Most dinosaur lovers will find this an interesting read, although a few of the reconstructions are not for the squeamish.In considering the heyday of the dinosaurs, books don't often mention that just like modern animals, they were tormented by the biting flies, mosquitoes and midges we find in amber today, weakened by parasites and fungus, and infected by lethal diseases carried by ticks, fleas and nematodes, some of which could have whittled down individual dinosaur populations beyond the point of recovery.Most people know that dragonflies and cockroaches have been around since before the dinosaurs, but the fact that the modern world's two deadliest infectious diseases, malaria and Leishmaniasis, were also around and may have killed off whole dinosaur herds was new to me.The Poinars don't carry their thesis quite to the point of claiming that parasites and disease were what ended the Age of the Dinosaurs, but they certainly present an alternate candidate worth thinking about.Click Here to see more reviews about: What Bugged the Dinosaurs?: Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous (Hardcover)
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