The hard layer of rock followed the cliff top, then stopped. Jim McCabe was dismayed. If the rock ended, the layer of fossils beneath it probably ended as well, and much of the work he and Darren Tanke had done would be for nothing. It was June 1986. McCabe and Tanke were science technicians from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, in Drumheller, Alberta. Their mission here, high on a bank above Pipestone Creek, a 12-hour drive northwest of Drumheller, was to dig through dirt, mud, and rock to a layer of dinosaur bones. What they found would determine whether the museum explored the site further. 
McCabe and Tanke knew where to find the fossils. A 12-centimetre-thick layer of bones striped the bank, 10 metres above the creek. The fossils were part of a bonebed, a jumbled collection of many animals’ remains. <...>

If I were, at about age twenty as a budding paleozoologist and paleoartist, handed a copy of this book by a mysterious time traveler, I would have been shocked as well as delighted. The pages would reveal a world of new flesh- and, in some cases, plant-eating dinosaurs and ideas that I barely had a hint of or had no idea existed at all. My head would spin at the revelation of the therizinosaurs, such as the wacky feathered Beipiaosaurus, and at the biplane flying dromaeosaurs, not to mention the little halszkaraptors with their duck-like beaks, the brow horns and atrophied arms of bulldog-faced Carnotaurus, or the bat-like membranous wings of scansoriopterygids.

If I were, at about age twenty as a budding paleozoologist and paleoartist, handed a copy of this book by a mysterious time traveler, I would have been shocked as well as delighted. The pages would have revealed a world of new sauropod and related dinosaurs and ideas that I barely had a hint of or had no idea existed at all. My head would have spun at the revelation of the neck spines of Amargasaurus and of sauropods so colossal that they not only gave the giant baleen whales a run for their money in terms of sheer  bulk but could feed over six stories high in tree crowns—and took only a few decades to get to those sizes!

I have been a lifelong dinosaur enthusiast. At the age of four, I created what my mother has dubbed my “first research paper”: a stack of illustrations of every different species I could find throughout the pages of my many dinosaur books.

I have been a lifelong dinosaur enthusiast. At the age of four, I created what my mother has dubbed my “first research paper”: a stack of illustrations of every different species I could find throughout the pages of my many dinosaur books. I’ve collected dinosaur books throughout my life, and recently I embarked on a search for a very specific sort of tome: a truly comprehensive, informative, encyclopedic collection of all known dinosaurs. Needless to say, a wide variety of dinosaur-themed texts have been available throughout the years, but try as I might, I couldn’t locate any volume that really fit the bill.