Remembering Cadillacs & Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs were everywhere in 1993. That was the year Jurassic Park hit theaters and smashed box office records. It also was the year two other major dinosaur films were released – Super Mario Bros. and We’re Back – although both would quickly be forgotten. Meanwhile, on television, U.S. broadcaster ABC aired the rebooted Land of the Lost. Fox Kids debuted Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a live-action show about teenagers who fought giant monsters with robot dinosaurs. And in the same time slot on CBS, a new cartoon called Cadillacs & Dinosaurs hit airwaves. It never had a chance.

Thirteen episodes of Cadillacs & Dinosaurs aired between fall 1993 and early 1994. Based on the cult comic book series Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz, the cartoon was the creation of Steven E. de Souza, a screenwriter who gave us the classic action film Die Hard (and would later write and direct the not-so-classic movie adaption of Street Fighter). All kids needed to know about the show’s setting was explained in the opening credits:

“In the 26th century, mankind faces an epic struggle for survival. The forces of nature have spun wildly out of control. Mighty cities have crumbled and the dinosaurs have returned to reclaim the Earth. In this savage land, one man stands alone: Jack Tenrec. Defending humanity in world gone mad… a world where only the strong survive… a world of Cadillacs & Dinosaurs.”

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? I certainly thought so. I was a teenager at the time, so I was outside the age range of the target audience. Still, I was a dinosaur-obsessed teen, and here was a cartoon stuffed with dinosaurs. Plus the setting fascinated me: A future post-apocalyptic Earth where dinosaurs had returned? How did the planet get that way? Why are the last humans holed up in crumbling cities? And why are they crossing the landscape in souped-up Cadillacs?

Cadillacs & Dinosaurs follows the adventures of Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee. Jack is part mechanic, part Greenpeace activist. His mission is to protect the environment from the same human follies that led to a global cataclysm centuries earlier. The irony is Jack goes about his work traversing the landscape in rebuilt 1950s Cadillacs, although the cars have been modified to run on clean-burning dinosaur poop. Hannah is his partner and potential love interest. She is a scientist and diplomat from a neighboring tribe of survivors. The two don’t get along at first, mostly because Jack is an annoying jerk who insults Hannah every chance he gets. By season’s end the two have developed something approaching romantic feelings for each other, although in the world of early ‘90s cartoons, knowing glances between characters were about as sexual as children’s entertainment got.

Cadillacs & Dinosaurs was much more child friendly than the comic on which it was based. (I didn’t discover the latter until years later.) Xenozoic Tales is punctuated by scenes of gory violence and has nudity and a little sex. The cartoon, on the other hand, was so committed to G-rated violence that even killing dinosaurs was off-limits. Jack was a bit of an ass in the comics, but in the cartoon he is nearly insufferable.  Hannah, unfortunately, is written for the show as something of a bubblehead. Other secondary characters underwent greater changes, perhaps the most notable being a clan of Mad Max rejects who went from being annoyances in the comics to the main antagonists of the series. (Another interesting change is that the human “moles” of Xenozoic Tales have been turned into literal mole men in the cartoon.)

Fans of Xenozoic Tales will appreciate that the cartoon loosely adapts some of the comic’s stories. The best was “Departure,” which takes Schultz’s tale about Hannah's creative solution to a mosasaur problem and expands it by throwing in a crazed warlord and a big-ass tank. The episode is easily the highlight of the series. That said, most stories were original to the cartoon, with the writers pitting Jack and Hannah against Triceratops stampedes, wildfires, and leftover weapons of mass destruction dating from before the cataclysm.

The animation was a bit stiff, being done on a TV budget, but at the same time it was rich in color with well-drawn environments and huge advancements in how dinosaurs were depicted in cartoons. The show’s greatest problem was its writing. Cadillacs & Dinosaurs suffered from bad dialogue, silly characters, and politically correct messaging that left even cranky liberals like myself wishing the writers would tone it down a little. These issues were hardly unique to Cadillacs & Dinosaurs in the world of children’s programming, but transformations were happening in television that made the cartoon something of a dinosaur. Batman: The Animated Series had debuted a year earlier, and it demonstrated that children’s shows could include complex themes and characters and still retain a younger audience (while also attracting older viewers). At the same time, a lot of kids’ entertainment was gravitating toward younger protagonists.  Gone were the days of G.I. Joe and He-Man with their mostly adult lead characters. Instead TV producers gave viewers Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with its “teenagers with attitude.” Jack and Hannah were practically geezers by comparison.

Still, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs had dinosaurs. It’s right there in the title, and dinosaurs were HUGE in 1993. So why did the show fail?

CBS stuck Cadillacs & Dinosaurs near the end of its Saturday morning programming block, meaning it didn’t air until 11:30 a.m. This in itself wasn’t necessarily a death sentence – Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted in the same time slot. But it did mean new episodes of cartoon would often be delayed so the network could instead air sports coverage at that time, particularly on the West Coast of the U.S. It especially didn't help that CBS carried the Winter Olympics that year. As a result, the thirteen episodes that were supposed to make up the show’s first season never ran continuously. Kids might tune in one week and catch an episode, but when they tuned at the same time next week all they found was sports coverage. Children have short memories, so a consistent schedule is needed to build a young audience. A CBS spokeswoman acknowledged this problem in a Los Angeles Times review of the show: “It’s preempted a lot,” she said.

CBS also didn’t go out of the way to advertise Cadillacs & Dinosaurs. But in fairness to the network, the tie-in toy line apparently wasn’t released until after the show was canceled, so there was little to generate demand among kids for more adventures. Only a single commercial was produced for the toys. (Warning: Poor sound quality.)

Cadillacs & Dinosaurs did get a pretty fun beat ‘em up arcade game, but as far as I know it was never ported to consoles. Instead kids had to content themselves with Cadillacs & Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm on the Sega CD. The game had great full-motion video animation but its gameplay was boring and repetitive.

So, a bad time slot, a lack of commitment on part of the network, and series of missteps in releasing tie-in toys and games. Also factor in Cadillacs & Dinosaurs was a show behind its time, airing in an era when you needed to either feature children as your main stars or bring a level of maturity to the writing that most kids’ programming had previously lacked. As I said at the beginning of this essay, the show never had a chance.

Criticisms aside, I still enjoy the hell out of Cadillacs & Dinosaurs. You can watch the entire series on YouTube or purchase all episodes for $15 on Amazon. (At least in the U.S. I’m not sure about the show’s availability in other countries.)  I suggest trying a couple episodes before making a commitment to watching all 13. The show definitely isn’t for everyone. As for myself, I admit nostalgia fuels part of my love for the series. Another factor is that I’m fascinated by the world Schultz created in the comics, and seeing it brought to life through animation—even in kid-friendly form—fills me with joy. Yes, I would love to someday get an adaptation that is closer in tone to the comics, but for now Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is a perfectly acceptable substitute.

