In this paper, adaptive dynamic surface control (DSC) is developed for a class of pure-feedback nonlinear systems with unknown dead zone and perturbed uncertainties using neural networks. The explosion of complexity in traditional backstepping design is avoided by utilizing dynamic surface control and introducing integral-type Lyapunov function. It is proved that the proposed design method is able to guarantee semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop system, with arbitrary small tracking error by appropriately choosing design constants. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.