Kids Are Still Drawing 1900's Idea Of What Dinosaurs Looked Like
T-Rex With Incorrect Posture An incorrect historical image of the T-rex, with inaccurate posture and skull shape. Wikimedia CommonsDraw a Tyrannosaurus rex from memory, right now. It's probably wrong in a very significant way. An article over at the Cornell Chronicle looks into the issue of "cultural inertia" in our understanding of dinosaurs. When asked to draw a T. rex, perhaps the most well-known (in popular culture) of all dinosaurs, both young children and college students will draw an upright, small-armed, tail-dragging creature that looks like a slimmed-down Barney or a less-plasticky Rex from Toy Story. But in fact, we've known for decades that the T. rex did not stand upright, but that its posture was much more horizontal. Even in Jurassic Park, the T. rex was portrayed reasonably in line with current scientific understanding of the animal. And yet our perception of the dinosaur is still stuck, similar to what was...