Anyway, if you want to know more about the cartoon, YouTube blogger AdvertisingNuts has a video explaining the differences between the show and the comics:

More essays

• Raising the Dead: Bringing Back Extinct Animals in Fiction
• The Rise of Dinosaur Erotica
• The Grass-eating, 200-foot-long Brontosaur of the Late Cretaceous, or Common Mistakes in Paleofiction
• Hey Hollywood! Forget Jurassic Park: Make this book into a movie instead 
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Pulps 
• T. rex in My Sights: The Ethics of Hunting Dinosaurs
• Gunning for Dinosaur  
• A Field Guide to Fake Dinosaurs 
• Dinosaurs & Dice: A Short History of Prehistoric Gaming 
• Brontosaurus: A Faded Star Rises Again
• Death in the Mesozoic: Paleontology in Mystery Novels 
• Our Prehistoric Future
• Finally, an Explanation for all the Dinosaur Erotica on Amazon

Finally, an explanation for all the dinosaur erotica on Amazon

A while back I weighed in on the proliferation of erotic stories featuring dinosaurs - a genre that exploded after Amazon’s self-publishing program took off.  At the time Christie Sims was the undisputed master of dinosaur porn, but over the past year that title has shifted to Montana author Chuck Tingle. I didn’t have a good explanation about why dinosaurs were featured in so many erotic stories. Turns out the online publication Vice found an answer, and it is, well, odd.

In “How to Make Money Writing Kindle Erotica,” journalist Livia Gershon spoke with several writers who pen self-published erotica through Amazon. Basically to be successful in the business, authors need to be able to produce a lot of copy and write about a wide range of sexual fetishes, even if they don’t find many of them appealing. Most writers quickly burn out, but a few have found writing erotica to be more financially rewarding than writing “serious” fiction.

Amazon provides a great vehicle for self-published authors, but the site has rules about what stories it will and won’t accept. Randy Johnson, the (obvious) pen name for a moderator of a popular erotic author subreddit, says Amazon bans stories featuring bestiality, but only for living species. Stories about sex with extinct and make-believe animals are okay as far as the company is concerned. That’s why you will never see “Pounded by the Panda” on Amazon. On the other hand, “Gaygent Brontosaurs: The Butt is Not Enough” is perfectly acceptable.

Just don’t expect to make a fortune with your brilliant mash-up of Jurassic Park and Fifty Shades of Grey. Despite the media attention such works get, Johnson told Gershon that dinosaur erotica doesn’t sell well:

"The vast majority of sales (which are very few) [for dinosaur erotica] are people interested in the novelty of it," he said. "If you don't get some media scandalmongering about it, you'll probably get close to zero sales."

My advice to any would-be dinosaur erotica authors? Don’t get discouraged. Maybe you won’t make much money, but you may still win a Hugo award.

More essays

• Raising the Dead: Bringing Back Extinct Animals in Fiction
• The Rise of Dinosaur Erotica
• The Grass-eating, 200-foot-long Brontosaur of the Late Cretaceous, or Common Mistakes in Paleofiction
• Hey Hollywood! Forget Jurassic Park: Make this book into a movie instead 
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Pulps 
• T. rex in My Sights: The Ethics of Hunting Dinosaurs
• Gunning for Dinosaur  
• A Field Guide to Fake Dinosaurs 
• Dinosaurs & Dice: A Short History of Prehistoric Gaming 
• Brontosaurus: A Faded Star Rises Again
• Death in the Mesozoic: Paleontology in Mystery Novels 
• Our Prehistoric Future

Our prehistoric future

Two years ago a state lawmaker in Utah put forward a strange proposal: We need to pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Why? Dinosaurs, of course.

According to Utah state Rep. Jerry Anderson, humans weren’t doing enough to warm the planet. So he introduced a bill that would have exempted the state from federal greenhouse gas regulations. The legislation was quickly shot down, but not before Anderson explained his reasoning, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune:

“We are short of carbon dioxide for the needs of the plants. Concentrations reached 600 parts per million at the time of the dinosaurs and they did quite well. I think we could double the carbon dioxide and not have any adverse effects.”

This isn't the first time I’ve heard this “global warming is good because dinosaurs” meme. I won’t delve into the politics of the issue other than to say climate scientists generally agree that warming the planet to such a degree would be a bad idea. But the reasoning behind this line of thinking - that the future should look like the planet's prehistoric past - is one that has been explored in literature a handful of times. The difference is that in science fiction, the outcome rarely has been beneficial for humanity.

J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World is probably the best-known work set in a future that has reverted to a primitive state. Global warming is the culprit, although in this case it caused by a mysterious flare up of the sun, which bathes Earth in radiation. The ice caps melt, the oceans expand, and life begins to “devolve” into ancient Triassic period forms to cope with the environmental changes. The novel is a haunting work, filled with vivid descriptions of an empty London overrun by prehistoric swamp:

In the early morning light a strange mournful beauty hung over the lagoon; the sombre green-black fronds of the gymnosperms, intruders form the Triassic past, and the half-submerged white-face buildings of the 20th century still reflected together in the dark mirror of the water, the two interlocking worlds apparently suspended at some junction in time, the illusions momentarily broken when a giant water spider cleft the oily surface a hundred yards away.

The Drowned World, published in 1962, wasn’t the earliest work to depict a future where ancient lifeforms have returned to reclaim the Earth. That distinction appears to go to the 1955 story "Report on the Status Quo" by Terence Roberts, in which World War III has changed the climate and facilitated the return of the dinosaurs. Set in the then-future year of 1961, the narrative is presented as a government report about how this brave old world came to be, along with humanity's first disastrous encounters with the resurrected saurians. (EDIT: It turns out I'm wrong about this story being the earliest example of the plot device. See the comments below.)

Dinosaurs also would return to rule the future in the comic Xenozoic Tales, better known as Cadillacs & Dinosaurs. This series, first published in 1986, is set 600 years into the future during the “Xenozoic Era,” which is the geologic age following the downfall of civilization after a planetwide catastrophe. Extinct species from every era of Earth’s history have been reborn, with mankind no longer the dominant player in the ecosystem. Just how this strange world came to be is one of the central mysteries of the series

The most recent example of this theme can be found in the soon-to-be-released young adult novel Edge of Extinction: The Ark Plan by Laura Martin. The first in a series, the book is set 150 years after cloned dinosaurs have taken over Earth's surface and forced the remaining humans into underground shelters. The cover blurb describes Edge of Extinction as "Jurassic World meets Dawn of the Planet of the Apes."

A future with resurrected dinosaurs is a stretch, to say the least, but there has been serious talk among scientists about bringing back extinct animals closer to us in time, from Tasmanian tigers to mammoths. The concept is known as “rewilding.” At its least controversial, rewilding simply means returning living species to their historic habitats, such as wolves to much of the American West. But some people have called for resurrecting extinct species through cloning and then releasing the animals into the wild. Imagine Yellowstone National Park, but with mastodons and American lions — that’s rewilding at its most extreme.

A few science fiction authors have flirted with the idea, but rarely have they explored rewilding in any great detail. One exception is Mary Rosenblum, whose 2009 novelette "Lion Walk" is set in a North America slowly being returned to its Pleistocene state. Rosenblum uses the setting to explore issues surrounding current-day conservation efforts.

Sadly, despite claims by a small minority of scientists, I doubt we’ll see any resurrected mammoths, let alone T. rexes. The technical and social hurdles are just too great. But it is still fun to imagine futures where that just might happen.

