The news by her mentor of the discovery of a Carcharodontosaur fossil – the first ever found in Brazil – has Giovanna Antunes, a young PhD at the Museu Nacional di Rio de Janeiro, running for the dig site. She is joined by her brother and his girlfriend, to make a first-hand report about the fossil. But once they arrive on the remote island of Maranhão, two equally dramatic surprises await them: the first is that there are human bones amidst the dinosaur ones, and the second is that Dr. Strauss – Giovanna’s mentor – has disappeared during a storm. But there is no time to wonder, or or ever to organize a rescue search: another storm is approaching the island, and the site must be evacuated. The catamaran will never reach its destination: a strong light and thunder hit the vehicle, and when Giovanna wakes up, among the wrecks, something has changed. The plants are different. The temperature is different. The air itself is different. And there are dinosaurs. The Cretaceous of what would become the Alcântara formation, right when South America is splitting from Africa, proves to be far more deadly than the survivors could have imagined and, while their numbers dwindle from page to page, Giovanna and her companions find themselves forced to fight for survival if they wanted to be back home…
Dino Hazard: Hidden Reality (Dino Hazard: Realidade Oculta) is a 2020 novel by Brazilian paleontologist Tito Aureliano. It was the first product of the intermedia project Dino Hazard, which was also to feature a comic book adaptation, a videogame, and figures of the extinct Brazilian fauna. Unfortunately, due to some complications, only part of this was realized. The novel, however, made it, and if you have ever wondered how a paleontologist imagines dinosaurs, this is the right book for you: the descriptions of the animals are definitely the selling point of the novel. The sci-fi part, although with no excessive innovation within the genre, turns out to be well-developed, with some twists the reader probably does not expect. Perhaps what is most lacking is how the various characters are written: none of them has this amazing, well-developed personality, and they’re pretty much all forgettable. It should also be noted that the English translation is not perfect, with some slips or dubious lexical choices from time to time. Even with these defects, Dino Hazard: Hidden Reality is an easy and capturing story, above average when it comes to dinosaur novels.
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