[.ca] Raptor Red (ISBN 0553575619)

The dinosaur's perspective:
Reading the dinosaur record is reading much conjecture and hypothesis. Although the theories are straightforward for the scientist and enthusiast, the average reader may have difficulty following the terminology and statistics. This narrative, however, makes the dinosaur legacy into an easy-to-follow story. We follow the life of a female Utahraptor known as Raptor Red. The author allows you to see and feel things from her perspective as he tells you about life in the time of the dinosaurs. We read of the other dinosaurs and how they interacted with the raptors. We follow Raptor Red on the hunt as well as courtship. We also read of the smaller mammals as a foreshadowing of how the dominant species will change. At no time does this book read like a textbook. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn a bit more about our dinosaur predecessors.

Raptor red:
Raptor red is an okay book that starts out strong but in the middle it begans to gets undeseriable to read. The middle of the book is a part that you have to keep on reading. On the other hand this book is great at the beganing and end. So if you like to read about dinosaurs go ahead and read your heart out.

Raptor Red:
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.

Perspectives:
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.

Not your dry reference book:
Raptor Red starts with the human discovery of her kind--the Utahraptor--in Utah fossil beds, and goes on to tell Bakker's imagined tale of how a year in the life of one of these amazing creatures may have been. I found the prose to be very believeable, with a lack of Disneyesque dialogue, but anthropomorphized thoughts in italics to express what may be running through the prehistoric creatures' minds as they did what they did. This technique leads the reader to a "dinosaurian" mindset, as if we really were seeing through a raptor's eyes. The protagonist is a adult female called Raptor Red, who loses her new mate in a hunt turned tragic. As she struggles to suvive as a lone hunter, she finds her sister, and in the strong bonds of family helps her with her chicks, but the situation gets more complex when a male raptor starts courting Red. There are "friends," such as an old white pteranodon and a small early mammal; there are "foes," the competing hunters in the form of acrocanthosaurs and deinonychus; and there are even disasters to overcome, from floods to injury and disease and the conflict of instincts and interests in the raptor pack. All in all, this work of fact-based fiction presents a view of dinosaurs as intelligent, adaptable, and capable of emotion, just as we see in wolves, lions, and zebras today. Highly reccommended to paleontology fans who want a break from the dry text of reference books; Raptor Red is a few parts imagination and a few parts fact based on what we know of dinosaurs and what we see in animals today, which makes for a very worthwhile experience.