This is one of the nicest things to do in New York on a Sunday afternoon: Have a good late breakfast (something like a bowl of porridge, some scrambled eggs, some smoked herring, toast with raspberry jam would be just fine), and then put on some comfortable clothes and some comfortable shoes and go over to the American Museum of Natural History. If there are children in your family, by all means take them along. While you are there, don’t miss the redwood-tree exhibit in the Hall of North American Forests, the worm exhibit in the Hall of the Biology of Invertebrates, the early-man exhibit in the Hall of the Biology of Man, the Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Hall of Man in Africa, and the bird-watching exhibit in the Akeley Gallery. This is just what we did on a recent Sunday afternoon. We saw all the things we liked best and then a few of the things that are interesting anyway. It was while we were looking at a few of the things that are interesting anyway that we came across, in progress, a lecture on dinosaurs.
The lecture was being given by Sidney Horenstein, a paleontologist on the museum’s staff, and was sponsored by the New York Paleontological Society. Sitting on some yellow petroleum-by-product chairs, listening closely to him, and watching some slides he showed to accompany his chat were lots of moms and dads and their little children. Some other little children were in strollers. Mr. Horenstein said that dinosaurs were around two hundred and ten million years ago; that at that time the earth’s atmosphere was warm; that as a group they lasted for one hundred and fifty million years, compared to our (man’s) measly two million; that most dinosaurs were plant-eaters except a few, like the great Tyrannosaurus rex, which apparently ate smaller dinosaurs; that one bite for a T. rex could probably feed a human family of four for one month; that the Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to be described scientifically; that the word “dinosaur” means “terrible lizard”; that dinosaurs that had lost their teeth stole dinosaur eggs and ate them; that T. rex had small hands, and no one knows what purpose its hands served except that maybe after it slept its hands helped it get up; that one genus with a bony crest on its head was called Kritosaurus, which means “chosen lizard”; that maybe dinosaurs became extinct because an interstellar explosion caused the earth’s atmosphere to cool and the dinosaurs died of exposure, but then again maybe their extinction was caused by something else; that no one has ever seen a dinosaur or knows what dinosaurs really did. While Mr. Horenstein talked, he showed slides of dinosaurs doing things, and almost always the dinosaurs were
in a swamp or near a swamp. He showed slides of dinosaurs with long, swanlike necks. He showed slides of baby dinosaurs just emerging from eggs the size of large avocados. He showed slides of dinosaurs attacking egg-stealing dinosaurs. He showed slides of dinosaurs eating no-longer-alive dinosaurs. He showed slides of dinosaurs with big teeth and slides of dinosaurs with little teeth. He showed slides of dinosaurs whose mouths looked like duck bills, and said that these dinosaurs were called hadrosaurs (meaning “bulky lizards”). He showed slides of dinosaurs with two horns and slides of dinosaurs with just one horn. He showed a slide of two dinosaurs battering their heads together. He showed slides of pink dinosaurs, blue dinosaurs, and green dinosaurs. Mr. Horenstein made it clear that it would be just wonderful to be one of these creatures, standing around in a gooey, warm swamp with your friends.
—April 24, 1978