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Bayard

(21,806 posts)
Wed Sep 16, 2020, 03:02 PM Sep 2020

Reimagining Dinosaurs

PREHISTORIC ICONS GET A MODERN REBOOT

On a chilly January afternoon, Susannah Maidment stands on the shore of a London lake, staring down a pack of dinosaurs.

Maidment, a curator at the U.K.’s Natural History Museum, has come with me to tour Crystal Palace Park, which in 1854 included the world’s first public dinosaur showcase. The sculptures were a smash hit at their unveiling and sparked the dinomania that’s been with us ever since. More than a century before Steven Spielberg dazzled the world with Jurassic Park, the Crystal Palace dinosaurs drew two million visitors a year for three decades straight, and Charles Dickens name-dropped one in his novel Bleak House.

To grant us a detailed look at these 166-year-old monuments, Ellinor Michel and Sarah Jayne Slaughter, trustees with the nonprofit Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, guide us through a metal gate to the banks of the lake, where we don waders to make our crossing. I misjudge my first step and fall into the water, clambering onto the island’s shore, dripping wet and smelling of pond scum. “Welcome to Dinosaur Island!” Slaughter exclaims, grinning from ear to ear.

Tucked in among ferns and spongy beds of moss, the pale green sculptures are imposing, even imperious. The park’s two Iguanodon, a Cretaceous herbivore, resemble huge iguanas with nubs on their snouts—which scientists now understand were spikes on their thumbs. It’s tempting to dismiss the assemblage as outdated or the stuff of B movies. But Maidment sees the Crystal Palace dinosaurs for what they really are: the bleeding edge of scientific knowledge at the time, based on comparisons between living animals and the few fossils available to researchers.

Scientists still use this technique to re-create the fantastic beasts, filling in the soft gaps in time-worn fossils. Bones don’t preserve evidence of cheeks on ancient faces, Maidment says, as we pause between two of the statues, “but we reconstruct them as being there because it works: Animals today have cheeks.” The park’s sculptors used the same process, she says. “They were completely reasonable to reconstruct them like this from what they knew.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/10/reimagining-dinosaurs-prehistoric-icons-get-a-modern-reboot-interactive-feature/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=linkedin::cmp=editorial::add=li20200916ngm-newngmreimaginingdinos::rid=&sf237791360=1


Fascinating article following the first scientific dinosaur research, to what exists today. Be sure to see the realistic animated clips. Many photos.

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Reimagining Dinosaurs (Original Post) Bayard Sep 2020 OP
This was amazing! Bookmarked so I can go back and read more later. Dem2theMax Sep 2020 #1

Dem2theMax

(9,595 posts)
1. This was amazing! Bookmarked so I can go back and read more later.
Wed Sep 16, 2020, 03:31 PM
Sep 2020

And I know some kids who are into dinosaurs, and I'm sharing this with them as well. Thank you so much for posting this.

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