Patagonia! Geographically, this term refers to the vast arid deserts lying between the South Atlantic and the Andes, encompassing most of the Argentinean provinces of Río Negro, Chubut, and Santa Cruz; culturally, this word evokes an exotic world of gauchos and gringos, guanacos, armadillos and killer whales, Tehuelche Indians, mythical living plesiosaurs, Welsh-speaking villages, Darwin, Butch Cassidy, giant ground sloths, and, of course, dinosaurs. Recent years have seen an enormous number of bizarre and wonderful new dinosaur species from this vast wilderness, including contenders for the title of all-time largest herbivore (Argentinasaurus, Puertasaurus) and predator (Giganotosaurus), embryonic sauropods, and some of the closest known relatives of birds (Buitreraptor, Unenlagia). Moreover, important discoveries of other major reptile groups have included flightless primitive birds and stunning fossils of filter-feeding pterosaurs. The majority of these fossils have come from Cretaceous sequences, although important Jurassic discoveries continue to be made.
The aim of Patagonian Mesozoic Reptiles is to provide the first comprehensive scientific overview in the English language of the Mesozoic fossil reptile fauna (including birds) of Patagonia. The volume is divided into 14 chapters, each written by one or more specialist taxonomists or geologists, and begins with an historical overview of the key people and events in the collection and study of Patagonian fossil reptiles, and an overview of the regional geological framework. Chapters 3–13 form the backbone of the volume: each chapter provides a systematic taxonomic overview of a particular reptile clade, including turtles, lepidosaurs (sphenodontids, lizards and snakes), crocodyliforms, pterosaurs, ornithischian, sauropod and theropod dinosaurs, birds, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and reptile ichnofossils. Each chapter provides a general introduction to the relevant taxonomic group and a map showing the distribution of localities, followed by a systematic palaeontology section; most, although by no means all, chapters also contain a summary phylogenetic tree displaying interrelationships. Information provided for each taxon includes details of known specimens, localities and stratigraphy, a diagnosis, and general comments on taxonomy, palaeobiology and phylogenetic position. At least one figure is provided for most major taxa. While one or two chapters, notably those on dinosaurs, provide rather perfunctory and superficial reviews, in general the quality of systematic information is excellent and comprehensive. Chapter 14 attempts to provide a summary overview of the Mesozoic faunal succession, and place it in a global context.
One of the persistent problems of the IUP ‘Life of the Past’ series has been the inconsistent, and often inadequate, reproduction of figures, particularly photographs. This problem is again evident – for instance the photograph of the premaxilla of the ceratosaurian theropod Genyodectes (fig. 9.2) is so out of focus that it is completely uninformative, while elsewhere the reproduction of line-drawings is often of low quality (e.g. figs 10.2, 12.1). Personally, I also find the page layout chosen by IUP frustrating: the margins are very wide, taking up nearly 40% of the width of the page, resulting in an unnecessary amount of white space, with text cramped into a narrow column. Finally, typographical errors and editing problems are not infrequent: for example Buitreraptor is consistently misspelt as ‘Buitreraraptor’.
Although IUP may attempt to market it as such, this is not a book aimed at a popular audience – the majority of the content is highly technical and not easily accessible to a non-specialist. As such, this volume will be of greatest interest and use to vertebrate palaeontologists and biogeographers working on Mesozoic reptile faunas; extracts will be of use to geologists interested in the geological history of South America.
