
American Tycoons Created the Dinosaur - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/75/story/how-american-tycoons-created-the-dinosaur
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beautifulfreak
I'm having trouble believing that American Tycoons created the dinosaur on the
basis of this article. Except for the Carnegie Natural History Museum, no
tycoons are named. But we're supposed to believe that tycoons felt the
dinosaurs symbolized them in the evolutionary change in business and culture.
That's an odd claim, but there's no evidence it extends from anything but the
author's imagination. No substance!

Edit: Oh, I see, it's an excerpt from a book about tycoons and dinosaurs. I
guess the rest of the book builds the case.

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dmix
> Their immense size and outlandish appearance all but ensured that dinosaurs
> would become a mass public spectacle.

It seems the public is very similar to the tycoons in many respects...

> Not only did dinosaurs reflect the obsession with all things big and
> powerful that prevailed at the time

Was this really unique to the time? We've been building giant pyramidal altars
then later skyscrapers and massive gardens and other. Even the ideologically
modest churches built giant grand Cathedrals and church buildings.

We're still seeing a popular boom in massive buildings and big things in
general across Asia and the Middle East.

~~~
hammock
>Was this really unique to the time?

I think so. World's Fair comes to mind.

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sandworm101
>> Electrons leave characteristic marks on a photographic emulsion as they
pass through a cloud chamber, and dinosaurs supply us with clues to their
former existence in the form of fossilized bones

A ridiculous comparison from a book published in 2019. For one, Dinosaurs have
left far more than fossilized bones, from footprints and droppings to actual
preserved tissue. Dinosaurs also left us their living DNA, in birds. We draw
scientific conclusions about dinosaurs from all sorts of evidence beyond
museum bones.

Similarly, our understanding of electrons is a bit greater than cloud
chambers. We use them to do work. To suggest that their existence is somehow
nebulous because we cannot directly see them is needlessly dramatic. It is
like saying this book doesn't really exist because all we can possibly learn
about comes only from our interpretation of light reflected off its surface.

Does being able to take a picture of an electron make is more or less real
than dinosaurs?

[https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-image-ever-of-a-
hydrogen-a...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-image-ever-of-a-hydrogen-
atoms-orbital-struc-509684901)

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droithomme
I wanted to hate it but it's a reasonable and thought provoking article. It's
true that when we go to these museums the dinosaur skeletons we see are not
the original bones but reproductions and these bones are never complete but
heavily reconstructed and the specific details of how much is speculation are
never made clear in the display (such as by making the fake parts bright
fuchsia).

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nprateem
This makes me think of this article I saw about what modern animals would look
like if they were drawn like dinosaurs [1]

[1] [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-
an...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals)

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peter303
Before they were called dinosaurs they were called dragons. Both western and
eastern cultures fantasized giant reptilian monsters. The dinosaur was a
science-based reworking of this idea.

~~~
dade_
I really struggle with the idea that dinosaurs and fossils were a discovery in
the 1800's. Writers make up anything these days. However, a separate thread is
that these tycoons did create corporate dinosaurs, which is where I assumed
the article would go from the headline.

~~~
theli0nheart
Yeah, that claim is most definitely false. You don't need to look very hard to
find evidence to the contrary.

> _Fossils have been visible and common throughout most of natural history,
> and so documented human interaction with them goes back as far as recorded
> history, or earlier._

> _There are many examples of paleolithic stone knives in Europe with fossil
> echinoderms set precisely at the hand grip, going all the way back to Homo
> heidelbergensis and neanderthals. They also drilled holes through the center
> of these round shells and apparently used them as beads for necklaces._

...

> _Fossils appear to have directly contributed to the mythology of many
> civilizations, including the ancient Greeks. Classical Greek historian
> Herodotos wrote of an area near Hyperborea where gryphons protected golden
> treasure. There was indeed gold mining in that approximate region, where
> beaked Protoceratops skulls were common as fossils._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil#History_of_the_study_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil#History_of_the_study_of_fossils)

~~~
perl4ever
I remember reading that the legend of the unicorn owes a lot to random finds
of narwhal tusks.

