# What's the deal with kids and dinosaurs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 13, 2005, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698 "2005-05-13T16:35:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/21 "2005-05-13T19:35:58Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > No it wasn’t. You just had to be in the right place – in 1965 you could still watch a brontosaur munching on swamp plants in the GM pavilion at the NY World’s Fair. Lotta good that does for a kid in Marion, Iowa. ---
**Author:** ![aaslatten](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@aaslatten](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aaslatten)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/22 "2005-05-13T19:36:34Z")
> [@aaslatten](#): > > I would think that an interest in dinosaurs would be indicative of superior intelligence in children, but not for the reasons supposedly stated in that article. Dinosaurs are products of the imagination, but are real beings that can be studied through the fossil record, etc. Curiosity in dinosaurs would indicate to me an interest in science and natural history. Dinosaurs are cool because they are big and frightening, but they are especially cool because they once roamed the Earth. meant to say dinosaurs ARE NOT products of the imagination ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/23 "2005-05-13T19:49:51Z")
Well, I was not around in the 60s, but I read a collection of comic strips written by the Berensteins, (The same couple who wrote the Bearenstein Bears) from the same time period, and can verify that it was taken for granted that kids love dinosaurs. Also, I don’t understand the harping on a need to see automated statues. The fact that a book says they are really, really tall, to me, was enough to have ideas of what they looked like. ---
**Author:** ![Just1Lurk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c0e974/32.png) [@Just1Lurk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just1Lurk)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/24 "2005-05-13T19:54:15Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **Little Bird:** They are just so cool! And we keep finding out cooler and cooler stuff about them! Did you know that they had one way lungs? Neat! That is neat, but how did they work and how did we find out about it? ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/25 "2005-05-13T20:01:44Z")
> [@Interrobang!?](#): > > 1. Is this observation accurate? Are kids (toddler age) likely to be obsessed with dinosaurs? Just as an anecdote, my five-year-old son has shown only mild interest in dinosaurs so far. He knows what they are and thinks they look neat, but he’ll gladly ignore them for a big earthmoving machine or something related to astronomy. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/26 "2005-05-13T20:14:55Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > And we had plastic and metal dino statuettes, stuffed dino toys, dino books, trips to the natural history museum to see dino skeletons…and this was all back in my preschool years in the mid- to late 1960’s. I never had access to all that stuff. Books, yes. Little plastic models, yes. No museums. But I did have a thing called Viewmaster (remember those?), with a few dino disks. That was the coolest! > [@](#): > > Why it should be such a near-universal childhood “stage”, though, with so many kids becoming fascinated by dinosaurs and then growing out of them, Grow out of them? Grow out of them? I understand the individual words, but in this context they make no sense strung together in that fashion. I still like dinos. I think that the Jurassic Park movies are lame and horrible, but I still watch them. Because they have dinosaurs! Rawr! ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/27 "2005-05-13T20:15:37Z")
Just last night I was checking a children’s museum site on an unrelated matter. This was a national association of children’s museums. It mentioned that a dinosaur exhibit of some kind is must have at nearly all children’s museums. Anybody remember back in the '60s when the Boston Museum of Science had only a model of the head of a T-rex? They were raising money to build the whole thing. I saw that head several times as a kid. They finally got the whole creature made up, but by then, IIRC, the old square-jawed look of the T-rex had been modified, so they had an outdated dinosaur on their hands. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/28 "2005-05-13T20:22:38Z")
Another factor nobody has mentioned yet: The comparative lack of interest in the subject among adults makes it something that kids can be smarter than the grownups about. I remember going to the Natural History Museum in D.C. when I was nine or ten and having our group of people gather around me because I knew more of the names and history of what was on display than the elderly docent who was supposedly guiding the tour. The sheer novelty of being legitimately smarter about something than the available adult was pretty thrilling and kept me engaged with the subject until… well, until now, really. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/29 "2005-05-13T20:22:38Z")