More essays

• Raising the Dead: Bringing Back Extinct Animals in Fiction
• The Rise of Dinosaur Erotica
• The Grass-eating, 200-foot-long Brontosaur of the Late Cretaceous, or Common Mistakes in Paleofiction
• Hey Hollywood! Forget Jurassic Park: Make this book into a movie instead 
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Pulps 
• T. rex in My Sights: The Ethics of Hunting Dinosaurs
• Gunning for Dinosaur  
• A Field Guide to Fake Dinosaurs 
• Dinosaurs & Dice: A Short History of Prehistoric Gaming 
• Brontosaurus: A Faded Star Rises Again
• Death in the Mesozoic: Paleontology in Mystery Novels

Death in the Mesozoic: Paleontology in mystery novels

Paleontologists are homicide detectives — it's just that bodies they uncover have been dead for a very long time. The problem for writers is that investigations into 65 million-year-old crime scenes rarely make for compelling reading. If they want to grab readers' attention, their murders need to be of the more recent variety.

According to one report, mysteries rank behind only romance as the most popular literary genre. Countless mysteries have been written with settings ranging from the modern day to ancient Rome. The genre is so extensive it basically has its own version of Rule 34: If it exists, there is a mystery novel about it. So it should come as no surprise that a handful of mysteries feature paleontology as a plot point. Rarely do we get living prehistoric animals in mysteries — that's the realm of science fiction — but many authors aren't shy about sprinkling a little science in their crime novels.

The most recent example of a “paleo-mystery” is Dry Bones (2015) by Craig Johnson. The latest installment in Johnson's popular Longmire series, the plot heavily borrows from the real-life legal battle over the remains of Sue the T. rex. From the cover blurb:

When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found surfaces in Sheriff Walt Longmire’s jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum — until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property the remains were discovered, turns up dead, floating face down in a turtle pond. With millions of dollars at stake, a number of groups step forward to claim her, including Danny’s family, the tribe, and the federal government. As Wyoming’s Acting Deputy Attorney and a cadre of FBI officers descend on the town, Walt is determined to find out who would benefit from Danny’s death, enlisting old friends Lucian Connolly and Omar Rhoades, along with Dog and best friend Henry Standing Bear, to trawl the vast Lone Elk ranch looking for answers to a sixty-five million year old cold case that’s heating up fast.

It should be noted that in the case of Sue, no one was murdered, although a fossil dealer did end up in prison.

Another recent paleo-mystery is The Dinosaur Feather (2008) by Sissel-Jo Gazan, which won an award for best mystery novel in the author's home country of Denmark. The plot revolves around a paleontology student who becomes involved in a murder investigation after her academic supervisor is killed. Closer in time is Homer Hickam's The Dinosaur Hunter (2010), about a ranch hand wrapped up in a murder plot surrounding the discovery of dinosaur fossils in eastern Montana.

Most paleo-mysteries are one-off affairs. One exception is Mesozoic Murder (2003) by Christine Gentry, which was followed by a sequel, Carnosaur Crimes (2010). Both feature Ansel Phoenix, a paleoartist who solves crimes in Montana.

Readers looking plucky heroines may want to check out Bone Hunter (1999) by Sarah Andrews. The fifth in a series of novels featuring forensic geologist Em Hansen, the protagonist finds herself the main suspect in the murder of a famous paleontologist on the eve of a Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Salt Lake City.

The famous crime novelist Patricia Cornwell dabbled in paleontology in The Bone Bed (2012), featuring her popular character Kay Scarpetta. From the description:

A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.

Other paleo-mysteries include Dinosaur Cat (1999) by Garrison Allen, The Last Dinosaur (1994) by Sandy Dengler, Rattle His Bones (2011) by Carola Dunn, and the young-adult novel Old Bones (2014) by Gwen Molnar.

All the novels mentioned so far feature human protagonists, but at least one series includes living dinosaurs. Anonymous Rex (1999) by Eric Garcia is set in an alternate reality where dinosaurs didn't die out and are living among us in disguise. A parody of hard-boiled detective fiction, the book has two sequels: Casual Rex (2002) and Hot and Sweaty Rex (2005).

Know any paleo-mysteries I missed? Feel free to mention them in the comments.

Brontosaurus: A faded star rises again

So much for being the snob who corrected my friends whenever someone mentioned “Brontosaurus.”

As you’ve probably heard by now, a group of scientists has proposed restoring the name after concluding the original fossils differed enough from Apatosaurus to constitute a separate genus. I’ll leave it to better writers to explain how this resurrection came about. All I know is I’ve lost the pleasure of tut-tutting writers when they included Brontosaurus in their stories.

Make no mistake: Brontosaurus has appeared in a lot of dinosaur books and movies. It is possibly the most famous dinosaur, running neck to neck with T. rex in terms of a dinosaur name everyone knows. Pull someone off the street and ask that person to draw you a dinosaur, I’m willing to bet most drawings will resemble a Brontosaurus: thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end.

Brontosaurus may in fact be the first dinosaur ever to appear in a work of fiction. The 1901 pulp adventure novel Beyond the Great South Wall by Frank Savile is about an expedition to Antarctica that discovers a lost civilization that worships a god named “Cay.” The author includes this footnote after the narrator stumbles upon Cay’s lair:

Lord Heatberslie makes a mistake here. Professor Lessatition's subsequent researches proved "the god Cay" to be without doubt Brontosaurus excelsus, remains of which have been found in the Jurassic formation of Colorado. It was purely a land animal.

Beyond the Great South Wall was probably the first example of dinosaur fiction. Yes, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was published four decades before Savile’s novel, but Verne’s tale didn’t include any living dinosaurs. Rather, the famous science fiction author populated his book with mastodons and marine reptiles. (Update: I forgot the 1888 novel A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder may actually be the first science fiction novel with dinosaurs, but a quick search through it didn't turn up any specific species, so my point stands for now.)

Brontosaurus also was absent in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World, possibly because many of the dinosaurs depicted in the novel were known from fossils discovered in Doyle’s home country of Great Britain, whereas Brontosaurus is an American beast. It is ironic then that Brontosaurus would play a major role in the first film adaptation of the book. The 1925 movie features not only a Brontosaurus fighting an Allosaurus, but the animal is transported to London to go on a rampage through the city—a scenario that was copied by countless other B-movies.

The animal appears again in the 1933 film King Kong during a frightening sequence in which a group of sailors are trying to cross a lake in pursuit of the giant ape. For sake of plot, Brontosaurus is turned into a flesh-eating monster that flips the sailors' rafts then picks them off one by one as they swim to shore. One sailor manages to climb a tree only to be eaten by the Brontosaurus, which can grab him because of its long neck.

