Book excerpt: Bigger and Better, Updated and Expanded We live in a golden age of paleontological discovery—on average, we find one new dinosaur species per week. The most fascinating among them take their place in this updated edition of Dinosaurs—The Grand Tour; from Aardonyx, a lumbering beast that formed a link between two- and four-legged dinosaurs, to Zuniceratops, who boasted a deadly pair of horns. Here, you’ll find everything worth knowing about every dinosaur worth knowing—more than 300 in all, including: Amphibious Halszkaraptor looks like no other dinosaur we’ve found—with a head and body the size of a duck’s, sharp claws . . . and a swanlike neck. Longer than a blue whale and three times taller than a giraffe, Patagotitan is a newly discovered contender for “biggest dinosaur ever.” The speedy little feathered predator Stenonychosaurus was an anatomical marvel, with retractable claws, asymmetrical ears for advanced hearing, incredible night vision, and a huge brain. Oviraptor—whose name means “egg thief “—doesn’t deserve its bad rap. This specimen from 1923 is now proven to have been sitting by its own eggs—not stealing another’s. Sinornithosaurus prove that dinosaurs shed their skin the same way that humans do, rather than sloughing it off all at once like a snake. At-a-glance sidebars put each dinosaur’s diet, size, and location at your fingertips. Stories of harrowing expeditions conjure the thrills of history’s most famous dinosaur hunters. Highlights from recent research reveal what’s new in paleontology today, including scientists’ evolving idea of what dinosaurs actually looked like. (Hint: They were more colorful—and feathery!—than we ever thought before.) And illustrations on virtually every page bring these prehistoric creatures to life in all their glory.