About the Author

DONALD F. GLUT has been professionally active in both the entertainment and publishing industries since 1966.Moving to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California, Don professionally entered show business as an "extra" (a POW) in the movie Von Ryan's Express (1965), the first of several such "roles." He began his professional writing career in 1966, writing articles for and finally editing the magazine Modern Monsters. In 1967, after graduating from the University of Southern California with a BA degree (for Cinema) in Letters, Arts and Sciences, Don worked as a musician, singer and songwriter in The Penny Arkade, a rock band produced by "Monkee" Michael Nesmith. However, most of Don's professional life has been as a freelance writer. To date he has authored numerous motion picture and television scripts (Shazam!, Land of the Lost, and animation, e.g., Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, Transformers, G.I.Joe, Duck Tales, Jonny Quest, X-Men, others), comic-book scripts (Captain America, Tarzan, etc., including creating for Gold Key Dagar the Invincible, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor and Tragg and the Sky Gods), more than 35 novels and nonfiction books, also numerous short stories, articles, songs, album-liner notes, etc. The Dinosaur Dictionary (1972) and Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia (1997), two of Don's many non-fiction books about dinosaurs, both were listed by the American Library Association among the best reference books of their years of publication. With The Dinosaur Dictionary Don created the much-imitated book format based upon an alphabetical listing of dinosaur names. Perhaps Don is best known for his novelization of the movie The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the nation's No. 1 bestseller for almost two months, which to date (still in print) has sold over 3.5 million copies. In 1982 he created characters and back story for Mattel's "Masters of the Universe" toy line. Among his more recent books is Chomper, an entry in the popular "Dinotopia" series. Don produced, wrote and directed various videos (including the documentaries Dinosaur Movies and Hollywood Goes Ape! and the music-video compilation Dinosaur Tracks(R)), theatre and movie projects. He has worked as a consultant on numerous other video, film and TV projects, and was "Dinosaur Consultant" on Roger Corman's movie Carnosaur (1993).