That’s one of several plot devices that, for me, required a suspension of disbelief. Yes, somehow the dinosaurs had never colonized North America. The location they choose is across the ocean from all their previous cities. The cold blooded intelligent dinosaurs are looking for a new place to establish one of their organic mega-cities because one of the established cities, built all of living, bio-engineered trees and other plants, is dying as the climate cools. West of Eden takes place at the onset of an ice age. In the case of West of Eden, it’s a much bolder premise: What if the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, but instead evolved into intelligent beings? In the case of Auel, the species is the Neanderthal. Both carry the reader into hypothetical worlds occupied by stone-age humans and a significant antagonist species. West of Eden was first published in 1984, just a few years after Jean Auel’s ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’, and there are similarities in the ‘feel’ of the two books. I gravitated to it because of its extensive world building. West of Eden is one of Harry Harrison’s more notable works of science fiction.
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