Dinosaurs

"I am the mistress, so let my birds assemble for me where the sheaves are gathered! I am Nance, so let my birds assemble for me where the sheaves are gathered! Let the birds of heaven and earth stand at my service! Let every bird without a name bring offerings!"

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

"Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along."

"Birds of a feather will gather together."

"Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song."

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

"You must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff."

"Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last."

"For birds the goal is simple—to secure a territory, to win a mate, to contribute the only lasting legacy of their brief lives—the passing on of genes to the next generation."

"Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove, The Linnet and Thrush say, "I love and I love!" In the winter they're silent—the wind is so strong; What it says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing, and loving—all come back together. But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he— "I love my Love, and my Love loves me!""

"Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!"

"Dame naturis menstralis."

"Bird on the horizon, sittin' on a fence He's singin' his song for me at his own expense And I'm just like that bird, oh, oh Singin' just for you"

"A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter."

"To warm their little loves the birds complain."

"Mayr became a mentor for many promising young men with an interest in birds. He urged them to pick a bird, to follow and study it, to learn the secrets of its breeding life, its winter habits, to take in small details that no one else knew because no one else had ever watched so closely. Mayr argued against a stream of ornithologists who hoped to make the science entirely academic, feeling that serious amateurs could make valuable contributions to the field of ornithology if they watched birds seriously and well."

"The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a box-wood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all the joy of life, And we in the mad spring weather, We two have listened till he sang, Our hearts and lips together."

"A feather in hand is better than a bird in the air."

"When the swallows homeward fly, When the roses scattered lie, When from neither hill or dale, Chants the silvery nightingale: In these words my bleeding heart Would to thee its grief impart; When I thus thy image lose Can I, ah! can I, e'er know repose?"

"Better one byrde in hand than ten in the wood."

"Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno."

"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these? Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught The dialect they speak, where melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought? Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!"

"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"

"The bird is my neighbour, a whimsical fellow and dim; There is in the lake a nobility falling on him. The bird is a noble, he turns to the sky for a theme, And the ripples are thoughts coming out to the edge of a dream. The bird is both ancient and excellent, sober and wise, But he never could spend all the love that is sent for his eyes. He bleats no instruction, he is not an arrogant drummer; His gown is simplicity - blue as the smoke of the summer. How patient he is as he puts out his wings for the blue! His eyes are as old as the twilight, and calm as the dew. The bird is my neighbour, he leaves not a claim for a sigh, He moves as the guest of the sunlight - he roams in the sky. The bird is a noble, he turns to the sky for a theme, And the ripples are thoughts coming out to the edge of a dream."

"Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day!"

"In all of nature, there is no greater spectacle than the fall migration of birds."

"A little bird told me."

"Well I wish I could be like a bird in the sky/How sweet it would be/If I found I could fly/I'd soar to the sun/And look down at the sea/And I sing 'cause I know/How it feels to be free"

"That byrd ys nat honest That fylythe hys owne nest."

"The worlds most frequent flyers don't have platinum status, free upgrades, or even passports. Every hour, millions of these undocumented immigrants pour across major political borders, and nobody thinks of building walls to keep them out. It would be impossible to anyway. Birds are true global citizens, free to come and go as they please."

"Birds teach us that borders are just lines drawn on a map—a lesson we can all take to heart."

"Between two seas the sea-bird's wing makes halt, Wind-weary; while with lifting head he waits For breath to reinspire him from the gates That open still toward sunrise on the vault High-domed of morning."

"There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them."

"That thought alone made me seek solace in chasing birds, because the one calming thing about being in their presence is the knowledge that my existence, to them, is entirely immaterial. The last thing birds care about is self-justification; they don't even notice me."

"And here is where nature mocks you absolutely. Birds don't work on your schedule. They don't care an iota for your plans or your desires. The ridicule your fantasy that you are in control of what it is you see. They appear when they want to and disappear accordingly."

"I believe in birds. I believe in their beauty, in their wisdom. I love the way they take me out of myself and enable me to live anew. I marvel at their capacity for flight, their sense of direction, their straightforward life, stripped down to the basics: eat, choose a mate, breed, protect. I gather that they don't think too much. They don't have writer’s block. They don't sit around wondering what project to take on next; they don't worry about authenticity or presenting their best selves on social media. I love birds because their lives are nothing like mine, because my anxieties would not only seem inane to them but would register as a foreign language."

"I was always a lover of soft-winged things."

"That which prevents disagreeable flies from feeding on your repast, was once the proud tail of a splendid bird."

"Birdes of a feather will flocke togither."

"Every bird that upwards swings Bears the Cross upon its wings."

"He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush."

"The bird That glads the night had cheer'd the listening groves with sweet complainings."

"How joyously the young sea-mew Lay dreaming on the waters blue, Whereon our little bark had thrown A forward shade — the only one — (But shadows aye will man pursue!)"

"Up and down! Up and down! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown; And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The Stormy Petrel finds a home,— A home, if such a place may be, For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young and to teach them spring At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!"

"Yr wylan deg ar lanw dioer Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer, Dilwch yw dy degwch di, Darn fel haul, dyrnfol, heli."

"And a good south wind sprung up behind, The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! ... "God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?"—With my cross-bow I shot the ."

"Great albatross!—the meanest birds Spring up and flit away, While thou must toil to gain a flight, And spread those pinions grey; But when they once are fairly poised, Far o'er each chirping thing Thou sailest wide to other lands, E'en sleeping on the wing."

"Those golden birds that, in the spice-time, drop About the gardens, drunk with that sweet food Whose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer flood; And those that under Araby's soft sun Build their high nests of budding cinnamon."

"Many condors were simply shot. No, they weren’t edible. No, their feathers weren’t prized adornments for ladies’ headgear. Despite their size, they posed no threat to humans or livestock. Yet there are nearly two hundred documented cases of condors that were killed for no better reason than to satisfy somebody’s perverted vanity."

