Dinosaurs in popular culture
Encyclopedia
Since the word dinosaur
was coined in 1842, there have been various cultural depictions of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs featured in books, films, television programs, artwork, and other media have been used for both education and entertainment. The depictions range from the realistic, as in the television documentaries
of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, or the fantastic, as in the monster movie
s of the 1950s and 1960s.
Cultural depictions of dinosaurs have been an important means of translating scientific discoveries to the public. The growth in interest in dinosaurs since the Dinosaur Renaissance
has been accompanied by depictions made by artists working with ideas at the leading edge of dinosaur science, presenting lively dinosaurs and feathered dinosaurs as these concepts were first being considered. Cultural depictions have also created or reinforced misconceptions about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, such as inaccurately portraying a sort of "prehistoric world" where many kinds of extinct animals (from the Permian
animal Dimetrodon
to mammoth
s and cavemen
) lived together, and dinosaurs living lives of constant combat. Other misconceptions reinforced by cultural depictions came from a scientific consensus that has now been overturned, such as the alternate usage of dinosaur to describe something that is maladapted or obsolete, or dinosaurs as slow and unintelligent.
The first attempts to understand dinosaurs may have started thousands of years before they were officially named. Humans have long found fossils and incorporated them into their myths. For example, the griffin
of mythology
may be based on dinosaur skeletons found in the Gobi Desert
. As noted by Adrienne Mayor
, a classical folklorist
, griffins were said to inhabit the Scythia
n steppe
s that reached from the modern Ukraine
to central Asia. Mayor draws a connection to Protoceratops
, a frilled dinosaur
that is commonly found in the Gobi. This dinosaur has many features associated with griffins; they share sharp beaks, four legs, claws, similar size, and large eyes (or eye sockets in the case of the fossils), and the neck frill of Protoceratops, with large open holes, is consistent with descriptions of large ears or wings. Additionally, its bones, which appear white, are easy to see in reddish Gobi rocks.
The meticulous, scientific study of dinosaurs began in the 1820s of England. In 1842, Richard Owen
coined the term dinosaur, which under his vision were elephant
ine reptile
s. An ambitious scientist who used dinosaurs and other fossils to promote his beliefs, Owen was the driving force for the Crystal Palace dinosaur sculptures
, the first large-scale dinosaur reconstructions that were accessible to the public (1854). These sculptures, which can still be seen today, immortalized a very early stage in the perception of dinosaurs. The Crystal Palace sculptures were successful enough that Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
, Owen's collaborator, sold models of his sculptures and planned a second exhibition, Paleozoic Museum
, for Central Park
in Manhattan
in the late 1860s; it was never completed due to the interference of local politics and "Boss" William Marcy Tweed. In the same period, dinosaurs first appeared in popular literature, with a passing mention of an Owen-style Megalosaurus
in Charles Dickens
's Bleak House
(1852–1853). However, depictions of dinosaurs were rare in the 19th century, possibly due to incomplete knowledge. Despite the well-publicized "Bone Wars
" of the late 19th century between Edward Drinker Cope
and Othniel Charles Marsh
, dinosaurs were not yet ingrained in culture. Marsh, although a pioneer of skeletal reconstructions, did not support putting mounted skeletons on display, and derided the Crystal Palace sculptures.
As study caught up to the wealth of new material from western North America, and venues for depictions proliferated, dinosaurs gained in popularity. The paintings of Charles R. Knight
were the first influential representations of these finds. Knight worked extensively with the American Museum of Natural History
and its director, Henry Fairfield Osborn
, who wanted to use dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals to promote his museum and his ideas on evolution. Knight’s work, found in museums around the country, helped popularize dinosaurs and influenced generations of paleoartists. Interestingly, his early work showing fighting "Laelaps" (=Dryptosaurus
) depicted dinosaurs as much more lively than they would be presented for much of the 20th century. At the same time, improvements in casting allowed dinosaur skeletons to be reproduced and shipped across the world for display in far-flung museums, bringing them to the attention of a wider audience; Diplodocus
was the first such dinosaur reproduced in this way.
