Godzilla was definitely a dinosaur. The question is : Which one? And that means, of course, both which kind of dinosaur and which Godzilla, since there were several. Plus, always with the science, the ultimate question is: How do we know?
One thing is known about the Big Guy. Godzilla is the only dinosaur to have both an Oscar and his own theme song.
Which Godzilla
If we’re going to define what kind of dinosaur Godzilla represents, we have to narrow the list to which one we’re talking about. In total, there have been 38 film Godzillas (33 Japanese) beginning with the one in 1954. While I’d love to spend a leisurely post (or ten) about Godzilla’s history, let’s stick with the dinosaur theme. Point being, there have been a lot of renditions of Godzilla which look different, so if we’re going to call him a dinosaur we have to narrow the field to at most three.
Fossil of plant-eating teeth, Morrison museum, photo by kajmeister
Fossils never excited me. Skulls do, but I could never find the thrill of a 1000-year-old imprint of a leaf. Imprint of a 200-million-year-old feather? Now you’re talking. Yet we wouldn’t know anything about the world that came before, without fossils. Everything we know about dinosaurs comes from fossils. You don’t get to know what T-rex ate, how a diplodocus withstood attack, how hadrosaurs laid eggs, or where the sauropods walked — without fossils. Fossils are the artifacts, the archive as the historians say, which prove that there was life before humans.
And they’re not really even bones.
Theseus’ Paradox
There’s a famous Greek philosophy idea about Theseus’ ship. Theseus sailed out to the island of Crete and slew the minotaur in the maze, plus had many grand adventures, which is why Athens was named for him. The story goes that the ship of his odyssey (no, that’s another guy) was put on display as a monument. Over time, the wood rotted, so a plank was replaced here, then there, then the mast…. Over a long time, all of the wood in the ship was replaced.
The pop cultural perspective on extinction is filled with visions of failure. The extinction of the dinosaurs is frequently viewed through this lens. But consider the lengthy reign of dinosaurs on Earth. Dinosaurs spent more than 160 million years ruling Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems. And technically, when you consider those modern dinosaurs flying around today, it means that dinosaurs have been around for more than 230 million years.
Kristi Curry Rogers, “Dinosaurs.”
Dinosaurs are often used as the definition of old, dead, extinct. Blackberries are now dinosaurs. Baby Boomers are dinosaurs with modern devices. The moniker is somewhat unfair. After all, dinosaurs did spread and thrive across the globe longer than any other type of creature. Fish lasted for about 60 million years in the “Age of Fish,” and mammals have also only been around about 65 million years. Dinos are extinct, but it took a rather dramatic way to take them out. (Well, technically crocodiles have been around since the dinosaurs, so maybe…)
Still, for what it’s worth, before we get overwrought about dinosaurs disappearing and the horror of species vanishing, we should get straight how extinction actually works.
Extinction causes from Firesafe Council.
Two Flavors of Extinction
First off, there are two kinds of extinction:
Background Extinction
Mass Extinction
Species go extinct all the time, and they always have. Background extinction refers to a one-off event, where a species dies off because it can’t adapt to the existing conditions. They lose their habitat or food source. Predators adapt more quickly than they do. Climate change has occurred countless times across the earth, multiple ice ages and warm ups and volcanoes spewing sulfur and CO2, plants gobbling it up. Every time there is a significant climate change, species go extinct–we’ve already had two Ice Ages in human history.
