Your first thought will probably be: because they’re cool, right? They’re giant, monstrous animals which roar and bite and destroy things! YEAH!!!
Not quite my angle.
Like most kids who grew up in the 90s, I came of age in a world saturated with dinosaur-related content. Shows like Extreme Dinosaurs, Dinobots, Beast Wars, to name but a few, all filled our young minds with action-packed adventures whereby anthropomorphised versions of our favourite prehistoric friends jumped around, bit stuff and fought each other in the name of JUSTICE, or something. Throw in a couple of explosions and 80s-style guitar solos and you’ve got a drug that no ten-year-old boy could ever JUST SAY NO to.
As my friends grew up, they left dinosaurs behind, where I assume they thought that all childhood memories and interests should remain, only ever having their enthusiasm reignited for the odd Jurassic Park/World film or mobile game.
I did the opposite.
As I got older, dinosaurs and the study of dinosaurs became even more interesting. I grew out of the need to see them on the big screen chasing Jeff Goldblum with his shirt off, instead opting for the quiet study of their biology and habitat. I read about them and listened to lectures by the rock stars of the palaeontological world, Philip Currie and Jack Horner included. I fell in love with the idea of thinking about how their lives must have been. Were they the lumbering monsters doomed to fail that early scientists hypothesised, or were they caring parents, fulfilling the niche of modern mammals? I gobbled up every bit of information I could find, and even acquired a diploma in Dinosaur Palaeobiology from the University of Alberta in the process.
To think that millions of years ago, there were creatures that lived, and dominated, for millions more. It’s a melancholy thing that these evolutionary marvels, through no fault of their own, were wiped from the face of prehistory. All we have as proof that they even existed is a fossil record. A fossil record which only shows but a fraction of the life that has ever existed on this planet. In fact, we will never know all the species that have walked this planet. We’ve been given the tiniest of glimpses into the lives of creatures that could not have possibly imagined that millions of years after their death, they would be studied by bipedal primates.
For me, it’s an honour to know that I share a planet with these animals. The same water molecules that made the life-giving fluid that was present during the Cretaceous period are present today. There is also a very good chance that the carbon that makes up my body and the calcium in my bones fulfilled the same role in the body of a dinosaur that is being studied by palaeontologists right now. A connection that spans millions of years. That’s beautiful.
I think Jack Horner, the palaeontologist who inspired the character Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, said it best. When asked why dinosaurs are so loved, he said: “They’re big, they’re different and they’re gone.”
Dinosaurs give us the chance to create our own personal mystique surrounding them. Science gives us the raw material, we just need to fill in the blanks with our imagination. That’s better than anything on TV.
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