A lesson learned from THE LOST WORLD OF THE DINOSAURS, by Armin Schmitt

 Science is always changing—roll with it and be open-minded!

            This will be a shorter blog, as dinosaurs are of course not “history”—they didn’t write down much for us to study, haha! I almost exclusively read history books, but every now and then I buy science books, to keep up with some of the discoveries I’ve missed out on since college. Also, this is a lesson from reading a dinosaur book that I think everyone can get behind—dinosaurs are, have been, and will ALWAYS be cool!!

            One of the intriguing aspects of reading new dinosaur books is how much we are constantly learning and changing our views of these extinct giants. When my parents were growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, scientists generally saw dinosaurs as extinct reptiles, with giant bodies and necks that towered dozens of feet straight up into the sky. They were seen as typical slow-moving lizards, who maybe spent life in sloth around swamps. By the 1980’s, growing understanding of dinosaur fossils had led to a revolution in paleontology, which saw dinosaurs as fast-moving, dynamic animals who were actually much more closely related to modern-day birds. This view of dinosaurs was etched into stone in 1993’s Jurassic Park, which the public has never since been able to forget or unsee—myself included, as I forced my poor parents to watch that VHS copy hundreds of times!

            The problem is that Jurassic Park is now over 30 years old, and our knowledge of dinosaurs has only further deepened in a way that franchise has not (check out how ridiculous its previous two entries have been). Scientists have now discovered fascinating details about how there was no way the famous long-necked dinosaurs could keep their heads a hundred feet in the sky for long—their bodies could not have long withstood the gravitational pressure—and likely mostly moved horizontally. Most small dinosaurs were probably covered in some type of feathers, and the famously scrawny arms of Tyrannosaurus could probably still bench-press over 400 pounds (the fun facts you learn)! If nothing else, people should always read new dinosaur books just to keep up with all the new fascinating research.

            From a perspective of modern concerns, one fascinating element of dinosaur research is our growing understand of paleoclimate, and just what a different world the dinosaurs lived in during periods of runaway global warming. The planet was likely a good 5-8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer during much of the dinosaur ages, and that should be of little comfort to anyone who sees what is happening to our planet today. The Earth of 100 million years ago was a deeply hostile climate for mammals, who had to survive by scampering on the ground and stealing dinosaur eggs while reptiles and birds ruled the planet. Dinosaurs lived in a hot and muggy world of droughts and floods that would last for years, and planetary disasters that laid waste to entire populations long before the damned asteroid finally finished them off. That is perhaps one great lesson we can learn from the dinosaurs—geological climactic change tends to have a rough effect on any animal populations who evolved in a different climate, and we should be doing everything in our power to prevent the same thing.

            And of course, read Armin Schmitt’s excellent The Lost World of the Dinosaurs—because it’s a relatively quick, fun read, and dinosaurs are cool.

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