As an amateur, armchair paleontologist (I would say dinophile, but that's not actually a word, and, strictly speaking, it means "lover of terrible [things]", which doesn't sound particularly pleasant) now is a great time to be alive and loving dinosaurs. There are, according to Steve Brusatte (in his book, The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs, which you should read, because it's good), about 50 new species discovered every year. This means that, at the rate of about one a week, a fresh dinosaur is described.
Most recently is a bat-winged creature called Ambopteryx longibrachium (see the picture above) has caught some attention. It isn't the first bat-winged dinosaur ever discovered--that happened back in 2015 when scientists described Yi qi. And that's kind of my point: It's really hard to keep up with the past. This isn't just a phenomenon I suffer from with dinosaurs; being a history aficionado has this same peril. I recently learned about Virginia Hall, a spy for the French during World War II. A book about her life was just released (I haven't read it yet), and, according to the NPR article that let me know about her in the first place, there are three books about her, as well as two movies in the works. This, of course, is wonderful. Far too often the butchers and killers and maniacs of the war are the focus of our stories. And, as most of the soldiers and all of the generals are male, it's particularly nice to get a story about the contributions of women in the war. Moreover, I also have a hard time keeping up with already published (and purchased) books that cover the topics I'm interested. I have two books about living in Elizabethan England, too many about Shakespeare to even catalogue from memory, and a solid handful of Milton-related works. Most of these were purchased because I thought they'd be interested and I believed (as I always do) the lie I tell myself that I will find a way to squeeze in a bit more reading, one more book. Thinking back over my own past, there was a time when what I liked was more niche than nowadays. As a kid, I loved reading Spider-Man novels--not just the comics, which were too variegated for me to keep track of--because I could buy them as they came out. In the mid- to late nineties, there wasn't the glut of interest in superheroes that we're enjoying (and I am enjoying it immensely) today. Now, however, there are so many ways of getting into the spider-verse that it's honestly intimidating. I don't want to say that this is simply because of nostalgia-glasses, though that certainly is a possibility. I was a pretty oblivious kid (I didn't, for example, know that eighth grade GPA didn't "count" until the third term of that year was over), so there's a good chance that more was happening that I simply wasn't aware of. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that there really is just a lot more output of content now than ever before. Clearly, the internet is the conduit for this, but I'm still convinced that part of the reason this feels the case is because there is a way for smaller voices to be better heard. I mean, not in the Spider-Man case: Intellectual properties tend to be pretty tightly regulated. But just in general, I'm confident that people were making stuff that they couldn't get into the mainstream and so they languished. So, I guess it's actually pretty hard to assert that we have quantifiable more stuff. The difficulty remains, however: Keeping up with the stories of the past, the new ideas of our future, the important aspects of our now is no easy task. It's beyond what a full-time consumer of culture could ever hope to accomplish, like drinking the ocean. Then again, who needs to drink it? We can enjoy it in many other ways. Maybe that's what I should focus on, instead. Despite the fact that we live in a hyper-connected world, there are still things that slip through the cracks, only resurfacing via happenstance when the algorithmic gods mindlessly decree. In this particular case, I'm thinking about two things about dinosaurs that I learned this week: Utah has evidence of an intermediary tryannosaurid that helps fill in the story of how the Tyrannosaurus rex eventually became the tyrant reptile king, and the amber-preserved tail of a mid-Cretaceous dinosaur. The former was published on 22 February 2019…the latter, which I just found out about, was published 8 December…of 2016. So, even though there are two really cool updates to our understanding about dinosaurs that I learned about this week, only one of them happened this week. I'm feeling behind the curve, sadly. So, in an effort to make myself feel better about my inadvertent lapse (maybe I should set up a Google Alert for dinosaurs?), I wanted to write just a bit about my impressions about Moros intrepidus, this newly named beauty. On one hand, I'm pretty excited about it. The find, as the news article linked above points out, shows how the demise of Utah's state fossil, the Allosaurus, opened up a new niche that the tyrannosaurids were able to exploit. How did T. rex get so big? Well, there were ancestors to the King back when Allosaurus was chomping its way through Jurassic Utah. When the other reptile died off, Moros intrepidus was there, ready to take over the spot as top predator. Add in a few million years of evolutionary pressures, and you've a recipe for the Rex. On the other, this sort of thing, while exciting, feels a bit rushed. This is simply my take, as an armchair paleontologist: I wish we had a bit more of the skeleton before making the claims we have. If you check out the article in Nature, you'll see that the dinosaur is described because of some leg bones and a few teeth. One of the things that paleontologists and paleoartists have been criticized for is the way they tend to wrap bones in some pebbly skin and call it accurate. There's a lot of possibilities about what's going on in the shape and type of body that isn't fossilized. (Think, for example, how different your dog looks when shaved versus when she's still in her winter coat.) When it comes to describing a dinosaur, we almost never have a complete skeleton in a single place. Often, the understanding of the creature comes because we've found multiple pieces from sundry places and specimens. Together, we're able to cobble together a fuller picture. But just like the idea of what they looked like, we sometimes miss things. And I worry that there might be something crucial that Moros intrepidus has in the space between its legs and its front teeth that could change a lot of what we're assuming here. Consider the distinctive heads of a Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodicus. Their bodies are constructed differently, yes, but their overall shape and purpose is pretty similar. Without their heads intact, however, there's a potentially huge error in describing what their faces would have looked like. As a person who's really invested in being as precise as we can about these ancient creatures, I'm reluctant to make the kind of interpretive jumps that come by having so few bones. That being said, the deal with Moros intrepidus isn't new; most of our dinosaur species come from very fragmental sections of the animal. We do this all of the time. I just…kinda wish we didn't? I mean, I'm not trying to diminish the hard work of the paleontologists who made this discover--it's really cool, and it helps guide future work in the field toward a deer-sized tyrannosaurid (which, let's be honest, is freaking awesome). When I see the news article, I realize how little we know about it. The newspapers, however, make it sound much more certain it is. There's simply too little evidence about the creature to make more than vague, hazy guesses. Did it take advantage of the extinction of Allosaurus as the Cretaceous started up? Yes, that much is clear. Did it look as depicted above? No idea. Though it's doubtful, we could ask how the scientists know it doesn't have an impossibly cool crest like the Cryolophosaurus. And the answer is, they can't. Not until more is found. So it's less that we've a new tyrannosaurid and more the idea that we're making a lot of assumptions about its shape and appearance that's bothering me. But, hey, I'm usually behind the times on this sort of thing. By the time you read this, there could be something else entirely discovered that will set the whole thing on its head. And that's the great part about paleoscience; it, like the biology it describes, is evolving.
