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Fictional Portrayal of Dinosaurs Examined

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Carcharodontosaurus saharicus skull.

William A. S. Sarjeant published a review of fictional portrayals of dinosaurs.[1] Sarjeant observed only two mentions of dinosaurs in fiction in the entire nineteenth century.[1] Even after the 1912 publication of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World dinosaurs still did not become common in fiction.[1] However, around this time they started appearing in works aimed at children. Dinosaurs didn't become abundant in literature until after 1955 in paleontology.[1] Dinosaur-themed fiction is important in that it reflects the growth of science understanding of the ancient world and occasionally "anticipates" new developments.[1] Further, many paleontologists describe their interest in dinosaurs as having been kindled or initially inspired by fiction.[1] In modern times many paleontologists have taken to writing such work targeting young or popular audiences to inspire enthusiasm for others.[1]

The first mention of dinosaurs in fiction is a one-off remark in the opening of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, published in 1852-1853.[2] The second of the two nineteenth century references occurs in The Fossil Spirit: A Boy's Dream of Geology.[3] The story features a fakir from Hindostan telling a group of boys about his past lives as prehistoric creatures throughout geologic time, including a life as an Iguanodon who was attacked by a Megalosaurus.[3] Sarjeant laments that apart from the fakir's story about his conflict with the Megalosaurus the book was a "singularly turgid and heavily didactic text."[3] For the rest of the nineteenth century dinosaurs made no more fictional appearances, although some authors gave treatment to recently extinct creatures and primitive humans.[3] The next major appearance of dinosaur in print was The Lost World. Sarjeant says the dinosaurs in the book were "excellently described" but said that further enjoyment of the work came from the "interplay between the personalities of expedition members".[3] Sarjeant praised Professor Challenger as the best character Conan Doyle had created besides Sherlock Holmes and said he was always reminded of the dispute about Darwinian evolution between Thomas Huxley and Sir Richard Owen when considering Challenger's disputes with Professor Summerlee.[3] Sarjeant conceded, however, that Dana Batory has uncovered more likely influences on Conan Doyle's design for these two characters.[3]

In 1919 Charles G. D. Roberts published an unusually factual portrayal of the Mesozoic World in a book titled In the Morning of Time.[3] In 1939, the first addition of The Sword and the Stone has the young King Arthur learn from a talking snake about a "war" between Ceratosaurus nasicornis and Atlantosaurus immanis.[4] The snake says that the last Atlantosaurus became known as the dragon slain by St. George.[5] This chapter was removed from subsequent editions of the book in what Sarjeant lamented were "ill-conceived editorial cuts."[5]

The idea of an underworld as a refuge for prehistric life was first used in 1864's Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, although dinosaurs didn't make their debut in such a location until Edgar Rice Burroughs began writing the seven novels about Pellucidar.[6] This fictional setting was one of the first attempts to imagine a world where dinosaurs had evolved into an intelligent civilization.[6] In 1957 Russian geologist Vladimir Obruchev wrote a novel where a team of scientists find an arctic entry to a subterranean world populated by dinosaurs as well as other forms of prehistoric life and giant tortoises. Sarjeant describes this novel's ending as "blea[k]" since after returning to the surface all of the scientists become involved in World War I and "all their trophies and even their lives are lost."[6] A dinosaur-filled underworld appeared in comicbook form in an anonymously written Wizard serial during the late 40s.[6]

C. H. Sternberg's non-fiction work Hunting Dinosaurs in the Badlands of the Red Deer River Valley, Alberta concludes with a series of fictional chapters where Sternberg dreams of traveling back in time to the various ages of prehistory.[7] In three stories Edgar Rice Burroughs imagines a passive sort of time travel where a "Land that Time Forgot"called Caprona that contains every stage of evolution from fish to primitve humans.[8] John Taine's 1934 novel Before the Dawn has another method for passive time travel where the characters use a "televisor" to see into the past.[8] Themes of time travel began appearing in works aimed at children, too, including a radio series by the BBC titled How Things Began.[8] Two short stories in the collection of dinosaur related fiction and non-fiction, The Ultimate Dinosaur imagined the minds of people under physical or emotional stress being projected back into the past.[8] Lyon Sprague de Camp's 1956 short story "A Gun for Dinosaur" portrayed wealthy hunters being guided by a professional big game hunter back to the Mesozoic "to hunt the biggest game of all."[8] Sprague de Camp later expanded this concept to a series of short stories published as Rivers of Time.[9] Various other collections of short stories contain works with themes of time travel, including Behold the Mighty Dinosaur, Dinosaur Tales, and Dinosaur Fantastic.[10]

