Finished the #Dinosaurs Past and Present books a while back. The only appropriate follow-up is The Ultimate Dinosaur. Goodness, this is a weird one.

Published in 1992 (and you can tell), Ultimate #Dinosaur is a heady collection of #paleoart, factual essays, and science fiction stories. It also has bizarre formatting and a rollercoaster of an opening paragraph.

“Wow! A 90’s anthology of sci-fi all involving dinosaurs?” Well... INVOLVING dinosaurs is the important part there. Most of them do. And the rest...?

Anyway, merry #MerMay from The Ultimate Dinosaur! (Art by William Parsons.)

There’s a surprising amount of #AllYesterdays worthy speculation in mostly the sci-fi stories. Smart dinosaurs! Live-bearing dinosaurs! Lactating dinosaurs! LACTATING DINOSAURS?!?

Lactating dinosaurs. Which is a theory somebody must have had around 1992-ish. Because it has been referenced in two sci-fi stories. So far.

Anyway, because it’s 1992, obviously Therizinosaurus and Deinocheirus must have been nightmarish killing machines, right?

AND since it’s 1992, the question of bird ancestry is... exactly that. Still even a question, I mean. I’m curious about this Megalancosaurus but what really slayed me is the “sometimes inane” comment.

Megalancosaurus by Scott Reid, for the curious. So birdlike.

It’s a beautiful day and I’m reading outside near my freshly filled food dispensaries for “sometimes inane” maniraptor descendants. Speaking of, LOOK at these 90’s raptors from Doug Henderson!

This brings me to the very weirdest story in the book, by Ray Bradbury. It’s very like Dandelion Wine and is about a little boy who longs to be a tyrannosaurus. Awww!

The kid starts sharpening his teeth, eating raw meat, and talking in his fevered sleep about demons in the deep.

Pictured: Primeval nightmare demons from the fevered dreams of a little 1950’s kid who immediately needs to find both Jesus and a more wholesome obsession like, I dunno, trains. Yeah, trains!

(Checks the copyright date on the Bradbury story.)

Nineteen EIGHTY three?!?

I don’t want to end this thread on that note tonight so here is a sunny friend.