Dinosaurs as a Cultural Phenomenon

Abstract

Few sciences have been as successful as pa leontology in remaining serious yet broad ly accessible at the same time. Much of its popularity may come from the image of the pa leontologist-explorer who pits himself against the wilderness and brings back fabulous things. The image is even partly true, because in the 19th century, dinosaurs (and paleontology) be came part of the myth of the American West. No longer were important discoveries made by European gentlemen in suits and ties who di rected a couple of workmen in an obscure quar ry Instead, fossil collecting had become pros pecting: A man with a horse and a pick?and of course a rifle?could venture out West and, like his gold-seeking cousins, bring back untold wealth from the rocks. That fantasy carries much more weight than the reality of the scientist in a lab coat, noting tiny details in endless trays of museum specimens and preoccupied more with statistics and geochemistry than with camphres in the badlands. No matter that most paleontol ogy concerns undramatic taxa like graptolites and brachiopods, the field continues to enjoy a reputation as a richly rewarded, swashbuckling enterprise. But why dinosaurs? They were not the first prehistoric creatures to gain wide attention. In 1801 Charles Willson Peale, a talented artist, showman, and inventor of the modern natu ral history museum, excavated the remains of three large mastodons from Newburgh, New York. The display of one of Peale's mastodons in Philadelphia helped start the public fascination with fossils. In the 1820s and '30s Mary Arming excavated an amazing array of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs from the Jurassic cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. In 1824 William Buckland described the world's first dinosaur?Megalosaurus?and the next year Gideon Mantell followed with the her bivorous Iguanodon. An 1830 watercolor by Hen ry de la Beche first depicted such creatures in life settings, but to judge by popular science books