But I wouldn’t have the knowledge or money to lead an archaeological expedition, unfortunately anymore. I have also participated in excavations, including one in the desert of Wyoming, USA, where I saw the feet of a large sauropod excavated along a stretch of desert known as the Jurassic Mile. Three complete dinosaur skeletons are shown, along with rocks that reveal the precise moment in geologic time when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out the non-avian dinosaurs. There, I saw dinosaur feathers preserved in amber (yes, many had feathers, like the birds that descended from them). I recorded a show for Radio 4, our special correspondent edition, where I visited the magnificent Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada. Parrot face: what a psytacosaurus tom looked likeĭinosaur hunting will always be a hobby for me, not a profession. I follow many of the world’s brightest paleontologists on Twitter, they are the most generous group of people, always willing to sacrifice their time to answer my passionate questions. The internet gives me access to unlimited specialist research.
The Prehistoric Planets series on Apple TV+, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, is so realistic it’s easy to imagine you’re watching a real wildlife documentary. We live in a period of new discoveries, the golden age of dinosaur lovers, where the fossil remains of previously unknown species are identified almost every week.Ĭomputer animation allows digital artists to recreate these adorable animals with incredible precision and clarity.
This sense of childlike wonder has been revived in recent years. My interest at that time matched the enthusiasm I had as a boy for dinosaurs. My first book in history was a study of the end of the Roman Republic, the years before the assassination of Julius Caesar. The Romans were ancient tyrannosaurs, the emblem of a predator, red in teeth and claws. Like dinosaurs, the ancient Romans were conspicuous, fierce, and extinct. When I was a kid in the 1970s, not much was known about dinosaurs, and most books on the subject were aimed at young children or senior experts.Īs I entered my teens, my obsession disappeared-or rather, it shifted to a new subject, the Roman Empire. My grieving parents will tell you it wasn’t because I wanted to try. I found ammonite, which is a spherical, shell-like fossil, very common on the south coast, but I couldn’t extract an ichthyosaur. My historical heroine is Mary Anning, who discovered the ichthyosaur skeleton in 1811 when she was 12, helping to dismantle the prevailing scientific theory that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Read Also: SCSD1 schools see growth in test scoresĭuring school holidays, I liked nothing more than looking at the beaches around Lyme Regis in Dorset or the Isle of Wight in hopes of finding amazing fossils.