RE: Dinosaurs in a Haystack...

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alien4240@aol.com [mailto:Alien4240@aol.com]
>
> I just got Dinosaurs in a Haystack and Bully for Brontosaurs for
> Christmas
> and I finally got around to starting Haystack and found out
> they're a bunch
> of essays (my brother gave them to me and I didn't know much
> about them) so
> I"m wondering, I'm 16 and a sophmore in high school, what's the
> best way to
> approach them? Should I try to understand them? Should I grab a
> notebook and
> take notes while hi-lighting pionts in the text (now it sounds
> like History)
> or should I just read them and try to get the general idea of
> them so I can
> broaden my field of major issues? ( I guess they weren't all major issues
> though) I've realized this is probably not list-related so anyone
> so kind as
> to respond, should probably do it off-list. Thankyou.
>
Well, they deal with general aspects of paleontology and evolutionary theory
and many other things, but at least some of the essays are about dinos.

My best recommendation: read them simply for enjoyment.  You will certainly
pick up a lot of useful information in doing so (as well as a lot of
trivia...), and Gould is a great writer.

These essays are written for enjoyment, not as a textbook.

Additionally, although most (all?) of us on the list are dinosaur-obsessed,
it is important to remember that there is much more to paleontology than
dinosaurs, and much more to evolutionary biology than paleontology.  Essays
like Gould's are a useful way of being introduced to these other topics.

Read on...

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-314-7843