Dinosaurs! follows the evolution of these spectacular creatures from their earliest beginnings as little fellows who had to evade attacks from giant croc relatives to today’s living dinosaurs.
Bakker was born in Bergen County, New Jersey. He attributes his interest in dinosaurs to his reading an article in the September 7, 1953 issue of Life magazine. He graduated from Ridgewood High School in 1963. At Yale University, Bakker studied under John Ostrom, an early proponent of the new view of dinosaurs, and later gained a PhD at Harvard. He began by teaching anatomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and Earth and Space Sciences, where future artist Gregory S. Paul worked and collaborated informally under his guidance. Most of his field work has been done in Wyoming, especially at Como Bluff, but he has ranged as far as Mongolia and South Africa in pursuit of dinosaur habitats.
I love kids dinosaur books! Whenever I see them cheap at a thrift store I will snatch them all up. This was a good one, I liked the details it gave about the dinosaurs and the artwork was nice and colorful.
This is a fantastic book for toddlers who love dinosaurs. Unless your kid is really into the whole subject I'd pass - it's not for the casual kid with only an interest in Stegosaurs and T-Rex's. Even though this isn't long by any means it tells, in the beginning, of the different periods, what they were called and what they're called when they're taken all together. The book then goes on to tell about certain dinaosaurs, in order of when they lived. Bakker included some of the dinos we all know but - and this is what Julia loves - he also included some lesser known dinosaurs. The Torvosaurus, the Stygimoloch, the Edmontonia, and the Torosaurus were all mentioned, along with a few other of the more unknown dinosaurs. At the end, it goes into how today we live with ancestors of the dinosaurs, namely birds and how they are the great-great-great-great=grandchildren. :) Very cute, super happy I picked this up, and Julia loves it so I know we'll be reading it over and over and over.
I would have loved this book as a kid...I was a dinosaur nut. However, some of the illustrations are a bit on the dated side--only a few of the smallest dinosaurs have feathers in the illustration, but the connection between dinosaurs and modern birds is highlighted.
As for dino behavior, fighting and preying is the primary focus of this book. However, just like modern animals, dinosaurs no doubt had a wide range of interesting behaviors, beyond just violent ones.