The Valley of Gwangi

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved dinosaurs. My Mum once told me that when I was about six my primary school teacher had privately admitted that she’d stopped trying to teach the class about dinosaurs because I knew more about it than she did. Dinosaurs are awesome – if it wasn’t enough that they were genuine, real life monsters that dwelt here on this earth millions of years ago then get the added value of the rich storytelling one can weave about the painstaking detective work that it took and takes to discover these extraordinary creatures and piece together their world, and the astonishing variety and bizarre variations on the basic dinosaur theme – such as Therizinosaurus – that abound. I’m certain that I’d have been a palaeontologist had I not had the self-awareness to realise that having the manual dexterity of an elephant and the attention span of a gnat aren’t the greatest assets in a job which requires unbelievably careful and time-consuming digging and preparation of fossil specimens.