Josh Klein Blog Post 1

Out of the visits we have taken in class thus far, my favorite has been the trip we took to the Natural History Museum where we explored the dinosaur exhibit. What was interesting to me was how there was an exhibit full of fossils accompanied by images of what each species of dinosaur would look like. That is particularly interesting to me because in reality, no one actually knows what dinosaurs actually looked like because no one was alive to see them. While we can estimate and take our best guesses as to the color that they were or the general body shape the dinosaurs had, no one knows for sure. That is why the live model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex stood out to me so much. Even though they knew the general bone structure of the T-Rex, the color of its skin and the movements it was making were just a best guess of how it actually looked and moved. I along with others in my group and museum visitors stood there for minutes watching in fascination as the electronic T-Rex moved and roared. 

As a kid I was obsessed with dinosaurs and would spend hours upon hours reading book after book all about dinosaurs. Yet even after all of this time, and even after reflection upon my obsession with dinosaurs, it never occurred to me that what I accepted as factual in terms of what my favorite dinosaurs looked like, was just guesswork. Our class discussion made this only more apparent to me as people have been drawing dinosaurs and prehistoric animals for hundreds of years which has ultimately helped shape how we envision them today. An example of this is in Henry De La Beche’s 1830 painting titled Duria Antiquior. In this painting, he depicts what appears to be prehistoric sea creatures and birds. He envisions them to have very large eyes and long jagged teeth. While some of this is based off of scientific findings such as the teeth that scientists have found of various species, the rest is his imagination. This painting has been reproduced by many individuals which further drives home the fact that people are fascinated with dinosaurs and beyond that, the imaginative nature of life beyond human comprehension.  

It is this same fascination that has driven people like Gideon Mantell to study rock layers as a way to date fossils and piece together history. It was also what drove Richard Owen, who coined the term dinosaur, to establish the Natural History Museum so that others could come and be fascinated by what he found fascinating. While at the museum we were tasked with thinking about how the exhibit relates to our major. In my discussion, I spoke about how peoples interest in dinosaurs has created an entire field dedicated to studying them, countless numbers of museums and exhibits where people can go to learn about them, and numerous Hollywood movies including the Jurassic Park series that has generated billions of dollars from people’s interest in the subject. Overall I really enjoyed this site visit because it was both a trip down memory lane as it reminded me of my early obsession with dinosaurs, and pushed me to think further about human fascination and analyze our desire to understand the world beyond our short stint of existence.