«
»

When We Become Dinosaurs

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
July 26th, 2009
Posted In:
Blog, Nonsense
Comments:
2 Responses, Join The Conversation.

Disclaimer: While reading this keep in mind that I only know what I learned at the museum. I have no idea what I’m talking about.

What We Know About Dinosaurs

Whenever I visit the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) I’m amazed at their vast collection of humongous dinosaur skeletons. I think, this huge thing died and it’s bones were fully preserved until a ROM expedition decided to dig it up, clean it up and set it up for me to see. Amazing! They know how it lived, what it ate, how much it ate… they know everything, it’s amazing.

My amazement lasts the exact amount of time it takes me to look down to read the plaque about whatever dinosaur I’m currently standing in awe of. The plaque tells me only 3 of the bones are real, the rest is made of plaster, the rest is made up. The truth is they rarely find full dinosaurs, they find a leg bone here a vertebrae there and try to match it up using everything they have learned in University. Everything we know about dinosaurs is just the most plausible guess of thousands of extremely intelligent paleontologists.

When Humans Become Dinosaurs

Look around, imagine how much of this stuff will be around a million years after humans cease to exist. They’ll find my perfectly preserved arm bone, your perfectly preserved knee cap, a foot print and an old water well. Based on that they’ll make their best guess as to what humans were all about. If your knee cap shows that you have very strong leg muscles they’ll assume all humans did. If the foot prints show the person walked with a limp they’ll assume all humans did….. Even if they find an entire town preserved perfectly they’ll still only know a tiny bit about a tiny part of one culture in one area of the world.

There’s no real point to this post, it’s just another thing I think about often. I still enjoy looking at dinosaurs in museums and watching dinosaur based shows on tv. I guess it speaks to the diversity of humans and the vast differences in all of us. Imagine if you are the perfectly preserved skeleton they find and base all of their assumptions on? That might be kinda cool….

Similar Posts:

  • aktt_notify_twitter: yes
  • background: url(/images/backgrounds/Dinosaurs.jpg)
  • aktt_tweeted: 1

Comments

  1. Alison Says:
    July 26th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    I bet most of what we learned about dinosaurs in school is now completely different – I mean at the time we didn’t even know what killed them… we learned a number of theories. Now it’s pretty widely accepted that it was an asteroid that did them in.

    My biggest disappointment was finding out recently that one of my all time favourite dinosaurs, the Brontosaurus, didn’t actually exist – turns out that another smaller “similar” dinosaur, the Apatosaurus had been discovered first. Originally they thought it was a related but different species than the bigger Brontosaurus. Turns out the small one was just a juvenile, so since that one was discovered and named first, the Brontosaurus of our youth is really an Apathosaurus. Sure, the same dinosaur is still there, but it’s just not the same.

    And that’s just a name change – there are actual mix-ups that have been discovered since our youth.

  2. DaveT Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    I like the Dinobots. However I have been told that there are some discrepancies in the dinosaurs they were created after in the show.

    I watch too many cartoons maybe I should go to museums more. Or build a robot dinosaur.

Show Background