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Book Review
The Dinosaur Project
Reviewed by Robert J. Sawyer
THE DINOSAUR PROJECT, Wayne Grady; $34.95
hardcover 0-921912-46-3, 272 pp., 7x10, Macfarlane Walter & Ross,
May 1993
Copyright © 1993 by
Robert J. Sawyer
All Rights Reserved
First published in Quill & Quire
[Starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit]
The Dinosaur Project is a wonderful book and not just
for those who love dinosaurs. It's a fascinating tale of
adventure and Canadian achievement, a compelling travelogue, and
an intriguing look at cultural conflict.
This is the story of the Canada-China Dinosaur Project,
which in the 1980s saw Canadian paleontologists dig in China and
Chinese paleontologists come to Alberta and our high arctic.
Grady, a Governor General's award winner, is a consummate
storyteller: he captures both the grandeur of inhospitable
landscapes and the interpersonal squabbles inevitable when
strangers are thrust together.
His chapter that intercuts between the paleontologists and
the slaughter in Tiananmen Square is a real page-turner. Also
fascinating are attempts to involve Mongolians and Native
Canadians through an exchange of traditional tents a
well-intended enterprise that caused much conflict.
Throughout the book, the ghost of Roy Chapman Andrews, the
first western paleontologist to visit China, hovers over the
scene, providing a stark contrast between the gonzo (and racist)
science of the 1920s and the tight-budgeted, earnest science of
today.
Grady wisely assumes his audience knows something about
dinosaurs (too many books these days presume that, somehow, the
reader has avoided all the other books, articles, and TV shows
about them), so he simply dives into the story. Yes, by the time
it's done, the reader will have learned many new things about
dinosaurs the Canada-China expeditions re-wrote much of what
we thought we knew about Mesozoic life but it will all have
been absorbed effortlessly.
There was also a documentary made about The Dinosaur Project
("In Search of the Dragon"), but, unlike that film, Grady's book
paints the expeditions with warts and all. Tempers flare, people
get sick and great discoveries are made. This book tries to
be many things, and to Grady's credit, it succeeds at all of
them.
Robert J. Sawyer, whose latest science-fiction novel,
Far-Seer (Berkley/Ace, May 1993),
is about an intelligent dinosaur who is himself a
paleontologist.
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