Quotes About Paleontology

Children have a great urge to learn about dinosaurs.

In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers.

Australia / New Guinea today has no equally large mammals, in fact no mammal larger than 100-pound kangaroos. But Australia / New Guinea formerly had its own suite of diverse big mammals, including giant kangaroos, rhinolike marsupials called diprotodonts and reaching the size of a cow, and a marsupial "leopard." It also formerly had a 400-pound ostrichlike flightless bird, plus some impressively big reptiles, including a one-ton lizard, a giant python, and land-dwelling crocodiles.

The near-simultaneous disappearance of so many large species raises an obvious question: what caused it? An obvious possible answer is that they were killed off or else eliminated indirectly by the first arriving humans. Recall

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.

...the argument from absence of transitional types boils down to the striking fact that such types are always lacking unless they have been found.

Dinosaurs have been extremely popular in the last few decades. It's no wonder. They're cool; they're huge; and they're magnificent creatures! But when did they live, and why did they die? Did they live alongside early man? These are good questions to consider. Did you know that modern man didn't even know about dinosaurs

Unfortunately, with dinosaurs, we haven't had enough specimens to determine how much variation there is within a species.

I can't think of any other region in the world which is such a vast source of fossils.

The more paleontological discoveries that are made, the more that we realize our knowledge of dinosaur types is fairly complete, and no ancestral forms ever will be found because they do not exist.

Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the mysteries of prehistoric creations.

Los restos paleontológicos revelan pruebas fascinantes de agresión entre hombres. Se han hallado trozos de lanzas y cuchillos alojados en los restos de cajas torácicas humanas. Las lesiones de cráneo y costillas son más frecuentes en el esqueleto masculino que en el femenino, lo que indica que el combate físico era una actividad fundamentalmente masculina.

I didn't know this before, but as it turns out, Tyrannosaurs can really haul ass.

Here's something else I bet you didn't know about Tyrannosaurs: they don't corner well.

Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.

If then this tendency toward collectivization is a mutation there is no reason to suppose it is for the better. It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction.

gorgonopsian sabertooth Rubidgea

Modern whales retain a tiny pelvis for hind legs that existed in their land mammal ancestors but have disappeared today.

Paleontology of conservatism and theology of morality. All this is a thing of the past, since the world inevitably goes into the shell of a black hole of selfishness.

Super Croc" is the nickname of Deinosuchus, a crocodile relative that lived about 75 million years ago. With a length of nearly 40 feet and remarkably powerful jaws, it was capable of killing and eating dinosaurs, though it may have munched more often on sea turtles.