Dazzling Dinosaur Diction

After much thought, the Alvarezes concluded that the most plausible explanation–plausible to them, at any rate–was that the Earth had been struck by an asteroid or comet. A Short History of Nearly Everything

But one woman woke everybody up at dawn on Wednesday because she found the tracks of a biped with a cloven hoof. One Hundred Years of Solitude

The flame-coloured carnivore emerged from beneath the tar­paulin and made for the hyena. Life of Pi

No one knows what wiped out the dinosaurs. Cosmos

Archaeologists excavating 30,000-year-old Sapiens sites in the European heartland occasionally find there seashells from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Within a couple of centuries, the majority of the local megafauna was extinct, along with 60 per cent of all bird species. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“It’s science. Archaeologists dig up fossils and stuff, and they can tell how old things are. Cockroaches—I mean crawlers—are really old and they’ve never changed much,” said Gregor. Gregor the Overlander

But as the herbicides rain down on forest and field, on marsh and rangeland, they are bringing about marked changes and even permanent destruction of wildlife habitat. Silent Spring

People in prehistoric times often hunted the big herbivores that dined on grass. The Omnivore's Dilemma

For a while, my friend Marisol and I both wanted to be paleontologists and search for dinosaur fossils. Crenshaw

In 1795 a selection of bones made their way to Paris, where they were examined by the rising star of paleontology, the youthful and aristocratic Georges Cuvier. A Short History of Nearly Everything

Most Polynesian islands originally supported big flightless birds that had evolved in the absence of predators, New Zealand’s moas and Hawaii’s flightless geese being the best-known examples. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

I feel the bones and shells of prehistoric creatures. Challenger Deep

The jellyfish slowly wrapped its tendrils tighter and tighter around its prey. The Mark of Athena

The sheep were fun while they lasted, and it is doubtful if any pair of quadrupeds ever had been sheared so often by so many. Cheaper by the Dozen

Frightful had arrived in the Galapagos Islands, six hundred miles out in the Pacific Ocean, where the birds and reptiles had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions, without predators. Frightful's Mountain

They were hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat. The Old Man and The Sea

Richard Owen, the paleontologist who hovered over England’s natural historians like a patrician falcon, descended from the Royal College of Surgeons, to verify and catalog Darwin’s fossil skeletons. The Gene