"Dinosaurs seem strange, but that is just because we are mammals biased toward assuming the modern fauna is familiar and normal, and past forms are exotic and alien. Consider that elephants are bizarre creatures with their combination of big brains, massive limbs, oversized ears, teeth turned into tusks, and noses elongated into hose-like trunks. Nor were dinosaurs part of an evolutionary progression that was necessary to set the stage for mammals culminating into humans. What dinosaurs do show is a parallel world, one in which mammals were permanently subsidiary, whereas the dinosaurs show what largely diurnal land animals that evolved straight from similarly day-loving ancestors should actually look like. Modern mammals are much more peculiar, having evolved from nocturnal beasts that came into their own only after the entire elimination of nonavian dinosaurs. While dinosaurs dominated the land, small nocturnal mammals were just as abundant and diverse as they are in our modern world. If not for the accident of the later even, dinosaurs would probably still be the global norm."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Gregory S. Paul (2010) The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press, p. 14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dinosauria
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Dinosauria
38 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Dinosauria →
Related Quotes
"When the dinosaurs fell at the end of the Cretaceous, they were not a senile, moribund group that had played out its …"
"The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression o…"
"If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land …"
"Humans are proud of themselves. The guiding principle of the modern age is "Man is the measure of all things." And ou…"
"Twentieth-century paleontologists have fallen into the bad habit of reconstructing the dinosaurs' life functions by u…"
"Dinosaurs are not lizards, and vice versa. Lizards are scaley reptiles of an ancient bloodline. The oldest lizards an…"
"No one, either in the nineteenth century or the twentieth, has ever built a persuasive case proving that dinosaurs as…"
"And let us squarely face the dinosaurness of birds and the birdness of the Dinosauria. When the Canada geese honk the…"
"It will blow some people's minds to realise that those dinosaurs in the movies would have been even weirder, and I th…"
"Archaeopteryx is so nearly identical in all known features with small carnivorous dinosaurs that it is hard to believ…"