When I first set pen to paper for PANGEA, I could not have known how completely it would take hold of me. This book lives at the precise crossroads of two passions I have carried since childhood: a fascination with dinosaurs, those magnificent rulers of a vanished world, and a deep and abiding love of history.

There is a particular kind of magic that descends when the work stops feeling like work. Hours would pass without me noticing. The story would unspool in my mind unbidden — while I walked, while I ate, in those quiet hours when I lay awake in the dark, the ceiling above me giving way to landscapes and creatures and the slow turning of imagined ages. I became, I confess, wonderfully and hopelessly obsessed.

I hope to take you with me into the wondrous world of Pangea. And when the final page is turned, I hope you take a little piece of that world with you — just as I have carried it with me all this while.

With gratitude,

Thomas Van de Walle