Prehistoric Monster/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

* All that said. [[Tropes Are Not Bad]], and this trope is one of the main reasons for the popularity of dinosaurs in fiction for the past century. Let's face it, elephant-sized carnivores are SCARY! Stories that played this trope straight often blurred the line between monster-filled fantasy and real world adventure, much the way remote jungles were once portrayed, but cranked [[Up to Eleven]]. Many writers today intentionally avoid portraying dinosaurs as normal animals in order to play up [[Rule of Cool]].

** Yes, but your argument seems more related to tropes like [[Dinosaurs Are Dragons]], [[Tyrannosaurus Rex]] and [[Carnivore Confusion|Predators Are Mean]]. [[Prehistoric Monster]] is more about animals such as trilobites, mammoths, Triceratops, dodos and so on, all animals that objectively will appear not scarier to us modern humans than modern crabs, elephants, rhinoceroses and ostriches do, if they would be still alive today (obviously giant theropods like Allosaurus are borderline cases, the image and its underline is a bit ironical...) I've read many books, article, docus and so on during my life, which treat modern and prehistoric critters in a "two weight, two measures" style. Whales are marvelous creatures while dinosaurs are monsters; rhinoceroses are cool while Uintatheres are scary; "normal" tigers are "among the most fascinating animals in the Universe" while "sabretooth tigers" are nothing but "cruel killers", and so on. Furthermore, the adjective "prehistoric" has become a synonym of "monstrous", "terrifying" in common language (a modern animal with a "prehistoric appearence" means it's ugly at least, if not downright creepy). All this [[Headscratchers|just bugs me]] (I'm studying biology at the university). PS. Forgive me for my bad English, I'm European...