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I remember reading a short story in a (I think) multi-author compilation many years ago. The vintage was probably 60s-70s. A time traveller was warning modern people that he had travelled to the era of the Dinosaurs and discovered that they has 'guns' and other technologies and their extinction was actually caused by warfare amongst themselves. I remember he gave some explanation as to why the technological artefacts did not appear in the fossil record, but I can't remember what that was.

Does anyone know what this story was called and who wrote it?

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    This forms an image in my head of a Gary Larson-esque T-rex with an army helmet and an M-16. Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 17:54

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Sounds similar to Asimov's Big Game.

If the intelligent dinosaurs were hunters, and their warfare was the result of hunting all other dinosaurs to extinction; and also if the time traveller warns their listeners that mankind is going to destroy itself, just like the intelligent dinosaurs, then this is your story.

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  • Yes that's it. The first line of your link "A drunk in a bar" reminded me that this is how the story started. It's possible that it is actually "Day of the Hunters" as mentioned in your link, as I did use to own 'Buy Jupiter' but I don't recall reading 'Before the Golden Age'. None the less, I'm sure one of the other of those two apparently similar stories is the one I read. Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 0:17
  • @Bogdanovist You're right! I also read the one titled "Day of the Hunters" from "Buy Jupiter"! I had forgotten the title and found this one by googling. They are essentially the same story, anyway. Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 4:19
  • In Buy Jupiter, Asimov writes in the foreword to The Day of the Hunter that it is an expanded version of Big Game (the manuscript of which he thought lost at the time). Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 8:34

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