The Dechronization of Sam Magruder was a work by George Gaylord Simpson not published until after his death.[10] Sarjeant described it as the "most poignant" story of time travel to the Mesozoic wherein the stranded titular character gradually succumbs to injuries accumulated while hunting dinosaurs leaving behind only stone slabs he's written his story on.[10]

There are many dubious reports of live dinosaurs being seen in remote locations.[11] However, since these reports were intended to be interpreted as factual accounts, Sarjeant ignored them.[11] Instead, he examined fictional literature for portrayals of contemporary dinosaurs surviving in isolates refugia.[11] Sarjeant found only two authors portraying such a notion.[11] The first being Conan Doyle's The Lost World.[11] The second was the 1923 novel Men of the Mist, "which hypothesizes the survival of a solitary carnosaur in a fumerole-heated Alaskan valley."[11] Fictional portrayals of dinosaurs surviving to interact with humans include Dinotopia as well as Robert Marsh's 1983 book How to Keep Dinosaurs.[11] Marsh envisioned a world where dinosaurs had survived widely enough where humans could keep them as pets and speculates on what their dispositions would be like and additionally speculates on requirements for their care.[11] Greg Bear's 1998 book Dinosaur Summer imagines that the discovery of Maple White Land in Conan Doyle's The Lost World ignites a fad for dinosaur themed circuses.[11] When the fad ends, the protagonist takes captive dinosaurs back to Maple White Land to release them. Sarjeant notes that most stories featuring a live dinosaur ends with "the customary slaying of the beast."[11]

Sarjeant also documented works featuring dinosaurs resurrected or reconstructed through scientific means.[11] Jurassic Park was one such work Sarjeant said he enjoyed both the book and movie based on it.[11] He credits the film version with "greatly increasing public interest in dinosaurs in many countries."[11] However, he described its sequel, The Lost World as "disappointing" and attacked Crichton for "arrogantly appropriat[ing]" Conan Doyle's title.[12] Sarjeant was disappointed in the film, too, calling it "one of the most hackneyed (and most patently flawed) of all Hollywood epics."[13] Sarjeant also noted that scientifically reconstructed dinsaurs were present in "Shakers of the Earth," a short story in The Ultimate Dinosaur compilation featuring genetically reconstructed Seismosaurs.[13]

The Eden trilogy, published from 1984 to 1888 was a work of speculative fiction that posited a world where dinosaurs evolved a civilization.[13] Mankind has also evlved in Harrisons setting and was beginning to compete with them.[13] Sarjeant said these works' illustrated zoological appendices "give them a particular charm".[13]

Dougal Dixon's The New Dinosaurs was a speculative work imagining what earth would be like if the dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animal groups had never been succeeded by mammals.[13] Sarjeant describes it as "truly remarkable and infinitely painstaking".[13]

Dinosaur themed literature aimed at children first target older, experienced readers.[14] The earliest work aimed at children young enough to be new readers was a 1960 French language book called Pataud, le petit dinosaure.[14] Sarjeant called it a "charmin[g]" book and "remarkable" that the earliest dinosaur book aimed at children was French since "French children do not share North American children's fascination" wih dinosaurs.[14] Bronto the Dinosaur was another 1960s work aimed at children with a similar story to Pataud.[14] The book was marketed as "educationally sound, Sarjeant said the book "cannot justly make that claim" on the basis of several scientific improbabilities.[14] In 1985 Marie Halun Bloch published an "unusual" work of fiction called Footprints in the Swamp telling the story of the end of the dinosaurs from the point of view of the surviving mammals.[15]

Sarjeant also noted that works of humor and poetry about dinosaurs were also written.[16] Like the 1988 Tyrannosaurus was a Beast by Jack Prelutsky. 1994 saw the publication of 1001 More Dinosaur Jokes for Kids by an author writing under the pseudonym Alice Saurus.[16] Sarjeant admitted amusement at the punny pen name, but said the book overall was "excruciating."[16]