"Thou should'st be carolling thy Maker's praise, Poor bird! now fetter'd, and here set to draw, With graceless toil of beak and added claw, The meagre food that scarce thy want allays! And this—to gratify the gloating gaze Of fools, who value Nature not a straw, But know to prize the infraction of her law And hard perversion of her creatures' ways! Thee the wild woods await, in leaves attired, Where notes of liquid utterance should engage Thy bill, that now with pain scant forage earns."

"Sing away, ay, sing away, Merry little bird Always gayest of the gay, Though a woodland roundelay You ne'er sung nor heard; Though your life from youth to age Passes in a narrow cage."

"Bird of the amber beak, Bird of the golden wing! Thy dower is thy carolling; Thou hast not far to seek Thy bread, nor needest wine To make thy utterance divine; Thou art canopied and clothed And unto Song betrothed."

"Cormorants are hated. In one popular anti-cormorant treatise, the bird is blamed for its very existence: “A war is being waged between the interests of sport fishermen and a predatory bird that has no local natural enemy. The bird’s sole purpose is to reproduce and eat fish.” Of course, obtaining food and reproducing are two primary goals of any species, including our own."

"The voice of the duck is the glory of the marshes."

"How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks."

"Of course the vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it."

"The francolin's voice is the glory of the fields."

"Gulls present a unique challenge, not only because most of them look similar, but also because plumage varies drastically depending on the age of a bird. To think that a juvenile and adult herring gull are related is to suspend disbelief in earnest."

"“That’s a great white heron,” my father told me. “As close to an angel as a bird can get.”"

"The first time I saw one in Africa I had much the same feeling as Mr. Malik was having now. It was one of happy elation. There is something about the shape of the bird, with its long curved beak and clown’s crest, and the colour of the bird, with its bright russet plumage speckled with bands of black and white—there is even some thing about the very name of the bird—it just cheers you up. Forget the bluebird of happiness, give me a hoopoe every time."

"The Jackdaw sat in the Cardinal's chair! Bishop and Abbot and Prior were there, Many a monk and many a friar, Many a knight and many a squire, With a great many more of lesser degree,— In sooth a goodly company; And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, Was a prouder seen, Read of in books or dreamt of in dreams, Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims."

"An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which a cat observing, asked, "Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of?" "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chestfull, and makes no more use of them than I do.""

"What, is the jay more precious than the lark, Because his feathers are more beautiful?"

"She stared out at a kestrel hovering on the wing in the distance. How little it cared for the world around it, content to drift and let the wind take it where it may."

"Changed to a lapwing by th' avenging god, He made the barren waste his lone abode, And oft on soaring pinions hover'd o'er The lofty palace then his own no more."

"The false lapwynge, full of trecherye."

"Amid thy desert-walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries."

"For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs Close by the ground, to near our conference."

"Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat? Loves of his own, and raptures swell the note."

"Perch'd on the cedar's topmost bough, And gay with gilded wings, Perchance the patron of his vow, Some artless linnet sings."

"I do sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing."

"Linnets * * * sit On the dead tree, a dull despondent flock."

"Hail to thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion! Thou, linnet! in thy green array, Presiding spirit here to-day, Dost lead the revels of the May; And this is thy dominion."

"So have I seen, in black and white, A prating thing, a magpie hight, Majestically stalk; A stately worthless animal, That plies the tongue, and wags the tail, All flutter, pride, and talk."

"I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

"Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen."

"Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and jibe: Wit, sophist, songster, Yorick of thy tribe; Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school; To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch-mocker and mad abbot of misrule!"

"Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown:"

"Ah, nut-brown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants! And ah, ye poachers!—'Tis no sport for peasants."

"Or have you mark'd a partridge quake, Viewing the towering falcon nigh? She cuddles low behind the brake: Nor would she stay; nor dares she fly."

"Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?"

"Like as a feareful partridge, that is fledd From the sharpe hauke which her attacked neare, And falls to ground to seeke for succor theare, Whereas the hungry spaniells she does spye, With greedy jawes her ready for to teare."

"Fesaunt excedeth all fowles in sweetnesse and holsomnesse, and is equall to capon in nourishynge."

"The fesant hens of Colchis, which have two ears as it were consisting of feathers, which they will set up and lay down as they list."

"See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings: Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground."

"In jalousie I rede eek thou hym bynde And thou shalt make him couche as doeth a quaille."

"A female California quail was scratching in a ground feeder outside the farm kitchen window when I washed my dinner dishes, among house finches, chickadees, sparrows. The graceful oval body looked quite large amnog the little birds. She scratched and pecked vigorously. I love to see quail being quail, they are so full of quailness."

"The song-birds leave us at the summer's close, Only the empty nests are left behind. And pipings of the quail among the sheaves."

"An honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails."

"“What is that?” I gasped, nearly blinded by the unexpected vermillion patches on the blackbird’s epaulets. I watched as the bird threw back its head, opened wide its beak and let out a sound so primal it left me marvelling: this was as close as I’d ever stand to dinosaurs. If this bird had been here all along, I thought, what else had I been missing?"

"Those Rooks, dear, from morning till night, They seem to do nothing but quarrel and fight, And wrangle and jangle, and plunder."

"Invite the rook who high amid the boughs, In early spring, his airy city builds, And ceaseless caws amusive."

"Where in venerable rows Widely waving oaks enclose The moat of yonder antique hall, Swarm the rooks with clamorous call; And, to the toils of nature true, Wreath their capacious nests anew."

"Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry, The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I."

"Tell me not of joy: there's none Now my little sparrow's gone; He, just as you, Would toy and woo, He would chirp and flatter me, He would hang the wing awhile, Till at length he saw me smile, Lord! how sullen he would be!"

"The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be."

"The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had it head bit off by it young."

"Behold, within the leafy shade, Those bright blue eggs together laid! On me the chance-discovered sight Gleamed like a vision of delight."

"An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware."

"Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself up into the Western Gull. He is rather the handsomest of the blue-mantled Laridae, for the depth of color in the mantle, in sharp contrast with the snowy plumage of back and breast, gives him an appearance of sturdiness and quality which is not easily dispelled by subsequent knowledge of the black heart within. As a scavanger, the Western Gull is impeccable. Wielding the besom of hunger, he and his kind sweep the beaches clean and purge the water-front of all pollution. But a scavanger is not necessarily a good citizen. Call him a ghoul, rather, for the Western Gull is cruel of beak and bottomless of maw. Pity, with him, is a thing unknown; and when one of their own comrades dies, these feathered jackals fall upon him without compunction, a veritable Leichnamveranderungsgebrauchsgesellschaft. If he thus mistreats his own kind, be assured that this gull asks only two questions of any other living thing: First, "Am I hungry?" (Ans., "Yes.") Second, "Can I get away with it?" (Ans., "I'll try.")"

"Could the whip-poor-will or the cat of the glen/Look into my eyes and be bold?"

"The moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screech-owl."

"Where deep and misty shadows float In forest's depths is heard thy note. Like a lost spirit, earthbound still, Art thou, mysterious whip-poor-will."

"And then the wren gan scippen and to daunce."

"I took the wren's nest;— Heaven forgive me! Its merry architects so small Had scarcely finished their wee hall, That, empty still, and neat and fair, Hung idly in the summer air."

"For the poor wren. The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl."

"Thus the fable tells us, that the wren mounted as high as the eagle, by getting upon his back."

"Among the dwellings framed by birds In field or forest with nice care, Is none that with the little wren's In snugness may compare."

"The bird is a mouse. A frustrating, feathered mouse, no more inclined to be seen by mortal eyes than your average leprechaun."

"I do not be­lieve birds deserve to be put in a taxo­nomic class separate from dinosaurs."

"The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression of basic dinosaur biology."

"The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like velociraptor. Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds."

"If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs."

"When it was assumed that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, it was correspondingly presumed that their flight evolved among climbers that first glided and then developed powered flight. This has the advantage that we know that arboreal animals can evolve powered flight with the aid of gravity, as per bats. When it was realized that birds descended from deinonychosaurs, many researchers switched to the hypothesis that running dinosaurs learned to fly from the ground up. This has the disadvantage that it is not certain whether it is practical for tetrapod flight to evolve among ground runners working against gravity. The characteristics of birds indicate that they evolved from dinosaurs that had first evolved as bipedal runners, and then evolved into long armed climbers. If the ancestors of birds had been entirely arboreal, then they should be semiquadrupedal forms whose sprawling legs were integrated into the main airfoil, like bats. That birds are bipeds whose erect legs are separate from the wings indicates that their ancestors evolved to run."

"Imagine, if you will, a world filled with billions of dinosaurs. A world where they can be found in thousands of shapes, sizes, colours and classes in every habitable pocket of the planet. Imagine them from the desert dunes of the Sahara to the frozen rim of the Antarctic Circle - and from the balmy islands of the South Pacific to the high flanks of the Himalayas. The thing is, you don't have to imagine very hard. In fact, wherever you live, you can probably step outside and look up into the trees and skies to find them. For the dinosaurs are the birds and they are all around you. Dinosaurs didn't die out when an asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago. Everything you were told as a child was wrong."

"From nesting, brooding and sex, to metabolism, development and even the diseases that afflicted them, many of the traits found in birds today were inherited from the dinosaurs. The boundary between dinosaurs and birds has become utterly blurred."

"Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs."

"I needed the birds worse & worse as I got older as if some crack had opened in the human scheme of things & only birds with their sharp morning notes had the sense for any new day."

"Archaeopteryx is so nearly identical in all known features with small carnivorous dinosaurs that it is hard to believe feathers were not present in such dinosaurs."

"When the dinosaurs fell at the end of the Cretaceous, they were not a senile, moribund group that had played out its evolutionary options. Rather they were vigorous, still diversifying into new or­ders and producing a variety of big­brained carnivores with the highest grade of intelligence yet present on land."

"The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression of basic dinosaur biology."

"If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life. Not only did dinosaurs exercise an airtight monopoly as large land animals, they kept their commanding position for an extraordinary span of time - 130 million years. Our own human species is no more than a hundred thousand years old. And our own zoological class, the Mammalia, the clan of warm-blooded furry creatures, has ruled the land ecosystem for only seventy million years. True, the dinosaurs are extinct, but we ought to be careful in judging them inferior to our own kind. Who can say that the human system will last another thousand years, let alone a hundred million? Who can predict that our Class Mammalia will rule for another hundred thousand millennia?"

"Humans are proud of themselves. The guiding principle of the modern age is "Man is the measure of all things." And our bodies have excited physiologists and philosophers to a profound awe of the basic mammalian design. But the history of the dinosaurs should teach us some humility... If our fundamental mammalian mode of adaptation was superior to the dinosaurs', then history should record the meteoric rise of the mammals and the eclipse of the dinosaurs. Our own Class Mammalia did not seize the dominant position in life on land. Instead, the mammal clan was but one of many separate evolutionary families that succeeded as species only by taking refuge in small body size during the Age of Dinosaurs. As long as there were dinosaurs, a full 130 million years, remember, the warm-blooded league of furry mammals produced no species bigger than a cat."

"Twentieth-century paleontologists have fallen into the bad habit of reconstructing the dinosaurs' life functions by using crocodiles as a living model. But the earliest researchers of the nineteenth century proved beyond a doubt that the dinosaurs' powerful hind limbs must have operated like the limbs of gigantic birds."

"Dinosaurs are not lizards, and vice versa. Lizards are scaley reptiles of an ancient bloodline. The oldest lizards antedate the earliest dinosaurs by a full thirty million years. A few large lizards, such as the man-eating Komodo dragon, have been called "relicts of the dinosaur age", but this phrase is historically incorrect. No lizard ever evolved the birdlike characteristics peculiar to each and every dinosaur. A big lizard never resembled a small dinosaur except for a few inconsequential details of the teeth. Lizards never walk with the erect, long-striding gait that distinguishes the dinosaurlike ground birds today or the birdlike dinosaurs of the Mesozoic."

"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."