After that, Brontosaurus faded into the background of most imaginative works about dinosaurs. It usually got a shout out but was never the star, lacking both the fierce weaponry of Triceratops and the predatory habits of T. rex. One exception was the 1953 novel Danger: Dinosaurs! by Richard Marsten, in which a herd of brontosaurs plays a small but important role in the plot. More often than not, any references to the dinosaur were more like this throwaway paragraph in David Gerrold’s 1978 novel Deathbeast:

At first, he thought it was a grounded blimp – then his eyes adjusted to the scale of the thing and he realized it was only a brontosaur. Not dangerous at all – well, not deliberately dangerous. There was the case of that hunter who was eaten inadvertently because the brontosaur’s eyesight is so poor it hadn’t see him in the tree – but that one really didn’t count.

The 1980s saw Brontosaurus rumble into the spotlight once again. The dinosaur played a starring role in the 1985 movie Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, a film so bad it nearly condemned dinosaur films to extinction. Luckily, the animal’s reputation was salvaged in 1988 with the release of The Land Before Time, an animated film about the adventures of a baby Brontosaurus named Littlefoot.

Brontosaurus didn’t make it into 1993’s Jurassic Park. However, the animal did appear in the 2005 remake of King Kong. The film took place on an island where dinosaurs continued to evolve and thrive after the rest of their kind died off 65 million years ago. According to the tie-in book, the island’s brontosaurs had evolved from earlier sauropod ancestors.

Will Brontosaurus rise again now its status has been restored? Hard to say. Still, it is notable that the upcoming Jurassic World features Apatosaurus as one of the dinosaurs populating the park. Given the park’s staff have been known to get dinosaur names wrong before, who is to say the dinosaurs are not brontosaurs?

Dinosaurs & Dice: A short history of prehistoric gaming

Dungeons & Dragons may be best known for dragons, but dinosaurs have been part of the roleplaying game since its start.

When D&D co-creator Gary Gygax penned the first edition of the system’s Monster Manual in 1977, he included a small menagerie of dinosaurs alongside the book’s otherwise mythological bestiary. Located in the "D" section between “Devil” and “Displacer Beast” were dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus, Iguanodon, and, of course, T. rex:

"Because of the nature of time in planes where magic works, dinosaurs widely separate in time are discussed hereunder, for they can be found intermingled on some alternate world, strange plane, or isolated continent somewhere."

Many roleplaying games, board games, and miniatures systems have featured dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. They are not nearly as numerous as games about elves and goblins, and most dinosaur-themed games are targeted at kids. But there is still a considerable number of games out there that can be enjoyed by adults who never outgrew their love for the ancient past.

Board games

The earliest dinosaur-themed board game listed by BoardGameGeek is the Alley Oop Jungle Game, published in 1936. Based on the comic strip of the same name, Alley Oop is a simple spin-and-move game obviously made for younger kids.

The following decades would see the release of several prehistoric-themed board games, most tie-ins to popular TV shows, like The Flintstones or Land of the Lost. Most were simple “roll-and-move” games, with players rolling dice and moving their pawns the same number of spaces as the result.

Things didn’t get interesting until the 1980s, a time when board game designers started to experiment with game mechanics. One product of this era was the 1985 board game Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs, in which players moved their explorer pawns across a 3-D board while avoiding T. rexes, pteranodons, and an erupting volcano. That same year saw the release of Tyrannosaurus Wrecks, a "microgame" in which time-traveling hunters journey to the Mesozoic to bag dangerous dinosaurs. Two years later came what I consider the best dinosaur-themed board game yet made, Dinosaurs of the Lost World. In the game, players lead expeditions into a prehistoric wilderness, seeking out new discoveries while avoiding hostile beasts. (If you want to know more about Dinosaurs of the Lost World, see my review.) The end of the decade saw the release of Tyranno Ex (1990), a “eurogame” in which players evolve their dinosaurs to survive in different habitats.

Despite this initial burst of innovation, most prehistoric board games have remained simple affairs. That said, there have been a few exceptions, such as the “caveman” game Stone Age (2008). Other prehistoric-themed games that can be enjoyed by grown-ups include Primordial Soup (1997), Evo (2001), Urland (2001), Wildlife (2002), Conquest of Pangaea (2006), and Evolution (2010; second edition 2014). The rise of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have allowed for the distribution of games publishers would have otherwise ignored, such as Apex (2015) and In a World of Dinosaurs (To be released).

Roleplaying games

As mentioned in the introduction, dinosaurs have been a part of roleplaying games since the start of the hobby. They would play a central role in the Dungeons & Dragons adventure module The Isle of Dread (1981), which was inspired by the film King Kong. Another King Kong-themed adventure module, The Isle of the Ape, came out four years later. When the D&D campaign setting Forgotten Realms was first unveiled in 1987, an entire landmass was set aside for the terrible reptiles: the peninsula of Chult. This setting was explored in detail in the 1993 supplement The Jungles of Chult. If that wasn’t enough, dinosaurs would get their own (inner) world to inhabit in D&D: Hollow World (1990).

Of course, D&D is not the only roleplaying game in existence. Lands of Mystery (1985) was a Hero System supplement that served as a toolbox for players who wanted to create their own “lost world” adventures. Another notable non-D&D setting is Space: 1889. This game, first published in 1988, takes place in an alternate 19th century where all the planets of inner solar system are habitable. Venus is a jungle planet inhabited by dinosaurs and lizardmen, while life on Mercury is just starting the transition from sea to land. The setting’s creator, Frank Chadwick, also wrote Cadillacs & Dinosaurs: The Roleplaying Game (1990). Set in the world of the comics, the game contains an extensive bestiary of prehistoric wildlife.

The popular roleplaying game system GURPS would get on the action with GURPS Dinosaurs (1996), which not only boasts stats for more than 100 extinct animals, but also has an introduction by paleontologist Jack Horner. One of the stranger settings to incorporate dinosaurs came in the form of Dinosaur Planet: Broncosaurus Rex (2001) by Goodman Games. The game is best described as a space Western with dinosaurs filling the part of Native Americans. Dinosaurs would return to Earth with the release of Hollow Earth Expedition (2006) by Exile Game Studio, which was heavily inspired by the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

As for more recent works, Cubicle 7 Entertainment released Primeval in 2012, which is based on the British television series about prehistoric creatures unleashed on the modern world.

Miniatures gaming

The history of prehistoric animals in miniatures gaming is harder to pin down than that of board games and roleplaying games. Many miniatures rulesets were published by tiny companies on shoestring budgets – I have rulesets that were probably produced on a desktop printer. Also, to play miniatures games, you need miniatures of dinosaurs and other animals, which are rare.

The earliest ruleset I have in my collection is Tusk (1994) by Matthew Hartley. This game lets players hunt mammoths and dinosaurs using easy-to-learn rules. Hunting dinosaurs also is the central focus of Saurian Safari (2002) by Chris Peers.

Other rulesets focus more on adventuring rather than hunting. One is Thrilling Expeditions: Valley of the Thunder Lizards (2008) by Rattrap Productions, which allows players to game "lost world"-type adventures. The same company also released the gaming supplement Dragon Bones: Adventures in the Gobi Desert (2005), which turns Roy Chapman Andrews' fossil hunting expeditions in 1920s China into Indiana Jones-like escapades. For gamers who prefer living dinosaurs to fossils, there is Adventures in the Lost Lands (2010) by Two Hour Wargames. Then there is Perilous Island (2013), a supplement for the miniatures system Pulp Alley.

