Do Dinosaurs Eat People?

While getting my boys into their room to put them to bed the other night, my eldest asked me, “Do dinosaurs eat people, Daddy?”  I saw a teachable moment I could seize on and responded, “Dinosaurs and people never lived together.”  He, of course, wanted to know why not.  I explained to him that all the dinosaurs were gone long before any people were around.  I told him that millions of years ago, a large comet struck the Earth and made it dark everywhere, which made the plants die, so that the dinosaurs didn’t have anything to eat.

I also told him that little creatures survived underground, and that they eventually became us.  I realized my over-simplification and decided to risk pushing the explanation beyond his years (I have always believed it better to err on the side of providing too much information to children rather than too little).  I rephrased, explaining that the small creatures that survived evolved – that they changed a little bit at a time, over and over again – until some of them turned into people.  He was satisfied enough with my description to eventually drift off to sleep without one more, "Why...?"

I thought back to the trip we took to the California Academy of Sciences a few months earlier,  and remembered the large Tyrannosaurus Skeleton Reproduction (pictured above) looming by the entrance.  My eldest had been amazed by it when we went inside - and so was I.  It is still amazing to me that such creatures existed.  Everything represented by that modeled set of bones - the depth of time that has passed in our planet's history, the sheer grandness of such a large predator, the fragility of life, and the ability of science to help us learn it all - will never cease to amaze.

The ironic thing was that the next night I saw a bit of Jurassic Park on television.   The part I saw included the scene where one of the park employees was eaten off of the portable toilet by the Tyrannosaurus Rex he was hiding from.  So maybe I should have told my inquisitive son that people and dinosaurs had never lived together – yet!  I’m kidding.  Really.

Image Credit: Me :-)