I like to think that I have a narrow alley of eclectic tastes. I like world history--mostly British, to be honest--and Shakespearean drama. I like Milton's poetry. I like comic books, with Spider-Man being my bae. I understand the World Wars better than most (well, that may be debatable). I play the guitar--mostly nineties alternative stuff. I used to play quidditch. I really enjoy deconstructivism, postmodernism, and new technology, though I'm unimpressed by modern architecture or the potential nihilism inside of current social trends. I like philosophy and I also like dinosaurs.
It's that last little bit that made me think. Today, I'm not at school. Instead, I'm spending the morning/early afternoon at Barnes and Noble, editing my manuscript and enjoying the ambiance. Before I sat down at my computer, I flitted through the store, checking out the different titles that caught my eye. As I do whenever I have the time, I worked my way to the back part of the store, where they keep their selections on philosophy. A couple of things I noticed: One is that they've recently (in that I just noticed it) created a subset of philosophy that's called "Agnosticism and Atheism", putting Dawkins and Hitchens and men of their ilk all in the same spot. While a great many other philosophers were also atheists, the idea is to put books that fully deny the reality of God all in one place. It takes up about two and a half shelves. The LDS (not even counting the religion and Christian sections) are entire rows. So it's not what I would call a particularly popular section. Anyway, so it seems like there's a binary at work here. The movie franchise God is Not Dead has just released its third film. Then there are titles like God is Not Good and The God Delusion. It made me wonder: Is there a center to this Venn diagram? Is there a book out there that's called, God is Okay or something like that? Maybe Schrodinger's God: Neither Dead nor Alive Until You Pray To Her/Him? If so, it perhaps shows that though people often want to have a middle path in choices, sometimes centrism is kind of stupid. Thought number two: There are lots of ways that philosophers have tried to get people to know more about the great thoughts of the (usually) Western tradition. I am a fan of the Philosophy and Pop Culture series, which has done a lot for helping me to understand some basic principles about philosophy. Stuff about Batman, the Terminator, zombies, and more are considered with a philosophical bent. So where's my Dinosaurs and Philosophy? To be fair, that's a tricky prospect. Not only is there no canon to discuss, but where do you start with that? The easiest way is to consider a franchise that also explores dinosaurs. They have one: In fact, Puck, my eleven year old, tried to read some of Jurassic Park and Philosophy a year or two ago. But Jurassic Park is a different creature (pun intended) than real dinosaurs. Though I don't have a lot of training in this, I think it would be a fun reason to dive back into philosophy. Looking for a system of ethics for Dromaeosaurus, for example, could be pretty fun. The thing is, I don't know what that would look like. I mean, philosophy is part of what makes humans unique (so far as we know). And when you're arguing about the morality of a Allosaurus and whether or not it ought to eat the baby Stegosaurus, well…that just sounds silly. Obviously, I need this book because I'm not smart enough to write this book. If any of you out there would like to make this happen, I would be happy to give you some of my money so that I can read it. Thanks in advance. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs 1 Aug 2018
When it comes to dinosaur books, there's often a binary, instead of a spectrum. On the one side, you have kids books. There are a lot of possibilities in this side of things, with everything ranging from pop-up books to coloring books to sticker books to encyclopedia-style books. And that's just the beginning. Then, on the other side of the binary, there are the more technical books. These are often published by university presses of some sort and they tend to have a lot of technical aspects. They're filled to the tips of the Brachiosaurus nostrils with information, as well as conjecture (as all science writing has) and hypotheses. The reason I say that it's almost a binary is because the stuff in between, the not-too-complicated-but-still-above-a-fifth-grade-reading-level is kind of rare. The two books that jump to mind, actually, would be My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Switek (of which I have two copies, both signed by the author, *humble brag humble brag*) and this one, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte. Not only is it written by a Steve (so odds are good that it's done well), but it hits that Goldilocks zone of dinosaur writing--clear, fun, passionate, and easy to access. Brusatte's style is light and enjoyable, with a natural ease to the prose. He doesn't wax poetic too often, which is probably the best way to approach a book like this. He's quick to give credit to his fellow paleontologists, even going so far as to recommend some of their books as alternatives and supplements to what he provides in his book. Admittedly, he gets a little too sycophantic (though that's too strong a term) and sometimes the book borders on self-indulgent memoir. That's a nitpick, however: The book is solid and enjoyable. Occasionally he dips into a Raptor Red style of narration, describing the prehistoric world as it might have been. He never has these possibilities do anything contrary to what we know about them and their behaviors, but he also posits these stories as "could bes". The book didn't hold a lot of surprises for me--probably a sign that I'm almost to the intermediate level of my dinosaur knowledge, I think. His arguments about feathered theropods were fairly convincing, but I'm still unwilling to go all the way up to a full-feathered Tyrannosaurus rex. Aside from the fact that it wouldn't look as cool (though there is some paleoart