"Did dinosaurs create the flowers in the fields?"

That was John Batchelor's startling question to paleontologist and dinosaur expert Anthony J. Martin during their discussion one Friday night toward the end of January about Martin's book, Dinosaurs Without Bones: Dinosaur Lives Revealed by their Trace Fossils, which clearly had enchanted Batchelor.
 
I've never had any interest in dinosaurs -- it was more than a decade after it premiered that I took time to watch "Jurassic Park."  But Martin sounded such a happy man, so happy to be spending his life studying dinosaurs, in spite of myself I listened to the interview.

Finally, though, I said, "All right, enough about dinosaurs." 

I was just about to switch off the radio when Batchelor popped out with that question.  So then I had to wait through the station break to learn whether dinosaurs had created the flowers in the fields. I'm glad I mustered the patience.  In ways I could never have imagined dinosaurs have shaped our world. 

Someday, on a dreary snowy day when I'm suffering from cabin fever, I will search for the podcast of the interview and listen again.  Come to think of it, I'll buy the book and tuck it away for a gloomy day. 

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