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A dinosaur threatens a duo of English adventurers. From "The Last Haunt of the Dinosaur" in The English Illustrated Magazine.

We just can’t let dinosaurs stay dead. They were real dragons that (notwithstanding their bird descendants) lived and died millions and millions of years before our species evolved, and they are so fascinating that we keep finding new ways to bring them into our world. Among the various ways humans and dinosaurs have been brought into contact, the idea that some dinosaurs might have survived in some pocket of unexplored wilderness has been a staple of science fiction and adventure stories for some time. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is the classic prototype for this subgenre, but one of the lesser-known variations on the theme was a 1908 story by Henry Francis called “The Last Haunt of the Dinosaur.”

While not an outright copy of Doyle’s story, Francis’ tale is another “Lost World” type of adventure that was standard for pulp magazines of the time (which included, I am sorry to say, racist undertones). Where Francis had a bit of trouble, though, was deciding what kind of dinosaur should menace the intrepid English explorers central to his story. It was a carnivorous dinosaur, the salacious descriptions of gore in the story make that clear, but Francis gave his dinosaur a long neck and small head like that of a sauropod. A case could be made that early sauropodomorph dinosaurs like Aardonyx would fit Francis’ description for body type if not dietary habits, but I am not feeling so charitable. It seems to me that he was confused and combined features from several dinosaurs to make a monster. (Francis covers his own tracks later on by having the scientists revise a restoration of a dinosaur skeleton they had been working on to fit the creature they saw in the jungle.)

Contrary to Francis’ imaginary tale, however, there is no reason to think that there are non-avian dinosaurs still inhabiting tropical jungles. Even if some lineages managed to survive the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago, their descendants would have continued to evolve and would probably look very different from their Mesozoic ancestors. Nevertheless, “Lost World” type stories give us an excuse to wonder what life would be like if the dinosaurs we know only as fossils actually lived alongside our species, and I have little doubt that this kind of tale will be around, in one for or another, for some time to come.

'Jingo' the Stegosaurus.

By the spring of 1916 it seemed inevitable that the United States would enter World War I. This prospect unsettled those opposed to our country’s involvement, and there was no better symbol for the military buildup these people feared than the great armored dinosaurs.

The papier-mâché Stegosaurus featured in the April 1, 1916 issue of the magazine The Survey was no joke. Created by the “Anti-’Preparedness’ Committee” the dinosaur carried the slogan “All Armor Plate – No Brains” beneath it as a jab at those who preferred trench warfare to diplomacy. Walter G. Fuller, a member of the organization that promoted the statue, explained:

It is difficult to conceive any more proper and appropriate symbol of militarism than that which the Anti- Preparedness’ Committee has hit upon. What could be more like the heavy, stumbling, clumsy brutal foolery which is destroying Europe than those old monsters of the past, the armored dinosaurs? These beasts, all armor-plate and no brains, had no more intelligent way of living than that of ‘adequate preparedness.’ All their difficulties were to be met by piling on more and more armor, until at last they sank by their own clumsy weight into the marsh lands …

Here was an animal unable to do even a little intelligent thinking. Its brain cavity in proportion to the size of its body was more diminutive than that of any other vertebrate. Like the militarist, therefore, it was unable to conceive of any intelligent foreign policy. Moreover, its vision was limited. Its eyes were small and could look only in a sidewise direction. It could not look ahead.

Such a strategy, Fuller argued, could only lead to extinction; just look at what happened to the slow, stupid, and overburdened dinosaurs! At the time no one had any idea why the dinosaurs had become extinct, and the belief that dinosaurs were large in size but diminutive in brain power made them perfect for caricaturing all that was perceived as brutish, dumb, and obsolete.  “Anti-preparedness” activists drove this point home by naming their dinosaur “Jingo,” a reference to “jingoism” or a feeling of nationalism so extreme that threats of violence against other nations becomes acceptable.

Reactions to Jingo’s tour of American cities were mixed. Anti-war activists, of course, loved Jingo while those who supported American involvement in the “War to End All Wars” thought it was a dumb public stunt. According to a later report, however, some Christian fundamentalists were upset that anyone would suggest that Jingo and his kind had been poorly made; God had created dinosaurs perfectly during the Creation week, after all. Nor was paleontologist W.D. Matthew of the American Museum of Natural History particularly impressed. Regardless of whether herbivorous dinosaurs escaped the claws of predators by virtue of their armor, speed, or wits, Matthew argued, they all became extinct. Even if there were “smart dinosaurs,” something that was in extreme doubt at the time, they fared no better than the massive, armored species when it came to survival.

In a cartoon published in The Survey, "Professor Theophilus Piffle" fails to morally persuade "Jingo" the Stegosaurus that brains are superior to brawn.

Ultimately Jingo and his message could not keep America out of war. Despite earlier isolationist and anti-war sentiments, the threat of unrestricted submarine warfare, an alliance between Mexico and Germany, and the Preparedness Day Bombing turned both politicians and the public towards war. Nearly one year after Jingo made his public debut, the United States declared war on Germany, and new laws such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 restricted the free speech of Americans. To speak out against the war was treasonous, and so Jingo was forced into extinction.

