"For my father, who took me to see the Tyrannosaurus when I was five"

This dedication is explicitly and highly self-consciously copied from that of the first "popular" book published (way back in the year I started college!) by the late Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist and popular science writer extraordinaire, and by far the greatest science teacher I ever had. It happens that his father took him to see the very same fossil Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton (at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City) at the very same age. All similarities between the two of us end there!

A few years ago, in a "scientifically correct" but controversial move, the Museum re-posed the Tyrannosaurus as part of an extensive renovation of its venerable dinosaur halls. When Dr. Gould and I were first inspired and awed by it, it was posed "reared up" on its hind legs, maximizing its overall impressive height in relation to the Lilliputian people viewing it from below. Careful biomechanical studies, based on more recently discovered and more complete fossil specimens, have come to the conclusion that it would probably have dislocated its hips, broken its tail vertebrae, and perhaps fallen over backwards by trying to actually do this. It is therefore now reconstructed in the crouching-while-running position made so familiar to this generation by the famous jeep-chase scene in the first (and best) Jurassic Park movie, and illustrated on the home page. I made a pilgrimage back Up North to see the "new" Tyrannosaurus a few years ago. Although the new pose does have the advantage of bringing the huge head and teeth closer, somehow I'm not sure if it will inspire new generations of future paleontologists and earth/life science teachers in quite the same way.


from http://www.amazon.com