A Field Guide to the Dinosaurs of North America: And Prehistoric Megafauna

225 Pages·2015·3.428 MB·English

by  Bob Strauss

A Field Guide to the
Dinosaurs of North America

A Field Guide to the
Dinosaurs of North America
and Prehistoric Megafauna
Bob Strauss
Illustrations by Sergey Krasovskiy
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Strauss, Bob, 1961–
A field guide to the dinosaurs of North America and prehistoric megafauna /
Bob Strauss ; illustrations by Sergey Krasovskiy.
pages cm. — (Falcon pocket guide)
Audience: Ages 5–50.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4930-0925-1 (hardcopy) — ISBN 978-1-4930-1508-5 (ebook) 1.
Dinosaurs—North America. 2. Dinosaurs—North America—Juvenile literature.
3. Dinosaurs—Museums—North America—Directories. I. Title. II. Title:
Dinosaurs of North America and prehistoric megafauna.
QE861.9.N67S77 2015
567.9097—dc23
2015012789
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Before You Head into the Field 1
Acrocanthosaurus 42
Agujaceratops 45
Albertosaurus 48
Allosaurus 51
Anchisaurus 54
Ankylosaurus 57
Apatosaurus 60
Appalachiosaurus 63
Bambiraptor 66
Bistahieversor 69
Brachiosaurus 72
Camarasaurus 75
Camptosaurus 78
Castoroides (Giant Beaver) 81
Centrosaurus 84
Chasmosaurus 87
Chirostenotes 90
Coahuilaceratops 92
Coelophysis 95
Deinonychus 97
Dilophosaurus 99
Dimetrodon 102
Diplodocus 105
Dire Wolf 108
Edmontosaurus 111
Euoplocephalus 113
Hadrosaurus 116
Hyracotherium 119
Kronosaurus 122
Lambeosaurus 125
Maiasaura 128
Medusaceratops 131
Megalonyx 134
Megapnosaurus 137
Nanotyrannus 139
Nothronychus 142
Ojoceratops 145
Ophthalmosaurus 148
Ornithomimus 151
Pachycephalosaurus 154
Pachyrhinosaurus 157
Parasaurolophus 160
Pentaceratops 163
Platypterygius 165
Plotosaurus 168
Postosuchus 170
Prognathodon 173
Pteranodon 176
Quetzalcoatlus 179
Sauroposeidon 181
vi Contents
Shonisaurus 184
Smilodon 187
Stegoceras 190
Stegosaurus 193
Styracosaurus 196
Triceratops 199
Troodon 202
Tyrannosaurus Rex 205
Utahraptor 209
Woolly Mammoth 212
About the Author 215
About the Illustrator 216
Contents vii

Before You Head into the Field
Setting the Scene
Let’s take a pretend trip back about 65 million to 250
million years ago to the Mesozoic era, when trillions of
dinosaurs roamed the expanse of what we now call North
America. Not only trillions of dinosaurs, but trillions of each
kind of dinosaur: meat- eating tyrannosaurs, feathered
raptors, horned, frilled ceratopsians—you name it.
To put the number into perspective: Only about one
hundred billion human beings have ever been born,
and that’s counting back to an arbitrary starting point of
fifty thousand years ago. Raise that number by the vast
expanse of deep geologic time and you’ll get a sense of
how impressive the dinosaurs’ two- hundred- million- year
dominance really was.
Of course, peek in at any given time in North America’s
past and you’ll see that not all dinosaurs were equally
represented. Some were naturally more populous than
others (during the late Jurassic period, for instance, plant-
eating ornithopods like Camptosaurus vastly outnumbered
meat- eating theropods like Allosaurus, for the same
reason that there are a lot more wildebeests in Africa
today than there are big cats—it takes a large population
of herbivorous animals to support a smaller population of
meat- eating ones).
Take any slice through deep geologic time, in any
region of North America, and you’ll find a unique
ecosystem: sauropods and hadrosaurs munching on
different types of vegetation; small, feathered “dino- birds”
1