Raptor Red compares, to my mind, poorly with good traditional nature writing like Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter. It’s not so much the book’s American-folksy, whimsical manner (an ankylosaur a “whackity-whack”?), but the crude style, the fragmented paragraphing, and debased neologisms like “dino”. Why replace the perfectly good “pterosaur”, or even “pterodactyl”, with “dactyl”, and “sea-crocodile” with “Meer-Krokodil”? Bakker’s own nonfiction The Dinosaur Heresies is much more competently written.

This novel might usefully convey exciting new science to someone who normally never reads factual dinosaur books, especially as 20-odd small sketches of patchy quality show the main characters. Worthily, with good intentions, Bakker crams in so much that the book’s reading qualities suffer, including details on the lifestyle of these dinosaurs and their contemporaries, as well as trendy topics like selfish genes, and kin and sexual selection (wrongly raising the possibility of sisters carrying “most” of each others’ genes). The target readership isn’t stated, but must surely be teenage and older.

Raptor Red is an accurate portrayal only within the context of uncertainties over the reconstruction of fossil animals as living forms. Without knowing the Utah deposits, I can’t be categorical on detail (for example, I have seen no publication formally naming and describing Utahraptor) but there’s undoubtedly a great deal of speculation: logical maybe, and based on best biological theory and inference, but still speculation, even -especially! – nice touches such as the pterosaur described as mischievous and intelligent as a parrot. Bakker’s dinosaurs do tend to be bigger, faster, brainier, and sexier than anyone else’s, and though perhaps not beyond the bounds of current debate, he’s certainly pushing on them. Now, such speculation is of course unavoidable in a dinosaur novel. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and you have to pick some particular viewpoint. Unfortunately, Bakker’s postscript never really admits these uncertainties.

Raptor Red suffers from the problem plaguing the historical novel since Walter Scott: those who know their saurians won’t find much truly new and those who don’t can’t tell between the fact and the fiction. It lacks the compensations of the good novel: the writing’s poor, and there’s not much insight into the human condition, though it certainly conveys Bakker’s views on the dinosaurian condition. You’ll certainly broaden your ideas about dinosaurs, but you won’t be much more certain about where the objective truth actually lay 120 million years ago.

This is the first popular book since 1901 on the pterosaurs, the extinct
flying reptiles contemporary with and hardly less famous than the dinosaurs.
A publisher who says ‘I want a dinosaur book up front now!’ would probably
be happy with any old monster. Yet, inevitably, the palaeontologist ignores
mammoths, pterodactyls and the rest, and sticks pedantically to that single
group of terrestrial archaeosaurs with upright gait. Now at last, the poor
pterosaurs are back in the limelight with this excellent book by Peter Wellnhofer,
a pterosaur specialist of long standing.

Pterosaurs are a coherent group of flying reptiles, all built on much
the same plan, with membranous wings supported largely by the greatly elongated
fourth finger. Wellnhofer begins with the history of pterosaur research
since the 18th century – air or water animal, bird, bat or reptile? – and
a general introduction to the anatomy of pterosaurs.

In a classic example of adaptive radiation, pterosaurs exploited their
adaptation to flight to colonise various ecological niches. So next comes
a chronological account of all known kinds, a fascinating insight into pterosaurs’
diversity. As most come from German and Brazilian rocks, and others are
still poorly known in the English-speaking world, this is particularly useful;
find your local dragon, whether you live in Cambridge or Ulan Bator.

Here are such creatures as the flamingo-analogue Pterodaustro with its
mouth full of sieving bristles. Other pterosaurs caught insects in flight,
speared fish or delicately picked winkles with their pointed snouts. For
the biggest of the lot, the Quetzalcoatlus with its wingspan of 12 metres,
its diet remains mysterious: dead dinosaurs, or little crabs?

Wellnhofer concludes with a look at other flying vertebrates and a reassessment
of the major problems of pterosaur biology, notably the exact nature and
size of the wing membrane (seemingly stiffened with horny rods), and the
manner of land movement (probably quadrupedal).

As for extinction, the later Cretaceous pterosaurs were large gliding
animals. Had the new-fangled birds muscled the smaller types aside? Wellnhofer
isn’t sure. These superb soarers flew so slowly that they were vulnerable
to the increased seasonality, and risk of high winds, during the latest
Cretaceous. No need for a meteor when you find yourself flying backwards
most of the time.

The book’s layout, with separate sections on general anatomy and problems
of lifestyle, is as logical a way as any to tackle a group of animals which
are broadly similar but have so many variations. The consequent splitting
of some topics between different pages dissipates their impact, however,
thanks to the lack of cross-referencing.

Wellnhofer does not gloss over controversies: he gives the various viewpoints
and then explains his own line. If you want to know more, you can use the
book’s exceptionally full set of references. Giving pterosaurs a book of
their own means that Wellnhofer can also discuss the palaeontological detritus
so often swept under the carpet – the many incomplete skeletons and odd
bones that may turn out to be all that’s known of your local pterosaur.

There is an excellent set of life paintings by John Sibbick, in which
for once the dinosaurs are in the background, as well as plenty of old engravings,
modern photos, and assorted sketches, diagrams, scale plans, family trees
and age charts. Michael Robinson’s translation is almost as successful –
the occasional hiccup suggests that it was not read by a Anglophone scientist.

Pterosaurs is full of information, pictures and references mostly quite
unavailable outside the technical literature. I recommend it to any interested
adult and older teenager, from a fossil enthusiast to an undergraduate wanting
background reading, though it is probably too meaty to give to anyone younger.
Let’s hope plenty more pterosaurs are found in Brazil and elsewhere: then
we’ll all know the answers to a few of the questions tackled in this book.

Michael Taylor is an assistant keeper of earth sciences in the Leicestershire
Museum Service.