STL Science Center

STL Science Center

01 August 2016

Mega Movie Lack

For as interesting, not popular, as Megaraptor is, it is entirely absent from the typical outlets of media and popular culture that have the most likelihood of presenting us with movies and documentaries. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that this animal is relatively new (1998) to science. "Newness" does not always imply lack o interest or knowledge, but some groups of dinosaurs are awed and forgotten rather quickly when they are announced. A giant dromaeosaur-like dinosaur is not what one would consider a throw-away dinosaur but the idea that it is 18 years old to paleontology and has not been often recreated says something about how little people remember that it exists. A second reason this dinosaur may not have become amazingly popular is because it is from South America. Many animals from the continent have become popular over time, but the majority of fossil taxa of South America are still somewhat of an enigma to general audiences. The only videos that are available of the animal are the cartoon shared on Sunday and the WizScience narrated pieces, which I have posted below. Unfortunately, the lack of professional, and probably public, interest in the dinosaur has not led to many large scale recreations of Megaraptor. At the moment, therefore, most of our visuals are static images and any interpretations of locomotion and movement of the fossil are relegated to text descriptions.

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