Dinosaur renaissance

It was initially spurred by research indicating that dinosaurs may have been active warm-blooded animals, rather than sluggish cold-blooded lizard-like reptilians as had been the prevailing view and description during the first half of the twentieth century.

Shortly after the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, British biologist and evolution-defender Thomas Henry Huxley proposed that birds were descendants of dinosaurs.

[4][5] However, in 1926, Gerhard Heilmann wrote his influential book The Origin of Birds,[6] in which he dismissed the dinosaur–bird link, based on the dinosaurs' supposed lack of a furcula.

[citation needed] This situation persisted until 1964, when John Ostrom discovered a small carnivorous dinosaur which he named Deinonychus antirrhopus,[8] a theropod whose skeletal resemblance to birds seemed unmistakable.

However, Harry Seeley disagreed with this interpretation, and split the Dinosauria into two orders, the Saurischia ("lizard-hipped") and the Ornithischia ("bird-hipped"), which were seen as members of the Archosauria with no special relationship to each other.

In most of his writings Bakker framed his arguments as new evidence leading to a revival of ideas popular in the late 19th century, frequently referring to an ongoing "dinosaur renaissance".

[20] These debates sparked interest in new methods for ascertaining the palaeobiology of extinct animals, such as bone histology, which have been successfully applied to determining the growth-rates of many dinosaurs.

Today, it is generally thought that many or perhaps all dinosaurs had higher metabolic rates than living reptiles, but also that the situation is more complex and varied than Bakker originally proposed.

On the basis of trackways, Bakker argued that sauropod dinosaurs moved in structured herds, with the adults surrounding the juveniles in a protective ring.

[17] However, shortly afterwards this particular interpretation was challenged by Ostrom[24] among others, although the venerable dinosaur track expert Roland T. Bird apparently agreed with Bakker.

[citation needed] Besides Bakker, key artists in this "new wave" were first Mark Hallett, Gregory S. Paul in the 1970s, and during the 1980s Doug Henderson and John Gurche.