Discovering your Inner Dinosaurs

Another interesting talk at Design of Understanding conference was by artist Luis Rey. He draws and paints dinosaurs. Now, any talk by a Spanish Londoner who draws and paints dinosaurs is interesting to start with, but he told a fascinating story which is even more fascinating.

Luis is a Dinosaur Geek - he wasn't content to just draw them, he had to get it abolutely right so started getting into paleontology and corresponding with all the leading dinosaur experts. This was in the 80's/90's when dinosaur reserach took two great leaps forward:

- firstly, more modern research and computer modelling revealed that dinosaurs did not walk upright, tails dragging on the ground, with waddly crocodile gaits. The long tails were part of the spine and were used as counterweights to the front, so the spine was held straight, horizontally, end to end. The carnivores even ran, very fast, more like ostriches.

- secondly, it was becoming clearer and clearer that many later dinosaurs had proto feathers, not traditional lizard skin, and in the mid 90's perfect feather fossils were fouind in Yixiang, China

So Luis had started drawing dinosaurs with straight spines and feathers (see picture above). And guess what - no-one wanted to publish them - because everyone knows that is not what dinosaurs look like. They told him he was barking - even though he was taking advice from the best authorities in the field at the time. The Jurassic Park movies coming out at the time took the decison to run many of the dinosaurs in the traditional poses as that is what dinosaurs "should" look like. It took the BBC's "Walking With Dinosaurs" to really change perception, and it was a somewhat courageous decision for them to do it (I suspect they could take the risk at the time as they do not rely on commercial funding - another reason to keep the BBC funding model there IMO)

It has taken most of the 90's and 'noughties for attitudes to change, and for feathered, fast running dinosaurs to become socially acceptable.

What amused and intrigued me is the dinosaur attitude problem (ie belief in things because of traditional received wisdom rather than keeping up with a changing fact base) even existed for dinosaurs.

But the lesson is that it took about 20 years from research findings to acceptance. It made me redouble my belief that we are seeing other many other "dinosaurs" all around us. I mean, if we can't even see dinosaurs clearly......