Robert T. Bakker
Fossils have richer stories to tell - about the lub-dub of dinosaur life - than we have been willing to listen to.
Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking.
You could arm-wrestle with a T. rex and win, but you shouldn't because it only makes them mad.
I'll bet you a six-pack of Coors that pretty soon, people will be discovering Cretaceous parasites inside Cretaceous bones. The possibility of looking into epidemiology and pathology is pretty cool.
Feathers predate birds.
To me it seems that the warm blooded dinosaurs replaced advanced mammal ancestors that were warm blooded, also.
One researcher just determined that African and Indian elephants make each other sick. When a new animal or plant is introduced to a habitat bad things happen. The biggest danger to native wildlife is foreign wildlife.
It was not an asteroid or comet, because it would have killed everything.
I also got a chance to go to the American Museum in New York, which helped my interest.
The impact of the magazine was very strong. As I said, it portrayed dinosaurs as part of the geological history, part of the story of life on earth. It struck that paleontology was the career for me.
As an undergraduate I held many small jobs as an illustrator.
Also, while I was at Yale, I had a job teaching kids at the museum.
At Harvard I was in charge of the comparative anatomy labs.
Since then I have held many jobs at museums in Colorado and Wyoming. I have also taught summer courses at the University of Colorado.
One of my major goals is to develop a web of the small Wyoming museums and create a major museum system. There are about eight of these museums, and they are all scattered.
Stegosaurus was common only on well drained, dry soil.
I also discovered the only complete Brontosaurus skull.
In 1941 Richard Owen said that the dinosaurs were almost hot blooded.
When looking at the evidence of feeding on large prey, you can see every size tooth from hatchling to adult in one spot. The babies may have been fed in the nest until they were full grown, like in eagles and hawks.
Land bridges were everywhere during the extinction, many species were spreading, and there were many diseases.
Often extinctions in the ocean occur at the same time as those on land. Then again, the ice age extinctions lost many big animals, but not many sea faring ones.
Birds evolved from a small raptor like theropod.
I want to be the Bob DeNiro of the Jurassic.
The evidence is overwhelming that birds are dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs are the best way to teach kids, and adults, the immensity of geologic time.Collection: Kids
Inveterate creationists, then or now, never allow their faith to fall victim to facts.Collection: Fall
It’s very simple why kids are crazy about dinosaurs — dinosaurs are nature’s Special Effects. They are the only real dragons. Kids love dragons. It’s not just being weirdly shaped and being able to eat Buicks. It’s that they are real.Collection: Crazy
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS.Collection: Names
The public image of dinosaurs is tainted by extinction. It's hard to accept dinosaurs as a success when they are all dead. But the fact of ultimate extinction should not make us overlook the absolutely unsurpassed role dinosaurs played in the history of life.Collection: Roles
If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life.Collection: Land
Traditional dinosaur theory is full of short circuits. Like the antiquated wiring in an old house, the details sputter and burn out when specific parts are tested.Collection: Science