As I opened the large, flat package from Princeton University Press and drew out the book it contained, for a few fleeting but very intense moments I was eight-years-old once again, sitting on the floor in my family’s living room, surrounded by a herd of small, green and brown plastic dinosaurs.
Yes, like so many adult naturalists today, I was “that kid” who was absolutely mad for dinosaurs. Of course, as with so many representations of dinosaurs in the early 1970s, my set of plastic “dinosaurs” was not exactly paleontologically correct. Tyrannosaurus Rex mingled freely with stegosaurus, triceratops, and dimetrodon on the vast beige shag-carpeted plain, as well as with three small, very confused-looking human figures (they were probably confused at the presence of these terrifyingly large and wholly unfamiliar creatures so nearby…).
Which is why fifty-one-year-old me, standing in my kitchen, holding a copy of the lavishly illustrated Dinosaur Facts and Figures; The Theropods and Other Dinosauriformes, newly published by Princeton University Press, could not help but think that had this book been available back in 1975, it would have never left my side, been read and re-read until it’s binding approached failure, and given me a much more accurate understanding of the creatures I found so all-consumingly fascinating (which would have then made me “that kid” who began every social interaction with something along the lines of “You know, birds are actually descended from certain species of dinosaurs…”).