that maintains his fearsome reputation while still incorporating the feathers), which isn't a scientific--or, really, important--argument, I simply don't see how a creature that big could survive with insulation all over its enormous body. Cryolophosaurus? Yeah, I could see that--assuming that there were colder conditions in the Jurassic Antarctica where that particular theropod's bones were found. (Bit of an assumption there, but the point is, if you have comparatively cold-weathered dinosaurs somewhere, then feathers on larger theropods make sense.) The reason I hold to this view is twofold: One, there hasn't been any direct evidence of T. rex feathers. North American sediment doesn't preserve as finely as the Chinese sediment does, so it's hard (so far, impossible) to get the kind of impressions we'd need for a "smoking gun" on the feathered question. Two, the larger an endotherm gets, the more heat it releases. However, the skin of the creature provides too little surface area to expel all of the pent up heat into the atmosphere. (That's why elephants' ears are the way they are: They increase the surface area as a cooling mechanism.) Spinosaurus was predominately aquatic in much the same way polar bears are--terrestrial animals that would have spent most of their time in the water. But that massive sail on its back was likely an adaptation that also aided on cooling off its immense body. When it comes to T. rex, we have a similar issue: The fellow is just too big to be covered in feathers. That's my hypothesis. Obviously, all we need is a clear piece of fossil evidence to change my mind. Brusatte asserts that rex was feathered for certain as a chick and perhaps a juvenile, and believes that the proto-feathers--more like quills or spines than what we think of as feathers--likely covered the Tyrannosaurus' bodies. I'm willing to go that far, in particular because of his observation that feathers probably evolved somewhere in a proto-theropod dinosaur, an ancient ancestor to the feathered raptors and theropods, which means that T. rex might have had vestigial reasons for feathers of any type. Wow, okay. That was a tangent. Uh, yeah. The book. Look, I really liked it. I marked it up, threw in the appropriate exclamation points at the cool parts, and Google image searched a handful of dinosaur names that I wasn't familiar with. As far as an introduction to the whole scope and sequence of the animals, this is an awesome book. In fact, I'd probably recommend it right along with My Beloved Brontosaurus (though, of the two, I think Switek's is written just a little bit better). It's accessible, smart, and--best of all--it talks about dinosaurs. What more could you want? Summertime is here with a hot slap and mindless monster movies abound. Unsurprising to any of you who are familiar with me and my interests, I was excited to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom when it released a couple of weeks ago. There were two reasons for that: One, it released the weekend before I went on my cabin writing retreat, which meant that I could see it a second time during said retreat. That meant that, if the first viewing didn't happen with the family, I'd still be seeing it early in its release. Two, it's another Jurassic movie.
Where does one begin when critiquing something that has a massive pass on the premise alone (dinosaurs eating people) and consistently refuses to go into the more interesting aspects of the implications of how we got to the premise in the first place? Well, that's a begged question: I'm trying to say, how can I split the difference between a disappointing story and world building and the deep and abiding love I have for the Jurassic Park franchise? It's more than an acknowledgment issue. I can say, "Hey, this 'review' should be taken with a T. rex sized grain of salt because I cut dinosaur movies a lot of slack," but that very slack-cutting also interferes with how I'm processing the movie. Since I can't really figure out how to square that circle, I'll slop out some of my feelings about the film, though I should probably point out that I'm going to talk about it as a whole--which means spoilers, if you haven't already seen it--and I also feel like I both want to recommend it and have to recommend it…though I'm not sure if I really do either of those. Okay, level one: The entire story. Um, I'm not really a fan. I guess getting rid of the dinosaur-island-people combo is good to do. Fifth entry into the franchise, maybe it doesn't all have to be filmed in a tropical location. Okay, I can see that to a certain extent. Additionally, I knew that Collin Trevorrow (director of Jurassic World) was eager to get off the island. And what better way to ensure that there are no more Jurassic movies on the island than to blow it up with a volcano? So I get the impulse. And, as a kid who's been trying for years (honest to Cthulhu years) trying to figure out how to tell a dinosaur-eating-people story, I understand that it can be tricky to figure out how to make get the people and the dinosaurs in the same place. Especially since every experience with the park has led to death, destruction, and chaos. Who's going to buy into the "oops, the dinosaurs got out again!" line? Nevertheless, they cracked the story into an almost-understandable bit of world-building in Jurassic World; they had space in which to maneuver. But the cartoonish villainy of the main antagonist in Fallen Kingdom doesn't really register as being worthwhile. The guy is already wealthy from managing the finances of a billionaire, so what does he even have to gain? At least with Roland Tembo, the bald-headed safari hunter from The Lost World: Jurassic Park (they really need to get their naming conventions sorted out) we had a character whose motivations aren't merely the pocketbook. This is vestigial spores from Crichton's original premise: It had to be for entertainment because the cost of running Jurassic Park would be far too high for grant-based science. So money has been the motivator for the mistake-makers