I’d ask those who have visited these facilities to come to their defense. You never know when a child’s imagination or future direction will be sparked by an exhibit or the chance to hear a dissenting theory like that of Dan Peterson’s above.

I was lucky enough to stumble into Utah Friends of Paleontology when my son was young. I continued to attend their meetings when he outgrew dinosaurs. There were many discussions of current thoughts, for and against. My son learned the basics of the scientific method in those days and grew into a formidable debater. I knew I was hooked as I sat rapt during a guest lecture on stromatolites….

Keep writing about all Utah has to offer, Brian. There are many benefits to this heritage beyond simple entertainment value.

Also, to anyone interested, i got picked for the Dino Social Media Meetup at the Los Angeles Museum to preview the new dinosaur hall (on Thursday the 7th). I will do updates on my facebook page and I’ll try to get a blog post and videos up the next day.

Perhaps someday in the distant future, man will have the technology to go back to the time of dinosaurs. If they do, and pick the North American Late Cretaceous, they may see well fed, very ‘bulky’ T-Rexes constantly ‘tripoding’ on their hind legs and tail, heads high in the air, to survey their hunting ground for any sign of movement (exactly like many low slung, quadrepedal monitor lizards often do). Likewise, there are some very emaciated, skin and bone crocodiles, and some enormously bulked out ones, much the equivalent of the well-fed looking ‘old’ T-Rex reconstructions. The time travelers might note that the only T-Rexes that look like the obligatory ‘skinny’ reconstrucstions of the late 20th,/early 21st century, are starving, sickly T-Rexes about to die.

How ironic that the ealier, bulky, upright reconstructions scoffed at today by the cutting edge dinosaur ‘experts’, may actually be the most accurate.

Those future scientists may laugh at how the paleontologists of the early 21st century scoffed and derided the ‘outdated’ reconstructions of their predecessors, who had the same bones to work wirth, but foolishly made their reconstructions bulky, 9like some living archosaurs), and in ridiculous upright stances (like birds, reptiles and mammals all do).