Chapter objectives

• Understanding fossils and fossilization

• Collecting dinosaur fossils

• Preparing dinosaur specimens

Tales of dinosaurs

This book is a tale of dinosaurs; who they were, what they did, and how they did it. But more significantly, it is also a tale of natural history. Dinosaurs enrich our concept of the biosphere, the three-dimensional layer of life that encircles the Earth. Our biosphere has a 3.8 billion-year history, and we and all the organisms around us are products of yet a fourth dimension: its history. To be unaware of the history of life is to be unaware of our organic connections to the rest of the world. Dinosaurs have significant lessons to impart in this regard, because, as we learn who dinosaurs really are, we can better understand who we really are.

Ours is also a tale of science itself. In an increasingly technical world, an understanding of science and how it affects lives is important. Science depends upon imagination and creativity, as well as data. In the following pages, we hope to build a sense of the intellectual richness of science, as well as a feel for what philosopher of science Karl Popper called the “logic of scientific discovery.”

The word “dinosaur” in this book. The term “dinosaur” (deinos – terrible; sauros – lizard) was invented in 1842 by the English naturalist Sir Richard Owen (see Box 14.2) to describe a few fossil bones of large, extinct reptiles.