Terrible Lizards - Alternate Dinosaur pop culture?

[Ditzy Vixen (RossN)]

In 1841 the English paleontologist Sir Richard Owen coined the term "dinosaur" from the ancient Greek deinos ("terrible") and saurous ("lizard or reptile"). At the time knowledge of dinosaurs was extremely limited with just three species initially placed in the new suborder - Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus.

Scientific ideas about dinosaurs advanced rapidly and continued to do so - the dinosaurs of Prehistoric Planet (2022) are already nigh unrecognisable from the beasts that haunted my dino books as a child in the 1980s and 1990s let alone their Victorian ancestors - but they have consistently caught the public imagination. There are even dinosaur 'superstars' most people would recognise - Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus...

So taking 1841 as a starting date how would our views of dinosaurs change if we had made certain discoveries later or sooner or not at all? Tyrannosaurus for instance is pretty much *the* dinosaur in pop culture (and rightfully so, they were awesome) but so much of it's fame derives from having a truly fantastic name (see also Brontosaurus), being found in fairly good conditions and getting a blaze of publicity right out of the gate.

Imagine evidence of feathers is found on a large dinosaur in the Victorian age (maybe Yutyrannus is described a century and a half before our time). How would that shape perceptions of dinosaurs? Or conversely imagine a 'rock star' dinosaur like the Tyrannosaurus isn't found until much later? What if anything would fill the gap in popular consciousness?

(I'm also intrigued by the idea of giving an unfairly obscure dinosaur a 'boost' with a cool name but I fear I'll have to leave any ideas there to people with much better Greek! )

 

[SenatorChickpea]

A big thing would be if the idea of Dinosaurs as being fast, warm-blooded or even quasi-Avian became the consensus view earlier. If you read Doyle's The Lost World, it's striking how these are very different monsters* from those in Jurassic Park- slow, cumbersome, clearly a relic of a bygone age, whose extinction is almost proof of the upwards progress of nature.

It would be more troubling for the Victorian community if it was accepted that this was an active, healthy vanished world- of clever creatures, of nimble ones, of animals every bit as varied as the present day.



*Obviously they're not monsters, but I'm talking about their function in the thriller fiction.

 

[DanMcCollum]

A big thing would be if the idea of Dinosaurs as being fast, warm-blooded or even quasi-Avian became the consensus view earlier. If you read Doyle's The Lost World, it's striking how these are very different monsters* from those in Jurassic Park- slow, cumbersome, clearly a relic of a bygone age, whose extinction is almost proof of the upwards progress of nature.

It would be more troubling for the Victorian community if it was accepted that this was an active, healthy vanished world- of clever creatures, of nimble ones, of animals every bit as varied as the present day.



*Obviously they're not monsters, but I'm talking about their function in the thriller fiction.

There actually were proponents of Dinosaurs being warm blooded fairly early on, but the ideas fell out of favor by the early 20th century. So it would actually be possible for the idea of warm blooded dinos to become a fixture of the popular culure from an early date. I also believe that the avian connection was noticed fairly early as well, only to be ignored until later.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

In 1841 the English paleontologist Sir Richard Owen coined the term "dinosaur" from the ancient Greek deinos ("terrible") and saurous ("lizard or reptile"). At the time knowledge of dinosaurs was extremely limited with just three species initially placed in the new suborder - Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus.

Scientific ideas about dinosaurs advanced rapidly and continued to do so - the dinosaurs of Prehistoric Planet (2022) are already nigh unrecognisable from the beasts that haunted my dino books as a child in the 1980s and 1990s let alone their Victorian ancestors - but they have consistently caught the public imagination. There are even dinosaur 'superstars' most people would recognise - Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus...

So taking 1841 as a starting date how would our views of dinosaurs change if we had made certain discoveries later or sooner or not at all? Tyrannosaurus for instance is pretty much *the* dinosaur in pop culture (and rightfully so, they were awesome) but so much of it's fame derives from having a truly fantastic name (see also Brontosaurus), being found in fairly good conditions and getting a blaze of publicity right out of the gate.

Imagine evidence of feathers is found on a large dinosaur in the Victorian age (maybe Yutyrannus is described a century and a half before our time). How would that shape perceptions of dinosaurs? Or conversely imagine a 'rock star' dinosaur like the Tyrannosaurus isn't found until much later? What if anything would fill the gap in popular consciousness?

(I'm also intrigued by the idea of giving an unfairly obscure dinosaur a 'boost' with a cool name but I fear I'll have to leave any ideas there to people with much better Greek! )

A big thing would be if the idea of Dinosaurs as being fast, warm-blooded or even quasi-Avian became the consensus view earlier. If you read Doyle's The Lost World, it's striking how these are very different monsters* from those in Jurassic Park- slow, cumbersome, clearly a relic of a bygone age, whose extinction is almost proof of the upwards progress of nature.

It would be more troubling for the Victorian community if it was accepted that this was an active, healthy vanished world- of clever creatures, of nimble ones, of animals every bit as varied as the present day.



*Obviously they're not monsters, but I'm talking about their function in the thriller fiction.

First of all, great to see others who (a) know about the dinosaurs of the Crystal Palace exhibition Ditzy, and (b) read Conan Doyle's Lost World Senator

The issue with them being accepted as fast, warm-blooded and quasi-Avian, though, was that IIRC, there was a real difficulty with accepting dinosaurs to begin with because there was a belief God wouldn't allow anything to go extinct like this (plus the whole issue around how old the world was, etc.). So they reconciled that by going 'well, these things were doomed to extinction because big/slow/dumb'.

 

[thatsagoodpoint]

If T-Rex and other dinosaurs were initially discovered having feathers then the connection to birds would have been made much much sooner. If alligator/crocodilian fossils were found to date among with T-Rex then the idea that dinosaurs ever went extinct might not have ever happened. It certainly would have given Charles Darwin even more support for his evolution theory.