Dinosaurs began appearing in films soon after the introduction of cinema, the first being the good-natured animated
Gertie the Dinosaur
in 1912. However, lovable dinosaurs were quickly replaced by monsters as moviemakers recognized the potential of huge frightening monster
s. D. W. Griffith
in 1914’s Brute Force
provided the first example of a threatening cinematic dinosaur, a Ceratosaurus
who menaced cavemen. This film enshrined the fiction that dinosaurs and early humans lived together, and set up the cliché that dinosaurs were bloodthirsty and attacked anything that moved.
The now-common trope of dinosaurs existing in isolated locations in today’s world appeared at the same time, with Arthur Conan Doyle
's 1912 book The Lost World
and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
as pioneers. The Lost World crossed into the movies
in 1925, setting heights for special effects and attempts at scientific accuracy. It is unusual, even today, for attempting to portray dinosaurs as something other than monsters that spent their lives in combat. The stop-motion techniques of Willis O'Brien
went on to bring dinosaurs to life in the 1933 film King Kong
, which merged the tropes of dinosaur combat and dinosaurs in a lost world. His protégé Ray Harryhausen
would continue to refine this method, but most later dinosaurs movies until the advent of CGI would eschew such expensive effects for cheaper methods, such as humans in dinosaur suits, modern reptiles enlarged by cinematography, and reptiles with dinosaur decorations. Dinosaur depictions diversified in the 1930s, spreading to newspaper comic strip
s in Alley Oop
and to advertising for Sinclair Oil
.
and World War II
combined to sink the study of dinosaurs into a decades-long lull. Scientists considered dinosaurs a group of unrelated animals that left no descendants, and dinosaurs were presented as stupid, slow, stuck in swamps, and doomed to extinction
. Scientific dinosaur artwork, primarily from Rudolph F. Zallinger
and Zdeněk Burian
, reflected and reinforced the conception of dinosaurs as slow and static (one artistic quirk that became commonplace in representations of Mesozoic
landscapes, the presence of a volcano
, was a hallmark of Zallinger's). From such ideas came the alternate definition of “dinosaur” as something out of date.
Films of the time typically used dinosaurs as monsters, with the added element of atomic fears in the early Cold War
. Thus, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
(1953) and Godzilla
(1954; American release 1956) portray monstrous dinosaur-like prehistoric reptiles that go on rampages after being awakened by atomic bomb tests. An alternative appears in Disney’s animated Fantasia
(1940), in its The Rite of Spring
sequence, which attempted to portray dinosaurs with some scientific accuracy (although it has the common error of showing prehistoric animals from many different time periods living at the same time). Dinosaurs gained a home in television
in the 1960s animated sitcom The Flintstones
, in another example of dinosaurs shown as coexisting with humans (for comedic effect in this case). Dinosaurs also entered comic book
s in this period in such series as Tor
and Turok
, where prehistoric humans fought anachronistic dinosaurs. For those wanting more scientific accounts of dinosaurs, there were the first nontechnical dinosaur books. Ned Colbert
’s The Dinosaur Book (1945) was the first such book, and its status as the only such book for many years made Colbert an important figure for the coming generations of paleontologists and dinosaur enthusiasts.
In the 1960s, paleontologist John Ostrom
began work on the theropod Deinonychus
. His findings, which were expanded upon by his student Robert T. Bakker
, contributed to the Dinosaur Renaissance
, a revolution
in the study of dinosaurs. Of particular importance were a reevaluation of the origin of birds that showed them to be closely related to coelurosauria
n dinosaurs, reappraisal of dinosaur physiology that suggested they weren’t the sluggish cold-blooded
animals they’d long been assumed to be, and a recognition that dinosaurs formed a natural group. Soon thereafter came new evidence on dinosaur social behavior, with nests of Maiasaura
suggesting parental care. These findings were reflected in the work of a new generation of paleoartists. One milestone was Sarah Landry's feathered dinosaur in Bakker's 1975 Scientific American
article, Dinosaur Renaissance.
, John Gurche
, Gregory S. Paul
, William Stout
, and Bob Walters illustrated the new findings in response to the demand.
