Long, long ago

Long, long ago, long before the age of man, strange creatures roamed the earth.
They were called dinosaurs.

So began my favorite book from as far back as I can remember.  The stories of Roy Chapman Andrews' treks across the Gobi Desert searching for fossils were something I never tired of.

Difficult even today, the journey back then was a grand adventure, braving death defying conditions to find traces of an amazing world that does not exist any longer.

I learned the entire Latin names of all of my plastic dinosaurs- even though dimetrodon was part of the group, which was a synapsid mammal and dinosaur antecedent, and pteranodon too, which isn't a dinosaur either.

Since Chapman's time, in fact, there has been a revolution in scientific thinking about dinosaurs.  The pioneering paleontologist Robert Bakker wrote a book called the Hot Blooded Dinosaurs, which paved the way to today's predominant theory that they were warm blooded, fast living creatures, and the direct antecedents of birds.

So, if I could magically start a new career, I would be a paleontologist, or, to keep art in the picture, a model builder of prehistoric creatures.

Thanks Kate for this thought provoking challenge!