Quote

Imagine if the dinosaurs had tried picturing the rulers of their planet 100 million years hence. They'd undoubtedly envision these creatures as... dinosaurs! Conceiving of aliens as polished versions of ourselves is appealing, but unconvincing.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.

Children have a great urge to learn about dinosaurs.

I've always loved dinosaurs.

There's something about dinosaurs that should be very humbling to human beings.

Unfortunately, with dinosaurs, we haven't had enough specimens to determine how much variation there is within a species.

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

Keratin can be very colorful, as we see in birds. We'd expect dinosaurs to be very colorful because they basically invented the characteristics we see in birds.

If the Bible is correct, and the Earth is only 6,000 years old, that means there were no dinosaurs, and museum curators have been messing with us. Or the dinosaurs were here, and we never noticed them. Or a lot of people saw them but didn't want to say anything.