"And let us squarely face the dinosaurness of birds and the birdness of the Dinosauria. When the Canada geese honk their way northward, we can say: "The dinosaurs are migrating, it must be spring!""

"It will blow some people's minds to realise that those dinosaurs in the movies would have been even weirder, and I think even scarier - like big fluffy birds from hell."

"I dromaeosauridi terricoli ricordano un modello predatorio felide non-cursorio (come lince e giaguaro) basato sull'agguato e sull'uso dell'arto anteriore nella predazione, piuttosto che un modello canide (stile lupo e licaone), più cursorio, basato sull'inseguimento e che non usa l'arto anteriore nella predazione, plausibile invece per i tyrannosauridi... Quindi il velocissimo "raptor" corridore è solo un mito post-moderno, privo di fondamenta scientifiche: in quanto a corsa, un dromaeosauridae era nettamente meno portato di un ornithomimidae, tyrannosauridae, troodontidae, alvarezsauridae o avimimidae."

"Land-dwelling dromaeosaurids followed a non cursorial felid model of hunting (like a lynx or jaguar) based on ambush and usage of the hind limbs in predation, rather than the more cursorial canid model which doesn't make use of the hind limbs in predation (like a wolf or African wild dog), which is more plausible in tyrannosaurids... The super fast cursorial "raptor" therefore is nothing more than a scientifically baseless post-modern myth. When it comes to running, a dromaeosaurid was notably less able than an ornithomimid, a tyrannosaurid, a troodontid, an alvarezsaurid or an avimimid."

"Tutte le evidenze esistenti indicano che i dromaeosauridi erano ricoperti di un fitto piumaggio. Tale discorso è valido per tutti i dromaeosauridi, anche quelle che, a causa di processi di fossilizzazione non idonei, non mostrano più tracce del loro tegumento, da Graciliraptor a Utahraptor. Faccio solo notare che l'alternativa alla presenza di piumaggio, ovvero l'ipotesi che i grandi dromaeosauridi fossero privi di piumaggio, se non addirittura squamati come coccodrilli, è palesemente anti-scientifica, dato che, a differenza di quella "piumata", non si basa su alcuna prova anatomica, né su fenomeni zoologici noti (non esiste alcuna prova che un animale piumato si evolva in uno squamato). I dromaeosauridi appartengono a Maniraptora, e nessun Maniraptora fossile scoperto finora ha mai presentato tracce di squame o scaglie. Al contrario, tutte le tracce di penne scoperte finora appartengono a scheletri di maniraptoriani, compresi alcuni dromaeosauridi: pertanto, i dati sostengono con schiacciante evidenza l'ipotesi piumata."

"All existing evidence indicates that dromaeosaurids were covered in thick feathers. This holds for all dromaeosaurids, from Graciliraptor to Utahraptor, including those whose fossils bear no traces of intigument due to unfavourable fossilization processes. I'd like to point out that the alternative to the feathered model, that is, the hypothesis that big dromaeosaurids lacked feathers or were even scaley like crocodiles, is blatantly anti-scientific, seeing as unlike the feathered model it is not based on either any anatomical evidence or on known zoological phenomena (there is no proof whatsoever of feathered animals evolving into scaley ones). Dromaeosaurids belong to Maniraptora, and no maniraptoran fossil discovered so far has ever shown traces of scales. On the contrary, all feather impressions found so far belong to maniraptoran skeletons, including some dromaeosaurids. Overall, the data supports with undeniable proof the feathered model."

"A voi la scelta: Utahraptor piumato e la Scienza, oppure il raptor squamato e l'Ignoranza."

"The choice is yours: accept the feathered Utahraptor and science, or the scaley raptor and ignorance."

"Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs."

"The most popular exhibits in any natural history museum are, without doubt, the dinosaurs. These creatures' popularity grows each year, partly because of the recent resurgence of dinosaur movies, but also because a skeleton of a full-sized tyrannosaurus rex still has the ability, even 65 million years after its death, to chill us to the bone."

"We comprehend... that nuclear power is a real danger for mankind, that over-crowding of the planet is the greatest danger of all. We have understood that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs."

"Here again one sees the gigantic man-made fallacy that informs our "Genesis" story. How can it be proven in one paragraph that this book was written by ignorant men and not by any god? Because man is given 'dominion' over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of the supposedly special and immediate creation."

"If we base the ferocious factor on the length of the animal, there was nothing that ever lived on this planet that could match this creature [Spinosaurus]."

"The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like Velociraptor. Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like Velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds."

"We have as much evidence that T. rex was feathered, at least during some stage of its life, as we do that australopithecines like Lucy had hair."

"I was looking forward to buying fluffy dinosaurs for my granddaughters and a bag of assorted fossils for my grandson, and for me. However, as I approached the door I realised that it was not a shop; it was a church. The preacher and his congregation, far from celebrating dinosaurs, would be cursing them, if indeed they believed in their existence at all. Even more abhorrent was the concept of 'evolution', especially the suggestion that man himself is descended from 'lower forms', which is considered not merely a fallacy, but an iniquitous falsehood, a heresy and a sin. Such are the convictions and the creed of the 'Creationist' churches. There are an awful lot of them in the States, especially down south."

"The biggest living terrestrial predator, the Siberian tiger, at about a third of a metric ton (300 kg) pales in comparison to the biggest of the meat-eating dinosaurs, which reached 5 to perhaps 20 metric tons - the size of elephants and bigger. But while elephants cannot run, the biggest predatory dinosaurs probably ran as fast as horses, and they hunted herbivores that themselves were as big as or bigger than elephants."

