page_title: Cultural depictions of dinosaurs
section_title: The 1980s to the present: Dinosaurs reconsidered
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural depictions of dinosaurs / History of depictions / The 1980s to the present: Dinosaurs reconsidered
caption_attribution_description: Created from en:Image:Iguanodons crystal palace email.jpg and en:Image:Iguanodon model.JPG.
context_page_description: Cultural depictions of dinosaurs have been numerous since the word dinosaur was coined in 1842. The non-avian dinosaurs featured in books, films, television programs, artwork, and other media have been used for both education and entertainment. The depictions range from the realistic, as in the television documentaries of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, or the fantastic, as in the monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s.
  The growth in interest in dinosaurs since the Dinosaur Renaissance has been accompanied by depictions made by artists working with ideas at the forefront of dinosaur science, presenting lively dinosaurs and feathered dinosaurs as these concepts were first being considered. Cultural depictions of dinosaurs have been an important means of translating scientific discoveries to the public.
  Cultural depictions have also created or reinforced misconceptions about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, such as inaccurately and anachronistically portraying a sort of "prehistoric world" where many kinds of extinct animals lived together, and dinosaurs lived lives of constant combat.
context_section_description: The reevaluation of dinosaurs spurred public interest, with the new generation of paleoartists quick to respond. Artists such as Mark Hallett, Doug Henderson, John Gurche, Gregory S. Paul, William Stout, and Bob Walters illustrated the new findings in response to the demand.
  By the latter half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, other media were showing the influence of the increased popularity, with diverse depictions aimed at a variety of ages and interests.
  In 1990 the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., featured an exhibition of dinosaur sculpture by Jim Gary that drew more visitors than any of its previous exhibits. His Twentieth Century Dinosaurs, popular since the 1960s, began being featured in textbooks, encyclopedias, and videos as well as later, by the likes of National Geographic, in their publications for children in 1975.
  For preschoolers, there was the educational television show Barney & Friends starting in 1992; their older siblings had the 1988 animated movie The Land Before Time and its increasing line of direct to video sequels (13 by 2016). Dinosaurs, a television sitcom, parodied humans and other television shows. Of particular note is Michael Crichton's 1990 novel, Jurassic Park, the popularity of which led to a series of films and other related media. The first of these, Jurassic Park, married advanced CGI with advances in scientific knowledge of dinosaurs. The Disney film Dinosaur was the most expensive movie in 2000, but was a box-office success. The falling cost of computer-generated effects also has recently allowed the increased production of documentaries for television; the award-winning 1999 BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs, the 2001 When Dinosaurs Roamed America, the 2003 Dinosaur Planet, the 2009 Animal Armageddon, the 2011 Dinosaur Revolution, and the 2011 Planet Dinosaur are notable examples.
  In April 2016, a proposal was submitted to the Unicode committee to encode three pictures of heads of three dinosaur species considered exemplary as emoji.
caption: Outdated and modern reconstructions of Iguanodon
exif: {}