Dinosaurs

Totalitarianism now seems now out of vogue, as is oligarchy. Praise be!

All political polls say so—The Leaning Tower of Pisa Poll, The What-Goes-Around-Comes- Around Poll, the prestigious Google Poll of Amateur Statisticians.

It seems that the idea of freedom began in the Age of Dinosaurs. Perhaps, we’re now nearing a new Age, the Age of Asking Questions, while listening to bright children wonder aloud: where did dinosaurs come from? Were dinosaurs really real?

Well, I’m child of 74. I’d actually been thinking recently about dinosaurs, and their human representatives on the earth mankind presently inhabits. And so, I asked a paleontologist the other night about dinosaurs, asking this question of him, an expert: are dinosaur’s, conjectural constructions?

He laughed at my question at first, and then he said to me, “Yes, dinosaurs existed, the Science proves it.”   

The paleontologist had spent his life studying dinosaurs, going on digs around world, knowing the differences between the Triassic Age and the Jurassic, when the supercontinent Pangaea began breaking into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south…

His answer though was not completely satisfying. The room in which my question was asked and that his answer was provided was once underwater at least 183 million years ago! Dinosaur bones, dinosaur footprints, even dinosaur eggs had been found by paleontologist’s, complete reconstruction of dinosaurs had been created and installed in famous institutions all around the world! Yet frankly, some of these reconstructions seemed fishy to me, some of them didn’t look authentic, as if disparate parts of a suppositional beast had been in fact cobbled together by a professional paleontologist in the basement of the Met in New York City.  And what can be said now about climate change? About oil and gas companies underwriting the scientific research supporting the paleontologist’s search for dinosaurs?

Last night, I shared my question to the paleontologist with a friend in California. She had a much better question: “why do you think, Brooks, children are so fascinated with dinosaurs?”