By the latter half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, other media were showing the influence of the increased popularity, with diverse depictions aimed at a variety of ages and interests.
In 1990 the Smithsonian Institution
's National Museum of Natural History
in Washington, D.C.
, featured an exhibition of dinosaur sculpture by Jim Gary
that drew more visitors than any of its previous exhibits. His dinosaurs, popular since the 1960s, began being featured in textbooks, encyclopedias, and videos as well as later, by the likes of National Geographic, in their publications for children in 1975.
For preschoolers, there was the educational television show Barney & Friends
starting in 1992; their older siblings had the 1988 animated movie The Land Before Time
and its increasing line
of direct to video sequel
s (12 by 2008). Dinosaurs
, a television sitcom, parodied humans and other television shows. Of particular note is Michael Crichton
’s 1990 novel, Jurassic Park, the popularity of which led to a series of films and other media. The first of these, Jurassic Park
, married advanced CGI
with advances in scientific knowledge of dinosaurs. Dinosaur
was the most expensive movie in 2000, but was a box-office success. The falling cost of computer-generated effects also has recently allowed the increased production of documentaries for television; the award-winning 1999 BBC
series Walking with Dinosaurs
, 2001's When Dinosaurs Roamed America
, 2009's Animal Armageddon
and 2011's Planet Dinosaur
are notable examples.
The popular ideals of dinosaurs have many misconceptions, reinforced by films, books, comics, television shows, and even theme parks
. Typical errors include: prehistoric humans living with dinosaurs; dinosaurs as monsters that did little else but fight; the portrayal of a kind of "prehistoric world" where all prehistoric animals are shown to exist; dinosaurs as all large; dinosaurs as stupid and slow; the inclusion of many prehistoric animals (such as Dimetrodon
, ichthyosaur
s, mosasaur
s, pterosaur
s, and plesiosaur
s) as dinosaurs; and dinosaurs as failures. Reports in the news media of dinosaur finds and dinosaur science are often inaccurate and sensationalistic, and popular dinosaur books usually lag scientific understanding. Dinosaur toy
s and models are often inaccurate, packaged indiscriminately with other prehistoric animals, or have fictitious additions like the large sharp teeth in some rubber
Triceratops
toys. The pejorative use of "dinosaur" as something behind the times has been applied to people, styles, and ideas that are perceived to be out of date, and on the wane. For example, members of the punk
movement derided the "progressive
" bands that preceded them as "dinosaur bands".
However, some popular depictors have strived for accuracy and present up-to-date information; Michael Crichton and Bill Watterson
(of Calvin and Hobbes
) are two contemporary examples. Paleoartists and illustrators in particular have kept up with research. Popular conceptions of dinosaurs have also been important in stimulating the interest and imagination of young people, and have been responsible for introducing many who would later become paleontologists to the field. In addition, popular depictions have the freedom to be more imaginative and speculative than technical works.
stories; educational works for children; prehistoric world stories (often with cavemen); and dinosaurs running amok in the modern world.
, has multiple factors. Dinosaurs were "monsters," yet are safely extinct, allowing for vicarious thrills. They appeal to the imagination, and there are many ways to approach them intellectually. Finally, they appeal to adults nostalgic for what they enjoyed as children. Children have been particularly drawn to dinosaurs over the years.
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
was coined in 1842, there have been various cultural depictions of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs featured in books, films, television programs, artwork, and other media have been used for both education and entertainment. The depictions range from the realistic, as in the television documentaries
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, or the fantastic, as in the monster movie
Monster movie
Monster movie is a name commonly given to movies, which centre on the struggle between human beings and one or more monsters...
s of the 1950s and 1960s.
Cultural depictions of dinosaurs have been an important means of translating scientific discoveries to the public. The growth in interest in dinosaurs since the Dinosaur Renaissance
Dinosaur renaissance
The dinosaur renaissance was a small-scale scientific revolution that started in the late 1960s, and led to renewed academic and popular interest in dinosaurs...
has been accompanied by depictions made by artists working with ideas at the leading edge of dinosaur science, presenting lively dinosaurs and feathered dinosaurs as these concepts were first being considered. Cultural depictions have also created or reinforced misconceptions about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, such as inaccurately portraying a sort of "prehistoric world" where many kinds of extinct animals (from the Permian
Permian
The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian...
animal Dimetrodon
Dimetrodon
Dimetrodon was a predatory synapsid genus that flourished during the Permian period, living between 280–265 million years ago ....
to mammoth
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...
s and cavemen
Caveman
A caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...
