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Many, many years ago, I read a book where dinosaurs were assumed to have suvived the K-T event (or it never happened), and they evolved to intelligent species that used not only language (which combined sound, posture, and colour changes on their skin) but also used technology. In the series, a human is captured or somehow gets integrated with one of the evolved dinosaur groups.

Again, from a very faint memory, the dinosaurs had a level of technology that would be about middle ages, and the humans were much more analogous to American Indian.

That's really all I can recall about the book, and I am trying to find it for my daughter to read. Can anyone help me out?

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    Are you talking about "Mario Brothers". ;)
    – Dima
    Aug 29, 2011 at 15:17

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You're probably thinking of West of Eden by Harry Harrison.

The lizard people use a biological based technology and genetic engineering. A scientist captures a human to study and teaches it to communicate in their language.

West of Eden is the first of three books that continue in Winter in Eden and Return to Eden.

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    THANK YOU! It was driving me nuts trying to recall this book. Now to tell my daughter.
    – Larian LeQuella
    Aug 26, 2011 at 20:45
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    @Larian - what age is she? This book might be a bit tough to properly appreciate in its fullness for a very young child (this is from experience of reading WoE translation at a fairly young age - 10 or 11 - and then re-reading recently in English). Just something to consider. +1, and welcome to scifi SE :)
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Aug 27, 2011 at 1:58
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    @DVK, hey, a familiar name. :) She's 15, and was really intrigued by alternate history type books after reading Clan of the Cave Bear (a book I never read).
    – Larian LeQuella
    Aug 27, 2011 at 3:29
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    Very different, but you might also want to look into Karel Capek's The War With The Newts, an incredibly good book for its age.
    – sbi
    Aug 27, 2011 at 23:02
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    @Larian - "Clan" is an interesting book/series, though I'd hesitate to classify it as "alt-hist". If she's 15, she is definitely old enough for WoE. If she's into a more recent alternative history and not just paleolithic, give her Eric Flint's 1632 (aka Ring of Fire) multiverse series, as well as Turtledove and David Drake's Belisarius series.
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Aug 29, 2011 at 7:37
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Looks like you've already found the book described, but another based on a similar premise is Dinotopia. Lavishly illustrated, and more an exploration than a story, really.

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  • I used to watch that when I was little, but the story wasn't as compelling as the one my dad told me about.
    – Skava
    Sep 3, 2011 at 16:21

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