[ad_1]
While the excitement rises for the sequel "Jurassic Park" just out, of course being a summer blockbuster, I am brought back to the most magical scene of the original movie. "The paleontologist, played by Sam Neill, just arrived on the mysterious He is walking in an open-top jeep, which suddenly stops in a clearing, his hands shaking, Neill takes off his sunglasses and his big eyes are focused on something high on the horizon: a roaring bellowing and a pot-ram behemoth wanders through the screen, his graceful neck reaching several floors in the canopy.When Jurassic Park's theme tune begins to play, Neill staggers toward the creature: "It's … it's a dinosaur." Tired, left almost speechless at his first glimpse of a living version of the fossilized beasts that he spent his career studying.
When I first saw "Jurassic Park" at the age of 9, in the summer of 1993, it was the scene that gave life to the dinosaurs of one year. way that none of my textbooks could ever have. A quarter of a century later, it moves me for a different reason, because now I am a paleontologist. I've spent years on excavation sites and in the bowels of museums collecting, measuring and studying bones, trying to use these meager clues to decipher dinosaurs as real, growing animals, in motion and in breathing there are tens of millions of years. How would I react if a dinosaur of flesh and blood suddenly appeared before me?
It would be, I admit, very improbable. The cloning of dinosaurs remains a fantasy of science fiction because no fossil dinosaur DNA fragment has ever been discovered, despite the efforts of hordes of scientists. If that happened, though, I'd probably be as stunned as Neill's character, and intoxicated by the opportunity to see if our theories about dinosaurs are correct.
Fact Allosaurus really chop his prey to death with agape jaws? Is there a Stegosaurus use his showy backplates to woo his friends? Was the big T. rex actually covered with mangy feathers? How does a long neck sauropod like Patagotitan – The size of a Boeing 737 – lay eggs and takes care of its young? My list of questions would be infinite.
In this spirit, what I am about to say may seem sacrilege. Despite the temptation to watch a Velociraptor pursue his prey or a flock of brontosaurus thunder across the plains, I would not resurrect the dinosaurs. If there was a magic button that would deliver a real dinosaur, I would not push it.
Of course, in practical terms, I much prefer a world where I do not need to worry about a T. rex Tracks me like I'm doing a work or shop bike at the mall. I also left the philosophical treatise only because "nature" killed the dinosaurs with the wall of an asteroid six miles wide, more than 60 million years before the first hominid stands on his hind legs would be the height of human hubris to bring them back.
But there are two arguments that really upset me.
First, bring back T. rex and Triceratops I think I would just be cruel. They lived in the late Cretaceous, 70-66 million years ago, while the world was very different. It was much warmer, there were no ice caps, the sea level was high and the oceans were thrown far into the earth, and the continents were in other positions. The dinosaurs would have breathed different air (there was so much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), eaten different foods (the grasses and flowers were just starting to evolve and there was no need for them to eat. there were more meadows or vast flowering forests). different animals (the mammals were a little more messy creatures rushing into the shadows).
Could a T. rexWho has evolved in this time and place, even being able to survive in our modern world? It would be like a human trying to do it on Venus.
Secondly, and putting aside all ethics, we do not really need to bring back T. rex and its Cretaceous (or Jurassic) kinship if we want to be inspired by real living dinosaurs among us. We must not lose sight of one of the most amazing facts ever discovered by paleontologists: the dinosaurs are still there, in the form of birds. The birds evolved from dinosaurs, making them dinosaurs. They have dinosaur DNA in their bodies, dinosaur blood in their veins, and many of them echo their dinosaur ancestors as they hunt with their talons, protect their nests, fight their rivals on the territory, brandish their flaming feathers to attract their companions, and use their great brains and their sharp senses to navigate.
The chickens, ostriches, turkeys, eagles and other 10,000 birds of today are just as "dinosaur" as T. rex or Triceratops – and they are already part of our world. Let's focus on enjoying them and keeping them, rather than on the wild notion of raising T. rex deaths.
* * *
Steve Brusatte is a faculty member of the University of Edinburgh and author of the new book "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs", which tells the story of the evolution of the original dinosaurs to extinction and the stories of women and men around the world. this story.
Source link
