Holding Hands with Dinosaurs

Dinosaur footprints reveal that many of them walked erect in a fashion similar to modern birds, putting one foot in front of the other. The earliest dinosaurs were small, light carnivores and omnivores, probably extremely quick and agile to avoid any large predators. During the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods they evolved into many different types, some of them reaching colossal size. The largest dinosaur we have ever found is Seismosaurus in New Mexico. Its fossil bones reveal an animal that may have weighed in at 30 tonnes and was up to an incredible 170 feet long; 2 times longer than today’s largest animal, the blue whale.

Sauropods like Argentinosaurus had long necks and reached giant proportions, weighing up to 100 tonnes. Their immense size kept them firmly on all four feet lumbering along like giant elephants. Wild elephant can be killers but frequent childhood visits to zoos have left us all with the belief that elephants are gentle, kind creatures capable of weeping. This anthropomorphic approach may not only be misleading about elephants it may be even more misleading about long extinct creatures like Diplocodus. They may have lived in harmonious groups and they may have been gentle giants, protected by their size rather than by their aggression. If they had met humans they may, like elephants, have become our best friends offering small children rides at the local zoo. But the truth is we simply don’t know. They may have been highly aggressive, intent on decimating anything in their path: monster gardeners with small brains.

Joe Tucciarone At nearly 170ft long the Seismosaurus was the largest animal to ever walk the earth.

Joe Tucciarone The Tyrannosaurus Rex -the film maker's dream

Where our imagination really runs wild is with the king of the dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus. Just their appearance - large heads, sharp claws, backward curving, doubly serrated teeth all fill us with fear. From just a few early bones Victorian palaeontologists soon built up a picture of a powerful creature with small front limbs, massive powerful rear legs, capable of grasping its prey in its jaws and casually ripping meat off in much the same way we might tackle a chicken leg. This fearsome creature has been a story teller’s dream, a monster from our worst nightmares, a beast that already lurked in the deep primeval forest of our darkest dreams. This fear is part of our genetic makeup, part of our primal instinct. Film makers and television producers have long understood the fatal attraction we have for these creatures from hell. It’s hard to imagine but perhaps Tyrannosaurus was timid and docile and that all along we have been completely wrong. We will never know, but like the lion tamer it would be a brave person that volunteered to be in the same cage as a 6 tonne reptile most scientists agree was a ferocious carnivore.