Robert T. Bakker
Robert T. Bakker
Robert Thomas Bakkeris an American paleontologist who helped reshape modern theories about dinosaurs, particularly by adding support to the theory that some dinosaurs were endothermic. Along with his mentor John Ostrom, Bakker was responsible for initiating the ongoing "dinosaur renaissance" in paleontological studies, beginning with Bakker's article "Dinosaur Renaissance" in the April 1975 issue of Scientific American. His special field is the ecological context and behavior of dinosaurs...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth24 March 1945
CountryUnited States of America
At Harvard I was in charge of the comparative anatomy labs.
Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking.
Fossils have richer stories to tell - about the lub-dub of dinosaur life - than we have been willing to listen to.
When looking at the evidence of feeding on large prey, you can see every size tooth from hatchling to adult in one spot. The babies may have been fed in the nest until they were full grown, like in eagles and hawks.
It was not an asteroid or comet, because it would have killed everything.
Land bridges were everywhere during the extinction, many species were spreading, and there were many diseases.
I'll bet you a six-pack of Coors that pretty soon, people will be discovering Cretaceous parasites inside Cretaceous bones. The possibility of looking into epidemiology and pathology is pretty cool.
The evidence is overwhelming that birds are dinosaurs.
The impact of the magazine was very strong. As I said, it portrayed dinosaurs as part of the geological history, part of the story of life on earth. It struck that paleontology was the career for me.
You could arm-wrestle with a T. rex and win, but you shouldn't because it only makes them mad.
Dinosaurs are the best way to teach kids, and adults, the immensity of geologic time.
Birds evolved from a small raptor like theropod.
I also got a chance to go to the American Museum in New York, which helped my interest.
One of my major goals is to develop a web of the small Wyoming museums and create a major museum system. There are about eight of these museums, and they are all scattered.