since the beginning. You could even say it's in the franchise's DNA. And money as a motivator works well in some stories. Sadly, InGen and all those who want the dinosaurs have become the Umbrella Corporation of the Jurassic movies (and if you don't quite get that comparison, then…well, I'm sorry. It's the best I can do, and it fits really well). This makes them cartoonish, bent on hypocrisy and making the same mistakes. Oh, and speaking of mistakes, the little girl, Maisie, is an adorable little actress who shows a resilience, ingenuity, and proactive character throughout…so why does she hide in her bed during the Indoraptor chase scene? My only guess is that this was an example of "kill your darlings" that wasn't heeded. If you're unfamiliar with the term, the idea of "kill your darlings" is often used in writing to encourage writers to cut their favorite things out if they fail to remain tonally consistent or otherwise interfere with the story. I can totally imagine the director, J.A. Bayona, imagining how cool it would be for the creepy, dinosaur-like-a-monster-in-the-closet moment to happen on screen. And, despite the fact that it didn't make any sense for Maisie's character to do that, put it into the movie anyway. It makes for excellent trailer fodder, but it's so contrary to everything about that little girl, it ended up losing its drama for me. That leads me to another frustration: the dinosaurs are either mindless beasts with insatiable desire for manflesh (though it's Chris Pratt's manflesh, so I get it) or smarter-than-dogs-and-even-some-people who are capable of emotion and desires. They're inconsistently drawn (think, for example, the fact that the Baryonyx, an obvious piscivore, would rather chomp on frightened interns than escape from lava, versus the entire menagerie that escapes the mansion--another Resident Evil connection--at the end) and that's a problem. The justification for this flaw is also deep in the roots of the franchise, when the T. rex shows up for an epic showdown with Velociraptor and ends up chomping them to pieces. It's pretty exciting…and utterly weird. I'm fine with the rex being an eating machine, but it's a weird behavior of that creature. As a result, all of the creatures going forward have a tendency to behave this way, too. The saddest part of that consequence is, if you think of the first film, the dinosaurs are a threat, but they aren't monsters. Particularly the moments with the Triceratops and the Brachiosaurus, we see dinosaurs in a more multifaceted light. That is less visible in all of the subsequent films, where they turn more and more focus onto the monster-of-the-film dinosaur (or pretend dinosaur, as the last two films have gone) and lose the dimensionality characters ought to have. Now, that isn't to say the other films don't try to do this. But that's it: They try. It's almost lip-service. We get snippets of it in the form of the Brachiosaurus moment in Fallen Kingdom, and there are shots here or there where the humans stare in awe and disbelief at the majestic animals. But it's all perfunctory and lacking the subtlety and power of the original. Speaking of the original, level two: The homages. Jurassic World spent a lot of time in trying to invoke the nostalgic feeling that so many people have of the 1993 film. Putting new characters into old locations, invoking John Williams' theme at just the right time, and even having Ian Malcolm's cameo float through out the movie in the form of his book. The DNA of Jurassic Park was being cloned into a familiar/similar mold, but with new ideas injected. In other words, Jurassic World the real-life movie was much like Indominous rex was to the in-movie park: A joining together of what worked with the old stuff and trying to make it new. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is trying to do the same thing, but with The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Ian Malcolm's cameo is live now--and Goldblum's performance is wonderful, his character's monologue significant--but more than that, there is the idea of island-first, mainland-later, the pillaging of the dinosaurs, and the effects of these creatures being released among more people (the consequences of which will show up, I suppose in the next film). Of course, that isn't to say that they don't recombine stuff from the original again. The homage to the raptor attacking the closing shelf with a sobbing girl made me happy, and seeing the Dilophosaurus, even if it was only a sculpture, was great. The frill may be bad science, but it's awesome creature design. These touches were nice, as it showed an appreciation for what worked so well in the beginning of the franchise. The call-backs make it feel like a continuous world, even if there isn't the same caliber of storytelling going on with the later films. I don't begrudge them using the old (though more Dilophosaurus next time, please, please, please), as it's a powerful emotion, nostalgia is. Who can blame them for wanting to tap into it? Final level: There is some brilliant work in this. The imagery of the dying Apatosaurus is provocative--and, had we spent any time with the characters interacting with these types of dinosaurs, it would have been even more powerful--and its symbolism of looking as if it had been put back into the amber was amazing. It wasn't a fully earned cinematic moment, but it was an impressive one, too. For the most part, the score worked really well, and I love the Jurassic World theme. It has the perfect mix of new-and-old that resonates with me, and I'm hopeful that it's a tune that will invoke nostalgia for my kids as they grow up. Jurassic Park was a watershed moment for me: One of the most idyllic and idealistic images for me of summertime is firmly entrenched in the summer of 1993. I was eleven, and if ever there's a time when summer is supposed to really mean something, it's when you're eleven.