American Museum of Natural History's Book of Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Creatures - Hardcover

These two picture books illustrate dinosaur paleontologists and their discoveries. Psihoyos, a well-known photographer who has worked for National Geographic magazine, gives these scientists celebrity treatment in a first-person account of his odyssey to fossil quarries and musuems around the world. His color photographs show paleontologists looking romantic and adventurous in the field and posing with their wonderful discoveries. Psihoyos also has a knack for telling a good story. In various episodes, he takes the skull of the late Edward Drinker Cope to visit modern paleontologists, watches FBI agents confiscate a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, and dangles on ropes to view fossils high on a cliff face. It's a bit sensationalized, but extensive quotes allow the paleontologists to speak for themselves, and they come off looking like heroes. Wallace's book is a companion to exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is currently renovating and updating its halls of vertebrate paleontology. It relates the history of museum-sponsored expeditions of the past that were led by such noted paleontologists as Barnum Brown and Roy Chapman Andrews. Specimens from the collection are shown along with the stories of their discovery and acquisition. People who have visited the museum would especially enjoy learning about the origin of the collections, but the book can stand alone as an interesting history of discovery. Both volumes are recommended for popular science collections.
Amy Brunvand, Univ. of Utah Lib., Salt Lake City
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the prehistoric days before Jurassic Park and Barney, the focus of dinosaur-mania for anyone growing up in New York City was the American Museum of Natural History, where the looming skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex inspired awe in generations of children. Now, with the renovation and extension of its dinosaur exhibit, that venerable and much-loved institution offers a history of its paleontology department, from its creation in 1891 to the present day. Among the adventures Wallace (The Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Dinosaurs, not reviewed) recounts are those of Barnum Brown (known as ``Mr. Bones''), who discovered the museum's T. rex in Hell Creek, Mont., in 1907; Roy Chapman Andrews, whose dinosaur- hunting fields in 1922 were in the Gobi Desert, where he unearthed the giant rhinoceros Paraceratherium; to Malcolm McKenna, who returned to the Gobi in the 1990s and found the remains of the Velociraptor. No amount of cinematic magic can surpass the wonder induced by a personal encounter with the remains of these giants who once stalked the earth. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.