) lived together, and dinosaurs living lives of constant combat. Other misconceptions reinforced by cultural depictions came from a scientific consensus that has now been overturned, such as the alternate usage of dinosaur to describe something that is maladapted or obsolete, or dinosaurs as slow and unintelligent.
Early human history to 1900: Early depictions
Griffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle...
of mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
may be based on dinosaur skeletons found in the Gobi Desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
. As noted by Adrienne Mayor
Adrienne Mayor
Adrienne Mayor is a historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist.Mayor specializes in ancient history and the study of "folk science": how pre-scientific cultures interpreted data about the natural world, and how these interpretations form the basis of many ancient myths, folklore and...
, a classical folklorist
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, griffins were said to inhabit the Scythia
Scythia
In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...
n steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
s that reached from the modern Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
to central Asia. Mayor draws a connection to Protoceratops
Protoceratops
Protoceratops is a genus of sheep-sized herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur, from the Upper Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. It was a member of the Protoceratopsidae, a group of early horned dinosaurs...
, a frilled dinosaur
Neck frill
Neck frill is the popular term for the relatively extensive margin seen on the back of the heads of reptiles with either a bony support such as those present on the skulls of dinosaurs of the suborder Marginocephalia or a cartilaginous one as in the Frill-necked Lizard...
that is commonly found in the Gobi. This dinosaur has many features associated with griffins; they share sharp beaks, four legs, claws, similar size, and large eyes (or eye sockets in the case of the fossils), and the neck frill of Protoceratops, with large open holes, is consistent with descriptions of large ears or wings. Additionally, its bones, which appear white, are easy to see in reddish Gobi rocks.
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
coined the term dinosaur, which under his vision were elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
ine reptile
Reptile
Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...
s. An ambitious scientist who used dinosaurs and other fossils to promote his beliefs, Owen was the driving force for the Crystal Palace dinosaur sculptures
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, also known as Dinosaur Court, are a series of sculptures of dinosaurs and extinct mammals located in Crystal Palace, London. Commissioned in 1852 and unveiled in 1854, they were the first dinosaur sculptures in the world, pre-dating the publication of Charles Darwin's...
, the first large-scale dinosaur reconstructions that were accessible to the public (1854). These sculptures, which can still be seen today, immortalized a very early stage in the perception of dinosaurs. The Crystal Palace sculptures were successful enough that Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was an English sculptor and natural history artist renowned for combining both in his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park, Sydenham, south London...
, Owen's collaborator, sold models of his sculptures and planned a second exhibition, Paleozoic Museum
Paleozoic Museum
Following the success of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' life-sized concrete dinosaur models created for England's Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851, in 1868 the Commissioners of Manhattan's newly created Central Park recruited the sculptor to create replicas of America's antediluvian...
, for Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in the late 1860s; it was never completed due to the interference of local politics and "Boss" William Marcy Tweed. In the same period, dinosaurs first appeared in popular literature, with a passing mention of an Owen-style Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic period of Europe...
in Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's Bleak House
Bleak House
Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon...
(1852–1853). However, depictions of dinosaurs were rare in the 19th century, possibly due to incomplete knowledge. Despite the well-publicized "Bone Wars
Bone Wars
The Bone Wars, also known as the "Great Dinosaur Rush", refers to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh...
" of the late 19th century between Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen...
and Othniel Charles Marsh
Othniel Charles Marsh
Othniel Charles Marsh was an American paleontologist. Marsh was one of the preeminent scientists in the field; the discovery or description of dozens of news species and theories on the origins of birds are among his legacies.Born into a modest family, Marsh was able to afford higher education...
