American paleontologist (1945- )
Zoos mislead their visitors by the way the species are housed. Birds are in the Bird House, of course, and crocodiles are always segregated to the Reptile House with the other naked-skinned, scale-covered brutes. So the average visitor leaves the zoo firmly persuaded that crocodilians are reptiles while birds are an entirely different group defined by "unreptilian" characteristics - feathers and flight. But a turkey's body and a croc's body laid out on a lab bench would present startling evidence of how wrong the zoos are once the two stomachs were cut into. The anatomy of their gizzards is strong evidence that crocodilians and birds are closely related and should be housed together in zoological classification, if not in zoo buildings.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
The Dinosaur Heresies
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.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
"Dinosaur Renaissance", Scientific American, April 1975
The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression of basic dinosaur biology.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
"Dinosaur Renaissance", Scientific American, April 1975
Dinosaurs are the best way to teach kids, and adults, the immensity of geologic time.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
Honolulu Advertiser, Jul. 9, 2000
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.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
The Dinosaur Heresies
Plants and plant-eaters co-evolved. And plants aren't the passive partners in the chain of terrestrial life. Hence today's Pop Ecology movement is quite wrong in believing that plants are happy to fill their role as fodder for herbivores in a harmonious and perfectly balanced ecosystem. A birch tree doesn't feel cosmic fulfillment when a moose munches its leaves; the tree species, in fact, evolves to fight the moose, to keep the animal's munching lips away from vulnerable young leaves and twigs. In the final analysis, the merciless hand of natural selection will favor the birch genes that make the tree less and less palatable to the moose in generation after generation. No plant species could survive for long by offering itself as unprotected fodder.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
The Dinosaur Heresies
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.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
Raptor Red
If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
The Dinosaur Heresies