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Summary: Paleontology has never been so alive!!
Review: Raptor Red is the story of the days of dinosaurs as seen through the eyes of a female Utahraptor. Her life consists of love, family, migration, and combating the elements and natural environment that surrounds her. You "feel" her hunger, pain, cold, fear, and family love. The one drawback to this book is that Robert Bakker is not a novelist, but rather a noted paleontoligist. At times the words used to describe the situation are more scientific, and tend to interrupt the reading flow of the story. But as you read this book realize that you are really hearing new paleontoligic theories in a most interesting manner. You will find that by the time you finish this book you have new ideas of how the dinosaurs lived and died, and that you have enjoyed the story in the process
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Summary: What a great way to interest children in paleontology!
Review: Robert Bakker has written a thoroughly enjoyable account of a female Utahraptor, her family, and their life in upper northwestern America during the Jurassic age. While the vocabulary is over the heads of most younger children to read for themselves, it is perfect for reading to them. This could be used in a classroom setting, or even better, as a way for parents to interest children in great books and paleontology. While highly entertaining, Raptor Red provides real information on Utahraptors and many other dinosaurs during the period in the same location. My son, age 10, loved this book
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Summary: A great book by an actual paleontologist
Review: This book is entertaining, educational, and in parts, gruesome. I personally loved the gory parts depicting dinos eating one another. Knowing my level of maturity in these matters, I am sure kids will too. Stuck in between the action though is a short course in Dinosaur ecology and behavior. Bakker's theories of dinosaurs were sometimes controversial in his field, but have now become almost universally accepted. He was the one of the first to see dinos as warm-blooded, quick, and sometimes highly intelligent. Spend some time with the highly social Utahraptors and the other big lizards of the past. (minus one point for the cheesy hologram cover)
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Summary: A toothy tale
Review: A toothy tale
Raptor Red By Robert T. Bakker is drama with a little bit of romance about the life of a female Utahraptor who lived 120,000,000 years ago named Raptor Red. The book starts out when Red's soon to be mate is killed in a fatal hunting accident. Now Raptor Red must fight for survival in pre historic Utah. She quickly joins up with her sister's new family, and together they try to find a safe home. At the same time, Red must obey natures command to pass on her genes by finding another mate. When she is approached by an attractive (meaning by raptor standards) young male she is torn in between two loyalties, one to her sister and her chicks, and the other to produce chicks of her own. This book portrays raptors as incredibly smart and effective creatures, a little smarter than a chimpanzees. I think that they are portrayed a little too smart because in several scenes Red thinks things more comlplex than most humans do. For example, when red is being chased by an Astrosaur, one of her sister's chicks is wading in the water watching the two. When Red notices a see monster about to attack the chick, she runs by the chick, knocks her out of the way, and instead the Astrosaur is grabbed and killed by the sea creature
The book is extremely well written, The writer has a well informed view on the topic since he himself is a archeologist. One of it's main faults though, is that many things go unexplained, or it will suddenly jump 2 months into the future. This is a book that would be enjoyed by all types of readers, and even non-readers.
By RJ McGirr
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Summary: An incredibly gripping Jurassic drama
Review: I wouldn't have thought what Robert Bakker has done in this book was possible! Certainly his academic work grabbed the public imagination, and his factual book "The Dinosaur Heresies" stirred up controversy with his theory that dinosaurs were actually fast, warm-blooded animals quite like modern mammals and birds. But to write a full-length novel about the day-to-day life of a dinosaur? How interesting could that be?
Well, maybe it's me - when I was a boy I used to devour the "animal books" of Jack London and Ernest Seton Thompson - but I just couldn't put "Raptor Red" down. You hear that said a lot, but this time it was literally true. Told in the present tense throughout, this story simply rips along, going from one thrilling episode to another and astonishing you with little-known but exciting facts and informed speculation.