, dinosaurs were not yet ingrained in culture. Marsh, although a pioneer of skeletal reconstructions, did not support putting mounted skeletons on display, and derided the Crystal Palace sculptures.
1900 to the 1930s: New media
Charles R. Knight
Charles Robert Knight was an American artist best known for his influential paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals...
were the first influential representations of these finds. Knight worked extensively with the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
and its director, Henry Fairfield Osborn
Henry Fairfield Osborn
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. ForMemRS was an American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenicist.-Early life and career:...
, who wanted to use dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals to promote his museum and his ideas on evolution. Knight’s work, found in museums around the country, helped popularize dinosaurs and influenced generations of paleoartists. Interestingly, his early work showing fighting "Laelaps" (=Dryptosaurus
Dryptosaurus
Dryptosaurus was a genus of primitive tyrannosaur that lived in Eastern North America during the middle Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous period. Although largely unknown now outside of academic circles, a famous painting of the genus by Charles R...
) depicted dinosaurs as much more lively than they would be presented for much of the 20th century. At the same time, improvements in casting allowed dinosaur skeletons to be reproduced and shipped across the world for display in far-flung museums, bringing them to the attention of a wider audience; Diplodocus
Diplodocus
Diplodocus , or )is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek "double" and "beam", in reference to its double-beamed chevron bones...
was the first such dinosaur reproduced in this way.
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
Gertie the Dinosaur
Gertie the Dinosaur
Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 American animated short film by Winsor McCay. Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality...
in 1912. However, lovable dinosaurs were quickly replaced by monsters as moviemakers recognized the potential of huge frightening monster
Monster
A monster is any fictional creature, usually found in legends or horror fiction, that is somewhat hideous and may produce physical harm or mental fear by either its appearance or its actions...
s. D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
in 1914’s Brute Force
Brute Force (1914 film)
Brute Force is a short silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith, and starring Robert Harron and Mae Marsh. The film was shot in Chatsworth Park, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California...
provided the first example of a threatening cinematic dinosaur, a Ceratosaurus
Ceratosaurus
Ceratosaurus meaning "horned lizard", in reference to the horn on its nose , was a large predatory theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period , found in the Morrison Formation of North America, in Tanzania and Portugal...
who menaced cavemen. This film enshrined the fiction that dinosaurs and early humans lived together, and set up the cliché that dinosaurs were bloodthirsty and attacked anything that moved.
The now-common trope of dinosaurs existing in isolated locations in today’s world appeared at the same time, with Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
's 1912 book The Lost World
The Lost World (Arthur Conan Doyle)
The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survive. It was originally published serially in the popular Strand Magazine during the months of April 1912-November 1912...
and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
as pioneers. The Lost World crossed into the movies
The Lost World (1925 film)
The Lost World is a 1925 silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The movie was produced by First National Pictures, a large Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. This version was directed by Harry O...
in 1925, setting heights for special effects and attempts at scientific accuracy. It is unusual, even today, for attempting to portray dinosaurs as something other than monsters that spent their lives in combat. The stop-motion techniques of Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....
went on to bring dinosaurs to life in the 1933 film King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
, which merged the tropes of dinosaur combat and dinosaurs in a lost world. His protégé Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...
would continue to refine this method, but most later dinosaurs movies until the advent of CGI would eschew such expensive effects for cheaper methods, such as humans in dinosaur suits, modern reptiles enlarged by cinematography, and reptiles with dinosaur decorations. Dinosaur depictions diversified in the 1930s, spreading to newspaper comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s in Alley Oop
Alley Oop
Alley Oop is a syndicated comic strip, created in 1932 by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the popular and influential strip through four decades for Newspaper Enterprise Association...
and to advertising for Sinclair Oil
Sinclair Oil
Sinclair Oil Corporation is an American petroleum corporation, founded by Harry F. Sinclair on May 1, 1916 as the Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation by combining the assets of 11 small petroleum companies. Originally a New York corporation, Sinclair Oil reincorporated in Wyoming in 1976...
.
