Dinosaur Science

On a zoology expedition up the Amazon, Professor Challenger has made an inexplicable discovery. Back in London, his claims are ridiculed throughout the professional community. Reluctantly, he recounts to Journalist Edward Malone, "Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something malevolent, something to be avoided. None can describe its shape or nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon. Something terrible lay that way. It was my business to find out what it was."

Susan loves her giant, Deinonychus boyfriend but they can't exactly be intimate now, can they? After all, Moab is a giant, apex predator working the mean streets of the raptor colony, while Susan is a slim, sexy yoga teacher. A human, and an herbivore, at that! Susan craves more from their relationship than romantic dinners and selfies. Deep down, she's dating a dinosaur to satisfy her fierce, primal desires. And even though Moab's talons are long and sharp, and she is squishy and delicate, she is determined to take their relationship to a new level . . . or die trying!

In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.

To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation.

Experience Earth from the big bang to the dinosaurs and beyond in this beautifully written, vibrant overview of our home planet's journey from creation to our time today.

For seven long years, chief park ranger Henry Shore has been dealing with and fighting anachronistic dinosaurs in his beloved Crater Lake National Park and in the surrounding town of Klamath Falls. It began with one lone leviathan, the one he tongue-in-cheek called Godzilla. Henry and his band of heroes defeated it but others followed: the flying varieties he named gargoyles, the mutant t-rexes and roaming velociraptors that were so much smarter than their ancient ancestors.

Chief Park Ranger Henry Shore has dealt with and fought real live dinosaurs at his beloved Crater Lake National Park for over six years. With the help of his rangers, a few brave FBI friends, and army soldiers, he'd been victorious over a prehistoric lake creature and years later some particularly fiendish, and clever, specimens of the flying variety. He and his newspaper publisher wife, Ann, thought their park was finally rid of the monsters and they could reclaim their tranquil life in a place they cherished. Not so.

Dinosaurs. Majestic giants. They’ve captured our imagination for generations. On planet Mintari, they live again. Mintari is far from Earth. Wild. Pristine. A world where triceratops herd across grasslands, pterosaurs soar over golden mountains, and T-rexes prowl the misty forests. But these magnificent beasts might soon disappear. And only one man can save them. They call him Jurassic Joe; a semi-mythical figure, a ranger who lives in the wilderness of Mintari. He is the defender of dinosaurs and the bane of poachers. A folk hero...but is he real?

Mary Anning grew up on the south coast of England in a region rich in fossils. As teenagers, she and her brother Joseph discovered England’s first complete ichthyosaur. Poor and uneducated, Anning would become one of the most celebrated paleontologists ever, though in her time she supported herself selling by fossils and received little formal recognition. Her findings helped shape scientific thinking about extinction and prehistoric life long before Darwin published his famous work on evolution.

After a month of celebrating a great placing in their first competition, Nate and his growing team are eager to get on to competition number two. Those dastardly aliens have changed the second competition's layout, though. Get excited, and prepare to dive right into the second part of this epic adventure. There might even be a few mighty T-Rex roars!

The humans' dinosaur killing serum and extermination practices had worked far better than anyone had prayed. The Earth belonged to the humans once more, and all its lands were safe - or so the world, Henry Shore, former Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park, and his wife, Ann, had believed...until one day, years later, two new dinosaurs, craftier than any the Earth had ever seen, appeared. One of them was benevolent, a friend to mankind, and the other was not. It was blood-thirsty, eerily intelligent, and unbelievably vengeful. This dinosaur wouldn’t be so easy to kill.

Henry Shore has spent the last decade hunting for, fighting, protecting people from, and exterminating rogue dinosaurs in his beloved Crater Lake National Park, and the towns around it. Once the chief park ranger there, now he’s retired and, since all the dinosaurs are supposedly gone, he’s trying to live his best retirement life. Except, for Henry, that doesn’t seem to be possible…because of a new sorrow he’s had to shoulder, and a new insidious breed of super-smart, highly intuitive dinosaurs that have suddenly emerged to again menace humanity.

The chicken can fly only a few metres but–somehow–this unlikely evolutionary descendant of Tyrannosaurus Rex has conquered the world. Earth is now home to more than twenty billion chickens, at least ten times more than any other bird. For every human on the planet, there are three chickens. In Fowl Play, Sally Coulthard charts the chicken's fascinating journey from dinosaur to domestication to exploitation, exploring every aspect of the history of Gallus gallus domesticus.

Thousands of years from now, the human race has expanded throughout the galaxy, colonizing millions of worlds and creating myriads of bizarre new religious cults and sects. One of these worlds is Stohlson's Redemption, where the human settlers raise dinosaurs for their religious ceremonies. When the ten-year-old Kerryl Ryson creates an unseemly incident that upsets a visiting Important Person, his father is fed to a dinosaur - as an object lesson in politeness - and his remaining family are sold into slavery.

Spenser was just an ordinary boy who enjoyed video games more than reading until he was approached by a mysterious cowboy who gave him a small, white stone. Just touching the stone sent shivers up Spenser’s arm, and suddenly he wanted to try it out. That evening when Spenser read his book and held the stone, he found himself transported into the village of Arco, a boy from long ago who was trying to save his people from a ferocious dinosaur. Spenser and Arco team up to discover a secret about the dinosaur.

Scientists have long attempted to understand Earth’s past, and in service to that effort, they have divided the world’s history into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. For example, the current eon is called the Phanerozoic Eon, which means “visible life”. This is the eon in which multicellular life has evolved and thrived. Before this, life was microscopic (single cells).

Taken from her home at a young age, Mai Changying is isolated and trained for life in the arena, competing on the backs of stampeding triceratops and other great beasts resurrected from millions of years in the past. But under her timberwolf tattoo and the ferocity of her competitive spirit, she has a secret desire - a longing for a pack, a family, a people.

Time is ticking down in the Empire’s game, and Alan has only five months to establish dominance in all three Metal mines... one of which is controlled by the enemy nation of Britonia. After a daring rescue mission exposes Britonia’s endless supply of high-tech weapons, Alan must now devise a way to beat their superior firepower using his biggest advantage: the bond he shares with his dinosaurs.

Risen from the past, these beautiful animals inspire all who see them. Titanic sauropods roam the land, devouring forests. Ceratopsians herd across the plains like living tanks. Pterosaurs fill the skies, some as large as planes. Ruling them all, the mighty T. rex reigns as king. Powerful as they are, the dinosaurs are facing another extinction. An army of poachers sweeps across Mintari. Killing. Burning. Even the greatest dinosaurs cannot survive their modern weapons. Against this army stands Joe Triplehorn. A Mintari Ranger. A man broken and forged in the wilderness.

For more than twenty-five years, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a column called “The View of Life” for Natural History magazine. More than thirty entries from that column comprise this collection, which covers topics from dinosaurs to baseball and nearly everything in between related to natural history and evolution.