The Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia should be considered a must-have for any classroom or dinosaur enthusiast. Filled with wonderful illustrations and information on dinosaurs through human ancestors, the book is a plethora of information presented in an interesting, and more importantly, less "teaching" way.

Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group - Chartwell Books for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a stunning book of visual artwork of hundreds of species I never knew about and some very interesting information about each animal and species all the way up to early human beings.
I particularly enjoyed the dinosaur parts and my little one enjoyed seeing the pictures and hearing the names of them.
This would make a fantastic gift for any dinosaur fans and is a great book to add to a book collection or even to have on your coffee table as a conversation starter.

I live with a kid that is dinosaur obsessed. I mean he has not wavered from it in all of his fifteen years. When he starts talking dino stuff I just get a look on my face because I totally have no clue what the heck he is talking about. I just look at the stuff he shows me for the pretty pictures.
He tolerates my stupidity and continues to try and educate me.


I looked over this book. But He said I wasn't capable of doing the review. So this is his review of this book.

Overall I really enjoyed this book, it has an incredible array of species consisting of many obscure species that I didn't know about. The descriptions are thorough and accurate as far as I can tell. My only issue lies within some of the artwork. The actual illustrations are great however-some are quite inaccurate primarily the Therapod, Sauropod and some of the Stegosaurid dinosaurs. Most of the inaccuracies lie within the postures and lack of feathers on species that have been shown that did.

Some examples of general inaccuracies in the artwork include:
Shrink wrapping of some of the animals heads and bodies (term used for describing the lack of fat or tissue, usually to pronounce the skeletal features of the animals)
Some of the animal's postures suggest sluggish movement while the up to date animals are known to be agile and active.

Positives of the book include:
Interesting and unique colors in the animal artwork, usually artists tend to make dinosaurs bland and uninspired browns, greys and blacks while the creatures shown in this book have vibrant colors and patterns.
A distinct array of species from all time eras with creatures from the Ordovician to the Cenozoic.
Great descriptions of the animals even on some of the more obscure species-ranging from the Moropus, Rytiodus, Titanosuchus and Argentavis.

Personally I think this is a great, comprehensive encyclopedia and that the pros outweigh the cons. I highly recommend.

I'm back now! If I had reviewed this I would have said Pretty pictures! and threw up a few gifs...so I'm going with the kids review. He might give me some cred. Oh and if you disagree with him..he doesn't know I posted it. I'm a bad mom.

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.

Brilliant encyclopedia of prehistoric creatures. From the earliest life forms, through fish and all the way to birds, this book has all you will ever need to know. An enthusiast’s dream, and one I will be dipping into and sharing with my classes on a regular basis. Amazing graphics and descriptions det out in chronological order, and pictures depicting scale against an adult human.

A densely packed & beautifully illustrated book on more than just dinosaurs. It's also on pre-historic fish, amphibians, other reptiles & early mammals. There is a lengthy introduction & detailed introductions for each group of animals.

Each chapter is organized by family going from earliest to latest. Each animal is pictured with lovely drawings.Basic information is given, including size, along with a paragraph or two about it.

It's a book that definitely makes you want to learn more.

The Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia is quite amazing. There are so many different species and details in this book, anyone that wants to learn more about ancient animals will love this book. The illustrations are gorgeous and some are also given a human silhouette to compare size.

I was provided with an electronic ARC through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Great informative book for anyone who is fascinated by dinosaurs or just wants to learn more. It is very in depth, I'd never heard of most of these dinosaurs before so it's very interesting. I really liked the scale that is given, with the human silhouette alongside the dinosaur so it's easier to gauge just how ginormous some of the species really were.

It’s a little known fact that those of us who were fascinated by dinosaurs are still fascinated by them as adults. So to all you would be paleontologists out there, have I got a book for you. Lavishly illustrated with pictures of all your old favorites, like T Rex and Stegosaurus, there are plenty of lesser known dinosaurs, as well as information about when and where they lived, what they ate and how they may have become extinct. Indulge yourself and learn something at the same time

I'm a huge fan of dinosaurs and this was a fascinating read.
I loved the pictures, the chronological order and the great numbers of entries.
A must read if you are interested in this topic.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

The Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia is a beautifully illustrated and richly detailed encyclopedia. Unlike the title suggests, this book is not just about dinosaurs. It also covers pre-historic birds, fishes, amphibians, reptiles & early mammals —it’s an amazingly detailed compilation of prehistoric life, covering more than 500 million years of evolution.

There is a detailed introduction for each group of species. Each chapter is organized by the family of species (fishes, birds, mammals, etc.); going from earliest to latest. With entries for more than 600 species, each arranged in its evolutionary sequence, starting from the primitive fish to birds, from predatory dinosaurs to woolly mammoths, from saber-tooth tigers and early humans to wolves.

Apart from their basic information including size and distinguishing features, each specie features a full-color illustration prepared as per the best up to date research by world-renowned paleontologists. The records of fossils, teeth, skin, hair, and even footprints and nests—have been used to arrive at informed judgments about posture, color, and other aspects of appearance, movement, their habitat. Comparisons with familiar living animals are also interesting. The content may become too technical at times but overall it’s kept uncomplicated.