The 1930s to 1970s: Moribund dinosaurs to renaissance
The Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
combined to sink the study of dinosaurs into a decades-long lull. Scientists considered dinosaurs a group of unrelated animals that left no descendants, and dinosaurs were presented as stupid, slow, stuck in swamps, and doomed to extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
. Scientific dinosaur artwork, primarily from Rudolph F. Zallinger
Rudolph F. Zallinger
Rudolph Franz Zallinger was an American-based artist notable for his mural The Age of Reptiles at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History and for the popular illustration known as March of Progress , one of the world's most recognizable scientific images.-Biography:Zallinger was born in Irkutsk,...
and Zdeněk Burian
Zdenek Burian
Zdeněk Michael František Burian was a Czech painter and book illustrator whose work played a central role in the development of palaeontological reconstructions during a remarkable career spanning five decades...
, reflected and reinforced the conception of dinosaurs as slow and static (one artistic quirk that became commonplace in representations of Mesozoic
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...
landscapes, the presence of a volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
, was a hallmark of Zallinger's). From such ideas came the alternate definition of “dinosaur” as something out of date.
Films of the time typically used dinosaurs as monsters, with the added element of atomic fears in the early Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Thus, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a...
(1953) and Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
(1954; American release 1956) portray monstrous dinosaur-like prehistoric reptiles that go on rampages after being awakened by atomic bomb tests. An alternative appears in Disney’s animated Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
(1940), in its The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
sequence, which attempted to portray dinosaurs with some scientific accuracy (although it has the common error of showing prehistoric animals from many different time periods living at the same time). Dinosaurs gained a home in television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
in the 1960s animated sitcom The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
, in another example of dinosaurs shown as coexisting with humans (for comedic effect in this case). Dinosaurs also entered comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s in this period in such series as Tor
Tor (comic book)
Tor is a fictional character, a prehistoric-human protagonist who originated in comic books from the U.S. company St. John Publications. He was created by writer and artist Joe Kubert in 1,000,000 Years Ago! Tor is a fictional character, a prehistoric-human protagonist who originated in comic books...
and Turok
Turok
Turok is a fictional American comic book character initially in comics from Western Publishing published through licensee Dell Comics. He first appeared in Four Color Comics #596 , then graduated to his own title, Turok, Son of Stone...
, where prehistoric humans fought anachronistic dinosaurs. For those wanting more scientific accounts of dinosaurs, there were the first nontechnical dinosaur books. Ned Colbert
Edwin Harris Colbert
Edwin Harris Colbert was a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author. He received his A.B. from the University of Nebraska, then his Masters and Ph.D. from Columbia University, finishing in 1935.Born in Clarinda, Iowa, he grew up in Maryville, Missouri...
’s The Dinosaur Book (1945) was the first such book, and its status as the only such book for many years made Colbert an important figure for the coming generations of paleontologists and dinosaur enthusiasts.
In the 1960s, paleontologist John Ostrom
John Ostrom
John H. Ostrom was an American paleontologist who revolutionized modern understanding of dinosaurs in the 1960s, when he demonstrated that dinosaurs are more like big non-flying birds than they are like lizards , an idea first proposed by Thomas Henry Huxley in the 1860s, but which had garnered...
began work on the theropod Deinonychus
Deinonychus
Deinonychus was a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur. There is one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This 3.4 meter long dinosaur lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago . Fossils have been recovered from the U.S...
. His findings, which were expanded upon by his student Robert T. Bakker
Robert T. Bakker
Robert T. Bakker is an American paleontologist who helped reshape modern theories about dinosaurs, particularly by adding support to the theory that some dinosaurs were endothermic...
, contributed to the Dinosaur Renaissance
Dinosaur renaissance
The dinosaur renaissance was a small-scale scientific revolution that started in the late 1960s, and led to renewed academic and popular interest in dinosaurs...
