Base Rates and Dinosaurs

There are many things to trouble the 50 years plus age group such as interest rate increases, pension provision, job security and general health but there is something else that is causing me stress and anxiety. 

It is having to rethink my whole understanding of Dinosaurs. 

It should not be happening. 

The delight in my earliest years of reading and studying about these terrible lizards was that they were, yes, terrible but above all they were dead, buried, fossilised and long gone. 

If you really wanted to you could go and see a skeleton of one in a museum or on TV and Hollywood Movie features have some excitement in that dinosaurs and human beings just do not co-exist happily. A toe on a pebbled foreshore could as easily produce a small fossil to add to a slowly expanding collection of bits of odd shaped stones in the  bottom of a drawer. 

Just think about that word- Dinosaur. 

When applied to a person it immediately conjurs up the image of a lumbering, hopeless, plodding and ultimately obsolete entity. I have been called such over recent years in my reluctance to accept technology and new practices in work and lifestyle. 

The sheer scale of some of these reptiles was fun to imagine using comparatives such as the size of a house, a bus or those mainstays of how many T-Rex’s could fit on a football field and how many times heavier than an elephant was a Brontosaurus.  

I have been a bit of a sceptic in the past about these skeletal representations of the great former inhabitants of Earth. If you did come across a pile of bones, spread out over a vast area of a tar pit or peat bog then it would be far too tempting not to cobble them together in a creature shape even if the contributing parts come from lots of different species. Think of those financial backers seeking a return on their investment and University publishing deals after all. 

So, Dinosaurs were an important part of my developmental years and this can be seen by the number of books, plastic models and that collection of stones that have followed me in my adult years in my green metal trunk of childhood treasures. 

I have in my adult years been fully assured of drawing a firm line under that subject as an interest or matter of concern.

Up until about 20 years ago the perception of these creatures had not changed much since the first fossils were studied seriously in the 1860’s. 

Their story was indeed epic but tragic. I can sometimes feel tears welling up at the thought of a Stegosaurus or Brontosaurus looking up at the darkening sky and not realising (in the former case because of a walnut sized brain), as they chewed a bit of vegetation, that this was their extinction event. You can see the attraction of the Jurassic Era to children with it being an age of dragons and monsters and survival of the fiercest, fittest and fastest. 

Then, like a meteorite impact, my whole world has been thrown into turmoil and disarray as I learn that Dinosaurs are still amongst us today. Yes, I kid you not. 

Recent excavations in China in particular but also including Mongolia, the United States and even Scotland have brought up full skeletal remains, beautifully preserved and detailed that clearly show that, and here is my main cause of anxiety, Dinosaurs had feathers. Such is the state of preservation that Paleontologists can determine the colour of the feathers and their purpose, be it for display, insulation or even actual flight. 

The fearsome carnivorous T Rex and those pesky, snappy Veloceraptors upon fresh study have been found to have had feathers. 

Fast forward some 50 million years from the dominance of Dinosaurs on the planet and what do you have? 

Birds!!!!!

Turns out that birds, those fragile things sat on the street front telephone wire or on my garden fence post are the missing link from the crocodilian reptiles of pre-history. 

There may be further revelations. 

Far from being a dried up subject there are almost weekly discoveries of new species to add to the running total of around 1500 species at the rate of one per week. 

I am now, in my 50's, having to reassess my whole comprehension of dinosaurs. 

I should really have seen it coming many years ago. My wife has for a long time made the case for birds as the descendants of those lumbering, lumpen lizards. 

Birds are Theropod Dinosaurs so get used to it. 

I must go now and replace the collection of edible nuts on the bird table with the rotting carcass of a small animal for fear of upsetting those terrible, flying, lizards.