560-569: Fossils and Dinosaurs. Dinosaurium, by Chris Wormell and Lily Murray

I have been longing to own the whole Welcome to the Museum series ever since I saw Botanicum in a museum gift shop. So closed libraries plus 560 in the Dewey system equals actually buying Dinosaurium with actual dollars, to have and to hold. It's a beautiful book and deserves to be owned and savored.

The first thing I learned upon opening the book  is that it's currently believed that the continents were in a totally different configuration in the whole Mesozoic Era, which includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. So, that's weird. I mean, it's one thing to see a news item that says that tropical fossils were found in Antarctica; it's another to look at maps that are allegedly Earth but are pretty much unrecognizable.

The main thing I learned was that it is now believed that many famous dinos, notably Tyrannosaurs, had some kind of covering on their skin more or less like feathers. It's interesting to speculate how something as complex as a feather could be a product of time and natural selection and to learn that feather-like structures could have other benefits even if they don't provide flight. After all, flightless birds do still exist and seem to find their lovely skin coverings useful!

I will also throw in a fun fact that I did not learn from this book but from one of my adult sons: Coelacanths, once associated only with the late Cretaceous period, are still around. They are not dinosaurs but ugly, inedible, rare fish.

Nothing could be finer on a quarantine afternoon than sitting on your porch with an enormous book full of dinosaur pictures on your lap. Well worth the investment!