Conclusion

Are there any games that I have missed? Plenty, much of it intentional. If you believe there are games worth mentioning that didn’t get a shout out here, feel free to point them out in the comments.

A field guide to fake dinosaurs

So, Indominus rex.

As you probably know by now, that is the name of the new dinosaur in Jurassic World.  The animal never existed in nature. It is instead the Frankenstein creation of the park's scientists, who spliced it together from snippets of DNA from other dinosaurs. From the description on the movie website:

At first glance, Indominus Rex most closely resembles a T. Rex. But its distinctive head ornamentation and ultra-bony osteoderms can be traced from Theropods known as Abelisaurs. Indominus' horns have been placed above the eye orbit through genetic material hybridized from Carnotaurus, Majungasaurus, Rugops and Giganotosaurus. Fearsome indeed.

The movie's producers have tried to keep the dinosaur's appearance a secret, but if you're curious, photos of I. rex have leaked online. Many dinosaur fans are not impressed. My favorite reaction so far has been the #buildabetterfaketheropod thread on Twitter, where people have posted drawings of their attempts to build the most ridiculous dinosaur possible.

Still, Jurassic World isn't the first work of fiction to invent its own dinosaurs. There actually is quite a long history of make-believe dinosaurs in cinema and literature. Dinosaurs are cool. Dinosaurs were big. But for some people they were never quite cool or big enough.

Below are all the examples of fake dinosaurs I can recall encountering in film and fiction. I don't include inaccurate depictions of real dinosaurs, like the oversized Velociraptors in the original Jurassic Park. I'm also leaving out the many examples of fictional dinosaurs that have evolved human-like intelligence – that is a topic for a future post. That said, if it was big, scaly or feathered, and never existed, then it made the list.

Rhedosaurus - The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a very loose adaptation of Ray Bradbury's short story “The Fog Horn.” It is notable in that it established the career of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. The “Rhedosaurus” created for the film stands 65 feet tall, walks on four legs, and is aquatic. The problem is all carnivorous dinosaurs walked on two legs and lived on land – well, at least we thought, until new fossils of Spinosaurus were recently discovered.

Godzilla – 30 films and counting

Godzilla (or Gojira) undoubtedly is the most famous fake dinosaur of all time. Well, maybe. His origin story has changed over the years. In his original appearance, he was a dinosaur mutated by radioactive fallout. We even got to see what Godzilla looked like pre-nuking in the 1991 film Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The Godzilla series is filled with many fake prehistoric monsters, from the pterodactyl-like Rodan to Anguirus, who is basically a spiky Ankylosaurus. And, of course, Godzilla led to the British rip-off Gorgo.

Gorosaurus – King Kong Escapes and Destroy All Monsters

”Who?” you ask. Gorosaurus is a minor monster in the Godzilla pantheon, making its debut in Japan's attempt at a King Kong movie: King Kong Escapes. But I think Gorosaurus is notable for the fact it is a pretty traditional dinosaur. The creature is basically an oversized Allosaurus with no superpowers, which is unusual for Japan's giant monsters. Even King Kong, a monster that originally didn't have any powers, was given the ability to harness lightning when he was recruited to fight Godzilla.

Tyrannosaurus trionyches – "A Gun for Dinosaur"

The incomplete fossil record has given writers the opportunity to fill in the gaps with dinosaurs they believe could have existed. In L. Sprague de Camp's short story “A Gun for Dinosaur,” the main characters accidentally awaken a species of tyrannosaur even bigger than T. rex.

Whatever this is – "Hunters in the Forest"

The main character in Robert Silverberg's short story “Hunters in the Forest” encounters a strange-looking and unnamed theropod in the Late Cretaceous:

It is a towering bipedal creature with powerful thighs and small dangling forearms of the familiar Tyrannosaurus, but this one has an enormous bony crest like a warrior's helmet rising from its skull, with five diabolical horns radiating outward behind it and two horrendous incisors as long as tusks jutting from its cavernous mouth, and its huge lashing tail is equipped with a set of great spikes at the tip.

All the monsters from At the Earth's Core

The novel At the Earth's Core had a pretty standard set of dinosaurs populating its prehistoric world. But the monster makers of the 1976 movie adaptation either never saw any dinosaur illustrations or were high on drugs when they designed the trippy creatures of this film. We get a Godzilla rip-off with a parrot's beak, two bipedal warthogs, a fire-breathing toad monster, and other strange critters.

The New Dinosaurs

The New Dinosaurs is a coffee table book by paleontologist Dougal Dixon that explored an alternate history where dinosaurs never died out. Instead, the animals evolved to fill modern ecological niches, so there are saber-toothed theropods, giraffe-like pterosaurs, armadillo-like sauropods, and so on.

Stratoraptor velox – Dinosaur Summer

Stratoraptor is the feathered, T.rex-sized antagonist of Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer. The creature lives in the “lost world” originally invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In Bear's story, Stratoraptor evolved from earlier dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx. It is not the only invented dinosaur in the novel, as the author also populates his lost world with allosaur descendents and a species of herbivore that lives in ant-like colonies.

Hide-a-saurus – Cavewoman

Comic book artist Budd Root invented many fictional dinosaurs to inhabit the Cretaceous world of Cavewoman. Most were carnivorous, but the one that always stuck out in my mind was a duckbill dinosaur the heroine dubbed “Hide-a-saurus.” It had evolved to camouflage itself in tall grass. The problem? Grass didn't become a huge part of the landscape until well after the dinosaurs died out.

Post-impact Antarctic dinosaurs – Evolution

Evolution by Stephen Baxter mostly is the story of human evolution, but he takes a few detours along the way. In one chapter, Baxter speculates that dinosaurs isolated on Antarctica survived the great extinction that killed the rest of their kind 65 million years ago. Among the survivors are the descendants of Velociraptors and Muttaburrasaurs, which have evolved to live in the harsh climate. Unfortunately their adaptations are not enough to save them from the final great freezing of the continent roughly 10 million years ago.

Dinocroc – Dinocroc and Dinocroc vs. Supergator

Okay, I admit I've never seen either movie. Just never got around to it. What's worrisome is the description reads eerily like the plot of Jurassic World, with its gene-spliced dinosaur. From Wikipedia:

A prehistoric dinosaur, known as the Suchomimus, is genetically engineered by the GERECO Corporation, headed by Paula Kennedy (Joanna Pacuła). After being spliced with a modern day crocodile, the creature escapes the lab and begins terrorizing the lake-side residents of a nearby town.

Baboon lizards - A Sound of Thunder

A Sound of Thunder is the deservedly forgotten 2005 film adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story of the same name. In the movie, the characters accidentally change the prehistoric past, which results in "time ripples" that gradually replace future Chicago with a reality where the dinosaurs never died out. The film doesn't do much with the premise: Really the only animals we see are some oversized bats, a large eel, and a pack of "baboon lizards" that are a cross between baboons and dinosaurs. The special effects are pretty awful, although not quite as terrible as Ben Kingsley's hair in the movie.

