The giant sail-backed carnivorous dinosaur Spinosaurus is one of the most famous of all dinosaurs; a staple of documentaries, books and video games, and the beast that bested the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park III. But what do we actually know about this crocodile-headed monster and its relatives, the spinosaurs?

The spinosaurs were some of the strangest predatory dinosaurs, combining a long low skull with powerfully clawed hands. Some species had huge sails over their backs, as well as fin-like tails. A great deal of scientific mystery surrounds them. Their fossil remains are highly fragmentary, many aspects of their appearance uncertain, their evolutionary relationships elusive, and interpretations of their ecology and behaviour are hotly contested.

Spinosaur Tales explores the exciting, sometimes controversial world of spinosaur science. Bringing these creatures back to life with stunning illustrations, world-renowned palaeontologists David Hone and Mark P. Witton present the latest views on the evolution, anatomy and lifestyles of an enigmatic yet charismatic dinosaur group.

Revisit the spectacle of the incredible new series of BBC One’s Walking With Dinosaurs in this richly detailed look into the distant past. With the latest up-to-date facts, interviews with leading dinosaur hunters and insights from the TV series, this is the ultimate prehistoric book that every dinosaur enthusiast needs to own.

Delve deeper into the dramatic stories of dinosaurs whose remains are currently being unearthed on dig sites all over the world. With stunning imagery and the latest scientific discoveries, these primordial giants are waiting to be uncovered by your own hands.

A cutting-edge dinosaur book for a new generation

• Beautiful imagery and expert insights: Uncover the latest information as told by professional dinosaur hunters and palaeontologists, which unfolds in the TV series’ signature narrative format and is accompanied by gorgeous imagery.
• Step into the breathtaking prehistoric world: Wade through prehistoric swamps, roam sprawling plains and discover primordial forests full of ancient life – home to some of our planet’s largest and most fascinating inhabitants.
• More than a companion book: Go beyond the Walking With Dinosaurs TV show by uncovering the backstories of each featured dinosaur, as told by the experts who brought the series to life.

Walking With Dinosaurs‘ first appearance in 1999 was the UK’s most-watched science program in the 20th century. Now 26 years later, it’s back – alongside this gorgeous book which continues the journey even beyond the documentary series.

The hidden clues of the past have been painstakingly pieced together and compiled in this brilliant volume that dinosaur enthusiasts and natural history buffs will not want to miss.

Dinosaurs are not what you thought they were – or at least, they didn’t look like you thought they did. The world-leading palaeontologist Michael J. Benton brings us a new visual guide to the world of the dinosaurs, showing how rapid advances in technology and amazing new fossil finds have changed the way we see dinosaurs forever. Stunning new illustrations from palaeoartist Bob Nicholls display the latest and most exciting scientific discoveries in vibrant colour.

No book before this has been so rigorous in its use of new data that finally tell us how dinosaurs actually looked. From Sinosauropteryx, the first dinosaur to have its colour patterns identified – a ginger and white striped tail – by Benton’s team at Bristol University in 2010, to the recent research on the mixed feathers and scales of Kulindadromeus, this is the first book to be based on cutting-edge scientific research.

Each chapter focuses on one particular species, featuring a specially commissioned illustration that brings to life the latest scientific breakthroughs, with accompanying text exploring how palaeontologists have become able to determine new details such as the patterns on skin and the colours of feathers of animals that lived millions of years ago.

This is a visual compendium to surprise and challenge everything you thought you knew about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived.

‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject’ PETER FRANKOPAN
‘As thrilling as it is sweeping’ TOM HOLLAND
‘This book dazzles in its originality . . . a triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERA

In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline – and so sparked a crisis that would engulf science and religion for the next six decades. By its end, the literal reading of the Bible had been overturned, science had been liberated from religion and the secular age had begun. Impossible Monsters takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women whose discovery of the dinosaurs revolutionised our understanding of the world, as well as those who resisted them and those, like Charles Darwin, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins. It is the riveting story of a group of people who dared to think impossible things and then showed them to be true.

‘Truly marvellous … an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES
‘A stunning work … of surprises and revelations’ STEVE BRUSATTE

Sharks have been fighting for their lives for 500 million years and today are under dire threat. They are the longest-surviving vertebrate on Earth, outlasting multiple mass extinction events that decimated life on the planet. But how did they thrive for so long? By developing superpower-like abilities that allowed them to ascend to the top of the oceanic food chain.

John Long, who for decades has been on the cutting edge of shark research, weaves a thrilling story of sharks’ unparalleled reign. The Secret History of Sharks showcases the global search to discover sharks’ largely unknown evolution, led by Long and dozens of other extraordinary scientists.

As the tale unfolds, Long introduces an enormous range of astonishing organisms: a thirty-foot-long shark with a deadly saw blade of jagged teeth protruding from its lower jaws and bizarre sharks fossilized while in their mating ritual. With insights into the threats to sharks today, how they contribute to medical advances, and the lessons they can teach us about our own survival, The Secret History of Sharks is a riveting look at scientific discovery with ramifications far beyond the ocean.

‘This book is the work of a master scientist and storyteller. It will make you see sharks in a new way: not as blood-thirsty monsters that we should fear, but as nature’s ultimate survivors’ – Steve Brusatte, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

‘Readers will want to sink their teeth into this’ – Publishers Weekly

‘Thoroughly researched and wonderfully narrated, The Secret History of Sharks makes a convincing case that the story of sharks is nothing less than the story of life on Earth. Highly recommended!’ – Nate Blakeslee, New York Times bestselling author of American Wolf

Ever since we first started discovering dinosaurs in the early-1800s, our obsession for uncovering everything about these creatures has been insatiable. Each generation has made huge strides in trying to better our understanding of these animals and in the past twenty years, we have made more discoveries than in the previous two hundred.

There have been extraordinary advances in palaeontological methods and ever more dinosaur fossils promise a landslide of new data and huge leaps forward in our understanding of these incredible animals. Over time, we have been bale to look at the sizes and shapes of bones, we have identified patches of fossil skin, we have looked at footprints and bite marks and we’ve calculated mass estimates and walking speeds.

With surprisingly little data to work from, we can put together a picture of an animal that has been extinct for a million human lifetimes. But for all our technological advances, and two centuries of new data and ideas, there is stull much more we don’t know. What parasites and diseases afflicted them? How did they communicate? Did they climb trees? How many species were there?

In The Future of Dinosaurs, palaeontologist Dr David Hone looks at the recent strides in scientific research and the advanced knowledge we’ve gathered in recent years, as well as what we hope to learn in the future about these most fascinating of extinct creatures.

‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject’ PETER FRANKOPAN
‘As thrilling as it is sweeping’ TOM HOLLAND
‘This book dazzles in its originality . . . a triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERA

In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline. They belonged to no known creature and were buried beneath a hundred feet of rock. Over the next two decades, as several more of these ‘impossible monsters’ emerged from the soil, the leading scientists of the day were forced to confront a profoundly disturbing possibility: the Bible, as a historical account of the Earth’s origins, was wildly wrong.

This is the dramatic story of the crisis that engulfed science and religion when we discovered the dinosaurs. It takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women who made these heretical discoveries, those who resisted them, as well as the pioneering thinkers, Darwin most famous among them, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins.

Impossible Monsters is the riveting story of a group of people who not only thought impossible things but showed them to be true. In the process they overturned the literal reading of the Bible, liberated science from the authority of religion and ushered in the secular age.

‘Truly marvellous … an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES

‘A stunning work … of surprises and revelations’ STEVE BRUSATTE