This Denver Paleontologist's New Book Has Good Bones

"It's easy to get me excited about anything related to fossils," says Amy Atwater. That's a pretty good quality to have when you're the director of paleontology at Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison — and fossils are literally your job. Now Atwater has written a kids' book about fossils, The Fossil Keeper's Treasure, which was published on March 4 (and will be celebrated with Atwater's appearance on April 6 at the Bookies Bookstore).

Although Atwater is originally from Oregon, she's happy to have landed her job at Dinosaur Ridge. "Colorado," she says, "has all of the right ingredients for fantastic paleontology. It has rocks on the surface from the age of the time of dinosaurs, which is not everywhere. We have great rock exposures back in Oregon, but they're much younger. They're Cenozoic versus Mesozoic, so we have a great mammal record in Oregon, but no dinosaurs. Oregon was under water during the age of dinosaurs, whereas Colorado was the hot spot for dinosaurs."

Her book, which was illustrated by Natalia Cardozo, is a celebration of all things fossilized, including prehistoric creatures such as crab-like trilobites and the extinct genus Smilodon (or what most of us call saber-toothed cats). Smart, fun and lavishly colorful, it's exactly the type of tome to draw children even deeper into the world of science. But it's also tactile as well as visual: Every page is embossed, so readers can run their fingers over Cardozo's gorgeous fossil drawings and feel something similar to what Atwater does when she's digging up dinosaur bones in real life.

"I'm not your typical paleontologist in that I haven't known I wanted to be a paleontologist since I was, like, five years old," Atwater says. "Even while doing my job as a paleontologist, I have been schooled by so many four, five, six and seven-year-olds. They are the great vessels of information for paleontology at that age. Their brains are just such sponges. But I actually wasn't really interested in that. I was interested in modern animals as a kid. But when I did fieldwork as a teenager, I had that moment of holding a fossil for the first time that no one else has ever seen before. That feeling is very, very enjoyable and addictive."

The Fossil Keeper's Treasure book-signing with author Amy Atwater, 3 p.m. Sunday, April 6, the Bookies Bookstore, 2085 South Holly Street, thebookies.com. The book is available for purchase here.