"When looking at the evidence of feeding on large prey, you can see every size tooth from hatchling to adult in one spot. The babies may have been fed in the nest until they were full grown, like in eagles and hawks"
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Bakker is doing what he’s always done best: smuggling a revolution into a seemingly plainspoken observation. The image of “every size tooth from hatchling to adult in one spot” reads like a field note, but it’s really a narrative grenade. Tooth sizes become a demographic census, turning scattered fossils into a social scene: a place where young and old intersected, not a random kill site. He’s arguing that behavior can fossilize indirectly, if you’re willing to treat patterns as testimony.
The intent is pointed. By invoking “feeding on large prey,” Bakker nudges dinosaurs away from the old caricature of solitary, sluggish reptiles and toward an ecology that requires coordination, risk management, and time. Large prey implies investment; investment invites the question of who benefits. His answer is parental provisioning, and the eagles-and-hawks analogy is a strategic bridge for skeptical readers: modern predators do this, so the behavior is imaginable, legible, and evolutionarily practical.
The subtext is a challenge to scientific timidity. Bakker is signaling that the most interesting dinosaur story isn’t just anatomy, it’s family structure. “Fed in the nest until they were full grown” is deliberately provocative because it stretches our comfort with deep-time inference: not just caring for hatchlings, but sustaining them long enough to leave a tooth trail of adolescence.
Context matters: Bakker emerged as a leading voice in the Dinosaur Renaissance, when warm-bloodedness, activity, and bird links were being re-litigated. Here, he’s extending that fight from physiology into culture - insisting dinosaurs may have had something like a childhood, and adults who planned around it.
The intent is pointed. By invoking “feeding on large prey,” Bakker nudges dinosaurs away from the old caricature of solitary, sluggish reptiles and toward an ecology that requires coordination, risk management, and time. Large prey implies investment; investment invites the question of who benefits. His answer is parental provisioning, and the eagles-and-hawks analogy is a strategic bridge for skeptical readers: modern predators do this, so the behavior is imaginable, legible, and evolutionarily practical.
The subtext is a challenge to scientific timidity. Bakker is signaling that the most interesting dinosaur story isn’t just anatomy, it’s family structure. “Fed in the nest until they were full grown” is deliberately provocative because it stretches our comfort with deep-time inference: not just caring for hatchlings, but sustaining them long enough to leave a tooth trail of adolescence.
Context matters: Bakker emerged as a leading voice in the Dinosaur Renaissance, when warm-bloodedness, activity, and bird links were being re-litigated. Here, he’s extending that fight from physiology into culture - insisting dinosaurs may have had something like a childhood, and adults who planned around it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nature |
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