* The final piece of this final level would have to be the dinosaur animations, textures, and digital acting. They used puppets again (seeing a "real" T. rex head snoozing was a joy) and that made a serious difference. I loved seeing how much has moved forward in the realm of puppetry, and if they would push back toward even more practical effects for the next film, it would only be for the better. And while I would prefer a more scientifically accurate** dinosaur, the Jurassic films have charted a specific course, specific look that they're adhering to and it gives the films both a brand and a continuity. I can't fault them for that. When it's all said and done, I don't think this is a bad Jurassic movie. Honestly, besides the first, they've all been sort of there. They very often miss what can be most exciting--for me, the exploration of ideas that the first film holds--in order to get to the dinosaurs as quickly as possible. Not one sequel has had the guts to keep the dinosaurs hidden from the audience for nearly an hour of the film's runtime, not one sequel has been as interested in the broader exploration of the implications of InGen's technology. I don't know if that'll ever change, honestly, as a complete popcorn flick with dinosaurs going chompy seems to satisfy the movie-going public. As of this writing, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has already surpassed $1 billion in gross ticket sales. That's enough to ensure another film for another summer--just in time for my second son to be hitting his tenth or eleventh summertime. And that is a good thing, so far as I'm concerned. --- * This is part, I believe, why It is so powerful a story for me. I reread it this year--which took three weeks to get through--and part of what I've concluded is that there is a lot of childhood power in one's eleventh summer. Stephen King utilizes that to great effect in the book. The recent movie also plucks at the idea, though its brevity prevents it from being as moving as the book is. But that's an essay for a different day. ** There are two little thoughts here: One is that the movies aren't where we should go to learn more about the world, but it often is; whether or not that means there's a responsibility on the part of the filmmakers is one to debate another time. The second is a memory I have of George Lucas saying that he knew spaceships don't make sounds in space, but he wanted his movies to have sound effects. As a result, all of the Star Wars spacecraft have engine noise and blaster effects. Sometimes the science gets in the way of the fiction, and that can interfere with the story you're trying to tell. So long as people don't mistake the movie for the true past, we're okay. And, let's be honest: There are enough pushing-the-glasses-up-the-bridge-of-the-nose types gassing, "Well, actually…" about the Jurassic World movies that I think most people know that the films aren't scientifically sound. (I recently attended a conference in which Jack Horner, the paleontologist to whom Spielberg originally went when making the first film in order to get the most up-to-date understanding of dinosaurs. He then promptly ignored all of the advice because it interfered with the story the way he wanted to tell it.) For my sister-in-law, today was a red-letter day: She graduated from nursing school. My wife and I joined my parents, my brother (her husband), and my other sister-in-law in celebrating, first by attending commencement and then heading out for dinner at a nice restaurant.
Over the course of the dinner, the topic of dinosaurs came up. This is not an unusual thing in my household, but it doesn't normally get broached in that particular company. (The reason is simple: Jack Horner is coming to a conference and give the keynote address next month, and it's happening right nearby. I already have tickets.) Since we were on the subject, my parents had a couple of questions. I had a hard time sitting still. See, when it comes to some of my major obsessions--Shakespeare, Milton, and writing--I have healthy, normal outlets: In fact, I get paid to talk about these things. (Today, for example, I spent my time in Shakespeare class talking about the coat of arms he purchased, the words he coined, and even the geography of the City of London as opposed to London. In other words, I rattled off random trivia about Shakespeare for a solid fifty minutes or so without breaking a sweat or referencing notes.) By having classes that allow me to talk about these major interests of mine, I don't get overwhelmed by unshared knowledge. Not so with dinosaurs. It's only been in the past few years that my interest in dinosaurs has really grown. Part of it is because my sons have a pretty sharp interest, so it's given us stuff to talk about. Another part of it is just…I don't know, I love dinosaurs. I think my brain finally got to the point where I could absorb some of the information that I needed in order to understand them. I know that part of it would have to be my beliefs' evolution on the topic of evolution: Without that mechanism, paleontology is pointless and the explanations unintelligible. So I've been slowly accumulating dinosaur factoids for the past half-decade or so, but I've had few chances to get into anything about them. It's my Achilles' heel. I have some students who deliberately ask questions about dinosaurs that they know the answer to specifically in order to throw off my day's lesson. I can't not answer a dinosaur related question. The fact that I let Gayle talk a little about dinosaurs to my parents was a huge demonstration of my self-control. The funny thing is, I don't often want to talk about dinosaurs in my essays. I don't know if it's because I'm too busy thinking of other things or if it's because I'm not as expert as I wish I were or what, but I'm hesitant to do too much dinosaur thinking here. Additionally, I don't always have a lot of time (like today) to write, and I don't want to throw extra time into the research that my own nit-picky self would expect from such an essay. Thus: impostor syndrome + perfectionism = fewer dinosaur essays. Nevertheless, it was fun for me to gas about dinosaurs to my parents