Gregory S. Paul citations

Gregory Scott Paul est un chercheur américain indépendant, auteur et illustrateur qui travaille dans le milieu de la paléontologie, et qui, plus récemment, s'est intéressé à la sociologie et la théologie. Il est surtout connu pour ses travaux et recherches sur les dinosaures théropodes et ses dessins de dinosaures. Il enquête professionnellement sur la restauration de dinosaures depuis trois décennies, Paul a eu son nom dans le générique de plusieurs films et documentaires: en tant que spécialiste des dinosaures sur Jurassic Park, sur les documentaire de Discovery Channel When Dinosaurs Roamed America et la série Dinosaur Planet.

Ses recherches récentes sur les interactions entre la religion et la société lui ont valu une forte couverture médiatique de la part de la presse internationale.

✵ 24. décembre 1954
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Gregory S. Paul: 22   citations 0   J'aime

Gregory S. Paul: Citations en anglais

“The dinosaur world I grew up in was classical. They were universally seen as scaley herps that inhabited the immobile continents. There was no hint that birds were their direct descendents. Being reptiles, dinosaurs were cold-blooded and rather sluggish except perhaps for the smaller more bird-like examples. They all dragged their tails. Forelimbs were often sprawling. Leg muscles were slender in the reptilian manner. Intellectual capacity was minimal, as were social activity and parenting; the Knight painting of a Triceratops pair watching over a baby threatened by the Tyrant King was a notable exception. Hadrosaurs and especially sauropods were dinosaurian hippos, the latter perhaps too titanic to even emerge on land, and if they did so were limited by their bulk to lifting one foot of the ground at a time. Suitable only for the lush, warm and sunny tropical climate that enveloped the world from pole to pole before the Cenozoic, a cooling climate and new mountain chains did the obsolete archosaurs in, leaving only the crocodilians. Dinosaurs and the bat-winged pterosaurs were merely an evolutionary interlude, a period of geo-biological stasis before things got really interesting with the rise of the energetic and quick witted birds and especially mammals, leading with inexorable progress to the apex of natural selection: Man. It was pretty much all wrong. Deep down I sensed something was not quite right. Illustrating dinosaurs I found them to be much more reminiscent of birds and mammals than of the reptiles they were supposed to be. I was primed for a new view.”

Autobiography, part I http://gspauldino.com/part1.html, gspauldino.com

“Dinosaur remains have been found by humans for millennia and probably helped form the basis for belief in mythical beasts including dragons.”

Gregory Scott Paul livre The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

Gregory S. Paul (2010) The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press, p. 9
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

“How would we think and feel about predatory dinosaurs if they were alive today? Humans have long felt antipathy toward carnivores, our competitors for scarce protein. But our feelings are somewhat mollified by the attractive qualities we see in them. For all their size and power, lions remind us of the little creatures that we like to have curl up in our laps and purr as we stroke them. Likewise, noble wolves recall our canine pets. Cats and dogs make good companions because they are intelligent and responsive to our commands, and their supple bodies make them pleasing to touch and play with. And, very importantly, they are house-trainable. Their forward-facing eyes remind us of ourselves. However, even small predaceous dinosaurs would have had no such advantage. None were brainy enough to be companionable or house-trainable; in fact, they would always be a danger to their owners. Their stiff, perhaps feathery bodies were not what one would care to have sleep at the foot of the bed. The reptilian-faced giants that were the big predatory dinosaurs would truly be horrible and terrifying. We might admire their size and power, much as many are fascinated with war and its machines, but we would not like them. Their images in literature and music would be demonic and powerful - monsters to be feared and destroyed, yet emulated at the same time.”

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 19
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

“Put a leopard and a [Deinonychus] together and the former would be in trouble.”

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 362-363
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

“When one reads about Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus, one is not dealing with species, like lions or African elephants. Instead, these are genera, a group of animal species. For example, the lion is in the genus Panthera.”

Species of Panthera include the lion Panthera leo, the tiger P. tigris, and the leopard P. pardus, among others. So saying Tyrannosaurus is much like saying "the big cats".
Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 176
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

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