Phillip Lars ManningRecensioni

567.9

Wait… It was while still reading the introduction that I began to have doubts about this book – was it to be the Dinosaur as Hero or the young teenager fossil hunter? Had I bought, by mistake, a book written for the young reader? Was Dr Manning talking down to me – and given the height of his various University Chairs and multiple degrees how could he not?

I persevered through the opening chapters, but it was a struggle as I could not quite hear the author's “voice" and found that I misunderstood – or totally missed – what he was saying. I decided the book would not be read at one sitting, as so many of my favorites were, and put it up on the ‘dip into’ shelf in the smallest reading room in the house (the one with running water).

I will finish it, and I will then have learned far more about Dinosaurs, Hadrosaurs and paleontology but not – as other reviewers warn – about the conclusions on this particular find.

I recommend, as others have, that you wait for the sequel as it might contain the results of the painstaking research Dr Manning and his team dedicate to ‘Dakota’ and his story.

Dinomummy takes you through a real life archaelogical dig and puts you in the mind of Tyler Larson who is a student of paleontology at Yale University as he along with his colleages try to discover first, what kind of Dinosaur they had discovered and second, why the Dinosaur Mummy ended up in Hell Creek. This is a really good book for students who are fascinated with Archaelogy.

Otherwise interesting books can be disappointing if they're written too soon. This is one of them. Dakota, a hadrosaur mummy unearthed in the Hell Creek Badlands in 2004-2005, is a remarkable find: a dinosaur still wrapped in a pebbled blanket of skin after 65+ million years.

Manning gives a great amount of background information on long term preservation, both the soft tissue mummy type and the more familiar mineralized fossil sort. And he shares his understandable excitement regarding the dinosaur remains that appear to yield more than just stone bones.

Manning takes us into the field during the excavation, plastering, and transport of the huge dinosaur. He also covers the tests done by CT scanners and electron microscopes. The science presented is fascinating. The preliminary results (showing that original biomolecules survived millions of years!) are tantalizing.

But that's what prompted my disappointment. They were preliminary results. More scans and more tests were needed. In fact, Manning ends his book before the team determined whether Dakota was male or female -- an expectation remarkable in itself. The studies aren't finished. Most of the science is undone, conclusions unknown. The book was published prematurely.

The dinosaur mummy awaits more scans and more tests, but what is a reader to do at the end of the book? The book ended too soon and preliminary results leave you hungry. It's as if Miss Marple had assembled the suspects in a room following a fascinating murder investigation only to have the last few pages torn away.

Find more of my reviews at Mostly NF.

Reviewed by Me for TeensReadToo.com

At the age of sixteen, Tyler Lyson made one of perhaps the most amazing discoveries when it comes to dinosaurs: a highly intact and detailed dinomummy. Not just a fossil as many discoveries of dinosaurs are, this one came complete with actual dinosaur skin and possible organs! Although he had always been fascinated with dinosaurs, Tyler hardly knew at the age of six, when he discovered the fossilized jaw of a duck-billed hadrosaur along with his brother, that one day his persistence and dedication would lead to such an amazing find.

Tyler Lyson grew up in Marmarth, South Dakota, and spent a large amount of his time exploring the grounds of Hell Creek, a remote, huge area of badlands not far from where he lived. At sixteen, he discovered the dinomummy, who was eventually named "Dakota" for the state where it was found. He contacted Dr. Phillip Lars Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in the U.K., and the real fun -- and work -- began.

Together with a large group of scientists from numerous fields and eager volunteers, Tyler and Dr. Manning set about uncovering this enormous and amazing dinomummy. We can follow their journey from head to tail through stunning full-color photographs included within the pages of DINOMUMMY. Dr. Manning also describes the techniques and equipment used to unearth, protect, and transport Dakota back to his lab for further study.

For anyone who loves dinosaurs, DINOMUMMY is a must-read! This is a fascinating look into a truly important discovery, and its easy-to-read language and helpful illustrations and captions make it perfect for even the youngest reader.

A 16-year-old kid finds a mummified hadrosaur in South Dakota. Not only is the full skeleton intact, but since it was mummified, there are bits of skin and such also. Very cool. The book starts with a fictionalized account of what the hadrosaur might have been doing that day and how it might have died. Then it goes into information about the process of digging up the dinosaur and how they can get information from it and what that information might mean.

An interesting book, but some questions went unanswered.