A is for Archaeopteryx

There is always plenty of work to do at a fossil dig, but every now and then there’s a lull in the activity. While I was volunteering with some graduate students at a site in New Jersey a few years ago, I had the pleasure of playing a paleo name game with some of the other volunteers during a break. The objective was to make it all the way from A to Z by giving a genus name of a prehistoric creature for each letter of the alphabet. I got stumped on a few, but now that someone has made a “paleobet,” I’ll have a good starting place for next time.

The cute drawings feature a variety of fossil organisms, from Fukuiraptor to the sponge Vauxia, and it is be just the thing to put on a little paleo-fanatic’s wall. Quetzalcoatlus might be a bit of a tongue-twister for those just mastering the alphabet, but it is less frightening than the inflatable “letter people” that introduced me to the ABC’s.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.