Defending Dinosaurs

It occasionally surprises me that interest in dinosaurs is considered something for children. This isn't true of everyone, to be fair, but it is all too common that when I express my absolute fascination with dinosaurs I get looks of puzzlement, even mild sympathy from other adults. It is as though I'm Peter Pan and refuse to grow up. Our culture certainly reflects this; the overwhelming majority of books on dinosaurs are aimed at children; the older one gets, the harder it is for the non-specialist to find a book on them that isn't filled with rhymes and cartoon depictions of these venerable beasts.

They may consider me with surprise, but I consider them with sympathy as well as my own bewilderment. To think that dinosaurs are for children only! As though dinosaurs, like Legos and Lincoln Logs, are to be put away as we grow in exchange for more "adult" interests! Certainly many children find themselves fascinated with dinosaurs, as I was, knowing the names of these remarkable creatures, playing endless games with dinosaur toys and reading every dinosaur book that they can lay their hands on. As they grow up, however, many of them lose this interest, putting the toys and books away in favor of something else. This is a tragedy to me, for it seems that losing interest in dinosaurs is a symptom of losing a childlike sense of wonder, a deep fascination with how the world works and a marvel at the vast spans of time that have led us to our present. 

I too, for a time, lost my interest in dinosaurs. I gave up the toys, stopped reading the books and, other than the occasional Discovery Channel documentary paid them little mind. Luckily for me, at the time I began my freshman year of college, the University still offered a course on dinosaurs, taught by an enthusiastic professor at the edge of retirement. During the summer term I took the course on its final run, for upon retirement the University would decide not to replace the professor who taught the course. Sadly for everyone who came after, "Dinosaurs: Myths and Reality" would never be offered again. Budget cuts no doubt played a factor even then, and the draconian cuts that followed in subsequent years, from a Republican governor hostile to education, ensured that the dinosaur course was only the first of many casualties. I digress. This course, short of necessity as it was, rekindled for me my love of dinosaurs. I absolutely insisted afterwards that my family go to the Carnegie Museum to see the new dinosaur exhibit, though ongoing construction of that fine display necessitated that we wait until the following year. Standing beneath the bones of massive beasts like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, looking up at the great jaws of the Tyrannosaurus, is surely enough to invoke a sense of wonder in all but the most close-minded and thoughtless of people. 

The author, in front of a Stegosaurus skeleton at the Carnegie Museum

There is a grandeur in these and other extinct beasts, and the mind boggles at the thought that, in an age long before even the first ape-like ancestor of humanity stood up on two legs, these creatures roamed across shifting continents. Even with all that modern science has unveiled, through over a century of tireless work, endless new things yet remain to be discovered, if only we look! New techniques and technologies tell us more and more about the biology and lives of dinosaurs with each passing year. The great drama of dinosaurs played out in a span of time so long that we can barely comprehend it, and dinosaurs evolved from small forms into a great variety of life, ranging from the tiny Compsognathus to Styracosaurus, from the massive Allosaurus to all the theropods who evolved into the birds that still visit our feeders every day. Surely the wonder of this should transcend boundaries of age, surely this is enough to amaze and inspire all of humanity, from the youngest toddler to a woman of a hundred and ten! Not for children alone, dinosaurs are for everyone!