Dinosaurs are symbolic of the ancient and the extinct. Almost all children go through a period of fascination with dinosaurs. In our culture they are domesticated monsters, the largest, most frightening animals imaginable, tucked away in books and turned into toys. Parents are often surprised by their child's ability to memorize the names of dinosaurs, but children sense that there is power in names. When they can name a dinosaur, they own it.
Some children never grow out of their dinosaur phase.
God have mercy on me, I'm one of them. In order to reconstruct a dinosaur, I have to research it as thoroughly as possible. This frequently involves sorting through the outrageous claims and contradictory statements that are so much a part of this branch of science. Gregory Paul says that Tyrannosaurus Rex could run and sixty or seventy miles an hour, easily. John Horner says that T. Rex never ran at all.