[Dinosaur Birthday Party] ...Public fascination with dinosaurs...(continued)

1 view

Skip to first unread message

Opa Bert

unread,

Apr 15, 2005, 6:58:09 PM4/15/05

to dinobl...@googlegroups.com

[http://www.dinosaursrockca.com]

(Here is the 4th in a series of blogs,
presenting Mr. Holland's article.)
(Please Note : TV listing may be outdated)

By contrast, if dinosaurs are not a feature of the Millennium Dome then it is presumably because they have long since ceased to be seen as exclusive national property. As with industrialisation and cricket, so with dinosaur studies - a British lead soon melted away. Finds in England had mostly consisted of isolated teeth or bones, but from the 1870s complete skeletons began to be dug up in the Rockies. The lead in palaeontological research passed across the Atlantic, never to return, but it was the revelation of the dinosaurs' sheer scale that really impressed the American public, for many of the skeletons were the size of apartment blocks. Even in prehistoric times, it seemed, things in America had been the biggest and the best.

In fact, the great rush to excavate dinosaurs was a more fitting metaphor for the way their country was developing than most Americans would have cared to admit. Palaeontologists were borne west on the same flood of immigrants that wiped out both the buffalo and the Indian way of life. The greed for spectacular specimens led America's two leading palaeontologists, Professors Cope and Marsh, to pursue the most vicious personal rivalry in the history of science, as their rival gangs stole or smashed up each other's collections of bones. Eventually their struggle to establish a monopoly led to the ruin of both their fortunes; in a parody of his customary ruthless business practice, it was left to that arch-monopolist Andrew Carnegie to step in and take over the funding of the hunt for dinosaur bones. It was size he was interested in, colossal specimens that would match the monstrous scale of his own business interests. The skeleton that dominates the main hall of the London Natural History Museum was a gift from him, and still bears witness to Mammon's appropriation of the dinosaur: its scientific name remains Diplodocus Carnegii.