#also did yall know the first paleontologist was a woman?

[guardian-of-da-gay]

the relationship between paleontology and animation? would u care to elaborate, im highly interested 👀

Not only could I spend 30 minutes talking about this but I DID for my History of Animation class. Unfortunately I don't have the files so ur just gettin a couple paragraphs (I also lost my big beautiful reference list so... feel free to fact check but this should all be accurate).

BASICALLY animation and paleontology got their start around the same time (late 1800s-early 1900s) and the two fields have been inspiring each other ever since.

Paleontology inspires animation because dinosaurs are cool but also because they're something that can only come to life with animation. One of the earliest animators, Winsor McCay was accused of tracing photographs so he decided to make a film about something that had never been photographed. Thus 'Gertie the Dinosaur' was born! By today's standards the silent film isn't great, but for the time it was groundbreaking! One of the ways it was so special was that it helped introduce dinosaurs to the public. At the time, dinosaurs were so unknown, a lot of the promotional materials for Gertie had to explain what dinosaurs were.

Later McCay would make an animated short called 'The Pet'... which did NOT have dinosaurs but inspired King Kong which DID have dinosaurs (animated with stop-motion)! King Kong would go on to be a source of inspiration for Godzilla, which would go on to be a source of inspiration for Jurassic Park. (Which may or may not be relevant but is cool trivia if ur a dinosaur/animation nerd!)

Jurassic Park gets its own paragraph cuz it had a massive impact on both animation and paleontology. It was one of the earliest uses of CG in a big, blockbuster film, it proved that CG was capable of creating something extremely lifelike, and it kickstarted the use of CG FX in the film industry (which has now gotten kinda crazy (CG-ing a gun into Nick Fury's hand?!) but capitalist greed leading to an out of control monster is very Jurassic Park). On a more positive note: Jurassic Park started a 'Golden Age' in paleontology. It was such a massively popular film with the most visually realistic (if inaccurate) dinosaurs ever animated that a lot of paleontologists today say Jurassic Park was the thing that got them interested in studying dinosaurs. (There's also been an increase in women paleontologists with some saying they were inspired by Dr Sattler!)

Jurassic Park had another positive effect for paleontology: the CG boom meant technology advanced and became more accessible (ie better and cheaper). Dinosaurs are being brought to life with more accuracy than ever in hyper-realistic CG documentaries (I'm not gonna get appleTV but boy did Prehistoric Planet tempt me).

Some paleontologists use animation tools for academics as well. I don't have my sources anymore but I specifically found a (very dry) paleontological article in which they examined the potential mobility range of a carnivorous dinosaur's jaw using Blender--a free 3D animation program!

All we have left of dinosaurs are bones and fossils, so paleontology is always gonna be linked with art and animation; it's the only way to see what dinosaurs looked like and how they moved. Which is depressing, but kind of cool cuz it means as long as we love and study dinosaurs we'll keep getting animated dinosaurs.

tldr; God creates dinosaurs. God kills dinosaurs. God creates man. Man creates animated dinosaurs. Man (and woman) think that's cool af and become paleontologists.