Robert T. Bakker

Dinosaurs have a bad public image as symbols of obsolescence and hulking inefficiency in political cartoons they are know nothing conservatives that plod through miasmic swamps to inevitable extinction.

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.

Feathers predate birds.

Since then I have held many jobs at museums in Colorado and Wyoming. I have also taught summer courses at the University of Colorado.

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.

I also discovered the only complete Brontosaurus skull.

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.

Also, while I was at Yale, I had a job teaching kids at the museum.

The public image of dinosaurs is tainted by extinction. Its 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.

I want to be the Bob DeNiro of the Jurassic.

At Harvard I was in charge of the comparative anatomy labs.

Stegosaurus was common only on well drained, dry soil.

Birds evolved from a small raptor like theropod.

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.

If we measured success by longevity then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life.

As an undergraduate I held many small jobs as an illustrator.

To me it seems that the warm blooded dinosaurs replaced advanced mammal ancestors that were warm blooded, also.

Its very simple why kids are crazy about dinosaurs dinosaurs are natures Special Effects. They are the only real dragons. Kids love dragons. Its not just being weirdly shaped and being able to eat Buicks. Its that they are real.

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.

Land bridges were everywhere during the extinction many species were spreading and there were many diseases.

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.

In 1941 Richard Owen said that the dinosaurs were almost hot blooded.

It was not an asteroid or comet, because it would have killed everything.

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.

The evidence is overwhelming that birds are dinosaurs.

Fossils have richer stories to tell - about the lub-dub of dinosaur life - than we have been willing to listen to.

Land bridges were everywhere during the extinction, many species were spreading, and there were many diseases.

I also got a chance to go to the American Museum in New York, which helped my interest.

You could arm-wrestle with a T. rex and win, but you shouldn't because it only makes them mad.