"How would we think and feel about predatory dinosaurs if they were alive today? Humans have long felt antipathy toward carnivores, our competitors for scarce protein. But our feelings are somewhat mollified by the attractive qualities we see in them. For all their size and power, lions remind us of the little creatures that we like to have curl up in our laps and purr as we stroke them. Likewise, noble wolves recall our canine pets. Cats and dogs make good companions because they are intelligent and responsive to our commands, and their supple bodies make them pleasing to touch and play with. And, very importantly, they are house-trainable. Their forward-facing eyes remind us of ourselves. However, even small predaceous dinosaurs would have had no such advantage. None were brainy enough to be companionable or house-trainable; in fact, they would always be a danger to their owners. Their stiff, perhaps feathery bodies were not what one would care to have sleep at the foot of the bed. The reptilian-faced giants that were the big predatory dinosaurs would truly be horrible and terrifying. We might admire their size and power, much as many are fascinated with war and its machines, but we would not like them. Their images in literature and music would be demonic and powerful - monsters to be feared and destroyed, yet emulated at the same time."

"If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs."

"What gave archosaurs the edge as large predators at this time, and therapsids the edge as smaller ones? Frankly, I am not sure. Both seem to have had heightened metabolic rates and fur or feather insulation... Perhaps the chief advantage enjoyed by thecodonts centered around their big, slashing attack jaws. These may have made them better big-game hunters, while the more precise cutting teeth of therapsids were more suitable for smaller prey."

"Although some dinosaurs may have spent some time feeding in the water like moose or fishing cats, at most a few became strongly amphibious in the manner of hippos, much less marine as per seals and whales. The only strongly aquatic dinosaurs are some birds. The occasional statement that there were marine dinosaurs is therefore incorrect - these creatures of Mesozoic seas were various forms of reptiles that had evolved over the eons."

"Dinosaurs seem strange, but that is just because we are mammals biased toward assuming the modern fauna is familiar and normal, and past forms are exotic and alien. Consider that elephants are bizarre creatures with their combination of big brains, massive limbs, oversized ears, teeth turned into tusks, and noses elongated into hose-like trunks. Nor were dinosaurs part of an evolutionary progression that was necessary to set the stage for mammals culminating into humans. What dinosaurs do show is a parallel world, one in which mammals were permanently subsidiary, whereas the dinosaurs show what largely diurnal land animals that evolved straight from similarly day-loving ancestors should actually look like. Modern mammals are much more peculiar, having evolved from nocturnal beasts that came into their own only after the entire elimination of nonavian dinosaurs. While dinosaurs dominated the land, small nocturnal mammals were just as abundant and diverse as they are in our modern world. If not for the accident of the later even, dinosaurs would probably still be the global norm."

"Imagine, if you will, a world filled with billions of dinosaurs. A world where they can be found in thousands of shapes, sizes, colours and classes in every habitable pocket of the planet. Imagine them from the desert dunes of the Sahara to the frozen rim of the Antarctic Circle - and from the balmy islands of the South Pacific to the high flanks of the Himalayas. The thing is, you don't have to imagine very hard. In fact, wherever you live, you can probably step outside and look up into the trees and skies to find them. For the dinosaurs are the birds and they are all around you. Dinosaurs didn't die out when an asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago. Everything you were told as a child was wrong."

"From nesting, brooding and sex, to metabolism, development and even the diseases that afflicted them, many of the traits found in birds today were inherited from the dinosaurs. The boundary between dinosaurs and birds has become utterly blurred."

"Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs."

"Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening."

"Even though paleontologists have uncovered numerous dinosaurs with everything from bristles and fuzz to full-flight feathers—which document the evolution of plumage from fluff to aerodynamic structures that allowed dinosaurs to take to the air—creationists deny the clear fossil record. There’s plenty of reason for creationists to abhor dinosaur feathers. The mountain of evidence that birds are living dinosaurs, and that many “bird” traits were widely shared among non-avian dinosaurs, are among the most gorgeous examples of evolutionary change yet found. Put feathers on a Velociraptor—we know it had feathers thanks to quill knobs preserved along its arm bones—and you get something disturbingly birdlike, revealing the dinosaur’s kinship to the ancestors of Archaeopteryx and other early birds. Not surprisingly, creationist groups like Answers in Genesis don’t feature feathery dinosaurs in their literature and museum exhibits. Instead, they take pride in promoting out-of-date, monstrous dinosaurs that more easily fit their contention that these animals were created separately from all other forms of life."

"Alterations to our favorite dinosaurs filter into the public consciousness only slowly, often taking a generation or more to become accepted. I’m now an unabashed advocate for fuzzy, fluffy, bristly, and feathered dinosaurs, but before I knew better I couldn’t believe that dinosaurs were different from the scaly monstrosities I grew up with. The fact that Jurassic Park 4 is supposed to feature naked dinosaurs—contrary to the overwhelming evidence science has to offer—confirms that many paleo fans of my generation and older prefer the comfort of recognizable pseudo-dinos to the more realistic ones paleontologists are reviving. But the latest generation of little dinosaur maniacs is fully onboard with the latest science. Then again, today’s dinosaur dreams might become fossilized in their minds, too. I wonder what they will scoff at when they grow up and see future museum displays or films that depict dinosaurs in ways that are strange and unfamiliar from what they learned in their childhoods."

"Sauropod dinosaurs are the terrestrial superlative: they were not just the largest animals ever to have walked on land, but an order of magnitude heavier than their nearest rivals – the hadrosaurid dinosaurs, and the proboscidean and indricotherian mammals."

"In bas-relief he late has shown A horrible show, agreed— Megalosaurus, iguanodon, Palaeotherium Glypthaecon, A Barnum-show raree; The vomit of slimy and sludgey sea: Purposeless creatures, odd inchoate things Which splashed thro’ morasses on fleshly wings; The cubs of Chaos, with eyes askance, Preposterous griffins that squint at Chance And Anarch’s cracked decree! Oh the showman who dens in Engihoul, Would he fright us, or quit us, or fool?"

"Come ho estesamenente discusso in passato, non ci sono prove che questo teropode avesse un'intelligenza "da scimpanzé"..., né che cacciasse in branchi organizzati. Anche se banale da dire, esso non deve essere visto come una terrificante "macchina da morte" ma solamente come un interessante predatore diapside opportunista, molto probabilmente solitario e tendente all'agguato, con un comportamento ed un'intelligenza intermedi tra quelli dei coccodrilli e quelli dei grandi uccelli non volatori."

