Evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs / David E. Fastovsky and David B. Weishampel.

with illustrations by John Sibbick.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Part I. Setting the Stage:
1. Introduction;
2. Back to the past: the Mesozoic era;
3. Discovering order in the natural world;
4. Interrelationships of vertebrates;
5. The origin of Dinosauria;
Part II. Ornithischia: Armored, Horned, and Duck-Billed Dinosaurs:
6. Stegosauria: hot plates;
7. Ankylosauria: mas and gas;
8. Pachycephalosauria: ramroads of the Cretaceous;
9. Ceratopsia: horns and all the frills;
10. Ornithopoda: the tuskers, antelopes, and 'mighty ducks' of the Mesozoic;
Part III. Saurischia: Predators and Giants:
11. Sauropodomorpha: the big, the bizarre, and the majestic;
12. Theropoda I: nature red in tooth and claw;
13. Theropoda II: the origin of birds;
14. Theropoda III: the early evolution of birds;
Part IV. Endothermy, Environments, and Extinction:
15. Dinosaur thermoregulation: some like it hot;
16. Patterns in dinosaur evolution;
17. Reconstructing extinctions: the art of science;
18. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction: the frill is gone.

Written for non-specialists, this detailed survey of dinosaur origins, diversity, and extinction is designed as a series of successive essays covering important and timely topics in dinosaur paleobiology, such as "warm-bloodedness," birds as living dinosaurs, the new, non-flying feathered dinosaurs, dinosaur functional morphology, and cladistic methods in systematics. Its explicitly phylogenetic approach to the group is that taken by dinosaur specialists. The book is not an edited compilation of the works of many individuals, but a unique, cohesive perspective on Dinosauria.