December 11, 2012
Beyond the Childhood Dinosaur Phase: Why Dinosaurs Should Matter to Everyone
Dinosaurs are often thought of as kid’s stuff. In America, at least, going through a “dinosaur phase” is just another part of childhood, and somewhere along the way we’re expected to stop acting like walking encyclopedias to Mesozoic life. Yet this narrow view of dinosaurs as nothing more than pre-teen kitsch obscures the essential truths these animals can share with us about evolution, extinction, and survival.
As paleontologist Michael Novacek argues in the video above, the history of dinosaurs is also our history–our mammalian ancestors and relatives snuffled and scurried through a dinosaur-dominated world for more than 150 million years. We can’t understand where we came from without considering dinosaurs. And, says paleontologist Matt Bonnan, “Dinosaurs put our place in the world into perspective.” By asking questions about dinosaurs–when did they live and what was the world like then?–the history of life on Earth comes into focus, and the answers to these queries help us better understand the pervasive forces of evolution and extinction through time.
These critical aspects of nature can be difficult to detect on the timescales of our lives, but become much more apparent when we can peek into deep time by sifting through the remains of creatures that roamed the Earth long ago. An individual dinosaur discovery might not have any practical use or even significantly change our understanding of the past, but when considered together with the ever-growing body of research about dinosaurs, it can help us understand how we came to be on this planet and may even give us some clues about the future–how species emerge and decline, how creatures adapt, and how life evolves after catastrophic extinction events.
What do you think is the best case for the importance of studying dinosaurs?
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
I’m really not a fan of having to sell an interest in biology (all science) because it has some benefit or insight into what makes us humans. Are we that really that selfish as a subspecies? Can we not be interested in interesting things without having to justify it?
Interesting case!
I’d argue that, as well as the above, one of the greatest reasons we study dinosaurs (and in general the history of vertebrate life) is the ‘hook’ if offers for science engagement. At the NHM in London, people queue for hours to see the dinosaurs, but queues for other areas are non-existent. I don’t know why, but I always like to think this is because [non-avian] dinosaurs and other extinct organisms are mysterious remains of a long-lost history, something which we’ll never be able to recreate or see for real, which creates a sort of longing to learn more about them.
So yeah, that’s a long-winded way of saying dinosaurs are awesome, lets yell about them to get people involved with science
it is difficult getting people to support paleontology because they don’t see any practical benefit to it. It’s almost like this mentality that the only things worth investing in are the ones that are “useful”. Chemistry is perhaps the most prevalent of the sciences because of all the breakthroughs it’s provided. Geology is only ever thought of because it can find mineral wealth (oil, diamonds, gold) and warn of earthquakes. If we’re ever going to get anywhere, we need break this myth that science is only important if it can be useful.
The biggest reason to study paleontology (not just dinosaurs) is because science is a means of understanding our world and our place in it. Without paleontology we’d probably still believe dinosaurs were dragons who drowned in Noah’s Flood. The simple truth is fossils exist, and if the purpose of science is understanding, then we need to understand these strange and wonderful things that come out of the ground. And indeed, fossils are our heritage. Paleontology shows us how far we have come as a species. Not everyone has a natural heritage they can be proud of. But i think paleontology gives us a natural heritage we can all be proud of.
As others have stated more eloquently before, the study of dinosaurs and paleontology is an ideal “gateway science” – especially for kids, but for adults as well. The history of the planet is full of charismatic megafauna, but few provide more fuel for imagination and desire for more knowledge than the dinosaurs. The enthusiastic response that many people have for them leads to a host of new questions (“How do we know how old they were? Why were they so successful – and so weirdly diverse – for so long? Why did they go extinct? Could we go extinct – either through the same reasons the dinosaurs did, or by our own actions?”). These questions require some study of biology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on for any of the answers to make sense… and this hopefully influences our interactions with the world accordingly.
Kids and adults alike may be intrigued by a news story about the latest discovery or a new piece of paleontologically-accurate art, which means that even the discoveries with no obvious practical use or significant alteration of our understanding can still be very valuable because they get people asking questions. Once the gate is open, even if someone doesn’t go on to become a paleontologist, they may still be carrying the scientific mindset and worldview that dinosaurs helped to establish for them – and I think our civilization is better for it.
On a related note: Mr. Switek, thank you for your prolific and outstanding writing, and best of luck in your future endeavors.