As we start this journey of 26 posts all about dinosaurs, you may have noticed that A does not start with a kind of dinosaur. This is not going to be about 26 different dinosaurs, although I promise I will throw in a few. So A is not for Apatosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Albertosaurus, or even Archosaur. This A is about how dinosaurs were grouped and identified as dinosaurs.
So one thing to know, even before I say more about what the ant-orbit-a-whatchamacallit, is that these posts are going to wrestle with questions about dinosaurs, such as:
What made a dinosaur a dinosaur?
Where did the dinosaurs come from? And where did they go?
What did they look like?
How did they behave?
And, most of all, how do we know?
In other words, I’m going to talk about the things that dinosaurs did. Their habits. Their loves and losses.. well, maybe not that. But the dinosaur ouvre, so to speak (i.e. their “body of work.” Body get it?) Since they lived 200 million years ago, it gets a little tricky trying to guess. But you would be surprised at what those clever scientists who study bones can figure out, just from the bones.
Every April, bloggers can try the A to Z challenge. Twenty-six posts about any subject. For 2024, I covered the alphabet on dinosaur characteristics, history of their identification, and famous people who dug for their bones. Links to all the individual posts by letter are in this “master” post below.
Da king! The Rex man! From the Dinosaur Journey museum, Fruita, CO. Photo by kajmeister.
I had been threatening. Pleading. Hinting for the last few years that I might just write about dinosaurs because I love ’em, and I hope you will, too. I have trekked across half a dozen dinosaur museums, as many fossil beds, gift shops, exhibits and so on. Often dragged my wife, sometimes my kids. (Does Big Foot count? Of course not! What about Godzilla? Well, let’s wait till the letter G and find out!)
Why do it? I wrote about the Olympics during the pandemic, it led to a book. Wrote about accounting–guess what the topic of my thesis is? Wrote about the Renaissance–worked it into my thesis. Wrote a published essay on the Mongols and the Silk Road… when you produce writing, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
I do this because creativity is like a positive kind of algae. It breeds on itself. When you don’t produce, it gets harder to start every time you try.
From the Royal Tyrell Museum, Alberta, CA. Photo by kajmeister.
This is not just a list of dinosaurs, A-Z. While I could have talked about Apatosaurus, Albertosaurus, or Ankylosaurs, you can see that my first “A” post is something about the way dinosaurs are designed. Many of these posts covered the science and facts concerning dinosaurs, not just 26 posts about individual dinosaurs. There are a lot of A-Z lists and books already out there, if you just want know all the dinosaurs that start with “K,” for example.
These posts will be about what dinosaurs are and are not. There were even a few posts about non-dinosaurs, like the swimmers and fliers who were related but not technically on the dinosaur family tree. Family trees–they’re now called clades–figure heavily into all this discussion. See letter C.
Don’t despair! You can see with posts like “D is for Diplodocus” that I did cover a few famous dinosaurs. But let’s start with one of the key features that defines dinosaurs, then talk about what they were like. Next to each post link I also include the key question that the post tries to answer.
They were greatest explorers of their era. One intrepid ambassador struck out west, across the Jade Gate, and stayed so long that he was imprisoned and married before coming home. The other sailed everywhere, in giant ships that dwarfed the little caravels that the Europeans had invented. He left a trail of sailing charts, reports, and temples all across the Indian Ocean.
At the end of the alphabet are two important Chinese explorers, ones who “discovered” the trading routes, over land and sea, which helped carve out where east and west might exchange their goods: the silk, the frankincense, the pepper, and the ideas.
Zheng He meeting traders from Asia to the west. From TopChinaTravel.com.
The stories of these explorers seem to be the perfect bookends to wrap up 26 A to Z posts about this amazing time and geography known as the Silk Road.
