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.
For the 2024 A to Z challenge, I picked dinosaurs. Twenty-six posts 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.
You figured it out from the picture, I suspect.
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 put myself through this?
I gotta tell ya. This was not an easy lift. It’s a month-long commitment, and this was a month where I already had commitments. My master’s thesis was due at the beginning of the month, and I was editing an economic course, doing people’s taxes, and preparing for a conference. Writers, you know the drill. If you want to write, you got to write.
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.
I did cover a few specific dinosaurs. But this is not 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 D for Diplodocus that I did discuss about 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.
I have been thinking about the intersection of history, storytelling, and science, ever since my visit to the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado, a small but enthusiastically curated museum dedicated to information about Colorado sightings of Bigfoot. I could not help but compare it to two other recent visits here, one to the Dinosaur Journey Museum in Fruita, Colorado and the US Olympic & Paralympic Archives in Colorado Springs.
What I grasped is that history, science, and storytelling all use parts that are native to each other. Scientists start with evidence, but must construct a narrative that uses deductive reasoning to explain results. This happens whether they are aiming particle beams at cuprite samples or reconstructing fossil skeletons from a riverbed. They need to tell a clear story. Historians also need to fill in the details on the timeline, starting with whatever sources (evidence) exist from the time period. Deductive reasoning and inferences play a part.
Storytelling, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish. If it has a little deductive reasoning–a little science behind it–the story might might have more power. Think about the explanation of constellations, for example. Humans are also naturally adept at “What If…? Tales don’t need evidence, although it helps if the story resembles the familiar. Imagination, however, should not let us replace evidence with anecdote. There are different kinds of evidence. Brief examples from my visits should help clarify the roles played. I can’t quite figure out the Venn diagram, but perhaps the following might help:
