More facts on Dinasaurs

A remarkable piece of evidence in support of the notion that there
is a relationship between the latent appeal of dinosaurs and the
human psyche can be found in mythology and folklore. Adrienne Mayor has shown that as early as the 7th century bc the Greeks had
contact with nomadic cultures in central Asia. Written accounts
at this time include descriptions of the Griffin (or Gryphon): a
creature that reputedly hoarded and jealously guarded gold; it was
wolf-sized with a beak, four legs, and sharp claws on its feet.
Furthermore, Near East art of at least 3000 bc depicts Griffin-like
creatures, as does that of the Mycenaean. The Griffin myth arose in
Mongolia/north-west China, in association with the ancient caravan
routes and gold prospecting in the Tienshan and Altai Mountains.
This part of the world (we now know) has a very rich fossil heritage
and is notable for the abundance of well-preserved dinosaur
skeletons; they are remarkably easy to find because their white
fossil bones stand out clearly against the soft, red sandstones in
which they are buried. Of even greater interest is the fact that the
most abundant of the dinosaurs preserved in these sandstones is
Protoceratops, which are approximately wolf-sized, and have a
prominent hooked beak and four legs terminated by sharp-clawed
toes. Their skulls also bear strikingly upswept bony frills, which
might easily be the origin of the wing-like structures that are often
depicted in Griffin imagery (compare the images in Figure 3).
Griffins were reported and figured very consistently for more
than a millennium, but beyond the 3rd century ad they became
defined increasingly by allegorical traits. On this basis it would
appear to be highly probable that Griffins owe their origin to
genuine observations of dinosaur skeletons made by nomadic
travellers through Mongolia; they demonstrate an uncanny link
between exotic mythological beasts and the real world of
dinosaurs.

Looked at through the harsh lens of objectivity, the cultural
pervasiveness of dinosaurs is extraordinary. After all, no human
being has ever seen a living non-avian dinosaur (no matter what
some of the more absurd creationist literature might claim). The
very first recognizably human members of our species lived about
500,000 years ago. By contrast, the very last dinosaurs trod our
planet approximately 65 million years ago and probably perished, along with many other creatures, in a cataclysm following a giant
meteorite impact with Earth at that time (see Chapter 8).
Dinosaurs, as a group of animals of quite bewildering variety,
therefore existed on Earth for over 160 million years before their
sudden demise. This surely puts the span of human existence, and
our current dominance of this fragile planet (in particular, the
debates concerning our utilization of resources, pollution, and
global warming), into a decidedly sobering perspective.
The very fact of the recognition of dinosaurs, and the very different
world in which they lived, today is a testament to the extraordinary
explanatory power of science. The ability to be inquisitive, to probe
the natural world and all its products, and to keep asking that
beguilingly simple question – why? – is one of the essences of being
human. It is hardly surprising that developing rigorous methods in
order to determine answers to such general questions is at the core
of all science.

Dinosaurs are undeniably interesting to many people. Their very
existence incites curiosity, and this can be used in some instances as
a means of introducing unsuspecting audiences to the excitement of
scientific discovery and the application and use of science more
generally. Just as fascination with bird songs could lead to an
interest in the physics of sound transmission, echolocation, and
ultimately radar, on the one hand, or linguistics and psychology
on the other; so it can be that an interest in dinosaurs can open
pathways into an equally surprising and unexpectedly wide range of
scientific disciplines. Outlining some of these pathways into science
is one of the underlying purposes of this book.
Palaeontology is the science that has been built around the study of
fossils, the remains of organisms that died prior to the time when
human culture began to have an identifiable impact on the world,
that is more than 10,000 years ago. This branch of science
represents our attempt to bring such fossils back to life: not literally,
as in resuscitating dead creatures (in the fictional Jurassic Park
7
Introduction
mode), but by using science to understand as fully as we can what
such creatures were really like and how they fitted into their
world. When a fossil of an animal is discovered, it presents the
palaeontologist with a series of puzzles, not unlike those faced by
the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes:
• What type of creature was it when it was alive?
• How long ago did it die?
• Did it die naturally of old age, or was it killed?
• Did it die just where it was found, buried in the rock, or was its body
moved here from somewhere else?
• Was it male or female?
• How did the creature look when it was alive?
• Was it colourful or drab?
• Was it fast-moving or a slow-coach?
• What did it eat?
• How well could it see, smell, or hear?
• Is it related to any creatures that are alive today?
These are just a few examples of the questions that might be asked,
but all tend towards the piecemeal reconstruction of a picture of
the creature and of the world in which it lived. It has been my
experience, following on from the first broadcasting of the
television series called Walking with Dinosaurs, with their
incredibly realistic-looking virtual dinosaurs, that many people
were sufficiently intrigued by what they saw or heard in the
commentary to ask: ‘How did you know that they moved like
that? . . . looked like that? . . . behaved like that?’
Questions driven by uncomplicated observations and basic
common sense underpin this book. Every fossil discovery is in and
of itself unique and has the potential to teach the inquisitive among
us something about our heritage as members of our world. I should,
however, qualify this statement by adding that the particular type of
heritage that I will be discussing relates to the natural heritage that
we share with all other organisms on this planet. This natural
8
Dinosaurs
heritage spans a period of time that exceeds 3,800 million years
according to most modern estimates. I will be exploring only a tiny
section of this staggeringly long period of time: just that interval
between 225 and 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs dominated
most aspects of life on Earth.