 |
| Scientists have revised their depiction of T-Rex from a dinosaur that walks upright (l) to one that walks balanced on its hips. (Illustration by Frank Cecala) |
Posted on 05/25/2006 7:01:46 PM PDT by Incorrigible
|
Not Your Father's T-Rex |
Five years ago, Michelle McCourt was reading her son's favorite bedtime story, "How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?" when she noticed something strange.
The dinosaurs she remembered from her childhood in the 1970s were gone. In their place were unfamiliar creatures like the "apatosaurus" and the "pteranodon."
"The brontosaurus didn't exist anymore. A pteradactyl wasn't a pteradactyl," said the 41-year-old mom from Sparta, N.J.
As McCourt and other parents have discovered, things are different in Bedrock these days. For instance, Fred Flintstone's "bronto burgers" now would be called "apato burgers" because paleontologists started publicizing the dinosaur's proper name in the 1980s.
In the past 30 years -- a "golden age" in paleontology -- well-known dinosaurs have been renamed or made over to reflect current knowledge. Recent discoveries, like the giganatosaurus -- bigger and badder than T-Rex -- are now sold as common playthings, while once-obscure dinosaurs, like the pachycephalosaurus, are featured in children's books.
For parents whose dinosaur-awareness lapsed between grade school and the purchase of their child's first velociraptor, today's prehistoric landscape can be disorienting.
"The thing I hear most is parents talking about the explosion of range and variety of dinosaurs. It's not just the stegosaurus and triceratops anymore," said Myles Gordon, vice president of education at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "Dinosaurs are really a part of popular culture, so people become aware of the changes."
New dinosaur fossils are discovered at the rate of about two a month, experts say. But unless they're paleontologists themselves, most adults won't recognize the "beipiaosaurus" or the "caudipteryx," two freakish, feathered dinosaurs from China, unearthed in the late 1990s.
Both, however, are brisk sellers for Safari LTD, which manufactures several lines of dino toys, including the Carnegie Dinosaur Collection, scale replicas of real dinosaurs authenticated by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
When Safari introduced four feathered dinosaurs this year, they were a hit.
"There is such a high demand, we cannot keep them in stock," said Alexandre Pariente, a spokesman for the company.
While kids can accept the fluffy predators, for grown-ups, they take getting used to, according to Thomas Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland.
"Some older folks can't get over the fact that a lot of the advanced meat-eating dinosaurs were feathered," he said.
The same is true of velociraptors, discovered in the 1920s but virtually unheard of until the 1993 film "Jurassic Park," in which they were erroneously depicted with reptilian skin, said Holtz, author of an upcoming Random House dinosaur encyclopedia for kids.
"We now know velociraptors were as feathery as ostriches," he said.
Other dinosaur images have also changed. The triceratops is slimmer. T-Rex has morphed from a lumbering green monster, tail dragging, to a wiry brown creature with an uplifted tail. (The Carnegie Collection offers both the original model, created 25 years ago, and the Rex updated in 1999.) At the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the T-Rex fossil no longer stands upright "like Godzilla," said Mark Norell, curator of fossil reptiles at the museum. "He walks with his back more parallel to the ground."
For the public, perhaps the most startling changes are the dinosaurs' new names.
The "pteradactyl" suffered from a case of mistaken identity. Its proper name was always "pteranadon," but illustrators often mislabeled it, perhaps confused by the term "pteradactyloids," which refers to a subgroup of winged reptiles, Holtz said.
The extinction of "brontosaurus" is a longer story.
When a fragment of the dinosaur was found in the 19th century, paleontologist O.C. Marsh named it "apatosaurus" ("deceitful lizard" in Latin). Later, he found parts of another creature dubbed "brontosaurus," (or "thunder lizard"). By the early 20th century, paleontologists realized they were the same dinosaur. But since "apatosaurus" was first, it became official, in keeping with a zoological code that governs the naming of species, Norell said.
The public, however, was largely unaware of the new name until 1989, when the U.S. Postal Service featured a brontosaurus stamp and paleontologists pointed out the error.
