What does a dinosaur expert like to read? Don Burge, paleontologist and director of the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, has wide-ranging interests. He woke up this morning, for example, and read some Egyptian poetry.
Early entertainment: When he was a boy, growing up in Los Angeles, right down the street from the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, Burge became fascinated with mummies and Indian artifacts. When he was 11 or 12 he liked to read books by and about Roy Chapman Andrews, who was the prototype for Indiana Jones. He was a spy in China during World War I and also was sent to the Gobi Desert on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History where his mission was to find the Garden of Eden.
Andrews didn't find the origins of man but he did find some dinosaur fossils says Burge, still sounding enthusiastic about his hero, all these years later. Andrews was an adventurer and a discoverer. "He had a big effect on my life."
Together time: As for what he read to his own four children, when they were small, Burge recalls they loved stories about animals. When they were older and reading on their own, they gravitated toward history and science. One son liked to read about the Civil War and was always drawing pictures of generals on horseback.