Robert T. Bakker facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Robert T. Bakker
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Bakker in 2008
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| Born | March 24, 1945 Bergen County, New Jersey, United States
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| Alma mater | Yale University (B.A., 1968) Harvard University (Ph.D, 1971) |
| Known for | The "dinosaur renaissance" |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Paleontology |
| Institutions | Johns Hopkins University Houston Museum of Natural Science |
| Doctoral advisor | John Ostrom |
| Doctoral students | Blaire Van Valkenburgh |
Robert Thomas Bakker (born March 24, 1945) is a famous American paleontologist. He is a scientist who studies dinosaurs and other ancient life. Bakker helped change how we think about dinosaurs. He strongly supported the idea that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded (endothermic), not cold-blooded like reptiles today.
Along with his teacher John Ostrom, Bakker helped start a new and exciting time in dinosaur studies. This period is called the "dinosaur renaissance". It began with Bakker's article "Dinosaur Renaissance" in 1975. He is especially interested in how dinosaurs lived in their environments and how they behaved.
Bakker believes dinosaurs were smart, fast, and could adapt well to their surroundings. He published his first paper on warm-blooded dinosaurs in 1968. His important book, The Dinosaur Heresies, came out in 1986. He also found the first proof that Allosaurus dinosaurs cared for their babies at nesting sites. Today, Bakker works as the Curator of Paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Contents
About Robert Bakker
Robert Bakker was born in Bergen County, New Jersey. He says he became interested in dinosaurs after reading an article in Life magazine when he was a kid. He finished high school in 1963.
Bakker went to Yale University and studied with John Ostrom. Ostrom was one of the first to have new ideas about dinosaurs. Later, Bakker earned his PhD from Harvard University. He taught anatomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He also taught Earth and Space Sciences.
Most of Bakker's fieldwork, where he digs for fossils, has been in Wyoming. He has also traveled to places like Mongolia and South Africa to study where dinosaurs lived.
Bakker's Dinosaur Theories
In his 1986 book, The Dinosaur Heresies, Bakker shared his idea that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Here are some of the reasons he believes this:
- Most modern animals that walk upright (like humans) are warm-blooded. Dinosaurs also walked upright.
- Warm-blooded animals have very strong hearts. A giant dinosaur like Brachiosaurus needed a powerful heart to pump blood all the way up to its head. This suggests it was warm-blooded.
- Dinosaurs such as Deinonychus were very active. This kind of active life fits better with a warm-blooded animal.
- Some dinosaurs lived in cold northern areas. It would have been very hard for cold-blooded dinosaurs to stay warm enough there.
- Dinosaurs changed and evolved quickly. This fast rate of change is common in warm-blooded animals, but not usually in cold-blooded ones.
- The number of meat-eating dinosaurs compared to the plant-eating dinosaurs they hunted matches what we see with warm-blooded predators.
- Birds are warm-blooded and came from dinosaurs. This means dinosaurs must have become warm-blooded at some point. The change from early reptiles to dinosaurs was bigger than the change from dinosaurs to birds.
- Being warm-blooded helps top predators and large plant-eaters survive. If dinosaurs weren't warm-blooded, other warm-blooded animals should have taken their place. But this didn't happen.
- Dinosaurs grew very fast. We can see this by looking at slices of their bones. Warm-blooded animals also grow quickly.
Bakker also thinks that flowering plants evolved because of how they interacted with dinosaurs. He also believes that a sickness, like a plague, caused by new animals crossing land bridges, was the main reason non-bird dinosaurs died out. He argues that if a comet had been big enough to kill all non-bird dinosaurs, it would have also wiped out many other animals that actually survived.
Writing Books
Bakker wrote a fictional novel called Raptor Red. This book tells the story of a female Utahraptor dinosaur over one year. In the story, Bakker shares his deep knowledge about how "raptor" dinosaurs (dromaeosaurids) behaved and what life was like during the lower Cretaceous period.
Faith and Science
Bakker is a Christian minister. He believes that there is no real conflict between religion and science. He thinks that the evolution of species and Earth's long history can fit with religious beliefs. Bakker sees the Bible as a guide for how to live, not as a literal timeline of Earth's history. He has suggested that people read the ideas of Saint Augustine, who also believed the Book of Genesis should not be taken word-for-word.
Bakker's Influence in Media
Robert Bakker has appeared in many TV shows and movies about dinosaurs.
- He was in the 1976 BBC Nova episode The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs.
- He played a big part in the 1985 CBS documentary Dinosaur!.
- Bakker also appeared in the 1989 BBC series Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives with David Attenborough. He talked about his idea that Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded. Bakker later named a type of ancient marine reptile, a plesiosaur, Attenborosaurus, after Sir David.
- He was featured in "The Great Dinosaur Hunt," part of The Infinite Voyage series, which first aired in 1989.
- Bakker was an advisor for the 1992 PBS series, The Dinosaurs!.
- He appeared many times in the TLC television series Paleoworld.
- He was also an advisor for the movie Jurassic Park. Some of the early drawings for the movie were based on Bakker's ideas.
- Bakker even appeared in the Sega CD video game version of Jurassic Park.
- He was a guest on the TV show Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1992.
- He was also shown digging for dinosaurs in Wyoming on an episode of Discover Magazine (TV series) on The Disney Channel in 1992.
Bakker and his 1986 book are mentioned in the original Jurassic Park novel. In the movie The Lost World: Jurassic Park, there is a character named Dr. Robert Burke. He is a paleontologist who is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. This character is a funny version of Bakker. In real life, Bakker believes T. rex was a hunter, while another paleontologist, Jack Horner, thinks it was mostly a scavenger. Horner says the movie director, Steven Spielberg, created the character of Burke and had him eaten as a favor to Horner. After the movie came out, Bakker recognized himself in Burke and thought it was funny. He even sent Horner a message saying, "See, I told you T. rex was a hunter!"
See also
In Spanish: Robert Bakker para niños
- Dinosaur renaissance
- Physiology of dinosaurs