But don't expect Fisher Price to rename its "Thunder the Brontosaurus" toy any time soon.
"Parents buy toys for their kids that they can identify with, and there just isn't enough equity in `apatosaurus' yet," said Brian Durant, marketing manager of Fisher Price.
Whatever they're called, the dinosaurs of tomorrow should be just as bewildering to the next generation of parents -- who'll wonder, no doubt, why their kids' caudipteryxes look so different from the ones they remember.
"In 2026, the way we think of dinosaurs today is going to look quaint," Holtz said.
May 25, 2006
(Carrie Stetler is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark. She can be contacted at cstetler@starledger.com)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Great. Now the prehistoric carnivores have gone metrosexual too. Where will it end?
Rexxy ping - it's all different!
Ooooh!!!
I love dinosaurs!!
"Saurapod" describes a long-neck dinosaur. Apatasaurus, formerly known as Brontosaurus, had a neck sort of parallel with the ground. Same with Diplodocus, though those were longer. Brachiosaurus and Ultrasaurus, on the other hand, had necks that went straight up (more perpendicular with the ground).
I hope they haven't messed with Allosaurus. He was wicked, and pound for pound the meanest dino of them all. At least that is what I was taught by ViewMasters.
Ping to read later
Not until we discover that Dinosaurs actually had an 'advanced' religion involving something referred to as Thetans.
Your not the only one!
As I told other game playtesters years ago when "GURPS Dinosaurs" was coming out (or was it an update of GURPS Ice Age"? WHatever!), as long as there are "Flintstone" reruns, there will always be a brontosaurus. Fred Flintstone did NOT eat apatosaurus burgers now, did he? You can't argue with Fred. The term will always be a footnote.
By the way, if you can find a copy, I recommend the box game "Dino Hunt" from Steve Jackson Games, which is a fun game in itself, but also has lots of fun facts on dozens of dinosaurs on as many cards. It technically is a collectible game as you can buy booster packs with more cards, but again, you have to find them. (I think SJG sold out years ago, but there's always Amazona and eBay.)
TS
...
Oh, sorry...
< /rpgplayer>
There.
One of my major regrets is that at the end of "Jurassic Park", the T-Rex , instead of killing the 'raptors, didn't rip Barney to shreds. Bu then, Spielberg always disappoints me. The shark lost in "Jaws", and at the end of "E.T", Vader didn't walk off the rocket, use the force to tie that little turd's neck in a knot, and cut the cute kids in half with his lightsaber.
Did they think that T-Rex dragged it's tail on the ground?
Ah yes, evolutionary science, where we must always trust that the scientists know exactly what they are talking about... even if they have to revise their ideas every 30 years.
I might still have my copy of that. Probably do. Probably in the same box with the photocopies of my GURPS Prisoner/Horror crossover article from RolePlayer magazine. I have a bunch of GURPS books -- never get to play though, so I didn't bother buying 4E yet. Maybe if I want to write some more for them, I'll eventually have to.
I still haven't finished reading the Munchkin books I bought.
TS
Ping
I wonder if these are relatives of the massive boo-boo that National Geographic made in it's quest to be the first with the best info on feathered dinosaurs?
What a SNAFU that turned out to be. NG had egg on its face for a long time. When the truth was told, the farmer who found the fossils, not caring for anything but money, stuck two pieces of unrelated fossil together and sold it as a feathered dinosaur ancestor.
(I wonder where he is, now....?)
I too am suffering from dinosaur identity crisis....I have started reading some of my hubbies more recent purchase of science and dinosaur text books for his own reading pleasure, and I have taken up to reading them also...I was rather shocked at finding dinosaurs I had never heard of before...it was quite an eye opening experience...in the future, as scientific explorations go to more and more places in countries that have been closed to exploration for one reason or another, as was said in the article, we will finding more and more different dinosaurs...its really quite exciting...
Thanks so much for the ping...its amazing, we were just talking about this very thing yesterday, the fact that more and more dinosaurs are being discovered, and today, we see an article about it..the kids of today, even in their fun books, are learning more and more...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.