Dinosaur Odyssey by Scott Sampson

Given the number of books that are published about dinosaurs, there is bound to be some overlap among them. Most titles fall into a handful of categories: the “menagerie” approach, where a collection of various dinosaurs is prefaced by a few short summaries of paleontology; the “life in the field” perspective, in which the scientific content is tied to the author’s experiences, and the “Age of Reptiles” summaries, which focus on which dinosaurs lived when.

But paleontologist Scott Sampson’s new book, Dinosaur Odyssey, cannot be pigeonholed into these categories. Relatively late in the book, Sampson recounts how paleontologist Jack Horner, harried by reporters asking whether a meteor had wiped out the dinosaurs, replied that he didn’t give a whit how dinosaurs died, he wanted to know how dinosaurs lived. Sampson uses this as his guiding principle throughout Dinosaur Odyssey, and gives readers a rare peek at what dinosaurs might have been like as living, breathing creatures.
Sampson starts things off not by diving into a discussion of bleeding-edge research, but by gradually setting the scene. Using dinosaurs as examples, Sampson discusses evolution, ecology, geology, biogeography and other concepts that provide essential background for the latter half of the book. In different hands, this material could easily be the stuff of dry, textbook-type recitation, but Sampson’s use of dinosaurs as examples and his injection of personal anecdotes into the storyline keep the text flowing nicely.

The second half of the book builds upon these topics by looking at looking at how dinosaurs interacted with one another and their world. Did the origin of flowering plants influence dinosaur evolution? Were the fancy horns on dinosaurs such as Triceratops for fighting or for display? Were dinosaurs really “warm-blooded”? How could so many different kinds of large predatory dinosaurs have lived at the same time? In answering these and other questions, Sampson refers to specific localities and studies, allowing the reader to get a better understanding of what particular places were like during the age of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs might seem almost like mythical creatures now, but Sampson shows that they were real animals that were affected by phenomena that are still shaping our world. His “dinosaur odyssey” offers a new way of linking the past to the present.

Earlier this week I wrote about a spectacular discovery made in Tamil Nadu, India: dozens of dinosaur eggs preserved in what may have been an ancient nesting ground. Word quickly spread about the discovery, but now it looks like scientists may never get to fully study the site. Since the time the discovery hit the news, local villagers and even students have been pillaging the site for dinosaur eggs, many of which will no doubt wind up in the hands of private buyers through the black market.

According to Mu Ramkumar, one of the geologists who stumbled onto the site last week, people had been taking dinosaur eggs and other fossils out of the area for some time. It was not until last week, though, that the extent of the fossil deposits was known, and now people are digging there full-time. Local scientists are calling on the government to protect the site, but who knows how much damage will be done by time action is taken?

The Great Dinosaur Discoveries by Darren Naish

There is no shortage of dinosaur encyclopedias available today. Each is organized a little differently and is aimed at a different audience, but there is a lot of overlap among them. The Great Dinosaur Discoveries, written by paleontologist Darren Naish, is a wonderful exception to this trend.

Rather than focus on the dinosaurs alone, Naish uses the history of science as a foil to illustrate how what we know about dinosaurs has changed over the past 200 years. The dinosaurs were are familiar with today would no doubt shock the Victorian naturalists who initially described them as enormous versions of lizards and crocodiles. This change did not come about instantaneously, and Naish’s book shows how scientific hypotheses intermingled with new discoveries to  shape our present understanding of dinosaurs.

This approach has been taken before, as in Edwin Colbert’s Men and Dinosaurs, but Naish’s book is a unique contribution. Not only does it serve as a sorely-needed update to books about how dinosaur science has changed, but is is lavishly illustrated. It is a pleasure just to flip through the pages and look at the photographs and artistic restorations.

Yet The Great Dinosaur Discoveries is much more than a glossy coffee table book. It is packed with scientific and historical information that will no doubt please a wide variety of readers. I particularly enjoyed Naish’s strategy for mixing the dueling historical and scientific narratives. The great discoveries are organized in chronological order and include the details of the discovery along with what we know now. This allows Naish to contrast the image of the dinosaurs when they were first discovered to what we have learned since. The entry for Megalosaurus, for instance, shows an early 1854 restoration of the dinosaur as a kind of crocodile/dog hybrid with a bold modern restoration of the predatory dinosaur running after a hapless herbivore.

Naish gives the same attention to detail to new discoveries, as well. The final section of the book, which focuses on discoveries made in the last decade, is an excellent overview of what dinosaur science is like today. As some paleontologists have noted, we are presently in a “golden age” for dinosaur studies; our understanding of them and their evolution is growing at an astounding rate. Almost every month major new discoveries are heralded in academic journals and important new finds are coming out of the ground fast and furious. While Naish has done an superb job making his book as up-to-date as possible, I have little doubt that he could already start working on an addendum to include all the new finds that have been announced since his book went to press.

The Great Dinosaur Discoveries is an excellent book for dinosaur enthusiasts of any stripe. It is a beautifully-produced volume that is among the best summaries of dinosaur science presently available. It will no doubt be beloved by professional paleontologists and young dino-philes alike.