Vastatosaurus rex – King Kong (2005)

V. rex is a T. rex descendant living in the forests of Skull Island in the 2005 King Kong remake. It has evolved to resemble something out of a Charles R. Knight painting, with three fingers instead of two and a much larger body size than its famous ancestor. V. rex isn't alone: Pretty much all the dinosaurs living on Skull Island are fictional, having evolved from creatures we find in the fossil record. The movie tie-in The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island provides a glimpse of the island's strange ecosystem.

Tree creeper – Primeval

The British TV show Primeval introduced viewers to a large number of real and fictional animals. Many of the latter came from a far future where humans were extinct, but the show’s writers invented at least one species of fake dinosaur. “Tree creepers” were basically Jurassic Park’s raptors crossbred with monkeys. They lived in the Cretaceous and used prehensile tails for grabbing unsuspecting prey.

Acceraptor – Terra Nova

The short-lived TV series Terra Nova invented a handful of fake dinosaurs with the explanation being that since the fossil record is incomplete, there were probably species that we know nothing about. The most memorable were the Acceraptors, or “slashers,” which were like Velociraptors but had crests and whip tails with blades at the end. They were a scary creation, but not one compelling enough to save the series from cancellation.

Will 2015 be the year of the dinosaur?

Let’s skip ahead to the answer: Probably not, but it should still be an interesting year for dinosaur lovers.

Next year will see the release of Jurassic World in June and the animated The Good Dinosaur in November. The last time two big-screen dinosaur films debuted in the same year was 1993, when the first Jurassic Park was followed a few months later by We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story. That same year also saw the release of the film adaptation of Super Mario Bros., in which dinosaurs were a major plot element but otherwise didn’t get much screen time.

Needless to say, 1993 also was a big year for dinosaur merchandise as companies tried to cash in on the sudden revival of dino-cinema. Dinosaur books, comics, posters, magazines, toys, cartoons, and direct-to-video movies were everywhere. Will we see the same thing again?

I have my doubts. One reason for the wild success of the original Jurassic Park was it had the good fortune of debuting during a blockbuster drought. The film’s only competition at the box office was the dismal Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle The Last Action Hero. Many of the other big hits that year — The Fugitive, Groundhog Day, Cliffhanger – were not the kind of movies whole families went to see. More importantly, they were not the kind of movies likely to sell a lot of merchandise.

A sign that things have changed for Jurassic World is the studio bumped up the release of the movie’s trailer by two days so it would debut ahead of the new Star Wars teaser, which threatened to drown out any buzz for the Jurassic Park sequel. Then there is the upcoming release of a tiny film you may have heard about - Avengers: Age of Ultron. Even the new Mad Max and Terminator films, while not necessarily kid-friendly movie properties, will likely divert the public’s already short attention span away from dinosaurs.

Another reason we’re not likely to see another explosion in dinomania is that cinematic dinosaurs are viewed as passé. The original Jurassic Park showed the public something they had never seen before: Incredibly lifelike computer-generated dinosaurs. But people no longer need to go to movie theaters to see such spectacle. BBC convincingly brought CGI dinosaurs to the small screen with Walking with Dinosaurs and its sequels, as did TV shows like Primeval and the short-lived Terra Nova. Sure, dinosaur lovers like myself could poke holes in the “dinosaurs are old news” argument, but Jurassic World’s creators are not helping. Here’s what the film’s director, Colin Trevorrow, told SlashFilm in May:

What if, despite previous disasters, they built a new biological preserve where you could see dinosaurs walk the earth…and what if people were already kind of over it? We imagined a teenager texting his girlfriend with his back to a T-Rex behind protective glass. For us, that image captured the way much of the audience feels about the movies themselves. “We’ve seen CG dinosaurs. What else you got?” Next year, you’ll see our answer.

Yes, it’s a little distressing the people producing the next Jurassic Park film think dinosaurs are boring. Still, that’s what we got. (It’s also an attitude explaining why the movie’s dinosaurs look so out-of-date compared to what paleontologists now know about their appearance.)

Now that I’ve spent the last few paragraphs poo-pooing the idea of Jurassic World resurrecting another surge of dinomania, let me point out there are reasons to be hopeful we will at least see an uptick in dinosaur-related products.

First, unlike Avengers or Star Wars, dinosaurs are not copyrighted. The Jurassic Park brand is, but book publishers, for instance, can’t release Star Wars-related products without first acquiring expensive licensing rights. No such restrictions apply to books about dinosaurs.

Second, there is a lot of interest in Jurassic World. As of this posting, it was the second most-referenced 2015 film on the Internet, according to Google. That puts it ahead of Star Wars but behind the Avengers. People seem genuinely interested in revisiting Jurassic Park.

Third, the public loves dinosaurs. Sure, dinomania waxes and wanes, but the fascination is always there. Seeing dinosaurs on the big screen is only going to help drive that interest up and businesses will want to cash in on that.

So what are we likely to see in dinosaur-related merchandise? The truth is it’s too early to tell. As far as paleofiction, which this blog is primarily concerned about, next year will see the release of The Dinosaur Lords, an epic fantasy novel combining Jurassic Park with Game of Thrones. There are no other major dinosaur novels announced so far, but I would be surprised if we didn’t get at least one dinosaur fiction anthology or the re-release of some older paleofiction titles. The big question is whether Jurassic World will get a novelization. Jurassic Park 3 was novelized as a kid’s book but there was no counterpart for adults. Note: Michael Crichton’s original novels Jurassic Park and The Lost World were released few years ago as a single volume titled Jurassic World. Don’t mistake that for the movie novelization.

What about toys? We already know Lego is releasing a Jurassic World set, which appears to be repurposing figures from its 2012 Lego Dino series. I’m sure we also will see Jurassic World action figures and playsets, and The Good Dinosaur undoubtedly will come with several tie-in toys. Chances are we won’t know more until Toy Fair 2015, a U.S. trade show in which many of the hottest new toys are debuted. The show kicks off February 14.

Video games are more problematic. Game developers have shown surprisingly little interest in dinosaurs over the years, but that may be changing. The creators of the popular Lego video game series have strongly hinted that their next game would be set in Jurassic Park. Other than that, there are a handful of non-Jurassic World games in the works. The most interesting is Saurian, which allows gamers to play as a dinosaur. Another dinosaur game – theHunter: Primal – is currently out as an unfished release, with the developers promising to add more dinosaurs to the title’s thin roster in the future.

Of course, I’ll update this blog with any paleofiction news as soon as I hear about it.

Gunning for dinosaur

Reginald Rivers won’t take just anyone into the past to hunt dinosaurs. No, as the time traveling safari guide in L. Sprague de Camp’s classic short story “A Gun for Dinosaur” explains, he only takes big men strong enough to handle the type of weaponry needed to bring down the terrible lizards:

Here you are: my own private gun for the work, a Continental .600. Does look like a shotgun, doesn’t it? But it’s rifled, as you can see by looking through the barrels. Shoots a pair of .600 Nitro Express cartridges the size of bananas; weighs nearly seven kilos and has a muzzle energy of over twenty-two hundred KGMs. Costs twenty thousand dollars. A lot of money for a gun, eh?

Yes, a lot of money, but not so much if you want to stop a charging T. rex dead in its tracks, according to Rivers’ thinking.

