Dino-Mania
My 3 year old
daughter loves dinosaurs. All of them. The “good” ones like Barney and the
“bad” ones from Jurassic Park and Godzilla. On that topic, she’s in the
exalted company of Calvin and other, regular kids world-over who too are “caught
up in the raging, teeth-baring grip of full-on dinomania”, as this article by Richard
Conniff calls it.
Soon after
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
was published, in 1861, the paleontologist, Hermann von Meyer, discovered a
dinner plate-size fossil:
“It seemed as if the proof of
evolutionary theory had arrived, like the Ten Commandments, engraved in stone.”
Von Meyer’s
description of the fossil was that of a type of flying reptile.
In 1964, John H.
Ostrom, a Yale paleontologist discovered Deinonychus, a primitive bird that he
said “must have been a fleet-footed,
highly predaceous, extremely agile, and very active animal”. A couple of years
later, when Ostrom was looking at the limestone slabs of von Meyer closely, he
could see the clear impression of feathers. Its bones also seemed to match
those of Deinonychus.
It proved to be
a transformational moment. Until then, dinos were thought to be “plodding,
thunderous monsters, cold-blooded and stupid” and “symbols of obsolescence and
hulking inefficiency”. But with Ostrom’s twin findings, the “dinosaur
renaissance” had begun. Bob Bakker, one of Ostrom’s students, was a vocal
believer in the new image of the dino as being active and warm-blooded. The duo
became greatly influential:
“Where John was cautious, Bob was
evangelical.”
Ostrom felt that
there was good evidence “that many different kinds of ancient reptiles were
characterized by mammalian or avian levels of metabolism”. Despite strong
resistance from the old guard, Ostrom’s view prevailed:
“It is now widely accepted that birds
evolved from the group of bipedal theropod dinosaurs.”
So much so that:
“The idea that birds are in fact living
dinosaurs is so commonplace that the debate has largely turned to the question
of why they were the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction of 65
million years ago.”
(The final proof
came in 2012, when a T.rex relative was found in Canada “covered in tufts of
long, filamentous feathers”).
Maybe the next Jurassic Park movie will add feathery,
bird-like dinos instead of only showing scaly, reptilian dinos. C’mon,
Spielberg, even my daughter knows that!
Maybe true that the flying dinosaur cousins had feathery wings and not leathery wings.
ReplyDeleteThese scientists don't give up and keep on digging and find something clearer. After that, they continue digging for something new that is not clear! On the whole, science being a never-ending quest, our scientists cannot be blamed for always keeping us in tender hooks. Fortunately children like Aditi couldn't care less for all this, as long as they have dinosaur toys to play with! :-)
However, I am of the opinion that whether the flying dinosaurs had feathery or leathery wings, the evolutionary process is offering us both options for flying in the animal kingdom even today. While most birds have feathers. bats do not have feathers. Also, insects do not follow feathers idea but a "flap" idea, which is neither feather or leather.
Possibly, feathers were a later evolutionary process but a better one. There are more survivors of that kind today than the other and more-awkward choice. Whether the branching out starting before/during/later than some dinosaur era, I am sure the scientists will tell Aditi one day. Hope she would be interested! :-)