What an entertaining book! Famous paleontologist Robert Bakker has written a biography of one particular dinosaur who lived 120 million years ago in what is now Utah. Appropriately, she is known as a Utah Raptor and is named Raptor Red. It is the story of her life as pieced together through her fossil record and paleontological research.

I am 71 years old. When I was a child and first learned about dinosaurs, they were presented as giant, cold blooded lizard related animals. So, too, was Robert Bakker. However, Dr. Bakker now convincingly argues just the opposite. He believes that they were warm blooded, mobile, intelligent, social animals. Raptor Red reflects this proposition.

Some of the professional criticism this book received when first published was that it was not well written (I disagree) and that he mixed up some of the fauna and animal life into the time frame. I'm okay with this because Dr. Bakker never intended this book to be a professional journal, but rather an entertaining novel in which he could present his theories about dinosaurs and their behavior, as well as teach a bit about evolution itself to the general, non scientific public. In this attempt he does an excellent job.

Written from the point of view of an outside observer, this unusual story is highly entertaining for those of us who have always had a soft spot for dinosaurs. By the way, Utah Raptor is the dinosaur featured in Jurassic Park that is not T-Rex. Coincidently, the movie (and those raptors) were being made at the same time as the first fossils were being discovered of Utah Raptor, justifying the larger size of the raptors in the movie. Velociraptors were much smaller. Calvin would definitely own this book! ( )

Every once in a while you're lucky enough to find a book that seems like it was written just for you. This is one of those books for myself. Set in the early cretacous the story follows a female Utahraptor in her battles to survive. It does its best to put you in the mindset of a dinosaur and tells of a remarkable journey. It was also just plain relaxing to read.

A few events in the book are based on fossil evidence such as a flood. The rest is sciences best guess on what life for the species would have meant. Written in 96. I'm sure if it was written 10 years later Raptor Red would have been feathered. The author is most famous for his proposal that dinosaurs were not cold blooded reptiles but had similar physiology to birds (which is widely accepted now) so the author goes into detail about their ability to stay warm, he even described counter-current heat exchange briefly which is commonplace in birds. I'm sure he's now focused on other research but I think it'd be fantastic if it could be revised routinely to include new discoveries in relation to the Utahraptor or the other species described in the book.

How wonderful to dedicate your life to research and then be able to share a story based on it. ( )

Fun short read. A story of love, family, and survival told from a dino's point of view. A little dated, and a bit more lecture like than I expected, but pretty good. ( )

I didn't think I'd like a book coming from the perspective of the Raptor.
But I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed the story line. ( )

When I grabbed this off the swap shelf at Tesco I wasn't expecting more than a fun little read to tide me over. I was not expecting to be thoroughly drawn into Red's world and to be so invested in these dinosaurs. I guess once a dinosaur kid, always a dinosaur kid. Kind of 'Land Before Time' but for adults. ( )