No one takes the time to appreciate how far dinosaurs have come. It’s a great demonstration of good science and a versatile mind.
When I was a kid, dinosaurs were these big lumbering gray and brown things. We thought they were cold-blooded. We didn’t know what they ate, how they looked, what they sounded like, how they took care of their young.
Some dinosaurs defied explanation how they could walk. Were they so big they had to live in swamps to support their weight? Was that Iguanodon’s thumb or his horn? Every book called them Brontosaurus, until they decided they should be Apatosaurus. Then they went back to Brontosaurus.
Pretty boring, right? Interesting shapes but dull colors.
As a kid, you love to imagine giant monsters walking the earth. And these things were real — that’s just the icing on the cake. And that led to all sorts of fantasies–owning them as pets, ones that could talk, alien dinosaurs, dinosaur robots, dinosaurs with laser guns that you can ride. But in all depictions, they were still kinda Godzilla-looking.
Now science knows better. Now they’ve got vibrant colors. They’ve got feathers. Feathers so thick they look like fur. They’ve got beaks. They’ve got bird hips. They can swim. They’ve got gangly limbs and fingers. Weird faceplates and colorful spines.
They’ve somehow gotten cuter AND more dangerous-looking. Like the poison tree frog. You want to observe from a distance, but not touch.
And it hasn’t taken that long either. Just look at the difference between Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park 3. Velociraptors went from pukey-green muscle monsters to lithe and feathered tribesmen, all in a span of eight years.
Eight years for a race of animals we know so little about and can’t (due to them being dead). All we’ve got is what’s fossilized in the ground. And yet, based on that, our entire understanding of the biology and behavior of these ancient animals turned around. Was it Jurassic Park that provoked more attention and money to dinosaur discoverers?
And accepted it willingly too. We didn’t just deny the evidence. Dinosaurs have feathers now? Sure. T. Rex nurtured its young? I’ll take it. Velociraptors were man-sized and had tribes and communicated? Get ‘er done.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking the other day. We don’t give enough credit to scientists for finding such incredible changes. And for convincing a public that’s slow to accept anything different than what’s established. Kudos to you, feathered dinosaurs.