"As I've said numerous times before, there is no proof that this theropod had chimpanzee-level intelligence..., nor that it hunted in organised packs. It may seem obvious, but it shouldn't be seen as a terrifying "killing machine", but simply as an interesting and opportunistic diapsid predator which was most probably a solitary ambush hunter, with a behaviour and intelligence intermediate between that of crocodiles and large flightless birds."

"Nel caso non l'aveste ancora fatto, dimenticate i Velociraptor di Crichton e le loro assurde scimmiottaggini criminali: farete un favore alla memoria dei Velociraptor in penne e ossa!"

"In case you haven't already done so, forget Crichton's Velociraptors and their absurd criminal plagiarisms: you'd be doing a favour to the real-life feathers-and-bones Velociraptor!"

"Yes, while T. rex played a prominent role in Crichton's pair of novels Jurassic Park (1990) and a sequel, The Lost World (1995), those nasty, sickle-clawed Velociraptors absolutely stole the show! The raptors took center stage in both novels and three Jurassic Park movies. But while no movie featured raptor dinosaurs before the Jurassic Park phenomenon, by then raptors had already stormed the beaches of science fiction literature... For besides fear and nightmares, now, simply the name Velociraptor - a dinosaur the name of which few knew thirty years ago - also evokes thoughts of DNA cloning, feathers and avian connections, warm-bloodedness, and even the softer side of familial relations. Now raptors are veritable monsters not only due to their inherent savagery, but also for their crafty, menacing intellect. Indeed, the raptors are imbued with qualities far too human-like for our comfort."

"Raptors did not actually resemble the reptilian monsters depicted in popular cinema, but were very large predatory ground birds, some with wings of substantial size (evidence of this comes from feather anchor points found on the wing bones of Velociraptor mongoliensis). The "raptors" did not closely resemble their carnosaurian cousins, but rather oversized Archaeopteryx."

"The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like Velociraptor. Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds."

"These are among my very favourite dinosaurs. Their long up-curved skulls, slender yet compact proportions, and great sickle claws make these elegant, attractive, yet demonic animals. There is nothing else like them. Pound for pound, these are among the most powerful of known predators; certainly no other theropod had such a combination of foot, hand, and head weaponry... Among theropods only Tyrannosaurus, with its extreme skull strength, equalled Velociraptor in total power relative to weight."

"The scene has been portrayed in paintings, drawings, and illustrations hundreds of times, but it remains thrilling. Tyrannosaurus, the greatest dinosaur toreador, confronts Triceratops, the greatest set of dinosaur horns. No matchup between predator and prey has ever been more drammatic. It's somehow fitting that those two massive antagonists lived out their co-evolutionary belligerence through the very last days of the very last epoch in the Age of Dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus stood over twenty feet tall when fully erect, and a large adult was as heavy as a small elephant - five tons. No predatory dinosaur, no predatory land animal of any sort, had more powerful jaws. Withstanding a Tyrannosauruss attack required either tanklike armor - the approach taken by Ankylosaurus - or most powerful defensive weapons - the approach taken by Triceratops."

"The rex bite is unique among better known dinosaurs. Instead of inflicting a long, shallow wound, rex jaws would thrust a few crowns deep into bone armor, killing a Triceratops with a single blow. We see close-linked co-evolution here, a terminal Cretaceous arms race. Triceratops is the commonest horned dino of the time, the final dinosaurian Age, the Lancian. T’tops departs from the ceratopsian tradition of frill construction. Torosaurus, very rare during the Lancian Age of the Cretaceous, retains that basic design: the frill is composed of thin bone rods that make a frame, with huge holes in the middle. Triceratops fills in the holes with greatly thickened bone. Why would Triceratops invest in five times as much bone volume in its frill? Well…to me the answer is obvious. Because the commonest predator has evolved great, armor-penetrating teeth. The argument goes in the other direction – T. rex evolved swollen, tall tooth crowns to deal with the unusual protection of the commonest horned herbivore."

"Come molti hanno sottolineato, ormai Tyrannosaurus rex ha travalicato i confini della pura ricerca scientifica, imponendosi come icona post-moderna e geomitologia. Ciò lo rende immune della normale critica scientifica, per questo risulta così inattaccabile, quasi sacro. Nessuno vorrebbe abbandonare il mitico Tyrannosaurus rex per l'oscuro Manospondylus gigas. Cosa dovremmo fare? Distruggere il nostro mito per accettare il rigore scientifico che impone di sostituire un nome con quello cronologicamente prioritario?"

"As many have pointed out, Tyrannosaurus rex has now ascended from the limits of pure scientific research and imposed itself as a postmodern, geomythological icon. This renders it immune to standard scientific criticism, thus making it unassailable, almost sacred. No one wants to abandon the legendary Tyrannosaurus rex for the obscure Manospondylus gigas. What should we do? Destroy our myth in order to accept scientific rigor, which would have us substitute the current name with the one that came first?"

"Proprio per le sue dimensioni e proporzioni limite, è probabile che non rappresenti la condizione "tipica" dei tyrannosauridi (né tanto meno degli altri tyrannosauroidi), nonostante che sia stato l'oggetto della maggioranza degli studi e delle analisi, non solo nello scheletro, ma anche nel tasso di crescita, la fisiologia, l'ecologia e la distribuzione spazio-temporale."

"Because of its proportions and maximum size, its probable that it doesn't represent the typical tyrannosaurid (much less other tyrannosauroids), despite having been the object of the majority of studies and analyses, not just on its skeleton, but on its growth rate, its physiology, its ecology, and its spatio-temporal range."

"Tyrannosaurus è universalmente noto con l'intero nome specifico, Tyrannosaurus rex, fatto che lo eleva al di sopra del genere anonimato delle altre specie di fossili, quasi tutte note solo col nome generico, senza mai menzione della specie. Qualcuno cita mai Velociraptor mongoliensis? No, esiste solo "il velociraptor" (o, peggio, "il raptor")."

