COSAM News Articles 2022 April Auburn Geology professor publishes fourth edition of Alabama Dinosaurs book, expands audience to anyone with an interest in dinosaurs

Auburn Geology professor publishes fourth edition of Alabama Dinosaurs book, expands audience to anyone with an interest in dinosaurs

Published: 03/31/2022

By: Leslie Leak

While doing field studies in July 1982, Auburn University Professor David King discovered the most complete eastern North American tyrannosaurid dinosaur specimen, later named Appalachiosaurus, in a small hill located in the southeastern part of Montgomery County, Alabama. This discovery led King down an unforeseen personal research path, resulting in many rewarding opportunities – one in the form of a book. In the latest edition of Alabama Dinosaurs, King builds on the knowledge he has gathered from that unique finding years ago, introducing the next generation of curious learners to the fascination of dinosaurs.

King, a professor of geology in the College of Sciences and Mathematics, published the fourth edition of Alabama Dinosaurs in February 2022.

“This edition is intended for use by a general audience, including high-school and college students,” said King. “While it can be used as a textbook, I wrote this latest edition because I wanted to produce an updated book for anyone interested in dinosaurs, especially eastern North American dinosaurs.”

Published by Sentia Publishing and available on Amazon, the fourth edition contains newly synthesized data and fresh interpretations about eastern North American dinosaurs in general and Alabama’s dinosaurs.

“In Alabama, there were at least five main groups of dinosaurs which are all discussed in the book - what they looked like, where they lived, how their fossils are found, and other items of interest about them and about Alabama during the time they lived here. This edition contains many new figures, including an Appendix of historic photographs related to the type specimen of Appalachiosaurus,” said King.

King’s idea to publish a book originated from a series of events that followed his unexpected discovery.

“Finding the initial bones that led to the excavations of the Appalachiosaurus type specimen was an incredibly rare and life-changing event, which I definitely did not see coming,” said King. “After the discovery, I tried to learn all that I could about dinosaurs, especially dinosaurs in the Alabama area, and I started thinking about how I could integrate my new knowledge into my teaching. After the first Jurassic Park movie came out in 1993, there was considerable public interest in dinosaurs. Not long after, I started a community education class on Alabama dinosaurs, which soon became an elective class for course credit at Auburn. This book got started initially as course notes for those classes.”

Editions of Alabama Dinosaurs have evolved over the years based on King’s educational intent and the availability of new information to share. Printed by photocopy in 1994 at Auburn University’s printing services, King’s first edition was written for his community education classes at Auburn and copies were handed out free to students following the classes. A second, longer edition was printed by the Auburn University Bookstore in 1996 and was written for King’s new, directed-study class at Auburn on Alabama dinosaurs. King self-published the third edition in 2002 with the intent of a global edition to be sold to the public. It was sold at the Auburn University Bookstore and was later placed on Amazon.

Alabama Dinosaurs is one resource King uses in the Geology 3300 course that he will teach this summer at Auburn.

“The course covers the history of investigations of all southeastern dinosaurs and the latest information on them,” said King, “plus other land and sea-dwelling creatures of the area during that time (Late Cretaceous). Students taking the course will get to examine replicas and go to a site to look for dinosaur bones.”

“Had I not embraced dinosaurs as a topic of personal research years ago, I would not have had a lot of really rewarding experiences in teaching and taking individuals on field trips to look for fossils over the years.”

In November 2021, Dennis Pillon of AL.com interviewed King about the 1982 Appalachiosaurus discovery as part of a two-part series called “Ancient Alabama”. Pillon’s article, which provides in-depth detail of the discovery process and shows fascinating images from the actual dig, can be found here.

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