, a revolution
Scientific revolution
The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...
in the study of dinosaurs. Of particular importance were a reevaluation of the origin of birds that showed them to be closely related to coelurosauria
Coelurosauria
Coelurosauria is the clade containing all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds than to carnosaurs. In the past, it was used to refer to all small theropods, although this classification has been abolished...
n dinosaurs, reappraisal of dinosaur physiology that suggested they weren’t the sluggish cold-blooded
Poikilotherm
A poikilotherm is an organism whose internal temperature varies considerably. It is the opposite of a homeotherm, an organism which maintains thermal homeostasis. Usually the variation is a consequence of variation in the ambient environmental temperature...
animals they’d long been assumed to be, and a recognition that dinosaurs formed a natural group. Soon thereafter came new evidence on dinosaur social behavior, with nests of Maiasaura
Maiasaura
Maiasaura is a large duck-billed dinosaur genus that lived in the area currently covered by the state of Montana in the Upper Cretaceous Period , about 74 million years ago....
suggesting parental care. These findings were reflected in the work of a new generation of paleoartists. One milestone was Sarah Landry's feathered dinosaur in Bakker's 1975 Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
article, Dinosaur Renaissance.
The 1980s to the present: Dinosaurs reconsidered
The reevaluation of dinosaurs spurred public interest, with the new generation of paleoartists quick to respond. Artists such as Mark Hallett, Doug HendersonDoug Henderson (artist)
Doug Henderson is an illustrator and artist specialising in the portrayal of fossil animals and environments. He has illustrated many books on dinosaurs and extinct life, and is credited as a "dinosaur specialist" on the film Jurassic Park in which his paintings appeared...
, John Gurche
John Gurche
John Gurche is an American artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and sketches of prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs and early humans....
, Gregory S. Paul
Gregory S. Paul
Gregory Scott Paul is a freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dinosaurs and his detailed illustrations, both live and skeletal...
, William Stout
William Stout
William Stout is an American fantasy artist and illustrator with a specialization in paleontological art. His paintings have been shown in over seventy exhibitions, including twelve one-man shows. He has worked on over thirty feature films, doing everything from storyboard art to production design...
, and Bob Walters illustrated the new findings in response to the demand.
By the latter half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, other media were showing the influence of the increased popularity, with diverse depictions aimed at a variety of ages and interests.
In 1990 the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
's National Museum of Natural History
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. Admission is free and the museum is open 364 days a year....
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, featured an exhibition of dinosaur sculpture by Jim Gary
Jim Gary
Jim Gary was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colorful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts...
that drew more visitors than any of its previous exhibits. His dinosaurs, popular since the 1960s, began being featured in textbooks, encyclopedias, and videos as well as later, by the likes of National Geographic, in their publications for children in 1975.
For preschoolers, there was the educational television show Barney & Friends
Barney & Friends
Barney and Friends, also referred to by HiT Entertainment as Barney the Friendly Dinosaur, is an independent children's television show produced in the United States, aimed at children from ages 1-8...
starting in 1992; their older siblings had the 1988 animated movie The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time is a 1988 American animated adventure film directed and co-produced by Don Bluth , and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall....
and its increasing line
The Land Before Time (series)
The Land Before Time is a series of animated films centered on dinosaurs. The series began in 1988 with The Land Before Time, directed and produced by Don Bluth and executive produced by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. It was followed by a total of 12 direct-to-video sequels, though none...
of direct to video sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
s (12 by 2008). Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs (TV series)
Dinosaurs is an American family sitcom that was originally broadcast on ABC from April 26, 1991 to July 20, 1994. The show, about a family of anthropomorphic dinosaurs, was produced by Michael Jacobs Productions and Jim Henson Television in association with Walt Disney Television and Buena Vista...
, a television sitcom, parodied humans and other television shows. Of particular note is Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
’s 1990 novel, Jurassic Park, the popularity of which led to a series of films and other media. The first of these, Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...
, married advanced CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
with advances in scientific knowledge of dinosaurs. Dinosaur
Dinosaur (film)
Dinosaur is a 2000 American computer-animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on May 19, 2000, and is the 39th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
was the most expensive movie in 2000, but was a box-office success. The falling cost of computer-generated effects also has recently allowed the increased production of documentaries for television; the award-winning 1999 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series Walking with Dinosaurs
Walking with Dinosaurs
Walking with Dinosaurs is a six-part documentary television miniseries that was produced by BBC, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, and first aired in the United Kingdom, in 1999. The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Branagh's voice replaced with that...
