But Why Dinosaurs?
- Kaitlin McMillan
- Aug 29, 2018
- 2 min read
When you commit to the massive undertaking of creating a blog, your brain is immediately swarmed with dilemmas over themes and color pallets and platforms and tags. Regardless of all these things, the question inevitably becomes--what should my focus be? What will make my blog stand out from the literal thousands of others? To me, the real question is: what do you love? What is the one thing you can always gush about?
For me, it's dinosaurs.
It began for me as a young kid enraptured by films like Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time. Seeing the sheer size and ferocity of these animals awoke something inside me as I sat--nose to the TV screen. My passion only grew as I matured. I went to college and found students and professors whose passions eclipsed even my own. I spent many a morning cradling handfuls of polished gastroliths and not-so-polished coprolites in and out of the Geology lab.
I had grown from loving dinosaurs because they were big to loving them because they were complex.
And that complexity is where some take issue.
It is becoming more and more apparent that many dinosaurs were more closely related to modern birds than they were ever to reptiles. There are some who see the newest
models created by paleontologists and artists today and think that something about their childhood has been taken from them. Plenty say that scientists took their favorite dinosaurs and "ruined them"; that dinosaurs "used to be cool". And I can understand those frustrations. I will always be fond of the dinosaurs of my youth. I'll always love Jurassic Park no matter how inaccurate the Velociraptor are.
But let's all be real here.
It doesn't matter whether dinosaurs are cool. It doesn't matter if people want dinosaurs with scales or wings or big goofy grins.
They aren't like dragons or unicorns where we can pick and choose what we like best about them. These animals existed. They were the masters of this Earth long before we were. The dinosaurs are gone but what remains are the remnants of their story--a story that began nearly 250 million years ago.
Is it not our duty as the keepers of these final pieces to study them--to appreciate them--as they were? Is it not more worthwhile to say here's how they lived--isn't it beautiful? That's why I'm here.
If you want explanations every week on how dinosaurs shape our world, our culture, and our future then stay right here.
We're going back...way back.
Top left: art credit to Jaemin Kim Middle right: art credit to Emily Willoughby
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