Jurassic larks
Does our obsession with dinosaurs say something else about our own fragile place on earth?
HEPHZIBAH ANDERSON
ILLUSTRATION BY HANNAH BERRY
The reign of the dinosaurs came to a cataclysmic halt 65m years ago, but as any parent knows, it’s another story altogether among the under 10s. Pirates and unicorns may come and go in popularity, but the likes of T-rex and diplodocus rule eternal, adorning backpacks and wellies, lunch boxes and pencil cases. In our house, it began with a dinosaur-themed painting smock. Next came books, models, sparkly dino hair clips. Before I knew it, my daughter and I were holidaying on the Jurassic Coast.
On Charmouth Beach, where Mary Anning once hunted fossils, the weather this August was cool and damp. Elsewhere in the world, however, the heavens unleashed flash floods, fires blazed and the mercury rocketed to life-endangering highs. And pestilence, needless to say, was everywhere. Against such a tattoo of planetary crisis, devotion to long-gone titans seemed freshly melancholic—all the more so because it took the form of haphazardly whacking rocks that had been minding their own business for millennia.