Raptor Red is a 1995 American novel by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker. It is a third-person account of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period, told from the point of view of Raptor Red, a female Utahraptor. The book features many of Bakker’s theories regarding dinosaurs’ social habits, intelligence, and the world in which they lived. The novel has been criticized for a perceived lack of characterization and average writing.
About Raptor Red in brief
Raptor Red is a 1995 American novel by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker. It is a third-person account of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period, told from the point of view of Raptor Red, a female Utahraptor. The book features many of Bakker’s theories regarding dinosaurs’ social habits, intelligence, and the world in which they lived. The novel was initially published as a mass-market paperback, and was later released as an audiobook by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by Megan Gallagher. Bakker received a large advance for the novel from Bantam Books, rumored to be in the six-figure range. The audiobook royalties were donated by Bakker to the Tate Museum in Casper, Wyoming, where he was curator at the time of the book’s release. It was also featured at the American Booksellers’ Convention in Chicago, alongside Michael Crichton’s The Lost World and Jurassic Park’s fadad fueled by the new trend in dinosaur books. It has been described as the “most ripping yarn ever written” and “one of the most memorable books of the 1990s and 2000s” The novel has been criticized for a perceived lack of characterization and average writing. Some scientists have taken issue with the scientific theories portrayed in the novel, fearing that the public would accept them as fact, while Discovery Channel host Jay Ingram defended Bakker’s creative decisions in an editorial.
The behavior of the raptors and other animals featured in the book was based on a combination of fossil evidence and observations of modern animals, such as chimpanzees and alligators. It also advances his controversial theory that an asteroid impact did not kill the dinosaurs in the CRetaceous–Paleogene extinction event, but rather a disease spread through migration. It takes place approximately 120million years ago, in the Early Cretsaceous period of the Mesozoic period of Earth’s history. It follows a year in RaptorRed’s life as she loses her mate, finds her family, and struggles to survive in a hostile environment. The author drew inspiration from Ernest Thompson Seton’s works that look at life through the eyes of predators, and said that he found it ‘fun’ to write from a top predator’s perspective. He was motivated to write the book by both his interest in dinosaur behavior and his desire to marry science and entertainment, saying that ‘nature is a drama.’ The book was an attempt to introduce a new dinosaur genus, Utahraaptor, to the public, as well as explain some of Bakkers’ theories regarding dinosaur behavior.
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This page is based on the article Raptor Red published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
