Dinosaurs of Darkness: In Search of the Lost Polar World

by Thomas H. Rich, Patricia Vickers-Rich

The discovery of the polar dinosaurs and the world in which they lived.

Dinosaurs of Darkness opens a doorway to a fascinating former world, which existed in Australia between 100 million and 120 million years ago, when Australia was far south of its present location and joined to Antarctica. Over the past two decades, scientists have determined that dinosaurs lived in this polar region.

The way we have come to know about this lost world--so different from any that exists on Earth today--makes for a fascinating story. Thomas H. Rich and Patricia Vickers-Rich. who played crucial roles in this discovery, describe their efforts to collect the fossils indispensable to our knowledge of this realm and the laboratory work that unlocked the secrets of these fossils. And they report on the activities of hundreds of other individuals who helped shaped the outcome. Their journey of scientific adventure is full of the ambiguities of life; it begins with one destination in mind and ends at another, arrived at by a most roundabout route, down byways and back from dead ends. Dinosaurs of Darkness is a personal account of the way scientific research is actually conducted and how hard it is to mine the knowledge of this remarkable life of the past.

Thomas H. Rich is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Museum Victoria in Melbourne and coauthor (with Patricia Vickers-Rich) of Wildlife of Gondwana: Dinosaurs and Other Vertebrates from the Ancient Supercontinent (Indiana University Press).

Patricia Vickers-Rich holds a Chair in Paleontology at Monash University, where she lectures in the Earth Sciences Department.

Life of the Past--James O. Farlow, editor

Contents
Dinosaur Cove
The Crossing of the Rubicon: The Excavation of 1984
Back to Dinosaur Cove
Interlude
Underground at Dinosaur Cove
New Explorations
Restoring the Life of the Past
The First Last Excavation of Dinosaur Cove
Other Eggs, Other Baskets
An Unexpected Surprise

Genres: Dinosaurs, Palaeontology, Nonfiction, Science, History

248 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I ignored some of the more negative reviews of this book; it was excellent! There's plenty of information on the specimens gathered, including drawings and photos, and the story of how they were gathered is coupled with the different hypotheses of how the fossils fit into the history of life.

[ccoelophysis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very well written (two authors and it doesn't indicate who is speaking when), but it's an interesting account of the discovery of dinosaurs in Australia. Don't expect to learn much about the dinosaurs themselves though.

[Kevin Orrman-Rossiter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting first hand account of the authors, both professional paleontologists, search for early marsupial fossils and their subsequent dinosaur fossil discoveries in Victoria (Australia) in the 1980s and 1990s. Great window into how science happens - than the dinosaurs of Australia themselves.