Dinosaurs, those evocative reptiles of the Mesozoic, have captured the hearts and minds of millions of people for decades. We love to imagine what they looked like, how they behaved, how they sounded. Many of us have felt a tingle in the spine looking at dinosaur bones, as we try to clothe them in muscle and flesh. They have acquired a certain mystical appeal. We think of them as somehow more than mere animals, as almost magical.

It turns out that dinosaurs were in fact even more amazing and intriguing than we could ever have anticipated. Some were so bizarre that they might scarcely be recognised as dinosaurs if we were to lay eyes on them. Some were simply enormous, larger even than the fabled Brachiosaurus. There was a carnivorous dinosaur even larger than Tyrannosaurus rex, that legendary “tyrant lizard king”. Some probably hunted in packs, much like wolves, and might have used fairly sophisticated attack patterns to bring down large prey. Some had beaks. Some had feathers, and we might imagine that these feathers were extravagantly coloured like those on many of today’s birds (birds, by the way, evolved from dinosaurs; strictly speaking, they are dinosaurs. More on this later). Some looked like gigantic turkeys with Edward Scissor Hands-like claws. Some had magnificent frills on their heads, and huge horns on their snouts. Apparently at least some could swim. The large sauropods might have lived in herds, grazing through the landscape on the lookout for theropods like Allosaurs. Far from being simple, cold-blooded brutes, dinosaurs were likely to be warm-blooded, comparably intelligent to many of today’s animals, and equipped with special adaptations to dissipate heat, sound alarm calls, and digest food.

These animals can make an adult feel like a child again, evoking a primeval excitement usually reserved for dragons and other creatures of fiction. Though I’ve never seen you, I miss you. I feel an intangible bond booming down through the ages. The rocks paint a world I’ll never experience, forever lost but for science and the imagination. I would love to know the flesh-and-blood you, how your skin felt against my palm, how your bellow felt inside my head. You fill the ancient Earth with a heart-wrenching artistry, and our dreams with awe and wonder. Your appeal is timeless, for while we know enough of you to be excited beyond words for what you might have been like, you conceal enough to leave us looking upon the sediments with envy and regret, forever hoping to catch a glimpse of your true selves.