When scientific facts intersect with scientific fiction, people pay attention. Such has been the case with Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s spotting of the 3I/Atlas comet heading towards Earth. Such also has been the case with the massive popularity of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World series that brought paleontology to the forefront of pop culture.
The one thing you realize when you look up at a life-sized dinosaur is that we humans are small, weak and defenseless. Those giants could easily eat a human or two for breakfast and still be hungry.
T-Rex was the ultimate killer, but even the smaller carnivores had massive claws. The Utah Raptor, for example, was a pack-hunting species of dinosaur the size of a cougar.
The setting for Moab Giants in Moab, Utah is the perfect location to pay homage to the ancient ancestors of our modern-day feathered friends. I tell my eight-year-old, Abby, “They kind of looked and moved like our backyard chickens.”
“That’s so cool, dad!” she exclaims.
It’s rare to get that kind of accolade from her aside from a screen or movie. We were enjoying the life-sized dinos so much that we missed our showtime to watch Moab Giants’ film. But we heard it is very cool. Grand County’s dinosaur park offers a fun retelling of one of history’s most ancient stories.
This former playground for dinosaurs once stretched from Moab, north to Vernal and Dinosaur National Park. Once a lush oceanside paradise, this was the Italian Riviera for dinosaurs. For more than 200 million years, dinosaurs lived, flourished and eventually died off due to rapid climate change.
To put human existence into perspective, the dinosaurs’ reign on earth lasted 180 million years. Humans have been around in their current form for less than 200,000 years. Dinos were around 825 times longer than we have been. Only crocodiles and sharks have been around longer.
The best way to understand the history of the former dominant species on earth is by reading the rocks. I’ve come across a few rock readers in my day. Moab’s late Lin Ottinger was one. Moab Giants’ resident paleontologist and science director, Paul Murphy, is another. Paul has a wealth of knowledge which he uses to inform visitors in the outdoor and indoor museums. The science of paleontology is reliable and accurate, but rock reading, using some conjecture and imagination, is a little more interesting.
Unlike the Jurassic Park films, Moab Giants shows how we tell the actual story of the dinosaurs. We need to examine their dynasties in geological eras within the Messezoic era: Jurassic, Triassic, and Cretaceous, with the last era being the most interesting. This is because, while the movie is named Jurassic Park, it would be more accurate to call it Cretaceous Park, because this is when the biggest and most violent creatures reigned.
Due to global meteor strikes and more violent geological activity, the atmosphere for the dinosaurs was abundant, with up to 25 times more c02 than we have today. Moab was a lush jungle with an inland sea that stretched across the entire middle of the US and Canada. This caused mega-flora (giant plants) to be followed by mega-fauna (enormous animals), which began a multi-million-year biological arms race. Dynasties rose and fell. The elimination of entire species created new opportunities for niche creatures to flourish.
T-Rex was the king, but the smaller pack-hunting Mapusaurus and the large spinal-plated Spinosaurus were also dominant over the herbivores and pacifistic brontosaurus.
The stories of the dinosaurs seem far too remote to fully comprehend. While meandering around the park with Abby, we become fascinated by how Giants tell the story, from small dinos during the Jurassic period, to very large dinos during the Cretaceous. They tell the story by showing the creatures who were dominating the storyline in their respective pathological eras.
The story feels like the rocks they are made of: cold and distant. Certainly there is a larger story to tell and comprehend, which is exactly why paleontology is so fascinating. The story is ever-unfolding as humans gain new insight. Dino DNA offers many more clues, but organic matter is seldom found. Is there trapped dino DNA from mosquitoes trapped in amber? No, even the best preserved DNA collected isn’t more than 800,000 years old.
For the short-term, we will need to leave it to science fiction authors and rock readers to contemplate and study. But like all past eras that have risen and fallen, the glimpses we get into the past reveal one fact that is certain: it’s good to be living in the here and now!
Feature Image Photo by Richard Markosian.
