The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs: Unearthing the Real Behaviors of Prehistoric Animals, by Dean R Lomax (author), Robert Nicholls (illustrator)

Jon Trevelyan (UK)

There are few books (and indeed writers) that have managed to bring fossils, fieldwork anecdotes, scientific rigour and humour together as effortlessly as The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs, Dean R Lomax’s newest offering (with art word by Bob Nicholls). It is more than just a compendium of strange fossils – it’s an invitation to look behind the display cases, to the lives of creatures long vanished (and not just dinosaurs as the title suggests).

From the outset, Dean makes it clear this isn’t going to be a dry taxonomy or purely morphology-driven palaeontology text. He frames the book around real, often astonishing fossil evidence – pregnant ichthyosaurs, battle wounds in sabre-tooths, mega-millipedes mating, ammonite eggs, even mosasaur mealtimes – and uses these to reconstruct behaviour, ecology, conflict, care, survival and sickness

And Bob Nicholls’s illustrations are vivid and rich in detail. They do what good palaeoart should: – they don’t simply reconstruct what once was, but evoke what might have been, that is, dynamic movement, emotion, interaction. The visual dimension amplifies Lomax’s storytelling, making the private moments of extinct life feel immediate.

One of the strongest aspects of the book is its tone. Where appropriate, Dean uses casual language to engage the reader (and no doubt often younger ones). And he mixes his own field stories with accessible explanations of how palaeontologists infer behaviour from fossils – bone structure, trace fossils, wear marks, comparative anatomy and so on. In this way, what might be abstruse for many is rendered approachable. There are ‘dinosaur jokes’ (often somewhat scatological, as the book admits), infusing levity without undercutting scientific seriousness. As one NetGalley reviewer put it, Lomax’s storytelling is “very humorous and effortless to read … and the phraseology isn’t too complex for a beginner …”.

This is much of what Slash (of Guns N’ Roses fame!) refers to when he called the book “fantastic, engrossing and funny. It’s one of the most fun nonfiction dinosaur books I’ve read.” That praise seems hard to dispute – the narrative pulls you in, the humour eases dense science, and never for long do you feel overwhelmed by technical jargon or dry data. The balance is impressive.

On the flip side, there are moments where broadness can be a weakness. Because the book spans many kinds of creatures – dinosaurs, mammals, fishes, ammonites and so on – it risks spreading itself a little thin in places. Some sections (for example, conflict, health, stranger fossils and so on) are enormously compelling; others less so, especially when there’s less fossil evidence to draw on or the behaviour inference becomes more speculative. This is unavoidable given the material, but for readers especially interested in one group (say non-avian dinosaurs), parts of the digressions may feel less satisfying.

Also, while the illustrations are superb, occasionally the transitions between anecdote, fossil evidence, and interpretive speculation are brisk; for readers wanting deep detail or footnotes, this might leave them feeling perhaps a little short changed. However, the book is clearly written for a broad audience – popular science, serious amateur and dinosaur enthusiast – not as a specialist monograph, and that’s okay, but the reader’s expectations should align with this. It doesn’t worry me too much.

In sum, The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs is a delight. It does what few palaeo-behaviour books manage – it makes you care about extinct lives, see them as more than bones, and smile (or gasp) at their weirdness, or lament at the the trudged. Slash’s comment captures it well – “fantastic, engrossing and funny” is no empty praise. For anyone curious about how scientists reconstruct behaviour from deep time, or simply in search of a richly illustrated, richly told journey into the strange private lives of prehistoric animals, this book will likely satisfy and surprise.

The book is published on 28 October 2025.

About the author

Dean R Lomax is an internationally recognised palaeontologist, author, television presenter, and science communicator. A leading authority on ichthyosaurs, he is an honorary research fellow at the University of Manchester and an 1851 Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. He is the author of more than ten books and has also written many articles for this magazine.

Bob Nicholls is a world-renowned natural history artist who specialises in the reconstruction of prehistoric animals, plants and environments. His illustrations and models have been published in more than 40 books and exhibited in museums, universities, and visitor attractions around the world.

Dean is the author and Bob is the illustrator of Columbia University Press Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils (Columbia, 2021), which was reviewed by me at: Book review: Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Fossils, by Dean R Lomax, illustrated by Bob Nicholls.

The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs: Unearthing the Real Behaviors of Prehistoric Animals, by Dean R. Lomax (author), Robert Nicholls (illustrator), Columbia University Press, New York (2025), hardcover (360 pages), ISBN-13:  978-0231211307