Dino Dancers

Anyone who knows me knows that I try to be as gender-neutral as possible when it comes to what toys kids play with. When my nieces and nephew were born I said I would buy them whatever toys they were into, I didn't care if the girls wanted GI Joes (actually, I kind of hoped that would happen) and if the boy wanted a Barbie that is what he would get. However, over the last few years I have learned that some gender stereotypes exist for a reason because wow do little girls like pink and princesses and my nephew will turn anything with wheels into a truck. In fact, the only thing which seems to interest both sides is dinosaurs. The other thing I have noticed since the next generation arrived is that this is not unique to my family. I couldn't fathom a guess as to why, but every kid appears to go through a dinosaur phase. The only thing that varies from kid to kid is how long it lasts. I include myself in that conclusion, but because I don't do anything halfway my dinosaur phase lasted a little longer than most and led to me doing things like playing today's musical interlude roughly 4,000 times between the ages of 8 and 11. I guess my parents should be grateful that CD's weren't popular yet and I had to rewind the tape after each playing or else the number would be much higher. Proving that you never really outgrow your childhood interests, you just push them to the back burner, my eyes are still automatically drawn to the word 'dinosaur' whenever it appears in print. That was what led me to read a story this week which archaeologists claim that, in an effort to attract mates, some species of dinosaurs would shake their tail feathers and dance around.

As you can imagine from a kid with a healthy interest in dinosaurs, for a little while I wanted to be an archaeologist but didn't pursue it because I thought it would require too much science. What I have learned as I have gotten older is that I should have stuck with it because I am creative and most of modern archaeology appears to be the science of making things up. Researchers have discovered that a certain species of dinosaur possessed both feathers and many vertebrae which would make them very flexible. This led them to make the conclusion about dancing to attract mates. Here's the thing: that feels like kind of a big leap. Just because a species could do something doesn't mean they did, nor does it answer the question as to why. For all we know it was really used as a defense mechanism. However, there is no evidence which disproves the theory, so people are treating it as fact. And that's the thing about being an expert in a field where no one has ever seen a living version of the things you study - you may not be able to prove you are right but they can't prove you are wrong either. As long as you say it with enough confidence people have no reason to believe you are making anything up. And if someone does ever begin to question your research I would suggest grabbing a group of feather and dancing around because I've heard that can be very distracting.