There are several ancient species covered in this book and anyone wanting to learn more about ancient animals will love this book. The illustrations are wonderful and the snippets of facts about hundreds of species are both informative and interesting. Overall, this is the best and most complete encyclopedia on dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures, I have ever read. This would make a fantastic gift for any dinosaur fan.


Many thanks to the publishers Quarto Publishing Group - Chartwell Books and Netgalley for the ARC.

You're never too old for dinosaurs.

This is a beautiful book with very professionally drawn full-color glossy illustrations on every page and all the scientific information that a student or researcher might look for.

The chapters are organised by species, separating fishes, amphibians, reptiles, ruling reptiles, birds, mammal-like retiles and actual mammals. Each entry starts with the name, era, locality and size of a typical example, followed by an overview of the species. The descriptions don't go into massive detail, but they do make all of them easily recognisable in case you fall into a jurassic world and wonder what's about to eat you.

The book is a wonderful reference volume and I could be tempted to get a physical copy just for the fantastic pictures.

Definitely a thorough treatise on the world of dinosaurs. It is definitely geared toward the older school-age child though younger ones would benefit if it was read to them as some words would need clarification. This would make a wonderful addition to any public library especially since there are always calls for books on dinosaurs at least once a week. The graphics accompanying the text are very detailed and offers almost life-like pictures of how dinosaurs appeared eons ago.
I received an advanced reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for my volunteer review.

Wow, what a great book for dinosaur lovers and such, who want to be. It is a great source of information about each species of dinosaurs but does not stop there and provides a lot more information up to humans and about how the environment has changed. Together with very useful information came great illustrations, which are fun to watch and valuable as well. So not only interested people will have lots of fun with this book but as well younger kids, who just start exploring the world of dinosaurs.
 
Great illustrated and with lots of great information, this is truly a great encyclopedia with which a lot of people will fall in love.

This book is absolutely brilliant. I’m always struggling to find books on dinosaurs that are suitable for ks2/3. This is perfect, well written and detailed. Highly recommend for all school libraries.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.

This is a GREAT dinosaur encyclopedia. As a dinosaur enthusiast, I was hoping for more of a dinosaur art book, but this a true, thorough encyclopedia. It's divided by type of dinosaur and then arranged chronologically within, with many groups even addressing the most current evolutions. There are illustrations for every dinosaur, with a concise blurb about them. And I really appreciate that most of the images (or the pages, at least) have a human present for scale.

This is a truly exhaustive collection of dinosaurs and other animals from the various time periods. The illustrations are nice and colorful and it provides actual useful information regarding each one, as well as overall information for the different time periods. A gorgeous, informational book!

The 2020 updated version of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Creatures by Barry Cox is a wonderful addition to any library.

I was expecting simply a bunch of entries on prehistoric animals, which would have been great. But this book offers so much more. There is a big picture history, introductions to the evolutionary paths these animals took and where they diverged from each other. I often think of a specialized encyclopedia as being a whole made up of separate though related parts. This volume takes that necessary aspect of an encyclopedia and weaves the story of the Earth and life on Earth throughout the book.

I highly recommend this for anyone interested in dinosaurs and/or other prehistoric animals. It offers insight not only into the animals but into how we have come to learn what we now know.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

Good look at prehistoric life along with wonderful illustrations

I enjoyed this book, the 2020 version of one previously published. The title is definitely a misnomer because only about a quarter of the book is dedicated to dinosaurs. However, the subtitle of “...prehistoric life” is very applicable and the book does a good job of discussing these. The best parts of the book were the introduction itself, introductions to each of the sections, and all the illustrations. I think this book would make a nice gift for anyone interested in prehistoric life.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

Filled with great facts and thoroughly researched this book weaves together the facts to turn an interesting tale of a wonderful topic into a must read.

Definitely an instance of a dinosaur book for the adult specialist – we're not even done with the introduction before we're talking of synapomorphies and the like. And no, that's not one of the species included here. We start with a fairly technical yet brief history of life on earth, and an attempt at the history of dinosaurs, in that it's about our experiences with palaeontology as a subject and not any of the actual species, before delving into the meat of the book. This ends up being a highly pictorial guide to as many animals as they could cram in – a couple of paragraphs (if that, at first) discussing each critter, with what looks like a wonderfully accurate portrait, including a silhouette for the average human in comparison where relevant (and yes, some land tortoises were our height). The info-box for each one succinctly says about its size, era and distribution. But it's not as empty or dictionary-like as that may sound, as mini-essays act as introductions to each family, order and even sub-order.

Later we get to the creatures for which the book is actually named – by no means all of these are dinosaurs, and here we get more detail, up to a full page each, based on their fame and attendant levels of research and knowledge. But the fact that so many creatures are packed in here does act as a corrective to the usual book guilty of presenting just the largest, what's assumed to have been the most vicious, and so on. Here all the contents are on an equal footing, and worthy of our knowledge. Knowledge that this book could never fail to expand. It must have been rebuilt from the ground up since the first edition in the 1980s, but it'll stay on shelves a comparable time to come.

I love this. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this! Beautiful, full of info, well-laid out and did I say beautiful? I love that every single creature is illustrated. I love that it includes, not only dinosaurs, but prehistoric fish, amphibians, early non-dinosaur reptiles, tortoises, marine animals, early birds, mammal ancestors, marsupials, extinct mammals that aren't even that old, and our ancestors. I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH.