dinosaurs and the media

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Dear paleonetters:

As some of you might have noticed on the NAPC program, there will be a
session on "Dinosaurs in the Public Eye." (As a science magazine editor, I
suppose I must be a retinal nerve.)  Jim Clarke, who is organizing it,
wants to have a panel discussion at the end of the session about how the
high public profile accorded to dinosaur research affects dinosaur
paleontology. As a panelist, I've been mulling this issue a bit and thought
I would post a few questions here. Any responses would be deeply
appreciated, and they might even lead to an interesting thread of
discussion here.


1. Do people who work with dinosaurs feel much effect on their research
from the great post-Jurassic-Park media machine--for good or bad (i.e., too
much pressure to deliver rock-em-sock-em results as opposed to less flashy
but no less important work)?

2.  How do paleontologists who DON'T work with dinosaurs feel about the
role of dinosaur paleontology? Does it grab too much attention? Or is the
coverage of their work good for the paleontological community as a whole,
since it gets the public interested about fossils?

3. Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to how disproportionate dinosaur
coverage is, if at all, versus other extinct taxa? (Choose your own
criterion: diversity, longevity of major groups, etc.)

Many thanks for your time--and many apologies for cross-posting.

Cheers

Carl Zimmer

Senior Editor, Discover
email:zimmer@panix.com
phone: (212) 633-4836
fax: (212) 633-4817

Address:
114 5th Ave., 15th Floor
New York, NY 10011
USA