See I'm not sure you can butterfly away the dinosaurs that easily as pop culture icons. They are the perfect combination - many are gigantic, all of them are exotic and unlike other prehistoric monsters like the placeoderms or synapsids, they are recent enough that there is an excellent fossil record available for everyone to marvel at. But okay, let's try and make it work. One thing in our favour is the fact that there was a group of ancient animals that were as much headline grabbers as the dinosaurs - the mammals. Let's say that remains of the indricotheres and a few other giant mammals are found earlier, whilst the remains of the sauropods and the giant therapods don't turn up until latter than OTL. This is achievable, there is enough mayhem in England and the western OTL US that maybe nobody really cares to go digging up old bones, especially when there are really impressive remains coming out of Mongolia and other parts of Asia in form of the biggest land mammals that ever lived.
Actually another thing that both interests me and fills me with dread is the effect that the conflict between societism and diversertarianism is going to have on paleontology and especially the theories on the origins of humanity.
teg