Dinosaur Days

A week or so before we left CA for PA, Sam found a book on dinosaurs and became interested, especially in some of the long and torturous names. So we’ve been reading a variety of dinosaur books, some serious and some silly. And we did one dinosaur craft shortly before our trip: a sponge-painted stegosaurus with clothespin-spiky plates:

(Thanks to No Time for Flash Cards for the idea.)

Some of the silly dinosaur books we’ve been reading include:
Tyrannosaurus Drip by the fabulous Julia Donaldson

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything

and an old favorite from Sam’s baby days

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight.

We’ve also read a couple of “serious” non-fiction books about dinosaurs for preschoolers too, although my favorite is a fictional-framed story by Vivian French called T. Rex.

During a visit to a natural history museum a boy and his grandfather discuss the dinos. What I appreciate about the treatment is that the story emphasizes 1) that we don’t know much about the dinosaurs, and 2) that much of what we do know is speculation.

And how! We had an illustration of this point just today. I was showing Sam an old dinosaur activity book that was mine, back in the days of my own dino-obsession, oh a good 30 years ago (or more… who’s the dinosaur here?) Sam was particularly taken with one of the games where you have to trace a path to Oviraptor’s preferred food. According to the book, Oviraptor ate eggs. And that’s how he got his name. Egg-robber. Fine. Sounds plausible, right?

So we decide to make our own Oviraptor and eggs.

But while Sam was gluing the eggs to the dinosaur’s habitat, I googled Oviraptor. According to Wikipedia, and a couple of other dino sites I consulted, Oviraptor’s name and character is under much dispute. It may not have been an egg-robber but an egg-protector. The first Ovi skeleton, discovered in 1923, was found among eggs. But was the dinosaur hoarding the eggs as food or brooding them?

I find myself fascinated not so much by what the answer might turn out to be, but by the deeper, epistemological issue underlying the question. Everything we know about the dinosaurs is a best guess, a reconstruction of bones and fossils. And that knowledge keeps shifting and growing as we dig deeper, or as different people dig, and ask different questions, and look at the pieces in a different way.

Isn’t that the way of all knowledge? I think so. Dinosaur study reminds me of the usefulness of scientific skepticism. It reminds me to not draw conclusions too hastily. As the grandfather in T. Rex says, “Maybe yes, or maybe no– it was millions and millions of years ago.”

Meanwhile, the cardboard Oviraptor was finished. Sam had colored it pink. (“Mommy, it looks like a flaminglo!”) I also drew a T. Rex to hunt the Oviraptor, but Sam had other ideas. As soon as I’d cut him out, a conversation took place in which Ovi decided that T. Rex was his daddy. Then the two dinos asked me for a mommy dinosaur. So I drew a Diplodicus and we cut her out. And so the family consisted of a carnivore, a herbivore, and a possible egg-robber. Scientific skepticism, right?

Sam is all for it. She proceeded to feed the dinos, bathe them, and put them to bed under a blanket made of pink construction paper.

How’s that for revisionist natural history?