The Dragon Hunt

Dragon from San Francisco New Year parade, 2020. Kajmeister photo.

A few weeks back, while still wrapped in the blanket of dinosaur research, I started thinking about serpent gods, flying monsters, and dragons. I wondered how scholars had addressed this question, but when a few glances at research led to papers on children’s stories and the ancestral memory of tree shrews, I gave up quickly. It was Christmas; I had presents to wrap and muffins to bake. Those few who discussed the possible origins of dragons appeared limited to art museums, mythology experts, or psychologists, rather than historians or paleontologists.

But last Thursday was of all things, Appreciate a Dragon day, according to Sandra Boynton. And we are finishing the Year of the Dragon, after all, with January 29th ending this most auspicious year and moving on to a different animal in the Chinese calendar, Year of the Snake.

Perfect timing to take another dive into the topic.

It seemed a simple question. After all, dinosaurs once covered the earth, which, at the beginning of the Triassic, was a single land called Pangaea. The continents split up after the dinosaurs proliferated, so dinosaur fossils now cover the globe, with similar species now found flung far apart in Argentina, the Rockies, and the Gobi Desert. Dragon stories also span the globe. It seems a question with a fairly obvious answer: Were human ideas and stories about dragons influenced by dinosaurs, by fossils found by ancient, primitive paleontologists?

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Z is for Zuul

Zuul crurivastator (Zuul, destroyer of shins), wikipedia.
Zuul, the Gatekeeper of Gozer, photo from collider.com.

Yes, Zuul from Ghostbusters. Zuul who inhabits Sigourney Weaver’s body in order to search for the Keymaster, schlubby Rick Moranis, so that their coupling will release the demon Gozer into the world. A nerdy fantasy written by nerds for nerds.

I was never a fan of the movie, but yesterday, when I was running down the list of which “Z” dinosaur would get the honor to front my very last post, and I said Zuul, my spouse immediately said Oh! The Gatekeeper of Gozer. Paleontologists, I suppose, are as nerdy as romance writers, medieval historians, and Hollywood directors, so, yes….

They did indeed name a dinosaur for Zuul.

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Y is for Yucatan

The Big One! Asteroid impact site in Chicxulub, Yucatan. Graphic from Atlantic.

BOOM! or maybe it was boom…boom…fshhhh..whap booma-booma…boom..bubble boom glub glub Boom…

Which was it? Luis Alvarez had one story, and he was laughed out of the paleontologist’s room. Until he wasn’t. Gerta Keller, who disagreed with him, has been laughed out of the same rooms. She’s won prizes for her research. Can they both be right?

There are multiple stories here. First, there is a story of a scientist who had a crazy idea and some data, which took decades for scientists to confirm. Then, there’s a second story, of a scientist still fighting for her own version, one which would upend those decades. Plus, there’s the underlying story, of what killed off all the dinosaurs. Between story one and story two, there’s still uncertainty about story three.

It’s been called “The Nastiest Feud in Science.” It’s still ongoing, even though now they do know where the asteroid hit. The crater is in the Yucatan.

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