Tyrannosaurus in popular culture
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Tyrannosaurus rex is unique among dinosaurs in its place in modern culture; paleontologist Robert Bakker has called it, "the most popular dinosaur among people of all ages, all cultures, and all nationalities".[1] From the beginning, it was embraced by the public. Henry Fairfield Osborn, the President of the American Museum of Natural History, intentionally billed it as the greatest hunter to have ever walked the earth. He stated in 1905:[2]
| “ | I propose to make this animal the type of the new genus, Tyrannosaurus, in reference to its size, which far exceeds that of any carnivorous land animal hitherto described... This animals is in fact the ne plus ultra of the evolution of the large carnivorous dinosaurs: in brief it is entitled to the royal and high sounding group name which I have applied to it. | ” |
As for the public, it too was electrified and on December 30, 1905, the New York Times hailed T. rex as "the most formidable fighting animal of which there is any record whatever," the "king of all kings in the domain of animal life," "the absolute warlord of the earth," and a "royal man-eater of the jungle." [3] In 1906, when the skeleton was erected, Tyrannosaurus was dubbed the "prize fighter of antiquity" and the "Last of the Great Reptiles and the King of Them All." [4].
Charles R. Knight painted a mural incorporating Tyrannosaurus facing a Triceratops in the Field Museum of Natural History for the National Geographic Society in 1942. Establishing the two animals as enemies in popular thought, it still inspires visitors today. Paleontologist Phil Currie cites this as one of his inspirations to study dinosaurs.[2] In commenting on their imagined rivalry, Bakker states although an often reproduced image, it remains thrilling because "No matchup between predator and prey has ever been more dramatic. It’s somehow fitting that those two massive antagonists lived out their co-evolutionary belligerence through the very last days of the very last epoch of the Age of Dinosaurs."[5]
At the time of its discovery it was the largest known land predator in history and although it has now been displaced in this respect first by the marginally larger Giganotosaurus and then Spinosaurus, it is still popularly perceived as the most fearsome of all prehistoric creatures. Tyrannosaurus has come to represent the quintessential large, meat eating dinosaur in popular culture and is embraced by people the world over as "King of the Dinosaurs" as its name suggests.
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[edit] Film appearances
T. rex has played a major role in many films, starting with the classic monster movie King Kong (1933), which featured a climactic battle between the giant ape and a Tyrannosaurus. The Tyrannosaurus model was made using a cast based on an early painting by Charles R. Knight. Willis O'Brien, the film's special effects director, stated that the battle between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus was the most technically difficult scene in the film to animate. Many early films depicted Tyrannosaurus with a lumbering, upright posture based on the current thinking of the time. Most of these films inaccurately portrayed the dinosaur with three prominent fingers on each hand like Allosaurus (though Tyrannosaurus had a third, vestigial finger, it wouldn't have been noticeable at first glance);[6] Walt Disney is reported to have informed dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown that "it looked better that way". Since that time, T. rex has appeared in a great number of "monster" films and educational documentaries.[2]
One of the most iconic depiction of Tyrannosaurus in film was in 1993's Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs including T. rex are brought back to life using blood from a fossilized mosquito. In the film, the dinosaur breaks free of its theme park enclosure, and proceeds to hunt and kill visitors. The popularity of T. rex has long had a reciprocal effect on dinosaur science; the popularity of Jurassic Park factored into the discovery of the dinosaur genus Scipionyx; fossils of this genus had laid in storage in a basement in Italy until the film's release attracted attention from the fossil owner.[7]
The Tyrannosaurus reprised its role as the lead dinosaur in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, the sequels to Jurassic Park. In Jurassic Park III, a Tyrannosaurus battles a Spinosaurus and loses.
A cheap Roger Corman-Produced cash in on Jurassic Park, Carnosaur (film), also featured a Tyrannosaurus, portrayed via a mix of suitimation, puppetry, and a life-size (but barely mobile) robot. The film spawned two sequels and stock footage of the T. rex was used in the films Dinosaur Island and Raptor.
Tyrannosaurus appeared in the Rite of Spring segment of Fantasia. It terrorizes the other dinosaurs in the segment and engages a Stegosaurus in a battle that it wins. A Tyrannosaurus (it's unknown if this is the aforementioned Tyrannosaurus) is also seen near the end of the segment, collapsing into the desert-like landscape due to starvation and/or dehydration.
Among other appearances, Tyrannosaurus has made major appearances in many other films, including The Land Before Time and Night at the Museum. The IMAX 3D film T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous featured a Tyrannosaurus in various time travel sequences, as well as its discoverer, Barnum Brown.
[edit] Television appearances
Tyrannosaurus has starred in several television series, including children's programs, both in those intended as fiction, and, more recently, documentaries. In Barney & Friends, it takes on the guise of Barney, and in the Australian children's show The Wiggles, the character "Dorothy the Dinosaur" is a stylized adaptation of a Tyrannosaurus. It plays recurring supporting roles in Dinosaurs (Roy Hess, Earl Sinclair's friend and the Sinclairs's neighbor) and Land of the Lost, playing villain in both the 1974 series (as "Grumpy") and the 1991 version (as "Scarface", who had a scar covering his right eye), Dinosaucers, as well as the TV anime Dinozaurs (as "Dino Tyranno" and his short-lived evil counterpart "Drago Tyran"). Documentaries and quasi-documentaries using Tyrannosaurus have included Dinosaur Planet, Prehistoric Park, T. Rex: New Science, New Beast, Dino-Riders, The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs, Walking with Dinosaurs, When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Sea Monsters, and Valley of the T-Rex.
Other appearances include Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (its Japanese counterpart Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger), Power Rangers: Dino Thunder (its Japanese counterpart Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger). Chomper from The Land Before Time (series), as well as Red Claw from the TV series are both tyrannosaurs.
[edit] Other appearances
Tyrannosaurus has appeared in many media and is perhaps one of the most widely used dinosaurs in existence, and as such many products have been marketed using this dinosaur. Various incarnations of, and creatures based on T. rex have appeared in video games, and several game series have featured Tyrannosaurus a centerpiece. These include the Dino Crisis/Dino Stalker line, various Jurassic Park tie-in games, the Turok video games and the Zoo Tycoon series.
Numerous models and children's toys depicting Tyrannosaurus have been produced, particularly in promotion of the Jurassic Park films. The Carnegie Museum Dinosaur Collection toy line released two versions of the dinosaur, with the second brought in line with more modern scientific understanding. Sinclair Oil ads from the 1950s frequently featured T. rex,[1] and products from radio-controlled helicopter models to a rifle cartridge (the .577 T-Rex) have been named after the dinosaur.[2] In music, the popular 1970s glam rock band T. Rex took their name from the famous dinosaur. The Transformers characters Grimlock and Megatron both turn into Tyrannosaurs.
In literature, a dominant representation of Tyrannosaurus since 1990 has been that of Michael Crichton's, as seen in the novel Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World. Its skeleton was also used to illustrate the covers of these books. A Tyrannosaurus rex was the protagonist of the children's book We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (later adapted into a feature-length film of the same name). In the Calvin and Hobbes comics, fantasy sequences often featured Tyrannosaurus rex. In one story arc, Calvin had to write a school paper and chose to write about the T. rex predator/scavenger debate. He believed that T. rex was a predator simply because "They're so much cooler that way." Tyrannosaurus is also featured as the protagonist in the long-running webcomic Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Bakker, Robert (2000). "Prologue", in Fiffer S: Tyrannosaurus Sue. New York: W. H. Freeman & Company, xi-xiv. ISBN 0-7167-4017-6.
- ^ a b c John "Jack" Horner and Don "Dino" Lessem, The Complete T. Rex (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pages 58-62
- ^ “Mining for Mammoths in the Badlands: How Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Dug Out of His 8,000,000 Year old Tomb,” The New York Times, December 3rd, 1905, page SM1
- ^ "The Prize Fighter of Antiquity Discovered and Restored," The New York Times December 30th, 1906, page 21.
- ^ Bakker, R.T. 1986. The Dinosaur Heresies. New York: Kensington Publishing, p. 240. On that page, Bakker has his own T. rex/Triceratops fight.
- ^ "T. Rex's Missing 3rd Finger Found," Discovery News October 17, 2007.
- ^ Poling, Jeff (1998). Skippy the dinosaur. Journal of Dinosaur Paleontology. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