Is it still there? I haven’t been in years, and I don’t remember it. All I can remember is the musical stairs. And the gift shop. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/30 "2005-05-13T20:28:06Z")
> [@](#): > > Why it should be such a near-universal childhood “stage”, though, with so many kids becoming fascinated by dinosaurs and then growing out of them, I still don’t really get. Big and scary but safely remote from everyday life? Sure, but so are lots of other critters. Yet we don’t have vast hordes of kids going through a recognized “blue-whale phase” or “elephant phase”. Kids think elephants are cool, too, just not as much (by and large, at least… I was an elephant kid all the way). I can think of a variety of reasons for this: Elephants still exist, and most kids have the opportunity to see live ones at the zoo. Elephants aren’t nearly as large as the largest dinosaurs. Elephants are all herbivorous. More is known about elephants than about dinosaurs. Elephants aren’t typically referred to by their fancy Latin names (which children are more familiar with than adults). All elephants are quadrupedal, as opposed to some dinosaurs which walk upright (like the kid does). I don’t know which of these are relevant, or to what extent, but there are plenty of differences. For blue whales, I think it’s largely a matter of relevance and ability to identify with them. A blue whale is mostly just shaped like a giant football. It only barely has identifyible arms, and no identifyible legs, and its mode of movement is completely unlike anything familiar to humans (even if a human swims, it’s a different way than a whale does, and swimming is nowhere near as natural to humans as walking). So it’s much harder for a kid to picture himself as a blue whale, which is, of course, a big part of the attraction (c’mon, who hasn’t done the Tyrannosaurus Stomp at one time or another as a kid? This is the advantage of bipedalism, mentioned above). Plus, the blue whale’s environment is completely unlike ours. While there aren’t any apatosaurs around any more, one can picture one stepping out from behind a house. A blue whale? Not so much. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/31 "2005-05-13T20:58:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Elephants still exist, and most kids have the opportunity to see live ones at the zoo. Elephants aren’t nearly as large as the largest dinosaurs. Elephants are all herbivorous. More is known about elephants than about dinosaurs. There are two varieties of elephants, and they look pretty much alike. Elephants don’t have foreheads shaped like shields, or rows of back plates, or giant teeth and tiny forelimbs. Let’s face it, dinosaurs have some pretty interesting physical features. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/32 "2005-05-13T21:28:38Z")
I remember dinosaurs being all over the place when I was a wee lad in the late 60s. There were dinosaurs in miniature golf courses. [Roadside life-size dinosaur parks.](http://www.agilitynut.com/dinos4.html) Promotional dinosaur models and inflatable dinosaurs brought to us by the good folks at [Sinclair](http://www.sinclairoil.com/about_sinclair.htm) There were dinosaurs on TV, too, from The Flintstones, to the 1968 TV adaptation of [The Enormous Egg](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316119202/002-9618286-3759219?v=glance) (a boy hatches a dinosaur egg and raises a Triceratops from a pup), to the zany Sherwood Schwartz comedy [It’s About Time](http://www.jumptheshark.com/i/itsabouttime.htm) (astronauts go back in time and encounter cavemen and dinosaurs). In comic books there was [Turok, Son of Stone](http://ksacomics.com/tarzan/14.gif) (the adventures of two Indians who discover a hidden valley full of dinosaurs). Speaking of hidden valleys, Hollywood gave us [Valley of the Gwangi](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0065163/). Yep, there was no shortage of dinosaurs to entice youngsters, as I recall. ---