Rivers isn’t the only time traveling hunter in fiction to speculate about what guns to bring along on a dinosaur hunt. Henry Vickers of David Drake’s Time Safari gives his clients a lecture on making sure they only carry weapons they can handle:

What I said, what I meant, was that size isn’t important, penetration and bullet placement is what’s important. The .458 penetrates fine – with solids – I hope to God all of you know to bring solids, not soft-nosed bullets. If you are not comfortable with that much recoil, you’re liable to flinch. And that means you’ll miss, even at the ranges you shoot dinos at. A wounded dino running around, anywhere up to a hundred tons of him, and that’s when things get messy.

As the above two examples illustrate, some science fiction authors have put a lot of thought into what types of guns would be needed to bring down already extinct species. So, were they right or were they off-target?

Let me answer that question by first admitting that I don’t know much about guns. Go ahead and revoke my man card if you wish. But I’m going to give it my best try by making a couple assumptions.

First, there is a wide array of military-grade, anti-armor weaponry I’m sure would more than do the trick. However, a lot of this weaponry must be mounted on vehicles because it is too heavy to lug around. There were no roads in the Mesozoic and most of the landscape would have been impassable terrain, so any hunters in the era would need to look for game on foot. That means they are going to need guns that are light enough to carry but have enough stopping power to bring down multi-ton dinosaurs.

Second, we can rule out a common assumption made by many early science fiction writers: That dinosaurs would be harder to kill than mammals because they had primitive nervous systems. Paleontologist Jose Luis Sanz noted this myth in his history of dinosaurs in popular culture, Starring T. rex! Dinosaur Mythology and Popular Culture. Referring to Poul Anderson’s short story “Wildcat,” in which a large carnivorous dinosaur continues to threaten the heroes even after being gutted by a spray of gunfire, the scientist wrote:

Anderson’s daring ideas are based on the strict inclusion of dinosaurs within the level of organization of present-day reptiles, with a generous supplementary dose of misinformation. Anderson supposed that dinosaurs would have tremendous vitality against wounds and mutilations (“a reptile dies with greater difficulty, since it is less alive”).

Dinosaurs were probably no harder to kill than mammals of a similar size. Of course, there were dinosaurs much larger than any land mammal that ever lived.

So, with those two assumptions in mind, what is a good gun for dinosaur? Here I’m going to cheat because at least one expert on firearms already has weighed in on the subject. Outdoor Life columnist John B. Snow pondered this question back in 2009 after watching Jurassic Park with his kids. His answer varied depending on the type of dinosaur. As for T. rex:

Personally, I wouldn’t go any lighter than a .458 Lott. The .470 NE (Nitro Express), .500 NE and .600 NE would also be good contenders. I would probably opt for a double-rifle with a red-dot sight on it. I’d want that red dot for precise bullet placement as the only shot that makes sense is a broadside shot that takes out either the hip or smashes the knee. Take out the leg to put it down and then finish it off with a double lung shot or a shot in the neck.

As for the smaller raptors, give Snow a star for pointing out the movie’s Velociraptors were much larger than the real thing. His choice of weapon would be a semi-auto shotgun loaded with buckshot. As for their larger cousin, Deinonychus:

A semi-auto shotgun loaded with slugs might serve well, but I’m going with a Springfield Armory M1A Socom 16 for this job. I’d put either an EOTech optic up front on it or something like the Trijicon SRS. Mount a SureFire X400 combo weapon light/laser and you’ll be good to go.

The 1997 film Jurassic Park: The Lost World also gave us an answer to the question. In it, the “great white hunter” character Roland Tembo carries a .600 Nitro Express – an “elephant gun” – specially made for the movie by the California gun builder Butch Searcy.

Still, let’s be honest: Any civilization that has invented time travel probably has access to firearms far more powerful than anything we have today. Or maybe not. In the David Gerrold’s 1978 novel Deathbeast, laser guns prove ineffective against a T. rex because the animal is simply too large for the beams to do major damage. Stick with bullets.

Then again, maybe you don’t need guns at all. In his nonfiction A Survival Guide: Living with Dinosaurs in the Jurassic Period, geologist Dougal Dixon said bolas – ropes with weights tied at their ends – would be useful in capturing smaller dinosaurs for food. Of course, you would have to first learn how to throw a bolas without smacking yourself in the face. Consider the following video the first step on your path to becoming a mighty dinosaur hunter:

T. rex in my sights: The ethics of hunting dinosaurs

Cover art for "The Best of L. Sprague de Camp"
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Chances are only the comet that ended their reign killed more dinosaurs than the time-traveling safari guide Reginald Rivers, but that doesn’t mean the man is without principles. As Rivers explains to an animal rights activist in L. Sprague de Camp’s short story “Miocene Romance”:

“Believe it or not, I’m a wild-life conservationist, too. I spend my own hard-earned money on organizations that try to protect endangered species, of course of which the Earth has lost hundreds in the last century. But the beasts my clients hunt on these time safaris are all long extinct anyway. Ending the safaris wouldn’t bring any dinosaurs or mastodons back to life.”

And that’s the end of the discussion, at least as far as Rivers is concerned. Dinosaurs are already dead so hunting them shouldn’t pose the same moral dilemma as hunting modern-day elephants or black rhinos, both of which still have a fighting chance of living long into the future. But is Rivers being a little too dismissive of the complaint lodged against him? If it were possible, would it be ethical to hunt dinosaurs and other extinct creatures, or should they enjoy the same protected status as many of today’s endangered species?

Before I go any further, let me say I realize this is a silly debate. The likelihood of any human ever getting to hunt a dinosaur, let alone meet one, is about the same as space aliens landing in my backyard and declaring me Queen of the Universe. (It turns out these particular aliens are a little confused about human anatomy.) But it is a fun thought experiment and an issue that really hasn’t been explored in literature despite the many tales of humans hunting the "terrible lizards."

The romance of the safari

As far as fiction on the subject, the great white hunter has been a central character in dinosaur stories almost since the beginning of the genre. The earliest example is Lord John Roxton from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. The book was written during the early days of the modern-day conservation movement, but Roxton showed no qualms about shooting any animal, living or extinct. (“This is a Bland's .577 axite express,” said [Roxton]. “I got that big fellow with it.” He glanced up at the white rhinoceros. “Ten more yards, and he'd would have added me to HIS collection.”) Still, Roxton’s role in The Lost World is a relatively minor one. Later authors would elevate hunters to lead characters, creating a type of story that would become its own subgenre: the dinosaur hunt. Examples include de Camp’s Rivers of Time, David Drake’s Time Safari, David Gerrold’s Deathbeast, Robert Wells' The Parasaurians, Evan Hunter's Danger: Dinosaurs! and, most famously, Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder.” There is even a popular video game series, Carnivores, for anyone who wants to live out their own dinosaur safari.