"Tyrannosaurus is universally known by its full specific name, Tyrannosaurus rex, a fact which elevates it above the anonymous generic labelling of other fossil species, which are almost all known only by their generic names without mention of their species. Does anyone ever talk about Velociraptor mongoliensis? No, there is only "the velociraptor" (or, worse still, "raptor")."

"We have as much evidence that T. rex was feathered, at least during some stage of its life, as we do that australopithecines like Lucy had hair."

"Tyrannosaurus rex did not have 6-to-8-inch serrated teeth and an arc of D-cross-sectioned teeth set in a massive, powerful skull just to consume rotting carcasses! These were killing tools. In sharp contrast are the weak beaks and feet of vultures and condors- the only true living scavengers."

"To a fair extent the Tyrannosaurus species are the tyrannosaur's of tyrannosaurs; they have taken to an extreme the development of skull size, strength, and power. This and the larger, more forward-pointing mid-upper jaw teeth suggest a more potent wounding ability than the albertosaur's. The stoutness of Tyrannosaurus relative to albertosaurs is readily apparent in the skeletal restorations. They are not as graceful, but they have a well-proportioned, majestic attractiveness of their own."

"This is the theropod. Indeed, excepting perhaps Brontosaurus, this is the public's favourite dinosaur, having fought King Kong for the forced favor of Fay Wray and smashed Tokyo (with inferior special effects) in the guise of Godzilla."

"The culmination of tyrannosaur evolution, T. rex was one of the very last North American dinosaurs. Nothing else combined its size, speed, and power. Since its demise we have had to make do with lions and tigers and bears, and other "little" mammalian carnivores."

"Of all the organisms scientists have found in the fossil record, Tyrannosaurus rex is the most prominent ambassador for paleontology. No dinosaur hall is complete without at least some fragment of the tyrant dinosaur, and almost anything about the dinosaur is sure to get press coverage. We simply can't get enough of old T. rex."

"I would be thrilled if palaeontologists discovered compelling evidence that tyrannosaurs were social hunters. A trackway preserving the footsteps of several individuals moving in the same direction at the same time would be excellent. But until then, tableaus of tyrannosaur families dining together must remain tantalisingly speculative parts of prehistory."

"BLAIN [offering a plug of chewing-tobacco to his comrades, which they each refuse] ...bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here... [holds up plug] ...this stuff will put hair on your hogleg... guaranteed... make you a God-damned sexual ty-ran-toe-sore-ass... just like me."

"If we base the ferocious factor on the length of the animal, there was nothing that ever lived on this planet that could match this creature."

"It is a really bizarre dinosaur - there's no real blueprint for it. It has a long neck, a long trunk, a long tail, a 7ft (2.1m) sail on its back and a snout like a crocodile. And when we look at the body proportions, the animal was clearly not as agile on land as other dinosaurs were, so I think it spent a substantial amount of time in the water."

"It was a chimera: half duck, half crocodile. We don’t have anything alive that looks like this today."

"Although of modest size, this creature was one of the most unusual of all dinosaurs and provides entirely new insight on the classification of predaceous dinosaurs and on the surprisingly sophisticated capabilities possessed by some theropods."

"In my opinion, the foot of Deinonychus is perhaps the most revealing bit of anatomical evidence pertaining to dinosaurian habits and capabilities to be discovered in many decades. Grandiose statements of this kind are, of course, easily rejected, but the functional implications of the pes of Deinonychus are not so easily discarded - especially in view of the other remarkable adaptations of this animal. Deinonychus must have been anything but "reptilian" in its behavior, responses and way of life. It must have been a fleet-footed, highly predaceous, extremely agile and very active animal, sensitive to many stimuli and quick in its responses. These in turn indicate and unusual level of activity from a reptile and suggest an unusually high metabolic rate."

"Put a leopard and a [Deinonychus] together and the former would be in trouble."

"[Deinonychus] is usually considered a small dinosaur. But the largest individual was an eleven-foot-long animal whose head approached half a yard long, and was of male-timber-wolf mass. If alive today it would be considered a big predator."

"Duckbills were supposedly croc-style swimmers, moving by strong, easy, side-to-side flexures of their tail. Therefore, the optimal design would feature vertical tail spines. But duckbill spines all slanted strongly backward, exactly as in land-living lizards, not in swimmers. Another problem in the duckbill's swimming equipment lies in the profile of the tail. The deepest part of the croc's tail is close to the end, because the end swings through a wider arc than does the base in moving side to side. Thus the tail is deepest where it can do the most good in pushing against the water. All powerful tail-scullers have such deep tail ends. But duckbill tails were deepest at the hips and become progressively narrower from top-to-bottom toward the tip - another caudal feature nearly totally maladapted for its primary function."

"The sum of evolutionary evidence is thoroughly damning. In nearly every modification of the evolutionary process made in the duckbills as they developed from their dryosaur ancestors, the duckbills suffered a diminution of their swimming potential. Their fore- and hind paws became shorter and more compact, not longer and more widely spread. Their tails got weaker and stiffer. Far from being the best, the duckbills must have been the clumsiest and slowest swimmers in all the Dinosauria. If pressed, they probably could paddle slowly from one riverbanck to another. The central theme of their bodily evolution was indeed specialized - orthodox theory was right on that point - but the direction of specialization was landward. These dinosaurs were specialized for a totally terrestrial existence."

"There may be some ground for believing that brontosaurs ate... soft foods. If the possibility of gizzard stones is ignored, the brontosaurs' dentition does seem little equipped to deal with meals of tougher plants. But there are no ground whatsoever for believing it of duckbills. The mouth of a duckbill dinosaur contained one of the efficient cranial Cusinarts in land-vertebrate history. Duckbill teeth and jaws were incomparable grinders, designed to cope with foods right inside the duckbill's oral compartment."

"No living reptile has cheeks. But no living reptile has grinding teeth anything remotely resembling those of a duckbill. If the duckbills could have evolved such unreptilian teeth, why couldn't they have evolved unreptilian teeth?"