By the way, the heroine (you have to call her that) turns out to be almost identical to the "velociraptors" in the film "Jurassic Park". At the time, everyone thought Steven Spielberg had contradicted all the scientific evidence by making his raptors twice as big as human beings - then in 1982, the year before the film was released, someone dug up fossils from a raptor that was almost identical to Spielberg's. That animal - christened Utahraptor - is Raptor Red, and she tangles with some scary opposition along the way. You wouldn't think there would be much that could threaten a fast-moving 500-pound monster with razor-sharp claws and teeth... until page 16, anyway.
Bakker is a born writer, and not only does he keep the action humming along, he even finds time for a lot more character development than you will find in many novels about people. Within a few pages you will find yourself identifying with Raptor Red, urging her on as she stalks prey, holding your breath when she is in danger, even sighing when she finds a mate. Then you pinch yourself and remember that she'd have YOU for dinner in about half of no time at all.
The key lies in Bakker's belief that some dinosaurs - certainly utahraptors - were highly intelligent, perhaps as much so as wolves and bears, or even the great apes. That opens up a whole new dimension that most renderings of the prehistoric world have utterly lacked.
Although it's a compact and inexpensive paperback, "Raptor Red" has been carefully produced, with considerable attention to detail. Starting with the holographic portrait of Raptor Red herself on the cover - it's corny, but I liked it. Every one of the 26 chapters begins with a little thumbnail drawing of a type of dinosaur mentioned in the story. And Bakker has written an interesting and instructive preface and epilogue, to explain some facts he couldn't reasonably fit into the book itself.
If you are in the least interested in dinosaurs, or animals of any kind - read it! You can't go wrong.
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Summary: Storys
Review:
The book, Raptor Red, was a thrilling tale on life during the Jurassic era. With the story being told through a raptor, you believe you become one. Robert Bakker made this book inspire creative writers to write the most unimagined story ever.
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Summary: One of those "changes my life" books
Review: I LOVE THIS BOOK. I'm not a scientist of any sort--I'm a linguist and lay pastor. But this book took me into a realm I had never been. I read it on the beach--got totally sunburnt because I couldn't put the book down and go in the house. I'm sure Bakker had no idea a 40-something divorced Mom/college prof was going to relate to his book in this manner, but, .... here's what I took away from it.
It explained to me the 'prime directive' of biological life--to pass on our DNA. No matter what we're doing throughout our lives, we are driven by the same urge--to attract a worthy mate who will engender healthy offspring and help us raise those offspring to continue to pass on our DNA. Even though Red is completely unaware of this directive, it guides every choice she makes, from the moment she wakes in the morning til she falls asleep at night. Having lost her own chick, she risks her life time and again to help rear her sister's chick, and see the chick safely grown, mated and producing viable offspring. Other chicks of her same breed are interesting--important too--but do not arouse in her the protective urge that her sister's chick does. They don't carry any thing NEAR the close DNA match that her sister's chick does--why waste time and resources on them, unless her sister's chick is safe? This explains why I adore my brother's chicks, I mean kids, but I'm not real crazy about my nephew-in-law. He's got NONE of my DNA--and he has my brother-in-law's snout.
From Red I learned several things about relationships that I believe are based upon how deeply the Prime Directive is encoded into our biology, and I think that realizing how engrained these behaviors are in our psyche can help us make better choices: to acknowledge the Directive and act according to it, or to lay it aside on occasion for another (higher?) purpose. Some of these lessons are:
1) Attempt to make yourself appear healthy--acknowledge what the 'healthy' signals are to your species (and culture) and do what you can within reasonable bounds to accomodate those, so that you can attract the largest number of mates possible from which to choose the best mate for yourself. Red spent hours trying to smoothe over scars on her thighs for fear the male raptors would think she had "fallen" during hunting.
2) Choose a mate that is not only healthy (refer to species-specific and culturally determined codes for assessing health), but also exhibits character traits that assure him to be capable of a) engendering healthy offspring; b) hunting successfully with me (since raptors and humans hunt in pairs); c) protecting said offspring until they are old enough to pass on their (our) DNA themselves.
3)Give him a good sniff at first meeting to make sure that he smells enough like your littermates to be LIKE you, but enough DIFFERENT from your littermates that he's not.... ewww... one of them.
4) If a potential mate comes to do his Dance of Love and his nodding and bobbing just don't appeal to you... don't feel guilty about it. Move on. There's something amiss there. Soon there will be some suitor whose moves will thrill you right down to your tarsal claws, I mean toenails.
5) Pay close attention to female relationships. They can provide very valuable assistance when your chicks need a hand across a raging, flooded stream, while you are stranded downstream.
6) Once your chicks are able to find their own mates, and they're off making their OWN chicks... you have complied with the Prime Directive!! You are HOME FREE!! and now sex is for FUN! Find that mate and party hardy!
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Summary: Speilberg, Eat your Heart Out!
Review: "A pair of fierce but beautiful eyes look out from the dull green undergrowth...the eyes belong to a youg adult Utahraptor...her eyes move back and forth, executing the rapid scanning of a hunter who is thinking about everything she sees. She is an intelligent killer..."
Thus begins "Raptor Red" a interesting and wonderous tale of the year in the life of a female Utahraptor. At first, one might believe this to be a documentary, or some boring story about a dinosaur. But what if the story was told by the dinosaur itself? Rivetting and spell-binding, this is an escape from reality into a world of peril, survival, and risky adventure. It gives a whole new light to the world of dinosaurs. For anyone who's a fan of Jurassic Park, you're in for a treat, or maybe I should put it as a warning.
Because in this story...Raptors rule.
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Summary: Perspectives
Review: This wonderful, jewel of a book takes the reader millions of years into the past. It is an exciting story of just how dinosaur life might have been. Bakker offers a scientific look into the world of the Raptor. His ideas are very well offered and he manages to keep an amazing amount of action throughout the story. He pulls at the emotions and feeds the mind at the same time. I just wish he would do other dinosaur based novels. Wonderful read! If you grew up like me, loving dinosaurs, this is a book for you! Bakker seems to be a supporter of evolutionary theory, but the book is a great story none the less.
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Summary: Raptor Red
Review: Raptor Red
Robert T. Baker
Clement Lim This book is just amazing. When I first read it I was hooked on it the minute the first word started. Robert T. Baker describes every aspect of the Mesozoic Era through the eyes of a young Utahraptor who calls herself red. Every piece fits perfectly as Robert describes life of that time period and the Utahraptors impact on American dinosaur life. This book is also a great resource information as it tells how exactly the muscles, coordination, and strategy are all mixed into one big fight for food and survival. Nothing in the whole entire world can be better than that.
The story starts out as Robert T. Baker describes a hunt. Raptor Red looks out of a fern bush and surveys a pack of mating Astrodon with her mate. Soon enough they choose a young male who isn't paying attention. As soon as they're limbs twitch, their off to hunt. The male is alarmed but by then it's to late. The raptors have already slashed at their prey with extreme ferocity. No matter how many times he tries to escape them the raptors follow. Soon their most deadly claw kills their prey with the utmost quickness. However, after the feast a terrible thing happens. Raptor Red's mate sinks into some quicksand. Since raptors make excellent killers but poor diggers, she hopelessly watches as her mate for the last 5 year dies.
Raptor Red soon gets right back up on her feet after her shock dies down. During her search for a new mate however, she finds her sister's chicks and rushes off to go meet her. They soon find a plump female Iguanadon and rips her apart in a flurry of slashes and brings the carcass back for some lunch. One day after being thoroughly well fed she finds herself strangely attracted to some red flowers. Soon herds start coming and mate with each other as their are so many of their own kind around. Rapor Red finds a male older than her. As soon as the male looks back, they start a courtship dance, a necessary ritual for mating. After fiting a much older utahraptor than herself, she finds herself landed with a new mate, although her sister doesn't like him. As since I can't give the rest of the book away, I recommend that you buy this book and read it on your own if your fascinated by the ancient world of dinosaurs.
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