The Complete Dinosaur

Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. Tall quarto. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and T-rex design to upper board in black, yellow endpapers embossed with patterns of dinosaur scales. With the dust jacket. 8 double-sided colour plates, greyscale illustrations throughout the text. Just a single tiny crease at the edge of the dust jacket. An exceptional copy. First edition, first printing. A beautiful copy of one of the most scholarly and best-selling of the dinosaur encyclopedias published during the "dinomania" of the 1990s. The Complete Dinosaur, copiously illustrated and accessible to both professional and popular audiences, contains forty-three essays by leading geologists and palaeontologists on dinosaur physiology, behaviour, and evolution; the history of palaeontology around the world; and the appearance of dinosaurs in popular culture. The Quarterly Review of Biology described it as "the most readable and interesting book on many aspects of dinosaurs that I know" in which "even the dinosaurian veteran will find novel insights and perspectives". They cite in particular the chapters on the history of dinosaur studies as "the most comprehensive and historiographically integrated treatment of the subject to date" as well as "Mary Higby Schweitzer's thoughtful and rational review on how we study the biomolecular resides in fossil organisms, the 'dialogue' on dinosaur extinction between a gradualist (Peter Dodson) and a catastrophist (Dale A. Russell), and R. E. H. Reid's powerful and comprehensive treatment of dinosaurian physiology" (The Quarterly Review of Biology vol. 73, no. 4, December 1998). Still in print, a second, revised and expanded, edition was published to much acclaim in 2012.