Lens to the Natural World. Kenneth H. Olson
consists of a-musement, i.e., to not think, to neither consider nor wonder. Among the latter is much television programming, wherein the average scene is three and a half seconds. One is reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s visit to New York City when he was being driven down Broadway. About the profusion of neon lights and advertising, he said that it must be beautiful, if you cannot read.
Natural history museums exist to expand our understanding; we cannot wisely guide our course in relationship to the life-systems on which we depend without sound knowledge of how they operate. Practical considerations aside, they also have the purpose of eliciting our admiration for the dynamics of planet earth and the complexity of life. Without that, it is as though we stand in a gallery that has the great works of art all facing the wall. A simple appreciation of our place in nature is essential to our humanity.
There is, however, a subtle danger to which institutions are prone as they attempt to describe the natural world. Many nature and science museums are not as much about nature as they are about technology. Even when the subject is that of various animals, the fact that robotics and synthetic sounds often dominate will lead to the subconscious focus not on the creature but on the human inventor. Nature is divided into bite-sized segments that are isolated from their contexts and hyped by electronics. The displays are often, therefore, less about the world and more about our domination of it. It is a mentality with a long pedigree, as Cicero boasted, “We are absolute masters of what the earth produces. We enjoy the mountains and the plains . . . We sow the seed and plant the trees. We fertilize the earth . . . We stop, direct, and turn the rivers. In short, by our hands we endeavor by our various operations in this world to make it, as it were, another nature.”
Consider the zoo in almost any large urban center, even the most spacious and ecologically minded, and, in the words of Scott Russell Sanders:
You will find nature parceled out into showy fragments, a nature demeaned and dominated by our constructions. Thickets of bamboo and simulated watering holes cannot disguise the elementary fact that a zoo is a prison. The animals are captives, hauled to this space for our edification or entertainment. No matter how ferocious they may look, they are wholly dependent on our care. A bear squatting on its haunches, a tiger lounging with half-lidded eyes, a bald eagle hunched on a limb are like refugees who tell us less about their homeland, their native way of being, than about our power . . . Snared in our inventions, wearing our labels, the plants and animals stand mute. In such places, the loudest voice we hear is our own.
Planetariums simulate not only the naked-eye vision of the sky but sights from deep space that, otherwise, would be closed to all but a few. As such, they more nearly facilitate the muse. Some things, of course, should not need such help. A few decades ago, when, for the first time, a lunar eclipse was shown on television, most people watched it on the silver screen, this when they could have stepped outside and seen the real thing.
A dinosaur bone, however, needs neither magnification nor exaggeration. It is what it is, whether in isolation or in an articulated skeleton: a tangible artifact from a creature that lived in an inconceivably remote period on planet earth.
Museums often use casts made from molds of the bones. These are near-identical reproductions and have several advantages, including that they can be shipped across the world for study or posed in mounts when the actual bone would be too heavy or fragile or when such exhibits would be too costly. But the authentic bone itself has a mystique that is unrivaled. Even the first-graders have learned to ask about a dinosaur specimen, “Is it real?” If not, at least some of the interest departs. If it is real, the eyes grow wide with excitement and wonder. The fact that museums can display such objects of fascination, often close-up, contributes to the popularity of the whole subject of dinosaurs. Some have called dinosaurs “nature’s special effects,” with the added attraction that they were real.
It is quite an understatement to say, concerning the role of dinosaurs in today’s culture, that they are popular. It was in 1842 that England’s Sir Richard Owen coined the name dinosaur to describe a new order of reptiles, this after the Greek words deinos for “terrible” or “frightfully great” and sauros, for “lizard.” Deinos might be equally well translated “awful,” this in the original sense of awe-full, and “Awesome!” is a phrase heard often in dinosaur halls these days.
The fascination with things prehistoric has meant that paleontologists who study dinosaurs no longer work in obscurity but have become celebrities. Blockbuster movies like Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (mostly about Cretaceous instead of Jurassic dinosaurs) fuel the imaginations of millions. Jack Horner was advisor to that film, as well as the sequels, and his persona served as the model for the main character played by Sam Neill. (Perhaps the reader will remember an early scene in Jurassic Park III, in which the paleontologist drives up to the dig site in a Museum of the Rockies pickup.)
In 1996, Arizona State University at Tempe hosted a month-long extravaganza concerning dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. The thousands who attended viewed entire skeletons on display, as well as a many other fossils. (Since then, there have been numerous other such Dinofest events at other sites around the country.) Included was a four-day symposium that featured dozens of researchers. The paleontologist Peter Ward describes the atmosphere of the event: “All the big name dinosaur guys were there, and the two biggest of all, Jack Horner and Bob Bakker, could easily be found simply by looking for the biggest crowd. As each passed through a room or hall, a retinue of attendees, groupies, and curious onlookers followed.”
Publicity in this era knew little bounds. Horner appeared on the cover of US News and World Report with the banner, “What Dinosaur Detective Jack Horner Does in the Real Jurassic Park,” i.e., Montana. In the 1990s, numerous magazines put forth cover articles, such as that by Newsweek bearing an image of T. rex: “Could Dinosaurs Return? The Science of Cloning.” Television documentaries on the subject of dinosaurs are continually in production, and newspapers report on dinosaur digs. Entire industries exist to crank out dinosaur toys and, of course, T-shirts are nearly ubiquitous.
Horner’s discoveries of dinosaur eggs (some containing embryos) and babies in nesting sites at the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Montana had made news the world over. They were the first complete such eggs ever found in North America. It was not only a discovery, however. It led to an image of entire nesting colonies of giants. In describing their environment, Horner provided a new picture of huge reptiles caring for their young, and he named the dinosaur involved Miasaura, meaning “Good Mother Lizard.” Baby dinosaurs became hugely interesting to millions. (Among the very best works to show how paleontology actually works are his Digging Dinosaurs: the Search that Unraveled the Mystery of the Baby Dinosaurs and his Dinosaur Lives: Unearthing the Evolutionary Saga. A fascinating new look at the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex is found in Horner’s The Complete T. rex. Written specifically for amateurs to aid in properly treating and identifying dinosaur fossils is his Dinosaurs under the Big Sky.)
In 2010, Horner was interviewed about dinosaurs on CBS television’s 60 Minutes. In addition to authoring numerous articles in scientific journals, he has appeared in a host of documentaries and been the subject of many magazine and newspaper articles. Thus, a case could be made for saying he is one of the most famous or recognizable living scientists of any sort in the world today. Yes, the subject of dinosaurs is fascinating.
Reasons why dinosaurs are so popular are many, and not all may be fully open to analysis. They surely do speak to the mind’s ability to conjure up scenes long past and populate them with creatures we could never see in any other way. Charles H. Sternberg, born in 1850, was one of the greatest of all fossil hunters, collecting prize specimens of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, and prehistoric mammals for several of the world’s premier museums. He wrote, “It is thus that I love creatures of other ages . . . They are never dead to me; my imagination breathes life into ‘the valley of dry bones,’ and not only do the living forms of the animals stand before me, but the countries which they inhabited rise for me through the mists of the ages.”
For children, the fascination may have something to do with the “monster” image of many of them, this combined with the fact that, being extinct, they are now safe to confront. For any and all, the puzzle of extinction also exerts an attraction; how could a group so successful for so long disappear?
For