Notes on Dinosaurs

1. Ichthyosaur fossil at the Natural History Museum, London, with the author's wife standing in to provide a sense of scale:

2. The work and contributions of the persons mentioned in this paragraph is ably summarized in The Great Naturalists, ed by Robert Huxley (London: Thames & Hudson/Natural History Museum, 2007).

3. We see this kind of dis-integrity on public display at the more than a dozen 'Creation Museums' in the US, where dioramas display dinosaurs living alongside humans (see photo above). These museums may claim that what they do is present their honest interpretation. How many of the tens of thousands of children who visit the museum understand that what they saee are merely 'interpretations'? How many of the parents who bring their children to visit the museum remind their children that what they see are 'interpretations' by the museum, and keep reminding them about it when they talk about it afterwards?

4. Stephen O'Brien, Tears of the Cheetah (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003).