Dinosaur Mountain: Digging into the Jurassic Age by Deborah Kogan Ray; illus. by the author Intermediate Foster/Farrar 40 pp. 4/10 978-0-374-31789-8 $16.99 g

Continuing her interest in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century explorations of the American West (see Down the Cobrado, rev. 1/08), Ray takes readers to the discoveries of prehistoric bones in what is now Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah. Striking endpapers tantalize readers with an Apatosaurus skeleton - fossil expert Earl Douglass's most dramatic find. Douglass's expeditions began in 1 908 when Andrew Carnegie sent him to find "something big" that he could display at his Natural History Museum. Although Douglass identified no new species, his finds were more complete, more accurately assembled, and more numerous than those hastily dug up during the "Bone Wars" between rival paleontologists at the end of the nineteenth century. Dramatic illustrations show the harshness and isolation of the land, and spot art sketching some fossil finds, tools, and methods of preservation gives the book the feel of a field manual. In addition, quotations from Douglass's journals are indicative not only of his process but of his reverence for the work: "The view we are now getting of the past by discovery of fossil animals and plants makes the present world ever new to us. . .a little window for a world of the imagination." Back matter includes a glossary, a bibliography, and information on Dinosaur ? ational Monument, the quarry, dinosaurs of the Jurassic period, Douglass, and Carnegie, bet t Y CARter