Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History

by Tim Haines

Book Overview

The companion volume to the BBC/Discovery Channel series, Walking with Dinosaurs reads like a cross between a National Geographic article and the script from one of Disney's True Life Adventures... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789451875
• ISBN13: 9780789451873
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 3.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 10.1" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Di-namic !

You've watched the shows,now it's time to read the book. " Walking With Dinosaurs: A Natural History" shows your how dinosaurs survived in the harsh, prehistoric worlds.The book is divided into six chapters, each chapter based on the successful T.V series. Each chapter starts off describing the world at that period of time and it also starts off by introducing you to each prehistoric creature that will be featured in that particular chapter.Unlike most dinosaur books, this book is more of a work of fiction. Each chapter is actually a short story of how the creatures survived and occasionally, there are small chunks of facts to read.Overall this is more of a scientific storybook book rather than the usual " dinosaur-factbooks". The most stunning feature of this book is its pictures. While most dinosaur books features hand drawn pictures, this book instead, is armed with "photographs" of dinosaurs.To fully immerse yourself in the prehistoric world of dinosaurs, I suggest you get this book now... before it becomes extinct !

The Age of the Dinosaurs brought to life

If you're interested in dinosaurs -- and who isn't -- you will be blown away by this magnificent book. It's a great companion volume to the TV special on the Discovery Channel, and a terrific book on its own. The text is well written, informative, and comprehensive to us lay readers, and the pictures of dinosaurs are so real that you almost forget they are computer-generated images; they look ready to walk right off the pages into your living room. I especially liked that along with the more familiar standbys such as Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, Tim Haines introduces us to dinosaurs most of us didn't know about before, such as Placerias and Postosuchus from the early Triassic period; Ankylosaurus, who could knock a Tyrannosaurus bowlegged; and Liopleurodon, a marine monster who looks like he could chomp a small whale in half and finish off with a couple of great white sharks for dessert. Haines presents the argument for warm-blooded dinosaurs very convincingly and his theory is backed by the recent discovery of a four-chambered fossilized dinosaur heart in South Dakota. He presents the dinosaurs not as museum fossils but as living beings who breathed, ate, slept, excreted, reproduced, and survived attack, and where the evidence is scant, his suggestions for filling in the blanks are so rational that we feel we are sharing a typical day in the life of a prehistoric animal. The photographs of the natural environment the dinosaurs lived in help bring the whole era to life. The final pages, which describe the crash-landing in the Caribbean of the asteroid that terminated the Mesozoic era, are written so vividly that we can almost visualize the flash of light in the distant horizon and feel the shock wave that spread over most of the earth and ended the age of the dinosaurs. This is a wonderful book for the whole family which will be read and referred to over and over again.

Dino-myte!

Tim Haines' "Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History" is simply awesome. As a dino fan for several decades, I am truly impressed. I've read many dino books and this one rates with the very best.Mr. Haines leads us through the day to day existance of various ancient creatures from their emergence through their mysterious vanishing. Each of six segments examines either a specific time period, species, or type (aquatic, airborne) of animal.The text is vivid and engrossing, especially the chapter describing the dinos' ultimate demise. The illustrations are taken from the video of the same name and are stunning.Perhaps Mr. Haines did take a bit of poetic license in creating the story lines, but since none of us were around at the time, his explanations are certainly as plausible as any other.In summary, if you or someone you love is any kind of dino fan, this book is a MUST!

SIMPLY FANTASTIC and an *Absolute* Delight !

If you enjoyed the incredible television series on the Discovery Channel, then you simply *have* to add this book to your library. It has *beautiful* pictures with great quality publishing from reknown publisher, Dorlington Kindersley. It's first class up-to-date, informative text makes this now one of the most interesting books I own. Let this book make a dinofan out of you (if you're not already)! And just for good measure, get the DVD or Video too :-) The book is a SIMPLY FANTASTIC!

a time travel of 50 million years into the past

What an absolute delight! H.G. Wells would be proud of a time machine like this book. It is not simply WALKING WITH but almost LIVING AMONG DINOSAURS. I have always been a fan of drawings and paintings of dinos but this book surpasses all I have seen before. The landscapes are partly original nature photos which depict a lush vegetation of a world long gone and make wonderful backgroung for the beasts. And the beasts themselves... well, there are no flaws (like a slightly misplaced or twisted limb) like the ones you may occassionally find on paintings - the computer generated graphics make sure of this. The animals hold themselves in a natural way showing grace of motion instead of the robust awkwardness we just about a decade ago thought were their way. The pictures themselves are of superb quality and the text really gives you a lot without using too much unintelligible jargon for the layman. The questions of extinction, cold- or hot bloodedness, reproduction etc. are all addressed. I only had one point of sorrow - a book like this cannot be long enough. But until someone develops a real time machine, we have to make do with this book - and it is worth the try!