**Author:** ![Runestar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/74df32/32.png) [@Runestar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Runestar)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/33 "2005-05-13T21:44:11Z")
Heck, I’m 43 and _still_ love dinosaurs. Never have grown out of it - just like TDN. If it’s got dinosaurs in it, I’m there. I’ll watch Jurassic Park I, II and III, and fast-forward through all the boring bits (translated: all the parts without the dinosaurs). I’ve got shelves of dinosaur books - some of which date back to my childhood. I bought the DVD, soundtrack CD _and_ book for Walking With Dinosaurs - a sure sign of sickness. In high school I got the chance to spend part of a one-month internship at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences preparing an _Ichthyosaurus_ skeleton for display - when that opportunity was offered to me, I damn near wet my pants. A couple of years ago Mrs. Runestar, my parents, and I travelled up to Victoria B.C. to visit the gardens there and just poke around. There was much eyebrow raising when we discovered that the Natural History museum there was hosting a temporary exhibit of Chinese dinosaurs. I had a hard time convincing everyone else that I hadn’t planned it that way… :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/34 "2005-05-13T21:50:48Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > my five-year-old son has shown only mild interest in dinosaurs so far. He knows what they are and thinks they look neat, but he’ll gladly ignore them for… something related to astronomy. That was me as a kid, for as long as I can remember. I ended up getting a master’s degree in astronomy. My favorite animal was bears, specifically polar bears. They’re just so furry and cute! ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/35 "2005-05-13T23:34:25Z")
I think a “dinosaur renaissance” occurred sometime during the '70s. It was about that time when scientists began re-examining and questioning then-long-held beliefs about the critters (not the least of which was whether “dinosaur” was a taxonomically valid term at all!). The discovery of _Deinonychus_ in 1969 by John Ostrom probably got the ball rolling - here was a critter that was definitely _not_ a slow, lumbering reptile, as they had often been portrayed in movies and art up to that point, but an active, agile hunter. One of Ostrom’s students, Robert Bakker, really got things going with his book _The Dinosaur Heresies_ in 1986, wherein he all but proclaimed that _all_ dinosaurs were active, more-or-less agile critters. At any rate, along with the scientific re-examination of these beasties came much renewed popular interest, as existing museum skeletons were dismantled and re-built in more accuate, as well as more active and dramatic, poses. And, of course, advances in technology have allowed us to bring dinos to live on the Big Screen (and even the Little Screen) far more accurately than was possible in the past. As long new discoveries keep coming in, dinos will remain in public view, and kids (and adults who never grew up…) will continue to geek out over them. They’re strange, they’re big (well, many of them , anyway…), they’re scary, they’re mysterious and they’re (mostly) dead - what’s not to love? For the longest time, until I got my first computer, my most expensive possession was a copy of [_The Dinosauria_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0520242092/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-3420833-7525516#reader-link). I forewent many a mac & cheese meal to buy that book! I’d love to go the AMNH to view their [current exhibit](http://www.amnh.org/), but I’ll probably have to wait a few years for it to get out this way (the tour is scheduled to hit the California Academy of Sciences in the future). > [@Just1Lurk](#): > > That is neat, but how did they work and how did we find out about it? You can read much about the whole dino lung debate starting with [this](http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/lung_fossils_suggest_dinos_breat.htm), and continuing [here](http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/misc/lungs.html). ---
**Author:** ![Just1Lurk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c0e974/32.png) [@Just1Lurk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just1Lurk)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/36 "2005-05-14T00:38:02Z")
Thanks for the links, **Darwin’s Finch**. I knew they’d found impressions of dinosaur skin, but actual fossil evidence of dinosaur organs - way cool! If I may extend this hijack a bit longer, how exactly do bird (and possibly dinosaur) lungs work? If I understood what I read correctly, air is drawn through the body by the expansion and contraction of air sacs, but what makes this “flow-thru?” Birds exhale, don’t they? How do they get rid of the carbon dioxide? To return to the OP, I’m also a dinophile from way back - that scene in \*Jurassic Park \* when Grant first sees the brontosaurus sent chills down my spine - and, based on my own experience, I have to agree with **tdn**. Kids love dinosaurs because they’re big and scary but not \*too \* scary. ---
