[3] A feature of the book are the stories of how each species' fossil was discovered by non-scientists visiting each region, with an often noted discovery involving a 7-year-old boy in 1988 finding an exposed Tenontosaurus skull alongside a riverbank.

[4] The first chapter looks into the late Triassic period where early forms of well known dinosaur species were just beginning to evolve and whose fossils were uncovered in the Texas Dockum Formation.

[5] For The Quarterly Review of Biology, Edwin H. Colbert notes the "felicitous prose style" of the book that has "excellent descriptions" that are "abundant illustrated by the very skillful and imaginative paintings of Karen Carr".

[7] In the journal Nature, Douglas Palmer described the book as a "homely American family tale of hard work and togetherness in the search for and discovery of dinosaurs", though he lamented that children in the United Kingdom won't have the opportunities for such fossilized exploration.

[9] Writing for The Lapidary Journal, Scott Stepanski praised Lone Star Dinosaurs for being a "story of professional and amateur discovery from an often-overlooked region of paleontology".