The famous "Dueling Dinosaurs": A Velociraptor and Protoceratops that became stuck together in death. From the Anatomical Record paper.

In one of the early scenes of Jurassic Park, the fictional paleontologist Alan Grant terrorizes a child visiting his dig site with a Deinonychus claw. If the dinosaurs were still alive they would have used the enlarged claw on their second toes to rip open the boy and eat his guts, Grant says, a fate Grant himself almost meets when he encounters the cloned predators later in the film. But did Deinonychus and its relatives like Velociraptor really use their claws to tear open their prey?

As part of the U.K. documentary miniseries The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs, a team of paleontologists created a reconstruction of a Velociraptor leg. When they tested it to see if the dinosaur’s claw could have been used to disembowel prey, they found something they did not expect. The huge foot claw of the “raptor” dinosaurs was not very good for slashing. Instead, it seemed to be better adapted as a grappling device, like a hook that could be used to hold onto or pin down prey. The claw may have even had a “locking” mechanism that would have kept the claw latched into the victims of Velociraptor, thus allowing the predator to dispatch its prey with its hands or jaws.

Some of those same researchers have now followed up with a new study published in a special all-dinosaur edition of the Anatomical Record, this time looking at a hand claw from Velociraptor. What they discovered was that the hand claw of the predatory dinosaur was also well-adapted to anchoring into surfaces. It was even strong enough to have held the dinosaur up if it attempted to climb a tree. Velociraptor lived in an arid landscape and so it probably did not actually engage in this behavior, but it is something Hollywood directors might want to take into account when they start filming Jurassic Park IV.

There is still much more work to do (the scientists have yet to test their hypotheses with other dinosaurs related to Velociraptor or even model how the entire hand might have worked while latching onto prey or a surface), but the studies have important implications for the evolution of birds. Velociraptor and Deinonychus are among the dinosaurs most closely related to birds, and they evolved from much smaller ancestors. It may be that the “killer claws” of these dinosaurs allowed the early, small members of this group to climb trees. Once up in the canopy, some of these dinosaurs, like the ancestors of Microraptor, might have evolved the ability to fly. The fact that such claws also allowed these dinosaurs to better hold onto and anchor themselves into prey was just a matter of putting a pre-existing trait to a new use and may have led to the evolution of the larger predatory forms like Utahraptor.

Birds did not directly evolve from Velociraptor, Deinonychus, or Microraptor, but the way these dinosaurs used their claws might provide a crucial clue to how their close avian relatives evolved. Paleontologists have debated for years whether birds evolved flight from the “trees down” or the “ground up,” and these new studies throw some tentative support to the “trees down” camp. Hopefully further studies will soon be undertaken to flesh out this hypothesis.

The reconstructed limb of a sauropod dinosaur. From Flickr user quantumdtell.

Could the African nation of Angola be the next hot spot for paleontology? According to the BBC, the recent cessation of Angola’s civil war has allowed paleontologists to start working in the country again. As the news company states, the country seems to be a new “fossil frontier” that is brimming with the petrified remains of ancient creatures as yet unknown to scientists.

Many of the fossils that have been found in Angola so far have been from fish, turtles, sharks and extinct forms of marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. Many of these fossils are sticking out of the ground, just waiting to be picked up, and there may be some new dinosaurs to find, too. In 2005, the paleontologist Octavio Mateus from Portugal’s New Lisbon University found elements from the front leg of a sauropod dinosaur. While the rest of the skeleton remains elusive, Mateus has stated his confidence that more dinosaur fossils will soon come to light.

Access to fossil sites is very important to paleontology. Paleontologists not only want to understand what the past was like at one particular place, but what the whole world was like in the prehistoric past. In order to do this paleontologists must study numerous sites from various ages at places all over the world, the more the better, and who knows what new secrets the Angola deposits might turn up?

The skeleton of Ceratosaurus, from The Dinosaurs of North America.

I love old books and papers. It is important to stay on top of the latest peer-reviewed articles and symposium volumes, but every now and then I like to pull a yellowing old science book from the shelf and see what scientists of centuries past had to say.

One of my favorite volumes in my little library is a copy of O.C. Marsh’s 1896 masterpiece The Dinosaurs of North America. Marsh was one of the foremost American paleontologists of the late 19th century, and he had a major role in establishing the study of dinosaurs as we know it today. Printed by the U.S. Geological Survey, the huge monograph contains descriptions of many of the most famous dinosaurs like Triceratops, Ceratosaurus and Stegosaurus. Many of these scientific descriptions are matched with beautifully printed plates depicting individual bones and restored skeleton. Beyond its scientific importance, it is really a beautiful book to look at.

Until recently it was pretty difficult to find this volume. Only a few copies were in circulation and you had to pay through the nose if you wanted to own one. Fortunately, though, the book is so old that it is now in the public domain and can be shared freely on the internet. If you want to have a look at it yourself, check out the O.C. Marsh Papers Web site. It contains a copy of the book in PDF format, as well as numerous other papers written by Marsh. It is a treasure trove of classic paleontology, and hopefully we will someday see a similar repository of papers written by Marsh’s famous professional rival, E.D. Cope.