Geoffrey Cox and Joan Wiffen: Dinosaur New Zealand

By MARGIE THOMSON

A dinosaur book with a difference: this is the story of New Zealand's own dinosaurs, which is exciting because up until about 25 years ago it was thought that dinosaurs had never lived here.

Thanks to the work of the extraordinary Joan Wiffen and her husband Pont - amateur palaeontologists - in the Mangahouanga Valley in the Ureweras, it is now known that these creatures did live here, although fossil remains are not plentiful.

This slim, well-illustrated book will be of great help to both children and adults (and brilliant in the classroom).

It is full of details about the Earth's history and the forming of New Zealand, about particular types of dinosaur, as well as many interesting snippets of dinosaur-related history, including the fact that the first acknowledged dinosaur fossil, an Iguanodon tooth discovered in England in 1820, is kept at our very own Te Papa.

There is also some intriguing discussion of the fact that the dinosaurs are not actually extinct. Birds, the authors say, are in fact dinosaurs, "so in one way New Zealand is the most important dinosaur location on earth".

HarperCollins

$19.95