**Author:** ![PapSett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/37 "2005-05-14T01:01:27Z")
a Dinophile… I like that . I am a dinophile . I grew up loving dinosurs , I watched anything and everything I could with a dinosaur in it . I read every dino book in the libraries over & over . I wanted a pet dino , brontosaurus , please . (Hell , my parents wouldn’t let me have a PONY in the backyard , dunno where I thought I was gona keep a bronto !) I am now closing in on 45 years old . I have watched the Jurassic Park trilogy more times than I can count . Walking With Dinosaurs is the Best . Thing . On . TV . Ever . The 3-D T Rex movie in IMAX is the coolest thing I have ever seen on the big screen . If they created a real Jurassic Park , I would sell my soul to go there . And I still want a pet dino , maybe not an apatosaurus (still wouldn’t fit in my backyard) , but one of the little compys would fit in nicely . Anna ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/38 "2005-05-14T01:27:34Z")
> [@Just1Lurk](#): > > If I may extend this hijack a bit longer, how exactly do bird (and possibly dinosaur) lungs work? If I understood what I read correctly, air is drawn through the body by the expansion and contraction of air sacs, but what makes this “flow-thru?” Birds exhale, don’t they? How do they get rid of the carbon dioxide? There are oodles of information about bird respiration [here](http://www.biology.eku.edu/RITCHISO/birdrespiration.html). And [here](http://bill.srnr.arizona.edu/classes/182/Birdresp.htm) are a couple summary diagrams which explain how the “one way” system works. And, if you have a Shockwave plugin for your browser, you can see an animation of the process [here](http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/multimedia/birdlungs/). > [@](#): > > To return to the OP, I’m also a dinophile from way back - that scene in \*Jurassic Park \* when Grant first sees the brontosaurus sent chills down my spine Actually, it was a _Brachiosaurus_ 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Hokkaido\_Brit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d26b3c/32.png) [@Hokkaido\_Brit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hokkaido_Brit)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/39 "2005-05-14T03:35:33Z")
I have just asked my nearly nine year old why he is so fascinated with dinosaurs - and I quote: “You can imagine what they were like and their world. You can know what shape they were from their bones but you don’t know what colour they were or how they walked or really what they ate so you can think about all that for as long as you like. They’re imaginative…” Pause… “And they’re so dead.” and another pause “And I just love them. Why are you asking me this??” So there you have it! I have grown interested in fossils and dinosaurs thanks to having to read to my kid about them ad nauseum (he doesn’t read English at his grade level, Japanese being his first language). Japanese kids also love dinosaurs too but I’d say its slightly less prevalent here. This summer when we go back to England we have booked a camping holiday in Dorset on the Jurasssic Coast, and we are going to have a great time looking for bones. My aunt found a dinopoo there and sent it to my son for his christmas present - it is his best thing ever, that and the mosasaur tooth from Santa (who was sweating when asked for an entire pterasaur…) ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698/40 "2005-05-14T13:28:28Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > As for how far back it goes – it precedes 1890. There were dinosaur models in the Crystal Palace in London decades earlier. They’re still on exhibition in London. Though, while I can’t remember where, I have seen extracts from a contemporary article in, I believe, _Punch_ satirising parents dragging their bored children to see the dinosaurs models in Sydenham. The implication was that the parents thought this natural history stuff was all terribly educational - which, in fairness, Owen and Waterhouse’s models were very much intended to be - and good for them, while the kids protested by bawling their eyes out. (Incidentally, the models have been nicely restored in recent years.) As to whether public interest in dinosaurs has fluctuated over the decades, in his essay on _Jurassic Park_, Stephen Jay Gould suggests that there’s always been some interest post-Owen, but that this has ebbed and flowed. He clearly had somewhat bitter memories of being teased, even bullied, by other kids for his own childhood obsession with them, which they didn’t share. Like **Darwin’s Finch** , he sees a particularly large surge in interest starting in the 70s. That sort of accords with my memories of growing up in the UK in the 70s: dinosaurs were interesting to me and my friends, but not something we obsessed over. Gould’s essay is in _Dinosaur in a Haystack_; there’s another relevant one, “The Dinosaur Rip-off”, in _Bully for Brontosaurus_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-kids-and-dinosaurs/303698.md?page=3)