T. Rex Might be the Thing with Feathers

I

n 1858, a collection of large bones was found in a field in southeastern New Jersey. Today the site is lost within the unremarkable sprawl of suburban residences, and there is an easy-to-miss plaque that commemorates a 78-million-year-old Cretaceous herbivore called the Hadrosaurus foulkii. Unless you’re a hardcore dinosaur aficionado or a paleontologist by profession, most likely you have never heard of the Hadrosaurus, but this dinosaur is more significant to science than the immediately recognizable Tyrannosaurus rex.

The way we imagine dinosaurs has evolved over the three centuries since their discovery. It’s an evolution characterized by the forces of fame, for the animals that rivet the public’s imagination are not the ones that yield the most interesting information about ancient biology. Stars such as T. rex, Stegosaurus, and the Triceratops bask in the glory of public attention while little known dinosaurs such as Hadrosaurus, Deinonychus, Maiasaurua and other unsung species do the heavy lifting of scientific revelation.

The injustice of fame is a common trope in science, but the history of paleontology provides a particularly vivid example, for it is an unusually harsh jury that decides which dinosaurs get memorialized in popular culture. Fond memories of museum trips and sandbox battles between plastic effigies of dinosaurian champions linger long past the “dinosaur phase” of many children. Even