Imagine Dinosaurs
- Amanda
- Oct 6, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 8, 2018
Google dinosaur. What do you see? Glimmering scales, skeletal frames, and spine-chilling teeth? Certainly not a medley of feathers and pigments. However, evidence suggests that dinosaurs were far from the scaly reptilian creatures typically pictured in search engines, mainstream media, and the public's perception.
Since the 1800s, scientists like Reverend Edward Hitchcock and Thomas Huxley have made the connection between dinosaurs and birds. However, these connections were predominately ignored, until more recent discoveries have forced scientists to rewrite prevailing perceptions on how dinosaurs acted and appeared.
One such discovery, Yutyrannus Huali, the largest known feathered dinosaur, now leads scientists to believe that its close relative, the T-rex, must have also been feathered.
Even dinosaurs that have no direct relation to birds have been found to have feathers, such as the Sinosauropteryx.
Photograph by AMNH/R. Mickens
In their book, All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals, paleoartists C.M. Kosemen and John Conway (along with paleontologist Darren Naish) imagine how creatures today might have looked like if they were drawn how dinosaurs are- hairless, featherless, and based solely on their skeletal structures. Most animals have fat deposits around their bodies and fur or feathers covering their faces and jaws. Take that away and all that is left is a gaunt, reptilian frame that leaves the creature barely recognizable.
Can you guess what animals are featured in each drawing? The images respectively show: a baboon, a cow, an elephant, a zebra, a rhino, a swan, a cat, and a hippo.
Their depiction of modern day animals causes us to question the common image of dinosaurs.
This raises the question: If you say something enough times, does it become true?
Dinosaurs have feathers and fur. It's been known for years. Despite this, the movie industry still portrays dinosaurs as scaly reptilians. Although the creators of the first Jurassic park movie worked with Paleontologists like Jack Horner and knew raptors and other dinosaurs had feathers, the CGI of the time could not create feathers. Since then, the image of these horrifying, alien creatures has been cemented in their audience's mind.
Even though the knowledge has been out there for years, for the everyday people, not much has changed for their perception of dinosaurs. They've seen the scaled dinosaurs so many times that to them, that's what a dinosaur looks like. They don't care whether or not it's accurate; They're just going to a movie or museum to have fun and be entertained, to marvel at how exotic and alien these creatures appear.
In his interview with The Frame, Horner states that dinosaurs are "just enormous animals and they're different than anything that's alive today. Completely different — there's no animal alive today that looks like a dinosaur. And they're gone, so they're just like these gigantic imagination engines, especially for little kids."
The idea that dinosaurs might have looked like giant chickens zaps the magic out of viewing them. It's not that people creating these movies don't know that they're being inaccurate, it's just that for various reasons - ratings, public interest, scare factor, cost, etc- they choose to ignore their inaccuracies.
Dinosaurs are not alone in receiving this treatment by the media. Places, people, events are all altered to serve/fit the media's needs and desires. It makes one wonder what other misconceptions have been repeated so many times that we simply accept them as fact, and craft our own works around that misinformed knowledge.
Next time you sit down to watch a movie, be aware that its meant to be entertaining and its portrayals of different people, lifestyles, places, and events are to be taken with a grain of salt.
Bushman, Monica, and Arts & Entertainment. “This Paleontologist Inspired 'Jurassic Park's' Original Hero.” LAist, June 2018, laist.com/2018/06/21/meet_the_real_life_paleontologist_b.php.
Tyson, Steven. “Steven Tyson.” A Book That Will Make You Question Everything You Know About Dinosaurs, 21 Dec. 2012, stetyson.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-book-that-will-make-you-question.html.
Your post was extremely interesting and enjoyable to read! As a child I often watched movies featuring dinosaurs, but I never paused to wonder if the portrayals were indeed accurate. Your tie to misconceptions about people, places, and events in addition to dinosaurs really brings to light the deep-rooted ignorance in society. As an improvement, I suggest perhaps elaborating on the source for the question, "If you say something enough times, does it become true?"