Re: Most popular/common dinosaur misconceptions

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> To my knowledge, pterosaurs were never placed
> within Dinosauria, even in the 1800s.

Indeed not. But, you see, pteroSAURS and dinoSAURS and plesioSAURS and 
ichthyoSAURS must have _something_ in common... of course nobody can guess 
that in the middle 19th century the most famous anatomists found something 
"intermediate between lizards and crocodiles" in the vertebrae of some of 
those groups, which is the whole reason for all those -saurus names (it 
started the tradition). That's right, for Owen the dinosaurs were a suborder 
of the lizards. (Maybe the crocodiles were another. Linnaeus had lumped all 
crocodiles into *Lacerta crocodilus*, after all.)

> If dinosaurs were so popular at that time that Brontosaurus was a
> commonly-used name, why wasn't the name change publicized more?

This is, unfortunately, extremely simple to explain: the article that sunk 
*B.* into *A.* was published in an obscure journal. When the audience is too 
small, the news never spreads.

> However, the general public seems to think that Jurassic Park depicts
> dinosaurs with complete accuracy, despite the fact that Hollywood
> frequently fails to portray anything with complete accuracy.

The public knows it has a right to expect that scientific topics are 
portrayed in movies with the greatest possible accuracy. Certain people in 
the show business refuse them that right without saying so.

> However, I still wonder exactly why animatronic dinosaur exhibits claim to
> portray the dinosaurs accurately and yet give Dilophosaurus a pair of 
> "venom
> glands" behind the head while having it spit water at the visitors (though
> it is the right size...).

Because they themselves don't know any better. I bet!