INSIGHTS1566 24 DECEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6575 science.org SCIENCEPHOTO: REUTERS/MOHAMED ABD EL GHANYBy Riley BlackD
inosaurs garner esteem that is often
reflected onto the people who search
for, excavate, and study them, and
therein lies a fundamental problem
with the ever-increasing
number of popular tomes
about the “terrible lizards” hit-
ting bookshelves. Even as the
field of vertebrate paleontology
pushes to become more inclu-
sive, personages from decades
past remain the only experts
many members of the public
encounter. Although there is a
trove of dinosaurian informa-
tion to recommend paleon-
tologist Darren Naish’s short
encyclopedia Dinopedia, it does little to
correct this antiquated view of who is, or
can be, a paleontologist.
“For a group of animals that died out 65.5
million years ago, dinosaurs...have a remark-able grip on our imagination,” Naish writes at
the top of the book. What follows is a friendly
and breezy tour of dinosaurs and what pale-
ontologists have come to know about them.
The book is not meant to be exhaus-
tive, as Naish notes, and often focuses on
the formative decades of the
1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, when dis-
covery upon discovery raised
questions about dinosaur social
lives, parenting, physiology, and
extinction, with each new pro-
posal kicking off new debates
that are running to this day.
Little wonder it is known as the
“Dinosaur Renaissance.”
Illustrated with Naish’s own
drawings, the result is a solid
primer on dinosaur science from
Archaeopteryx to the Zigong Dinosaur Mu-
seum in China. Nevertheless, the book of-
fers a view of modern dinosaur scientists
that is practically petrified.
Naish includes profiles of a handful of pa-
leontologists: Robert Bakker, Jack Horner,
Halszka Osmólska, John Ostrom, Richard
Owen, Greg Paul, and Paul Sereno. These
figures were indeed pivotal in the dinosaurdebates and discussions of the late 20th
century, but Naish’s decision to focus on
them, rather than on contemporary paleon-
tologists, makes the book feel decades out of
date rather than representative of modern
dinosaur studies. Aside from the gender im-
balance, nonwhite scientists and researchers
from the Global South are given short shrift.
Naish’s book joins a number of recent titles
that have failed to effectively convey the in-
creasingly diverse practice of paleontology ( 1 ,
2 ). I, too, have fallen far short in achieving
equality and inclusivity in my writing ( 3 ).
There is no doubt that the Dinosaur Re-
naissance was huge for paleontology. Many
of the children who were inspired by the
museum exhibits, books, and films that de-
buted during that time are paleontologists
or fossil fans still. But the height of that
era’s dinomania was nearly three decades
ago, when discussions about diversity and
representation in the field often occurred
in the background, if they happened at all.
Paleontologists today openly consider such
issues, as well as adjacent topics such as the
ethics of collecting specimens and samples
in other countries and the repatriation of il-
legally exported fossils.
Still, there is much work to be done. In a
field in which even gender equity between
white cisgender researchers has been dif-
ficult to achieve, now is not the time to
reaffirm the male-dominated days as rep-
resentative of where the field stands today.
Change is likely to come slowly. Diversity in
paleontology is currently highest among vol-
unteers, students, and early-career research-
ers, all of whom are less likely to be thought
of as authorities, less likely to be conducting
research that is covered by the press, and less
likely to write books themselves.
Again and again, op-eds and sociological
studies have pointed out that a lack of visible
representation affects who goes into science
and who is supported through its process,
which, in turn, affects scientific theory and
thought ( 4 – 7 ). It is time to start embodying
the change we wish to see. Ensuring that
popular accounts of paleontology reflect the
field’s 21st-century practitioners would be a
strong step toward this goal. jREFERENCES AND NOTES- S. Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs (William
Morrow, 2018). - A. Berta, S. Turner, Rebels, Scholars, Explorers (Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 2020). - B. Switek, My Beloved Brontosaurus (Scientific
American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). - C. T. Begeny et al., S c i. A d v. 6 , eaba7814 (2020).
- K. Rainey et al., Int. J. STEM Educ. 5 , 10 (2018).
- K. Kricorian et al., Int. J. STEM Educ. 7 , 16 (2020).
- J. G. Stout et al., J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 100 , 255 (2011).
10.1126/science.abj2629
Paleontologist Sanaa Al-Sayed probes the remains
of a Mansourasaurus shahinae in 2018.The reviewer is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
(St. Martin’s, forthcoming 2022) and Skeleton Keys:
The Secret Life of Bone (Riverhead Books, 2019). Email:
[email protected]PALEONTOLOGYRevisiting paleontology’s
greatest hits
An otherwise solid dinosaur primer does little
to convey the changing face of the field
BOOKS et al.
Dinopedia
Darren Naish
Princeton University
Press, 2021. 216 pp.