The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

INSIDE SKEPTIC

in this issue

Victorian England’s Jurassic Park

• Mary Anning, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Richard Owen
• discovery of dinosaurs
• Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies
• World’s first prehistoric park: The Crystal Palace
• Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
• Science improves over time.

from the Introduction

Hello!

In this issue of Junior Skeptic, we venture back two hundred years to a time when no one had ever heard the word “dinosaur” or suspected such creatures ever existed. This is hard for modern people to imagine. Today, everyone knows about dinosaurs. Kids learn about dinosaurs almost before they can talk! If I say “Tyrannosaurus rex,” you can clearly picture one. You know things about T. rex: it lived a long time ago, walked on two legs, ate meat, and eventually went extinct. Yet there was a time when absolutely no one knew any of those things. What was it like when people learned about dinosaurs for the very first time? Let’s find out!