for a few minutes, even if it meant being rude and cutting off people at the table because I couldn't hold it in. That's just what happens when one of my interests is being discussed. I am interested in history. This wasn't something I expected earlier in my life: I never excelled at it, nor really had a lot of interest in my history classes all the way up through college. It wasn't until I was hired to teach history along with my English skills that I started seeing the appeal of history. With that growing (albeit still nascent) ability of appreciating nonfiction came a renewed passion for prehistory. There's always been a love for dinosaurs in my nerdy heart, but it really increased thanks to my training on understanding history. And, in a lot of ways, that's not surprising: Prehistory is still history. Additionally, I love science fiction, with its predictions and predilections about the future, the ways in which mankind may (but likely won't) go. From The Expanse to Battlestar Galactica to Star Wars and Star Trek, I like seeing what may be. The future is an exciting place to be. And, since I won't be going there myself--no warp drive is likely in my lifetime, alas--it's great to visit the future, if only in my imagination. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert is a future-history-prehistory. By that I mean that it looks at the deep-past extinctions--a topic I'm interested in not only because of its connection with dinosaurs, but also because I'm trying to write a story about dinosaurs and need to fill the well with extinction data--and describes the evidences of them. Of the big five extinctions (Cambrian, Ordovician, Devonian, Permian-Triassic (part of when almost 90% of life on earth died off), Triassic-Jurassic, and Cretaceous-tertiary), none perfectly follows the others. That is, though there are common threads, there's never a root cause that matches its fellows. The most famous mass extinction, the Cretaceous-tertiary, happened because of an extraterrestrial impact. Though there's plenty of evidence to show massive volcanic activities during the time of the death of the dinosaurs, it has become more and more clear that the huge loss of life that transpired about 66 million years ago came because of a rock the size of Manhattan slamming into the Yucatan Peninsula. This is unique to the K-Pg event. We don't see the Great Dying (the Permian-Triassic) transpiring because of space rocks. That's what I mean by the idea of it being a book about prehistory. But it also talks about the minor extinctions, brought on because of human interaction with the environment, that can be traced throughout the recorded history that we have created. Kolbert talks about all sorts of species that have been dying off at an accelerated rate ever since we've been able to track these things. Some of the extinctions came about because of happenstance--a change in the environment brought about by humans accidentally wiped out a species. Others, however, were deliberately hunted to extinction, like the flightless moa. Their extinction coincided with the arrival of humans to New Zealand about 600 years ago. More recent examples also abound throughout her work. As Kolbert walks through the causes, effects, and implications of the sundry extinctions--all minor, in the grand scheme of things, yet taken as a whole add up to something really unsettling--she shifts from history toward future-history. What are the possibilities if human behavior continues in the way that it has? Like every other mass extinction, there's a unique factor, something that makes a difference. In the case of the current mass extinction, that factor is human behavior. Part of what might make the claim difficult for some to process is the brevity of a human lifespan. The entirety of written human history is so short that the same time frame, rolled forward from the catastrophic event at the Chicxulub Crater, probably still saw the earth covered with dinosaurs. In other words, these events are geologically rapid, but as far as day to day? Well, they take time. Nevertheless, even within the finite perception of what we can perceive in the world, it's clear that we have a significantly less diverse Earth now than we did in the past. While the viability of the planet for human life* is in question, there's no concern about losing "all life on Earth". If nothing else, learning more about these extinctions--and the background extinctions that are accelerating around us--has helped me to see that, in the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm: ---
* Since I'm a Mormon, I probably should point out that my religious tradition teaches a millenarian concept of "the end of the world" that takes the Book of Revelation pretty seriously. I can't pretend to know what God is thinking in those terms, of course, but I don't think it's impossible that a Second Coming could come about simply because we've poisoned our world. It's a deus ex machina ending, but it might be the most fitting. Nothing can save us from ourselves: Only God can do that. Though I won't be around to see the continued ramifications of the ways that humans have manipulated the world, it's fair to assume that things will get a lot worse long before they get better. In this, science and religion agree. Out in a tiny part of the boundary between Colorado and Utah, there is Dinosaur National Monument, a small chunk of geological anomalies that has managed to take a slice out of the deep past and put it on display. It is there that a visitor can see the Quarry Hall, a place where thousands of fossilized bones, all from about 150 million years ago, are on display. Part of what makes the Quarry Hall so exciting is that it's a wall, yet all of the bones are still in the place where they were first discovered. Due to geological spasms (for lack of a better term), what was once horizontal became almost vertical, and since the pre-World War I days, scientists have studied the thousands of specimens available in an incredibly dense chunk of preserved deep time.