, 2001's When Dinosaurs Roamed America
When Dinosaurs Roamed America
When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a two-hour American television program that first aired on Discovery Channel in 2001. It was directed by Pierre de Lespinois and narrated by actor John Goodman...
, 2009's Animal Armageddon
Animal Armageddon
Animal Armageddon is an American paleontology-based documentary television miniseries that originally aired from to on Animal Planet. All the prehistoric scenes are created 100% in Lightwave...
and 2011's Planet Dinosaur
Planet Dinosaur
Planet Dinosaur is a six-part documentary television series produced by the BBC, narrated by John Hurt, first aired in the United Kingdom in 2011, produced by VFX studio Jellyfish Pictures. It is the first major dinosaur-related series for BBC One since Walking with Dinosaurs...
are notable examples.
Public perception of dinosaurs
Dinosaur World (Florida)
Dinosaur World is the name of three outdoor dinosaur theme parks. Locations include Plant City, Florida, Glen Rose, Texas, and Cave City, Kentucky. The parks features over 150 life-size dinosaur sculptures created by Christer Svensson...
. Typical errors include: prehistoric humans living with dinosaurs; dinosaurs as monsters that did little else but fight; the portrayal of a kind of "prehistoric world" where all prehistoric animals are shown to exist; dinosaurs as all large; dinosaurs as stupid and slow; the inclusion of many prehistoric animals (such as Dimetrodon
Dimetrodon
Dimetrodon was a predatory synapsid genus that flourished during the Permian period, living between 280–265 million years ago ....
, ichthyosaur
Ichthyosaur
Ichthyosaurs were giant marine reptiles that resembled fish and dolphins...
s, mosasaur
Mosasaur
Mosasaurs are large extinct marine lizards. The first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764...
s, pterosaur
Pterosaur
Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period . Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight...
s, and plesiosaur
Plesiosaur
Plesiosauroidea is an extinct clade of carnivorous plesiosaur marine reptiles. Plesiosauroids, are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods...
s) as dinosaurs; and dinosaurs as failures. Reports in the news media of dinosaur finds and dinosaur science are often inaccurate and sensationalistic, and popular dinosaur books usually lag scientific understanding. Dinosaur toy
Toy
A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...
s and models are often inaccurate, packaged indiscriminately with other prehistoric animals, or have fictitious additions like the large sharp teeth in some rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...
Triceratops
Triceratops
Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur which lived during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 65 million years ago in what is now North America. It was one of the last dinosaur genera to appear before the great Cretaceous–Paleogene...
toys. The pejorative use of "dinosaur" as something behind the times has been applied to people, styles, and ideas that are perceived to be out of date, and on the wane. For example, members of the punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement derided the "progressive
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
" bands that preceded them as "dinosaur bands".
However, some popular depictors have strived for accuracy and present up-to-date information; Michael Crichton and Bill Watterson
Bill Watterson
William Boyd Watterson II , known as Bill Watterson, is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes...
(of Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...
) are two contemporary examples. Paleoartists and illustrators in particular have kept up with research. Popular conceptions of dinosaurs have also been important in stimulating the interest and imagination of young people, and have been responsible for introducing many who would later become paleontologists to the field. In addition, popular depictions have the freedom to be more imaginative and speculative than technical works.
Usage
The typical use of dinosaurs in popular culture has been as vicious monsters. There are several distinct genres of dinosaur depictions commonly used: "lost worlds" on modern Earth; time travelTime travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
stories; educational works for children; prehistoric world stories (often with cavemen); and dinosaurs running amok in the modern world.
Appeal
The appeal of dinosaurs, as suggested by author, researcher, and dinosaur enthusiast Donald F. GlutDonald F. Glut
Donald F. Glut is an American writer, motion picture director, screenwriter, amateur paleontologist, musician and actor....
, has multiple factors. Dinosaurs were "monsters," yet are safely extinct, allowing for vicarious thrills. They appeal to the imagination, and there are many ways to approach them intellectually. Finally, they appeal to adults nostalgic for what they enjoyed as children. Children have been particularly drawn to dinosaurs over the years.