Book Week 2025, Day 8: Jurassic West, 2nd edition, by John Foster

Ha ha, I lied. Book Week will continue until morale improves.

Mike has made the point to me more than once that there are papers I could and probably should write, but haven’t, because they’re things that I just assume everyone else knows. I’m not alone here, it’s a very common human thing to subconsciously assume that basic, background knowledge for each of us is also basic, background knowledge for most everyone else (a.k.a. the “curse of knowledge”, which Mike has blogged about before) — even when stopping and interrogating that assumption would explode it almost immediately. Similarly, there are books I haven’t blogged about because they are so fundamental to my process that it’s hard to remember that not everyone in the world operates from the same fundamentals.

I’ve given quite a few public talks about dinosaurs, and in the past decade I’ve typically ended with shout-outs to four things: (1) this blog, (2) my book with Mark Hallett, (3) Brian Engh’s website and paleoart channel, and (4) John Foster’s Jurassic West. I realized, admittedly a bit belatedly, that it’s plain loony for people who see my talks to learn about JW, but not people who read this blog. So I’m patching that hole.

John Foster in the field near Brachiosaur Gulch. That big rock he’s standing in front of is a preserved stream bed in cross-section.

Here’s my plug for Jurassic West: it’s the closest you can get to carrying the Morrison Formation around in your backpack. I don’t mean a couple of little pieces, I mean the whole damn thing. John covers everything about the Morrison: geology, sedimentology and stratigraphy, paleoenvironments (yes, plural, the Morrison was diverse in every way), plants, inverts, dinosaurs, other vertebrates, history of study, notable quarries (well, really, all the quarries, if you count the incredible appendices), current research, prospects for the future, and, I assume but am too busy to check right now, about 57 other things I’ve forgotten to mention. And it’s well written! And lavishly illustrated! And nicely produced, on good heavy high-gloss paper between sturdy covers. Which is a good thing, because I use this freakin’ book so often that it doesn’t have a space on my bookshelf, it stands cover-out in front of all the lesser books, where I can grab it in less time than it took to type this clause. It’s ridden with me to and from Utah and Colorado more times than I can count. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve picked it up just to review which dinosaurs are known from which quarries, I could afford to buy you a copy.

The emotional truth of my relationship to this book.

If Jurassic West was all that John had produced, it would still be a towering achievement, and a humbling one for those of us who toil in its shadow. But he also has a totally separate research thread on Cambrian strata and their biotas, and a whole ‘nother book on that stuff, Cambrian Ocean World. And he continues to do fieldwork and museum research and publish papers on both the Morrison and the Cambrian (jeez, pick a lane, fella!). Oh, and he’s a husband and father with a wonderful family, including his rather accomplished spouse, ReBecca Hunt-Foster, Park Paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument. I assume John either has a Time-Turner or he’s into some deep necromancy, and he’s too good of a friend and colleague for me to want to find out which.

If you like dinosaurs, the Morrison Formation, or just want a truly killer guide to take with you on your museum-and-dinosaur-quarry tour of the American West, this book is a must have. Very Morosaurus-brained of me not to have recommended it sooner. In my defense, it’s only because I assumed you already had a copy.

Now Book Week is over. Probably. Come back tomorrow and we’ll find out together.