Ebook: Unearthing the dragon : the great feathered dinosaur discovery

Unearthing the Dragon is the first book to establish the dramatic change in our understanding of dinosaur origins, based on the new fossil discoveries in China reported by the leading US researcher in a personal account of his adventures there.

Mark Norell establishes this revolution in our understanding of dinosaurs that has occurred in the last decade. Dinosaurs are no longer thought of as lizards so much as birds. The transformation can be seen by comparing the first Jurassic Park movie with its leathery dinosaurs to the recent reconstructions in the BBC series "Walking with Dinosaurs in America" where they appear as warm-blooded feathered animals, attending their young and brooding their nests.

This transformation in popular culture is based on fossil discoveries in one profoundly important region in China: Liaoning Province. Mark Norell, the Chair and Curator, Division of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, is the leading US researcher on these fossils, and he has traveled to the region repeatedly over the last decade. Here he tells the story of these discoveries and his work with an extraordinarily talented group of Chinese scientists.

Unearthing the Dragon is a very personal account of being in a foreign land with a radically different culture, history of science, and code of social behaviors. In the hinterland of China, farmers, not trained researchers, often collect fossils. Local officials' trust is garnered over banquet meals and vigorous drinking sessions. Photographer and artist Mick Ellison shares in the adventures as the pair navigates forward through the world of modern China--and leads readers back to a magical prehistoric land of feathered dinosaurs revealed in the Liaoning fossils.