As an old museum guard once told me, the secret of the fascination of dinosaurs, especially for the young, is that "they are half real and half not-real." The resulting tension gives them a particularly exotic nature. In the mind of a child, they are half dangerous and half safe, half scary monster and half special pal. They are powerfully strong but cannot reach us. They are in many ways familiar and near, and yet also very far away in time and totally foreign to our experience. Other extinct creatures, whether ammonites, trilobites, flying reptiles or mammoths, similarly fascinate us with their strangeness and antiquity, but they lack the same emotional connection.

American Scientist Online > Keith Stewart Thomson > Dinosaurs as a Cultural Phenomenon. Bei Arts & Letters Daily auf diesen mehr entwicklungsgeschichtlichen denn kulturhistorischen Artikel gestossen. Gut lesbar erläutert Thomson die Entwicklung des Zirkus, der seit etwa 200 Jahren um die »Urtiere« gemacht wird. Erinnere mich, dass Dinos bei mir während der ersten Schuljahre schwer angesagt waren.

Trilobiten fand ich allerdings auch schon immer super.