Deep time is the phrase used when we talk about things a long time ago--like, longer ago than Star Wars. Human history is, if we're being generous, about 10,000 years old. But when we start talking about how old Earth is and how long ago dinosaurs lived (in the case of the creatures outside of Jensen, Utah, about 150 million years), the human perspective gets swallowed up. I get dazzled when I'm in Europe and I see buildings that have been standing since before America was discovered, to say nothing of becoming its own nation. As I often point out to my students, in America, if something is over 100 years old we put up fences and CCTV to protect its historical worth. In Italy, hobos pee on buildings that saw the rise of the Holy Roman Empire. In other words, calculating the time when these creatures lived is part of the mind-blowing work of geologists and paleontologists. Split Mountain Canyon, which is part of the Dinosaur National Monument, is one example of how the best explanation for what we see is enormous amounts of time. Another example is the gradual evolution from theropod, non-avian dinosaurs to their modern iteration, birds. (That there are non-avian dinosaurs that didn't provide the common ancestors with birds only makes things more complicated…and more interesting.) Only deep time can give the, well, time needed to contemplate and calculate what we see in these formations and fossils. But what was so exciting for me and mine wasn't just the Quarry Hall--although that place is amazing. My favorite sauropod (because I can't just have a "favorite dinosaur", I need it more specific than that) is a Camarasaurus, in part because of her prolific presence at the Quarry Hall. No, for us as a dinosaur-loving family, we had the most exciting time--the "best for last moment"--walking along the trail next to the Quarry Hall. It's an easy walk, especially after we'd practiced hiking on the rugged terrain of Arches National Park the days preceding, that leads down from the road and into a shallow canyon. Because the area is replete with geological strata, we got to walk through deep time, from pre-Jurassic fossilized life all the way up to the Morrison Formation in which the Jurassic fossils are found. Part of the trail is a spur that leads up a narrow--though not particularly tall--cliff-face in which hundreds of unexcavated dinosaur bones are visible. And not just visible. They're tangible, too. The paleontologists discovered the exposed bones, but decided not to excavate the site, in part because there were so many better-preserved examples inside the Quarry Hall (which they no longer excavate at all, having more than enough to work on from what they have been able to find), but also, I think, to help inspire future paleontologists and paleontological studies. To be honest, I think that's why both the hike and the Quarry Hall are visitor draws: There's a transparency that science sometimes fails to exploit when dealing with the public. See, I've been to a lot of dinosaur museums. The more modern ones are always interested in having a windowed lab in which the tools of the trade are on display, an actual lab wherein the painstaking work of fossil preparation takes place. Yet there are always backrooms and storage facilities and drawers filled with more than what we see in the exhibit halls. Not only that, but that's where the real bones are, rather than the cast reproductions that are used to create the dynamic and imagination-snagging poses and tableaus. I don't have a problem with casts instead of real bones being visible to the public--if damage happens to a cast, it's costly, rather than potentially catastrophic--but I know some people, already skeptical of verifiable things (I guess), see conspiracy in scientific processes. To help clarify those processes, as well as encourage investigation into the natural world, the Dinosaur National Monument has a comfortable, clear, and well-laid out exhibit hall that isn't even an exhibit hall--it's a slice of the mountain, preserved for everyone to enjoy and appreciate. Then, if you've the time/stamina (we were there in early April this time, which was the perfect time to explore the place, as it gets oppressively hot during the summer months), you can go down this pathway, this cliff-hugging spur. And you can see the bones. They aren't hard to see, honestly, once you realize how they are differently shaped, differently textured, differently colored than the rock beside it. As we walked up, my wife, Gayle, noticed one bone, then another. Shortly thereafter, we were spotting them all over the place, pointing them out to our boys, and feeling the unique texture of deep time. Other hikers passed us, and we took a moment to help them see that there was more than the dramatic spinal column beneath an overhang, or the clear femur (my guess--and it's just a guess-is that it was a Camarasaurus femur, if only because it was over a yard long) at the top of the spur. The cliff-face was covered in fossilized bones, all there for "discovery" by the monument's guests, all there to touch and taste*. Walking back to the parking lot (where our car would burn the ancient plant life that comprises oil and gasoline), Gayle and I talked about how our fingers were tingling. Not just because we'd spent the last fifteen minutes rubbing rough surfaces, but because we were, 150 million years down the road, reconnecting with life that we somewhat understood and could appreciate, albeit through a process that converted the living into stone. Nevertheless, it was a powerful reminder of how interconnected life is on Earth, how we're all small particles among something bigger, grander, and more involved than any one of us. It was a memorable day, a moment when we touched deep time, and were touched in return. --- * Yes, I "tasted" the fossils. Putting a fossil on your tongue helps you know if you've found a rock or a fossil: The former tastes like dirt and is rough. A fossil, however, will stick to your tongue. Nope, I'm not joking. The two behemoth creatures of fantasy and science fiction imagination would have to be dragons and dinosaurs.* And though the latter is not as common a trope as the former, I think it's fair to say that these two categories have had a lot written about them and both have significant things to say within their respective genres. But I'm not so much interested in considering the way the two influence their genres, but instead how the real-life stuff influences the fantastical. Here There Be Dragons It's no secret that real life dinosaurs inspired the myths of dragons and gryphons. Fossilized bones didn't appear only once natural philosophy turned into modern-day science. But dragons in their mythical and, as it were, classical sense are originally conceived as, basically, Tyrannosaurus rex but with longer bodies and, hey, why not, wings. (Which, if you want to read a story about a T. rex having wings and flying, you can read Steve Cole's YA Z. Rex. It is about as good as you might think when I tell you that it's about a T. rex growing wings and flying.) Because of these long-standing stories, despite the fact that dragons have 'existed' for only a few centuries, their inspiration doesn't feel as old. Not, at least, in terms of narrative. When it comes to the science, yeah, obviously. The death date of the dinosaurs was, like, at least before St. George was alive. But as a culture, going back deep into the medieval times and even earlier through Eastern influences, we've been telling stories about dragons for a good chunk of our human history. To me, it makes sense that dragons would have a continued presence in pop culture and fantasy literature because we've always told stories about dragons. Sometimes they're nice (Anne McCaffery's versions spring to mind); usually they're not (I think of the dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire and they aren't nice even to their "mother"). Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small. In other words, the concept of human/draconic interaction is malleable and intriguing. Though I think this trend is slowing down, there was a time (I have heard) where every fantasy book with a dragon on the cover would sell, and those without one wouldn't. Okay, so maybe that's apocryphal, but the idea of marketplace saturation with dragons has a logic to it. The ubiquity of dragons in fantasy is one of its staples, one of the ways in which a person can easily understand that this book is fantasy. Tolkien did it, so of course, everyone else had to. Even Pat Rothfuss' first Kingkiller Chronicle, The Name of the Wind, has a dragon that Kvothe, the main character, slays. Terry Goodkind's first novel, Wizard's First Rule not only has a wizard (necessary for "traditional" fantasy), but a dragon, both of whom are featured prominently on the front cover of the early paperback art. The creatures are prominent in much of the "sword and sorcery" style of narrative, including Dungeons & Dragons, which, it should be pretty clear, involves dragons. What I'm getting at is that these creatures are everywhere within the genre. It's great. While I no longer want to write a dragon story, necessarily, I think they're a wonderful aspect of the genre and if I could Impress a Pernese dragon, I would do it in a heartbeat. Welcome to Jurassic Park
Dinosaurs, on the other hand, have a different history in fiction and in books. Rather than being a part of a collective imagination and cultural heritage, dinosaurs are given a separate marketing approach. This is coming from my own experience (obviously), but I get the sense that dinosaurs have three distinct categories into which they're fitted: Kids books and encyclopedias, scientific books, and Jurassic Park. The first category is the DK Encyclopedia style of books, including picture books, alphabet books, and even the clever Dinosaur Train, which really tried to introduce high quality research into a kids' show. But that's partly my point: If you want to see a plethora of dinosaur books, you have to go to the Children's Section of Barnes and Noble. The covers are really bright, the font is easy to read, and there's a friendliness to it. Or, on occasion, the books will be edgy and have claw marks on it and look real tuff, trying to pull in a sense of adventure for the reader (presumably male, based upon the way we market to kids**). These are great "gateway" books, but their purpose isn't to pull children into a narrative, whether that's a cultural one or not. Instead, they're non-fiction, meant to educate and inform. I'm all for that--but there isn't a book with a dragon on the cover inside the Children's Section that isn't instantly understood as being fantasy, narrative, story. The second category is the grown up version of the first: The real meat (pun intended) of dinosaur research, complete with controversies, roundabout conclusions, gestures toward where the field may go, and confessions of false assumptions and attempts at corrections. These books are on my shelf, yes, and I've read some of them. Depending on the writer, they're either engaging and exciting, despite the fact that they're about fossilized bones (look to Brian Switek's My Beloved Brontosaurus for an example) or their entire premise is put into the first chapter and the rest of the book feels meandering and pointless (I'm looking at you, How to Build a Dinosaur). The point is, though there can be anecdotes, there aren't stories in these. They are factual, not fantastical, and that isn't a flaw. I don't want to be faulting a phone book for lack of a plot, here, because that's not what I'm driving at. Instead, I'm trying to point out that, if you're going to get a dinosaur book, it'll probably be one like this. The third category is using Jurassic Park as an umbrella term for the whole concept. While there are plenty of other dinosaur books (Footprints of Thunder and Cretaceous Dawn and Raptor Red spring to mind here), they're always compared to the science fiction novel (and its much more popular and familiar movie), Jurassic Park. For better or worse, Crichton's novel is the way in which we think about narratives on dinosaurs. The recent Dinosaur Lords books by Victor Milan all have a double-whammy blurb from George R.R. Martin: "It's like a cross between Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones." Name dropping the biggest fantasy novel series with one of the most iconic pieces of dinosaur science fiction guarantees a jolt of recognition. I pre-ordered the book based on that blurb alone. So while there are some books out there with dinosaurs, it's nothing like with dragons. And I find that so interesting. Maybe it's because we can make up stories about dragons without feeling like we need to get a PhD first, or maybe because Neil deGrasse Tyson won't fact-check our story in a tweet if it's about dragons but he probably will if it's about dinosaurs. Perhaps we feel like, because dinosaurs are real, our imaginations are bounded by that reality. I know that's an issue for me. I want to write a dinosaur book, but I want it to be accurate and I want it to have people being eaten by dinosaurs. And, because Jurassic Park already created such a vivid world of human-eating dinos, it's difficult to see around it to other possibilities. At least, that's how it is for me. That I'm interested in the harder story to tell--the one where I have to figure out what I'm doing in the shadow of one of the most influential stories in my own life--instead of going along with the "make it up, they're dragons!" possibility says something about my desires as a writer and what I now find worthwhile. And maybe, one day, we'll let dinosaurs be just as imaginative as we let dragons--they're kind of like cousins, after all. --- * Okay, aliens are probably a bigger thing within science fiction. But, as I think about it, in terms of a singular species, science fiction doesn't seem to have that generic trope. Spaceships, aliens, advanced technology--those tropes are definitely there. A creature, though? I don't know. It isn't really dinosaurs--there are probably more stories of alien brain slugs that take control of your body than there are dinosaur books--but I thought a juxtaposition of the two would be worthwhile. So don't get cranky if you disagree with the introductory sentence is what I'm saying. ** I know I'm not alone in feeling slimy thinking about selling stuff to kids. I mean, they don't know how to put their shoes on correctly, yet we expect them to make market-wise decisions about what they consume? Well, different rant for a different essay. |
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