Quotes from bakker robert t ii

The dinosaur is for most people the epitome of extinctness, the prototype of an animal so maladapted to a changing environment that it dies out, leaving fossils but no descendants.

The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression of basic dinosaur biology.

No one, either in the nineteenth century or the twentieth, has ever built a persuasive case proving that dinosaurs as a whole were more like reptilian crocodiles than warm-blooded birds. No one has done this because it can't be done.

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

Mammalian furballs dream. So do birds and big-brained dinosaurs like raptors. But a rich dreamtime requires extra brain capacity where memory can mix with fantasy. Turtles and lizards and snakes sleep the dreamless sleep of the small-brained.