Day: December 16, 2020

Dinosaurs are the rock stars of the fossil world. Transcending the world of science to be embraced by popular culture. Films, comics, documentaries, t shirts and toys – dinosaurs are everywhere. But, even amongst them, there are a select group of iconic dinosaurs that have stuck in the public’s imagination. Which ones, and why?

If everyone made a list of their five favourite dinosaurs, there would be a lot of repetition. Tyrannosaurus, of course. Triceratops.  Stegosaurus. Brachiosaurus? Maybe Velociraptor and Spinosaurus. A couple of decades ago, the list would probably be a little different.  When I was growing up, every set of dinosaur toys would have a T. rex, a Triceratops, a Diplodocus, a Stegosaurus and maybe an Iguanodon or a Brontosaurus. This last one got made scientifically extinct a while ago when it was realized there had been a misidentification; poor Bronto was just an Apatosaurus and the name was formally dropped. That all changed in 2015 when it was reinstated with some more recent finds. The damage has been done, though, and Bronotosaurus has been dropped from our list of heroes.

On the other hand, Spinosaurus and Velociraptor are relative newcomers. Velociraptor was the star of Jurassic Park – bulked up and defeathered by the film-makers, they terrified a new generation of dino-lovers and tore their way through our ribcages into our hearts.  Spinosaurus, while also appearing in the Jurassic Park movies, is the most widely available commercial dinosaur tooth. It’s pretty easy to buy a nice example of a Spino tooth, and I think this has significantly boosted its popularity over the past 20 years. Tyrannosaurus rex holds the position it has always held. As its name proudly tells us, it’s the king. I mentioned the two newcomers above, but most of the reason behind our list of dinosaur elite is how long they’ve been known to us. Today, with new techniques available to paleontology, and a spread of the science to the developing world, new dinosaur species are discovered at an astonishing rate, but it wasn’t long ago new finds seemed few and far between. This means it’s hard for a new find to stick out from the crowd, and that’s partly why the first dinosaurs to be named have a bit of an edge. They’ve had years to build their reputations and endear themselves to us before the hordes appeared. 

Tyrannosaurus was found in 1900, but described five years later, with a bit of fanfare. Here was an enormous, horrifying beast, a monster that immediately and perfectly represented all we imagine when we think of carnivorous dinosaurs. And the name… perfect. So many scientific names are awkward and difficult to pronounce. Tyrannosaurus rex is a joy to say.

Triceratops is another dino-darling, born of the Bone Wars or Marsh and Cope, in 1889. Although there are now a lot of ceratopsians known, and Trike was far from the first found, lots of them were uncovered, and many in good shape. Museum fodder. The distinctive beaked, horned and frilled head quickly lodged itself in dinosaur artwork and museum displays across the world. There are a few reasons our list of favourites formed in the first place, and evolved in recent years. Get in there early and make a big impression. Have a cool name. Be big. Be scary. Be pointy. Be well-preserved and on display. But more important nowadays – be in movies.

It’s all felt a little apocalyptic recently. We humans haven’t really been around very long in geological terms. A few hundred thousand years, perhaps, more or less as we are now. That’s the blink of an eye, in terms of our planet’s history. We have grown up quickly, but in blissful ignorance of the harsh realities of large-scale natural disasters. Earth’s past, well-documented in its geological record, is littered with them, but we’ve not been here long enough to witness them first hand – thankfully. Covid 19 is a little taste of the power of nature.

A very long time ago, when our planet was young, it was hammered by rocks. Lots of huge rocks, for ages. Not a particularly enjoyable experience, you’d imagine, but character-forming, like winter camping.  
This prolonged period of galactic stoning has a name – The Late Heavy Bombardment. Seems a very long time ago for something to be called ‘late’, but it’s considered late in the time frame of the formation of the solar system’s planets. The Heavy Bombardment part you get, I’m sure.
We know what happened to the dinosaurs, more or less. Instead of bazillions of smaller stones battering the planet, one single enormous rock thumped into the Gulf of Mexico (or where it is now, at least) and caused a great deal of damage. As well as a chain of events that saw the extinction of around 76% of species. Hard times, but there have been worse extinction events – those at the end of the Triassic and Permian saw 80% and 96% of species wiped out.

On a far smaller scale, climate change has been a factor in some disastrous periods in the history of life. Droughts and ice ages, floods and heatwaves, but if I’m focusing on the geological, aside from things falling from space to cause trouble, there can be events beneath the surface that are similarly awful. Volcanic events on a gigantic scale have taken place, flooding huge areas of land with lava and the skies with smoke and ash for thousands of years. Not good for plants. Not good for things that eat plants. And not good for things that eat things that eat plants. Yellowstone Park in Wyoming is home to the famous geyser Old Faithful, and many others. These are a fascinating and beautiful phenomenon, but there’s a sinister reason behind them. Yellowstone sits on the caldera of a supervolcano. The devastation that would follow the eruption of a volcano of that size doesn’t bear thinking about – but for the brave, there’s a decent imagining of the outcome on Youtube. Due to the calculated mass of magma in the chamber, though, a massive eruption seems unlikely in the short term, so we can breathe easy.

The other obvious tectonic activity that threatens life on our planet is the earthquake. Their scope for damage is probably more limited, even if we consider the resulting tsunami, but for humans there are complicating factors. Panic, chaos, disease, food and water shortages, and – more obviously – buildings falling down.
I started by mentioning how short humanity’s existence has been, and how that our limited perspective can blinker us a little to the dangers of the world. But it can also be a reassurance. Things will go on. Bad times pass. It’s important to remember that sometimes.