Barosaurus lentus mounted in the American Museum of Natural History. ("Barosaurus mount" by Greg licensed under BY CC 2.0.)
JEAN De La Fontaine, the famous French novelist, said that imagination has much more power over us than reality, but I will have the courage to say no, I will say that reality could be as captivating as our imagination, that it shapes what we can imagine. But my purpose here is not to talk about abstract things, as you may already know, I´ve come here to talk about dinosaurs. What does this really have to do with my introduction? You´ll see.
My challenge is that after the end of these paragraphs you´d feel as excited as I do when I talk about dinosaurs. But what makes them so special? We, the humans, have always looked at the stars, meaning that we search for bigger things, that´s why we landed the Moon, why we went to the deepest ocean, and why we got our hands dirty to figure out the secrets that our past hid. What effect did this have? Although Richard Owen was the one who coined the word "Dinosaur", the truth is that since ancient times people have to know that rocks hold what then were just monsters. Those people put them into their tales of fantasy, originating the myths about dragons, griffins, or marine monsters. All of these creatures are products of our imagination but based on the remains that, throughout centuries, no one was able to explain.
Dragons, griffins, marine monsters... all products of our imagination, but based on remains that, throughout centuries, no one was able to explain.
Then it came... the science, to help us understand, not that reality was disappointing, but that could be as amazing as those tales. We got to know more and more from the fossils, windows to that distant past when authentical beasts walked the earth. Dinosaurs were the monarchs of this planet for more than 150 million years. They got to be giants and dwarfs, they had horns, frills, whiplashes, spikes, crests, domes, sails, teeth, feathers, scales... they are still with us, sometimes in front of our eyes or in our backyards, or as the food in our plates.
With science, people also tried to look for more reasonable reasons to love dinosaurs; as saying that through them we can learn how to avoid our own extinction, or how the planet could change with climate revolution. Maybe all those reasons could ve valid, but if you think on it, other things could also help us understand that. Actually, among all the data and facts, love for dinosaurs surpasses what any science artifact could measure, it's really on our adventurous human heart, the origin of feelings.
That's why I don't just like but love dinosaurs, because they are more amazing than anything we could have ever imagined by ourselves. Dinosaurs were, are, and most probably will always be one of the most wonderful animals to ever exist, a reflection of our desire to be intrigued by creatures beyond our limits, some of the very things that make us humans, a product of nature´s imagination.