Remember the Alamosaurus

Up close and personal with Alamosaurus. Credit: Perot Museum of Nature and Science. One of the best things about my job is that I get to talk to a lot of paleontologists (admittedly my favorite -ologists). A couple years ago, I was fortunate to chat with Anthony Fiorillo and Ron Tykoski, both of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. We were all on the phone to talk Nanuqsaurus hoglundi, the Hobbit of tyrannosaurids, a ferocious little fella found well above the Arctic Circle. But, like most of the paleofolks I encounter, Fiorillo (the museum's chief curator) and Tykoski (director of its paleontology lab) were just having fun discussing dinosaurs. We kicked around the idea of why so many of us are smitten with the extinct animals early in life, and why that enthusiasm doesn't dull for those who make a career of it. "Dinosaurs are the gateway drug to science," Fiorillo said at the time. That comment stayed with me, because I think it sums up the way every child feels walking into a museum hall, looking up at these fantastic creatures and learning no, this isn't some special effects villain cooked up for Jurassic World, this was a living, breathing animal as real as you are.