Brian Switek > Quotes

“I nurtured my dinomania with documentaries, delighted in the dino-themed B movies I brought home from the video store, and tore up my grandparents' backyard in my search of a perfect Triceratops nest. Never mind that the classic three-horned dinosaur never roamed central New Jersey, or that the few dinosaur fossils found in the state were mostly scraps of skeletons that had been washed out into the Cretaceous Atlantic. My fossil hunter's intuition told me there just had to be a dinosaur underneath the topsoil, and I kept excavating my pit. That is, until I got the hatchet out of my grandfather's toolshed and tried to cut down a sapling that was in my way. My parents bolted out of the house and put a stop to my excavation. Apparently, I hadn't filled out the proper permits before I started my dig.”
― Brian Switek, My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

“As new discoveries continued to accumulate it became apparent that almost every group of coelurosaurs had feathered representatives, from the weird secondarily herbivorous forms such as Beipiaosaurus to Dilong, an early relative of Tyrannosaurus. It is even possible that, during its early life, the most famous of the flesh-tearing dinosaurs may have been covered in a coat of dino-fuzz.”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“The places paleontologists looked for fossils and how those fossils have been interpreted have been influenced by politics and culture, reminding us that while there is a reality that science allows us to approach the process of science is a human endeavor.”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“This area produces a protein given the whimsical name Sonic Hedgehog,”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“Distinguishing the first true birds from their feathered dinosaur relations has become increasingly difficult. If we define birds as warm-blooded, feathered, bipedal animals that lay eggs, then many coelurosaurs are birds, so we have to take another approach.”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“What exactly is bone tissue? What makes it different from other stiff organic materials, such as the tough chitin of a blue crab’s shell? From a biochemical perspective, bone—in La Brea’s skeleton, in yours, and in any other vertebrate’s body—is pretty simple. It’s a combination of two different materials: a protein part called collagen and a mineral part called hydroxyapatite.”
― Brian Switek, Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone

“Their necks also beautifully demonstrate the jury-rigged nature of evolution while simultaneously refuting the notion that some divine Artificer intelligently designed organic life”
― Brian Switek, My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

“If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“Even now, the world's metamorphosis continues. It's at a rate that's practically impossible to detect with our own eyes, but it's happening. The scale of a human life - measured by the speed of Internet updates or the crawl of a working day - is ill suited to fit the dynamic nature of our planet and the fantastic organisms that continue to evolve here.”
― Brian Switek, My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

“the difficulties of making temperature experiments [on fully grown alligators] would be great and can be best left to the imagination.”)”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“In order to approximate dinosaurian physiology, the trio of scientists carried out the unenviable task of sticking thermometers in the cloacae of American alligators.”
― Brian Switek, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

“And even though the dinosaur’s arms have frequently been ridiculed, T. rex traded grasping arms for a heavy skull capable of delivering devastating bites.”
― Brian Switek, My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs