… That view didn’t change until the 1960s, when a few renegade scientists, led by John Ostrom, began to imagine quick, agile, hotblooded dinosaurs. This perception was elaborated, so that by the early twentieth century, dinosaurs had become so weak that they could not support their own weight. … the Victorians made them fat, lethargic, and dumb – big dopes from the past. That was still the most accurate description of these creatures, Malcolm thought. Velociraptor skeletal cast at the Dinosaur Journey museum in Colorado (original photo by Jens Lallensack)Īnother theme, naturally, is the changing scientific view of dinosaurs, and indeed other things, over time (in fact, the book and film are already out-of-date in some respects): “ Back in the 1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards.
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