Paleontological Challenge: Avert the "Dumb, Slow-Moving Dinosaur" Perception

Dinosaurs in both culture and paleontology were depicted as dumb, lizard-like beasts really up until Jurassic Park revitalized their image with proper scientific understanding (with some creative liberties of course). Despite the work of John Ostrom in the 1960s with Dromeosaurs, the idea of dinosaurs being active, dynamic animals never really entered the public consciousness until said move.

How could this idea been prevented, or at least have a lessened impact?

I believe that the depiction of dinosaurs in early films like King Kong and the Lost World are what really led to the public belief that dinosaurs were lumbering and slow. If some early director makes the decision that his film is going to have fast dinosaurs then that's probably how they're going to be known.

Sir Richard Owen is key here - when Gideon Mantell, the discoverer of Iguanodon, came forward with theories that Iguanodon was bipedal and more light-weight than Owen believed, he claimed that Owen himself and George Cuiver discovered Iguanodon. Owen went against Mantell's research when he described the dinosaurs for the Crystal Palace models that were the Jurassic Park of the Victorian era, setting the tone for public perception of dinosaurs for decades. Mantell and Owen had a famous rivalry, with Owen authoring Mantell's obituary claiming he had done nothing of note - inaddition, he later had a section of Mantell's spine removed, pickled and kept on a shelf in the Royal College, where it remained until 1969.

So yeah. Maybe avoid that extended scuffle and we might have at least slightly more accurate dinosaurs.

It might help if some of the early discoveries are of some of the more birdlike dinosaurs--getting them identified with warmblooded birds instead of coldblooded lizards would probably least to public perceptions of dinosaurs (dinornithes?) as more active creatures.

I wonder how much of this reflects the social darwinist views of the original paleontologists.

I've read that in the late 19th century Dinosaurs were seen as active and reasonably intelligent (how else could they have dominated mammals?). Archaeopteryx and Compsagnathus helped with that. I'm not certain what caused the belief in slowness.

Faeelin said:

I wonder how much of this reflects the social darwinist views of the original paleontologists.

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From what I've read (which admittedly was several years ago) this was quite a bit of it. Early on it was believed that species which went extinct were those who were lesser than modern species. So the idea of dinosaurs was changed to slow, stupid creatures, and it was this that killed them.

Get some other theory about their deaths to emerge earlier and it might help to make a (relatively) more realistic version of dinosaurs.

Beedok said:

I've read that in the late 19th century Dinosaurs were seen as active and reasonably intelligent (how else could they have dominated mammals?). Archaeopteryx and Compsagnathus helped with that. I'm not certain what caused the belief in slowness.

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This seems to be true. The first great dinosaur illustrator was Charles R. Knight, who worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His early illustrations showed highly active, dynamic dinosaurs, such as in his painting below. However, when the scientific orthodoxy changed, his illustrations changed to match.

Mongo said:

This seems to be true. The first great dinosaur illustrator was Charles R. Knight, who worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His early illustrations showed highly active, dynamic dinosaurs, such as in his painting below. However, when the scientific orthodoxy changed, his illustrations changed to match.

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for everyone's reference, the painting here depicts Dryptosaurus (also known as Laelaps) which was discovered in 1866, and the painting itself is from 1896

perhaps if Knight was even MORE prolific, it would have affected the public perception of dinosaurs?

oshron said:

for everyone's reference, the painting here depicts Dryptosaurus (also known as Laelaps) which was discovered in 1866, and the painting itself is from 1896

perhaps if Knight was even MORE prolific, it would have affected the public perception of dinosaurs?

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If wasn't just him supporting that. The Bird-Dinosaur connection was more or less unchallenged during the period after Archaeopteryx for quite a while. I think the American rush finding so many large sauropods and other quadrepeds may have been what undid it. (Maybe?)

Beedok said:

If wasn't just him supporting that. The Bird-Dinosaur connection was more or less unchallenged during the period after Archaeopteryx for quite a while. I think the American rush finding so many large sauropods and other quadrepeds may have been what undid it. (Maybe?)

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you mean the Bone Wars? that'd certainly be an interesting POD...

I'm not sure that Marsh and Cope not being bitter rivals would change anything. It was a slow but perceptable cultural shift which meant Dinosaurs had to be slow and lumbering otherwise why did they die out(as mentioned in previous posts), there had to be a progression of life leading UP to Man (who was made in God's image), and that was only if you didn't believe that the earth was created in about 4000BC. This shift culminated in the evolution trial. I'm not sure how you avert this shift because the people who led it were not unintelligent.

A similar resistance is that to Continental Drift which only became widely accepted in the 1960s when morphed into Plate Tectonics as Magnetic Data from the sea floor became widely known.

So perhaps it would have needed even more fossils being found in the 19th and early 20th centuries to help provide the evidence required. For example more fossils with evidence of feathers would be a help.