Dinosaurs have made appearances in various space-themed works.[17] Sarjeant criticized these portrayals as lacking "any real echoes of [the dinosaurs'] terrestrial condition".[17] Anne McAffrey imagined a planet called Ireta populated by dinosaurs transplanted there by aliens attempting to preserve Earth's Mesozoic biosphere before it would inevitably become extinct.[17] Two books explored this setting, 1978's Dinosaur Planet, and a 1984 sequel called Dinosaur Planet Survivors.[17] Other literature using the concept of a Mesozoic ecosystem transplanted by extraterrestrials includes the 1992-1994 Quintaglio trilogy by Robert Sawyer.[17] Sarjeant called these the "most developed science fiction treatment of dinosaurs".[17] These books involve intelligent theropods whose science has developed to the point that their paleontologists are studying the fossils left by their ancestors.[17]

L. Sprague and Catherine Crook de Camp took a different approach to science fictional portrayals of dinosaur paleontology.[17] Their 1983 novel The Bones of Zora has an "interstellar" feud occur between paleontologists competing for access to fossils on the fictional planet Krishna.[17] Sarjeant compared this fictional rivalry to the real life Bone Wars.[17]

Sarjeant describes the appearance of dinosaurs in the Star Trek franchise's 1995 novel Star Trek: The First Frontier as "Predictabl[e] enough".[17]

Dinosaurs and paleontological themes tend not to be common in crime fiction and are often only incidental to the plot.[18] The first crime novel to feature "relevant" dinosaur paleontology motifs was the 1976 adaptation by John Harvey of One of our Dinosaurs is Missing.[19] In 1994, a murder mystery novel called The Last Dinosaur was published by Sandy Dengler.[19] A character is apparently killed by a life size movie set Tyrannosaurus prop, but "the dinosaur is not guilty!"[19] The 1999 novel Bones, by John Paxson was described by Sarjeant as being the "best crime fiction novel concerning dinosaurs".[19] Sarjeant praised its portrayal of "the relation between amateur bone hunters and professional paleontologists" and said "the crime pivots upon very believable jealousies concerning a crucial scientific discovery."[19]

Some fictional works have attempted to portray paleontological research and history.[20] Badlands by Robert Kroetsch was 1975 novel portraying an expedition of "eccentric" paleontologists seeking the remains of dinosaurs along the Red Deer River.[20] Pictures From a Trip by Tim Rumsey tells a "believable" story of three bone hunters in the American West.[20] An incident from the book involving the accidental shattering of a Triceratops horn "must cause a sympathetic shiver in the mind of any paleontologist."[20] The Bone Wars was a 1988 novel by Kathryn Lasky set in Montana during eponymous feud between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh.[20]

The Year of the Dinosaur, published in 1977 was an early attempt to educate readers about the Mesozoic through fiction.[20] It was written by well-known paleontologists Edwin H. Colbert and illustrated by his wife, Margaret.[20] This story describes a year in the life of a "brontosaur".[20] A similar approach was taken by Robert T. Bakker in 1995's Raptor Red, a novel about "the adventures and misadventures of a migrating female Utahraptor."[20] Phil Currie, who himself got interested in dinosaurs due to their portrayal in fiction, has collaborated with other authors on a book series.[21] Each installment portrays the life of a different dinosaur genus and includes a "briefer" factual section at the end.[22]

Sarjeant noted that Mill's The Fossil Spirit portrays the contemporary scientific reconstructions of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus faithfully, although they turned out false.[23] Many early writers portrayed dinosaurs faithfully in line with inaccurate scientific understandings of dinosaurs as cold-blooded and stupid.[23] Conan Doyle's The Lost World and George Gaylord Simpson's The Dechronization of Sam Magruder both fell into this trap.[23] However, Edgar Rice Burroughs, however "anticipated later scientific deduction" by portraying his dinosaurs in ways suggestive of better intelligence than the portrayals of other authors.[23]

For a long time scientists believed that sauropod dinosaurs needed to stay in water in order to allow buoyancy to support their massive weight.[23] Conan Doyle's The Lost World features an apparent sauropod walking on land, but since it does end up in water known to house marine reptiles Conan Doyle may have actually been describing his interpretation of an elasmosaur.[23] Obruchev definitely saw sauropods as being able to move about effectively on land and so "was ahead of scientific opinion."[24]

Theropods were sometimes portrayed as killing prey by leaping on them.[25] This motif derives from Charles R. Knight's painting of fighting Dryptosaurus.[25] However, modern scientists doubt whether the larger carnivorous dinosaurs were physically capable of leaping.[25]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle incorrectly accepted the prevailing scientific consensus that pterosaurs were poor fliers who depended on gliding to travel, and portrayed them as such in The Lost World.[25] Authors of paleontological fiction perpetuated this false scenario for the next seventy years.[25] However, Sarjeant noted in their favor that even "recent and ... authoritative" works had perpetuated the same falsehood so he didn't feel that fiction authors should be blamed for their misconceptions.[25] Sarjeant also noted that while Conan Doyle underestimated pterosaur flying abilities he anticipated the later scientific conclusion that they were social animals.[25] Conan Doyle also portrayed some pterosaurs as carrion eaters, which fits with some modern scientists' proposal that Quetzalocatlus was a vulture-like scavenger.[25] Sarjeant said it is "hard to assess" whether pterosaurs were as smart as birds, but thinks the idea to be "plausible".[26] He thinks the intelligent pterosaurs descended from Quetzalcoatlus that populate Anne McCaffery's fiction are plausible.[26]

In 1937, Morant imagined a feathered dinosaur-like animal that lived during the Triassic and glided about on four wings.[26] This portrayal reflected contemporary scientific speculations attempting to reconstruct the hypothetical ancestor of birds.[26] Fossils from China later revealed the existence of just this sort of animal.[26]

Sarjeant encouraged writers to speculate on the distribution of feathers throughout the different dinosaur groups "before further scientific discoveries spoil the fun of such speculations."[26]

Sarjeant described the literary quality of most fictional works depicting dinosaurs as low during the period when they first became a popular subject in the 1970s, although he praised their imagination.[27] Afterwards, however Sarjeant feels that dinosaur-themed literature has generally become high quality and generally making sincere attempts to be scientifically accurate.[27] He finds their speculations on dinosaurs behavior and "in particular" coloration intriguing.[27] Sarjeant praised dinosaur-themed fiction as informative, "very enjoyable" and as a potential source of inspiration for future scientists.[27] Sarjeant criticized "so-called serious English scholars" for not valuing imagination in fiction highly enough in comparison to works centered on the human condition.[27]

Footnotes

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Abstract," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 504.
  2. ^ "Introduction," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 504-505.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h "Introduction," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 505.
  4. ^ "Introduction," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 505-507.
  5. ^ a b "Introduction," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 507.
  6. ^ a b c d "Dinosaurs in an Underworld," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 507.
  7. ^ "Travelers in Time," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 507.
  8. ^ a b c d e "Travelers in Time," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 508.
  9. ^ "Travelers in Time," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 508-510.
  10. ^ a b c "Travelers in Time," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 510.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Dinosaurs Surviving Today," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 511.
  12. ^ "Dinosaurs Surviving Today," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 511-512.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g "Dinosaurs Surviving Today," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 512.
  14. ^ a b c d e "Dinosaurs for Younger Children," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 512.
  15. ^ "Dinosaurs for Younger Children," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 512-514.
  16. ^ a b c "Dinosaurs for Younger Children," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 514.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Flights into Space and Crime," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 514.
  18. ^ "Flights into Space and Crime," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 514-516.
  19. ^ a b c d e "Flights into Space and Crime," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 516.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Approaches to Reality," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 516.
  21. ^ "Approaches to Reality," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 516-518.
  22. ^ "Approaches to Reality," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 518.
  23. ^ a b c d e f "Evolving Concepts," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 518.
  24. ^ "Evolving Concepts," in Sarjeant (2001). Pages 518-519.
  25. ^ a b c d e f g h "Evolving Concepts," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 519.
  26. ^ a b c d e f "Evolving Concepts," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 522.
  27. ^ a b c d e "Conclusions," in Sarjeant (2001). Page 525.

Info used in

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References

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  • Sarjeant, W. A. S., 2001, Dinosaurs in fiction: In: Mesozoic Vertebrate Life, edited by Tanke, D. H., and Carpenter, K., Indiana University Press, p. 504-529.
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