Dinosaurs in science and pop culture | Europeana

Published 25 June 2025 by Tina Schneider (Natural History Museum, Berlin)

Dinosaurs and their fossils shape the palaeontological sciences, but they are also a major pop culture phenomenon. Discover informative, weird, and wonderful objects that interweave the scientific and not-so-scientific aspects of these amazing creatures.
Everlasting mania
Honestly, who doesn’t love dinosaurs? At some stage in childhood, everyone seems to be captivated by the peculiar charm of these long-extinct, often giant representatives of our animal kingdom. For many of us, this phase of fascination never seems to end.
Our appetite for dinosaurs is constantly being fed as new discoveries of dinosaur remains pop up in our news feeds, while fictionalised material is used in movies and TV documentaries. The best-known dinosaur species even appear regularly in all advertising channels. In short: dinosaurs are long extinct, but they are still all around us.
The reign of the dinosaurs
As a group of animals, dinosaurs were extremely successful. Whilst Homo sapiens have populated the planet for just around 300,000 years, dinosaurs lived on our planet for more than 150 million years. They were incredibly diverse and adaptable and lived through all three geological periods of the Mesozoic Era: Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.
The reign of the dinosaurs ended around 66 million years ago, when a large asteroid collided with Earth. They are, however, not entirely extinct. We now know that birds are direct descendants of theropods, the meat-eating dinosaurs, to which the well-known Tyrannosaurus rex belonged.
The Archaeopteryx shown above is another iconic dinosaur-representative. Considered a transitional form, it mediates between theropod dinosaurs and birds. Roughly raven-sized and equipped with feathers, Archaeopteryx fossils were first discovered in southern Germany in the 1860s. With only about 14 skeletal finds of Archaeopteryx, its fossils are extremely rare. This is in stark contrast to the finds of other dinosaurs. Iguanodon, for example, is known from thousands of fossilised remains.
The tallest and the smallest
Compared to other creatures of their time, dinosaurs were relatively large and heavy, yet the size of the different dinosaur species varied greatly. A 1995 study examined 220 dinosaur species and found that the average dinosaur weighed between 1 and 10 tons. Not all dinosaurs were giants. The group of theropods for example, which includes Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Allosaurus, also had smaller representatives, comparable in size to a chicken. A study from 2018 indicates that the smallest extinct dinosaurs could have been as light as 13 grams.
Other dinosaurs, however, were truly enormous, in particular the long-necked sauropods. Sauropods were diverse, widespread and included the biggest animals known to have lived on land.
One of the most impressive sauropod skeletons ever found is Giraffatitan brancai, see image above. A mounted Giraffatitan skeleton in the Natural History Museum in Berlin is over 13 metres tall and 23 metres long. It is estimated that such an animal would have weighed somewhere between 20 and 50 tons.
Palaeontology and early expeditions
Palaeontology is the science about fossilised organisms, including dinosaurs. An important part of palaeontological research is the study of fossilised bones, eggs and footprints.
Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) marks the beginning of palaeontology as a science. His work contributed to the rapid progress and flourishing of the field from the 1810s/1820s onwards.
Many significant dinosaur discoveries were made during colonial times. Giraffatitan for example was unearthed during the German Tendaguru Expedition (1909-1913) in the colony of German East Africa, now Tanzania. The Tanganjika Expedition, which happened around 25 years later, also took place in what is now Tanzania. Below are images from both expeditions. Today, historic dinosaur finds are not only studied from a palaeontological perspective, but are also viewed and researched as collection items with complex object biographies due to their colonial contexts.
First public interest
Until the 1840s, no one had ever heard of the word ‘dinosaur’. Comparative anatomist Richard Owen, who later became the first director of London’s Natural History Museum, introduced the term in 1841.
The above-mentioned Iguanodon contributed to the public’s first enthusiasm for dinosaurs. In the 1850s, in Victorian England, an exhibition of life-like dinosaur sculptures was shown in London's Crystal Palace Park. The displayed models of two Iguanodon fuelled the imagination of visitors and the popularity of dinosaurs overall. A historical concept drawing is shown below. It marked the first time that life-size models were built as a reference for fossils. Until then, only mounted skeletons had been presented to the public.
The Crystal Palace Park display was so successful that in the following years dinosaur exhibitions opened in parks and museums all over the world. Life-size dinosaur reconstructions are still popular today, while some modern exhibitions include moving animatronics with sounds and lightshow elements.
Dinosaurs take off
From a human perspective, dinosaurs are creatures of astounding appearance and often towering size. In this way, they have fuelled human imagination and have become an enduring part of pop culture.
Today, dinosaurs are present in our everyday lives. Companies use their images in advertising and they decorate every imaginable product, from fashion items to dishes.
Dinosaurs have inspired all kinds of creative works, ranging from literature and theatre to music productions. In popular music, several artists use dinosaur themes. There are successful bands called T-Rex, Dinosaur Jr., and Heavysaurus.
Dinosaur-related topics feature in some exceptionally successful books, films and TV series such as The Flintstones from the 1960s or the Jurassic Park franchise, starting in the 1990s. The first Jurassic Park film from 1993 brought in over 3 billion US dollars in revenue with the help of merchandising. The buzz surrounding the film was enormous and helped to create a pop culture hype.
Pop culture influence
It wasn’t only pop culture that experienced a dinosaur boom due to Jurassic Park. Palaeontology as a scientific field saw an enormous boost. Many modern-day palaeontologists were influenced by both the film and the novel it was based on. In 2018, palaeontology professor Mike Benton from Bristol University stated that most of his students today name Jurassic Park as their main influence in their decision to study dinosaurs.
However, Jurassic Park hype also brought some problems, such as a big increase in the illegal collection of dinosaur bones making them collection and speculation objects for private individuals instead of being available for scientific studies. In a recent example from 2024, the skeleton of a Stegosaurus was sold at an auction in New York City. The anonymous private buyer paid 44.6 million US dollars.
Dinosaurs in science today
Current investigations, which continuously reveal new species descriptions and scientific findings, are regularly featured in wide-ranging media coverage and enrich the research community and dinosaur enthusiasts alike. Nowadays, palaeontologists combine modern scientific methods with those from other fields of research, such as biochemistry or medicine, to decipher yet unknown aspects of evolution. For instance, they investigate what dietary habits dinosaurs had or what health problems they were confronted with. The following figure shows, for example, bones that indicate deforming arthritis.
At the Natural History Museum in Berlin, for instance, the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex was analysed using high-resolution medical computer tomography at a local clinic, showing exactly how tooth growth worked in a T-Rex. As its teeth were constantly being renewed and replaced, they were of different sizes. Larger, older teeth were lined up next to smaller, freshly replaced teeth. The depiction of the homogenous dentition of the T-Rex shown below is therefore incorrect.
Such fresh insights excite both young and old dinosaur fans all over the world. New big-budget film and television productions are incorporating scientific findings and provide ever more authentic depictions of dinosaur physiology, behaviour or habitats. Science and pop culture seem to go hand in hand when it comes to ensuring the constant omnipresence of these fascinating giants of the Mesozoic era.