"In comparing the hadrosaurs with other dinosaurian herbivores, it is striking that they alone lack any obvious defensive or protective adaptations. They possessed no horns, no claws, no sharp teeth, they carried no clubbed or spiked tail, and they had no bony armor. They certainly were not constructed for rapid flight and they cannot be considered giants for their time. In short, the hadrosaurs appear to have been quite defenseless — a most improbable plight. As an alternative it seems increasingly probable that they depended upon the relative security of lakes, swamps, or rivers and thereby escaped from their enemies."

"By themselves, brontosaur gizzards don't indicate how much or what these dinosaurs ate each day; other lines of evidence must be employed to explore these questions. But brontosaur gizzards and teeth together indicate what brontosaurs did not eat. They didn't eat soft, mushy vegetation. Birds that subsist entirely on soft fruits don't possess muscular gizzards and don't use hard pebbles for their gizzard linings. Soft, watery food requires only a short, simply constructed gut - with just enough contractile force to squeeze out all the juices. Brontosaur teeth, moreover, confirm the heretical idea that they ate a tough vegetable diet. If the brontosaurs dined only on soft water plants, then very little wear would be found on their teeth. But in fact the teeth of Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and their kin manifest very severe wear, which could only have been produced by tough or gritty food."

"There may be some ground for believing that brontosaurs ate... soft foods. If the possibility of gizzard stones is ignored, the brontosaurs' dentition does seem little equipped to deal with meals of tougher plants. But there are no ground whatsoever for believing it of duckbills."

"The movie was okay, but I will never forgive them for presenting Brachiosaurus as such a heavy limbed clunker. I had nothing to do with that. I thought it was too bad the potentially omnivorous brachiosaurs – which were unlikely to have been as placid as cattle – missed the opportunity to snarf up the bratty kids when they were up in the tree."

"To judge from the dimensions of this thigh-bone, its former possessor must have been twice as great as that to which the similar bone in the Oxford Museum belonged; and if the total length and height of animals were in proportion to the linear dimensions of their extremities, the beast in question would have equalled in height our largest elephants, and in length fallen but little short of the largest whales; but as the longitudinal growth of animals is not in so high a ratio, after making some deduction, we may calculate the length of this reptile from Cuckfield at from sixty to seventy feet. In consideration therefore of the enormous magnitude which this saurian attains, I have ventured, in concurrence with my friend and fellow-labourer, the Rev. W. Conybeare, to assign to it the name of Megalosaurus."

"We cannot view this remarkable configuration of the anterior thoracic vertebrae of the Megalosaur without being impressed by an idea of the great strength of the muscles or ligaments—more probably of the energetically contracting muscles—which were implanted in those thick and lofty spines, from which, as from a fixed point, they acted upon the nuchal region of the head. The remarkable fossil, therefore, above described, yields some insight into the vigour with which such a head, consisting chiefly of the well-armed maxillary and mandibular apparatus, must have been made to operate on the bodies which the instincts of the Megalosaurus impelled it to grapple with and destroy in the reiterated predatory or combative acts necessary for its own support and preservation."

"Megalosaurus had large blade-like teeth set in sockets, not adhering to the bone of the jaw as is the case among lizards. Buckland noted this important diagnostic feature, yet he failed to appreciate its importance. For it gave unassailable proof that Megalosaurus was not a gigantic lizard; it was a gigantic reptile with socketed teeth, such as are possessed by the crocodiles, yet it was not a crocodile, either—Buckland was sure of that. In short, Megalosaurus was something new, a reptile the like of which had never before been imagined."

"When the first dinosaur quarry was opened in 1822 at Stonesfield, England, quarry men found the one-ton Megalosaurus and a tiny mammal."

"As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn-hill."

"In bas-relief he late has shown A horrible show, agreed— Megalosaurus, iguanodon, Palaeotherium Glypthaecon, A Barnum-show raree;"

"The indications would be consistent with the presence of a saber-toothed tiger, such as are still found among the breccia of our caverns; but the creature actually seen was undoubtedly of a larger and more reptilian character. Personally, I should pronounce for allosaurus.""Or megalosaurus," said Summerlee."Exactly. Any one of the larger carnivorous dinosaurs would meet the case. Among them are to be found all the most terrible types of animal life that have ever cursed the earth or blessed a museum."

"He discovered the fossil bones of the prehistoric Iguanodon in the Sussex Weald"

"Like the teeth of the recent iguana, the crown of the tooth is accuminated; the edges are strongly serrated or dentated; the outer surface is ridged, and the inner smooth and convex; and as in that animal the secondary teeth appear to have been formed in a hollow in the base of the primary ones, which they expelled as they increased in size. From the appearance of the fangs in such fossil teeth as are in a good state of preservation, it seems probable that they adhered to the inner side of the maxillae, as in the iguana, and were not placed in separate alveoli, as in the crocodile. [...] [T]he term IGUANODON, derived from the form of the teeth, (and which I have adopted at the sugges­tion of the Rev. W. Conybeare) will not, it is presumed, be deemed objectionable."

"Iguanodon was a relative of the duckbill. It won international fame as the first dinosaur made known to science, when it was dug from road-gravel quarries in Sussex, England, in 1822. The iguanodont's adaptations were styled after the duckbill's—closely packed chopping shredding teeth (although iguanodont's weren't as complex as duckbill's)."

"Iguanodon was about thirty feet (ten meters) long and weighed a few tons. It had a spike on its thumb for defense and a beak at the front of its mouth for snipping plants, and it could switch between walking on all fours and sprinting on its hind legs. Its line would eventually go on to produce the hadrosaurs, or duck-billed dinosaurs, [...]"

"In bas-relief he late has shown A horrible show, agreed— Megalosaurus, iguanodon, Palaeotherium Glypthaecon, A Barnum-show raree;"

"You'll find their footmarks all over the Hastings sands, in Kent, and in Sussex. The South of England was alive with them when there was plenty of good lush green-stuff to keep them going. Conditions have changed, and the beasts died. Here it seems that the conditions have not changed, and the beasts have lived."

"In the morning it was not long before we discovered the source of the hideous uproar which had aroused us in the night. The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery. From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself."