Dinosaurs

They bestrode the earth before man was but a twinkle in a mammal's eye. They left behind nothing but bones and Steven Spielberg movies. They were....dinosaurs.
And we went to see them, or rather what bits we could find of them a couple of million years later. This led me to thinking about the very ubiquity of dinosaurs in modern culture, from Jurassic Park to the Flintstones, to exhibitions like this. They have become commonplace and the unfortunate result has been a loss of wonder at what once was. The bones, amazingly reconstituted, are millions of years old and that in itself should invoke a sense of both awe at their longevity, and humility at the lack of ours. But no, it provoked nothing more than a half hearted shrug as I skimmed through the explanations about the Mesozoic period. Similarly, the sheer size of the beasts has been rendered less impressive by their repeated CGI renderings on film and television and there is a sort of media-induced 'ho-hum' reaction to it all.
Or at least that was me.
But Cian...well he was torn between awe and fear. Dinosaurs were that big!! Wow!!!! And their teeth were that big!! Wow!!! And these are really their bones!!! Wow, wow!!! And why do I have to stand for this stupid picture with Daddy?
Mind you the visit to the dinosaur exhibition did provoke a number of near unanswerable questions like "Where do dinosaurs sleep?" and "Can dinosaurs eat whales?" and "How do dinosaurs keep their teeth clean?" and "Why are there so many dinosaur bones?" and "What are the Flintstones?"
I will say that this constant stream of unanswerable questions did get a bit tiring after a while, but I am still glad he had the untrammeled curiosity to ask them all.