AustinTranslation

THE ACTUAL JURASSIC JOURNAL
Part Four of The Jurassic Journals

I'm not much of a journaler. In fact, I've never kept an on-going journal in my entire life (other than reading journals required in English class). However, my memory is lousy and extremely unreliable, and I wanted to remember everything about my first dino trip. So, I decided to keep a journal of my adventure into fossil country. My sketchbook doubled quite nicely as a dino-diary and I was able to catalogue, not only all of my frustrations of finding nothing but dirt for hours on end, but also great quotes from my fellow diggers.

One fella in particular, a fellow newbie named David Bourke, had the greatest quotes and stories. His anecdotes would start with these amazing hooks like, "So I was drinking moonshine at a fiddler's convention..." My favorite quote of David's was when he and I were talking about Disney's Fantasia:

David: "Fantasia was one that I went back and saw in the sixties in a whole different light."

Me: "Because of your appreciation for music?"

David nods, thoughtfully.

David: "Plus I was really high."

The nearly illegible notes on this spread are from a conversation I had with Pete Larson about whether or not dinosaurs reached REM state of sleep and were capable of dreaming. Pete reckons they could based on the fact that birds do.

Most of these sketches are me copying out of Robert Bakker's book The Dinosaur Heresies in an attempt to learn actual dinosaur anatomy.

And, just for fun, here's a picture of a female wolf spider covered with her babies taken by my buddy and fellow digger, Amar Dosanj. Sorta brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?