Hunting a Triceratops in the video game Carnivores HD.
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What is the appeal of stories about humans hunting dinosaurs? The lure is in the big game hunt itself, which has been romanticized as the ultimate test of civilized man against primitive nature. And the bigger the game, the more the romance, as author Bartle Bull explains in his history of the African safari, Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure:

When Europeans began to penetrate the interior of Africa in the early nineteenth century, animals were in such plenty that elephants foraged in herds of hundreds. At times antelope covered the savannah like a carpet. Lions were literally a pest. One might see 150 rhinoceros in a day. Dedicating a lifetime to foxes and pheasants, or at best to stag and boar, European sportsmen saw in giraffe and elephants the animals of paradise. To the European hunter, Africa was Eden.

Dinosaurs are the next logical step up from giraffe and elephants. They are the largest, most dangerous game, and therefore would be the most romantic to hunt. They also are conveniently extinct, giving modern-day writers politically correct prey to populate their otherwise unfashionable safari stories – most people today get squeamish when seeing an elephant put down, but they don’t have the same reaction when the animal in question is a T. rex.

The nature of time

Perhaps audiences should feel just as sorry for the T. rex. Dinosaurs, by the very fact that they’re extinct, would qualify as the most endangered of endangered species, right? That might be true if we found a dinosaur living today in the middle of the Congo rainforest. (For the record, we won’t.) But in most cases if we want to go hunting dinosaurs, then we’re going to need to hop in a time machine and travel back to the Mesozoic Era, and that’s where the question of ethics grows complicated.

Interior art for "A Sound of Thunder," published in Playboy in 1956.
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The answer will depend on the nature of time itself. Can the past be changed? Or is it fixed, meaning nothing that time travelers do will alter the future? If it’s the former, then the dilemma goes beyond the implications for dinosaurs. Time-traveling hunters could put the very existence of the human race at risk. This is the situation explored by Bradbury in “A Sound of Thunder”: Stomp on the wrong mouse, the story’s safari guide tells a client, and the entire course of history is changed:

"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life.”

The risks are so great in Bradbury’s version of time one wonders why time travel to the past is allowed at all. That said, chances are the famous author got it wrong. The general consensus among scientists since Einstein is that the past is unchangeable. This is because the passage of time is something of an illusion. The past, present, and future are not really separate entities. They exist more or less as a single, self-consistent whole. We think of the past as set in stone and the future as hazy and unformed, but in reality every event that will ever happen has happened, so the actions of future time travelers in the past already are a part of history. Stomp on all the mice you want, you're not going to change anything.

Besides laying waste our notion of free will, the concept of an unchangeable past gives credence to Rivers’ argument that it doesn’t really matter how many dinosaurs hunters kill  – we’re doing nothing that changes the fate of a species. Hunting dinosaurs is not comparable to modern-day efforts to save black rhinos because we have no knowledge of the future, meaning we could still play a role in the survival of the rhino population. But we do know what ultimately happens to T. rexes, so affording them the same protected status as black rhinos would be pointless. T. rexes will live and die during roughly the same time frame we see in the fossil record, whether we hunt them or not.

TARDIS vs. reality

We can’t stop there – the answer to our question gets even more complicated! Rivers' argument was an easy one to make because he essentially has a magic time machine. Like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, the time machine Rivers uses is able to travel to any point in the past. That means he can spread out his hunts over enough time so that their ecological impact would be minimal. Say, for example, that Rivers’ policy is never to travel to a time within 100 years of a previous visit. As a result, Rivers could make 1,860,000 trips to the Mesozoic Era before running out of times to visit. Given the billions and billions of dinosaurs that lived throughout the era, Rivers’ safaris would barely count as a blip.

Dinosaurs and the TARDIS from the 2013 episode "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship."
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Unfortunately, time machines probably won’t work the way that Rivers’ machine does, if they work at all. Most time machines dreamed up by physicists won’t even be able to travel to the Age of Dinosaurs, given they can only take travelers back in time to the point of the machine’s creation. The one exception might be the creation or discovery of a wormhole that leads back to the Mesozoic. A wormhole is a tunnel through spacetime that theoretically could exist, although no evidence for wormholes has yet been found. The limitation of a wormhole is it could only connect us to one point in the Mesozoic, so we couldn’t pop in and out of different times throughout the era like Rivers does over the course of de Camp’s stories. This has profound implications for dinosaur hunters.

If we’re stuck with only single point of time we can access, then we could easily overhunt species in that time period to extinction. “Wait a minute!” you say. “You’ve already pointed out there is nothing we can do to change the fate of a species we already know is extinct.” True, but it is ignoring the fact that our knowledge of the prehistoric past is incomplete because the fossil record is an imperfect means of recording information. Only a tiny, tiny number of individual animals are preserved as fossils, with entire species likely leaving little to no fossil record at all. And we can say only in the very broadest terms the span of time that a particular species existed before dying out. That lack of information means we have no way of fully gauging our impact on a prehistoric environment, which leads to my next point: Any ethical hunter will tell you that one of the sport’s core principles is that future generations should be afforded the same hunting opportunities that today’s hunters enjoy. That’s why many hunters, like Rivers, are conservationists. It simply would not be sporting to hunt T. rexes to extinction because you are denying future hunters that same opportunity. Rivers may be able to shoot dinosaurs willy-nilly thanks to his magic time machine, where he can spread out any damage to the ecosystem over millions of years, but if we have a gateway to only a single period in prehistory, hunting would need to be strictly regulated to maintain animal populations for future generations of hunters. The concept is not so different from that of the modern-day game preserve, although in this case the correct term would probably be "temporal preserve."

Time travel is far-fetched to say the least, but what if we went the Jurassic Park route and cloned our dinosaurs? There are very good reasons to believe this is a dilemma we will never have to face, given that cloning a dinosaur is pretty much impossible. Plus I doubt that any company that went to the time and expense of bringing back a T. rex would simply sell off the hunting rights to the highest bidder. Michael Crichton had it right – businesses would maximize their profits by sticking those dinosaurs in a zoo and selling tickets.

Conclusion

This Lego dinosaur hunter set is probably as close as we'll ever get to the real thing.
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One question I didn’t address here is whether we should be hunting animals to begin with. There are obviously some groups, such as PETA, that believe we should not. That debate is part of a much larger discussion that will need to be argued in other places. I also conveniently focused on dinosaurs and didn’t talk about prehistoric animals closer to us in time that may have went extinct because of human hunting, like mammoths. If we could bring mammoths back, should we be allowed to hunt them? The ethical questions there cut a little deeper and probably will need to be considered in a separate essay.

Now it's time to lay my cards on the table: What are my thoughts about hunting dinosaurs? If we were somehow able to invent a time machine, I would rather see the animals studied than hunted. That’s not to say there won’t be opportunities for limited hunts – to research dinosaur anatomy we’re going to need to kill a few of them. (If that shocks you, where do you think those animal mounts in natural history museums came from? They’re not facsimiles.) But for the most part, dinosaurs would simply be of too much scientific value to end up as trophies on some rich hunter’s wall.

It's not a dilemma that keeps me up at night. As I have already stated, time travel to the past is almost certainly impossible, so I very much doubt any hunter will ever get to test his or her mettle by staring down a charging T. rex. Luckily we have talented writers who can dream of what that experience would be like.

Coming next week: I put ethical questions aside and ask, “What is a good gun for dinosaur?”