Excerpt
From Raptor Red
Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker
Mass Market Paperback
Raptor Red watches and thinks.
When she is feeling well fed and content and well loved, her mental powers are allowed to indulge themselves. She can experiment.
She walks parallel to the shoreline, watching the waves carefully, focusing her eyes below the surface. She keeps her distance from the average line where the waves break.
There! She sees another huge shape cruising parallel to the shore. She watches-and a giant head breaks surface.
She stands on tiptoes, trying to look as tall as possible.
She waits... waits... waits...
Here it comes! she shouts to herself. She flexes her knees and ankles. An immense dark torpedo comes right at her, plowing through the breakers.
Just as the head and front flippers begin to slide up the beach, Raptor Red turns and jumps four strides diagonally, upslope and to her right.
Whhhmmmpp! The big kronosaur stops exactly on the spot where Raptor Red was standing a few seconds earlier.
Fssshhhh! Foam and steam exit in two jets from the kronosaur's nostrils, just in front of the eyes. The great sea-reptile pauses, then retreats awkwardly back to the water.
The male raptor is amazed.
“My job is to dig up fossil bones and figure out how dinosaurs lived. I think it’s the best job in the universe.”—Dr. Robert T. Bakker
Dr. Robert T. Bakker is a paleontologist and works with the Wyoming Dinosaur International Society and the author of the children’s books Raptor Pack and Maximum Triceratops.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I DIG RAPTORS
I dig raptors. Every week I climb into my truck with a couple of friends and a dog named Pepper and drive to Wyoming to dig Jurassic dinosaurs for two or three days. We specialize in meat-eaters. We’ve excavated the Big Three of Jurassic predators: (1) 36-foot-long allosaurs, who had giant thumb-claws; (2) 30-foot-long ceratosaurs with huge, super-sharp teeth; (3) 40-foot-long megalosaurs, whose jaws carried…