| Summary: | The writer discusses people's huge fascination with dinosaurs and notes that dinosaurs are the subject of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC's) flagship fall 1999 science series Walking with Dinosaurs. He points out that the BBC has spent £6 million on the series, and he argues that it is doubtful whether so much money would be spent on any other nature series. He asserts that this reflect the fact that dinosaurs are simply more intriguing to people, and more familiar, than the vast majority of creatures still alive. He contends that dinosaurs are commercially exploitable because their evolutionary failure makes them safe, even though they are regarded as the ultimate in ferocity and size. He traces the history of paleontological studies of dinosaurs from its origins in Britain in the 1800s, through early discoveries in America, to the dinosaur renaissance of the 1960s, and he discusses the film Jurassic Park. He asserts that dinosaur fascination has come of age, and that for the first time ever, perhaps, dinosaurs are now less interesting as cultural fetishes than as objects of science.
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