In Abbeville's new "Dinosaurs" series, a talented artist and a noted paleontologist have teamed up to re-create the vanished world of the dinosaurs, for young readers of age nine and up. Each volume in the series tells the story, in comic-book form, of a different dinosaur living in its particular geological time and place. The narrative is entertaining, while all the details of the dinosaurs behavior and its encounters with other species are rendered with as much scientific accuracy as possible. At the back of each volume, meanwhile, are several short essays, abundantly illustrated with original drawings and photographs of fossils, that explain more about the creatures and geographical settings encountered in the comic.These essays, written in terms that kids will understand, reveal not only what paleontologists have learned about the age of the dinosaurs, but also how they have learned it, by examining fossils and other types of evidence. "The Journey", the first title in the series, takes place in the late Triassic period, 210 million years ago, in the northern part of the supercontinent Pangaea.
It follows the dangerous trek of a plateosaurus, a large herbivore and her hatchlings in search of food. The essays following the comic chart, the evolution of life on earth and in particular the emergence of dinosaurs in the Triassic, give an overview of Triassic geography."A Jurassic Mystery", the second title, is a paleontological whodunit set in the late Jurassic period, 150 million years ago, at a place that now lies in Germany. It investigates the suspicious death of an archaeopteryx, an early species of bird descended from the dinosaurs. The essays concern the process of fossilization, the geography of the Jurassic, and the development of flight in vertebrates.