Finally a Dinosaur Textbook with a Section on Dinosaur Origins! Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History

In 2010 when I reviewed the first edition of Fastovsky and Weishampel "Dinosaurs: a Concise Natural History" for the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology I gave it a good review, recommending it for classroom use.  However, one complaint I had was that as a book on dinosaurs it had almost no coverage of dinosaur origins.  David Fastovsky took note and assured me that the next edition would remedy this. 

Well I'm happy to say that the second edition is out and does indeed have a much expanded section on dinosaur origins. Thanks to David and David for not taking my constructive criticism too hard and adding this section. In my opinion this makes what I think is the best dinosaur textbook available even better. 

New Book Available - The Triassic Timescale

Available now, Geological Society of London Special Publication 334, The Triassic Timescale, edited by S. G. Lucas.  The table of contents is listed below and you can find out more about the book and order it here.  The PDF of the introductory article is also available as a free download.  Note that in this introductory article Lucas rejects the recent long Norian hypothesis basing this rejection on vertebrate, pollen, and conchostracan biochronology.  For a detailed discussion of this I'll refer interested parties again to the recent paper by Irmis et al. (2010).

LUCAS, S. G. The Triassic timescale: an introduction.

LUCAS, S. G. The Triassic chronostratigraphic scale: history and status.

MUNDIL, R., PÁLFY, J., RENNE, P. R. & BRACK, P. The Triassic timescale: new constraints and a review of geochronological data.

HOUNSLOW, M. W. &MUTTONI, G. The geomagnetic polarity timescale for the Triassic: linkage to stage boundary definitions.

TANNER, L. H. The Triassic isotope record.

TANNER, L. H. Cyclostratigraphic record of the Triassic: a critical examination.

ORCHARD, M. J. Triassic conodonts and their role in stage boundary definition.

O’DOGHERTY, L., CARTER, E. S., GORIČAN, Š., & DUMITRICA, P. Triassic radiolarian biostratigraphy.

MCROBERTS, C. A. Biochronology of Triassic bivalves.

BALINI, M., LUCAS, S. G., JENKS, J. F. & SPIELMANN, J. A. Triassic ammonoid biostratigraphy: an overview.

KÜRSCHNER, W. M. & WALDEMAAR HERNGREEN, G. F. Triassic palynology of central and northwestern Europe: a review of palynofloral diversity patterns and biostratigraphic subdivisions.

CIRILLI, S. Upper Triassic–lowermost Jurassic palynology and palynostratigraphy: a review.

KOZUR, H. W. & WEEMS, R. E. The biostratigraphic importance of conchostracans in the continental Triassic of the northern hemisphere.

KLEIN, H. & LUCAS, S. G. Tetrapod footprints – their use in biostratigraphy and biochronology of the Triassic.

LUCAS, S. G. The Triassic timescale based on nonmarine tetrapod biostratigraphy and biochronology.