The Dinosauria
book edited by David B. Weishampel
The Dinosauria is an encyclopedia on dinosaurs, edited by paleontologists David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson, and Halszka Osmólska. It has been published in two editions by the University of California Press, with the first edition in 1990 and the second edition in 2004. The book is a single comprehensive text on dinosaurs, with the second edition revised and reorganized to reflect the substantial growth in dinosaur research over the elapsed time.
Content
The first edition of The Dinosauria includes 29 chapters organized into two sections, the first on "Dinosaur Relationships, Biology, and Distribution" and the second on "Dinosaur Taxonomy". This organization separates the book into a first section dedicated to topics that encompass Dinosauria as a whole, while the second focuses on individual taxa, organized by evolutionary group with a comprehensive description of anatomy, relationships, paleoecology, and other aspects of their biology. Each chapter is written by a paleontologist knowledgeable about the topic of group, edited and coordinated by American paleontologists David B. Weishampel and Peter Dodson, and Polish paleontologist Halszka Osmólska. Combined, 23 paleontologists from nine countries contributed to the first edition.
The second edition of The Dinosauria revised and reorganized into 30 chapters organized into two sections, the first on "Dinosaur Systematics" and the second on "Dinosaur Distribution and Biology". The rearrangement into taxonomy first reflects how the taxonomic revisions impact the interpretations of biogeography, paleoecology, and function. Between the publication of the first and second editions, it also became better established that birds were members of Dinosauria, and all Mesozoic birds were also included.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7730227. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Dinosauria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.