« Dinosaurs often evoke a certain nostalgia associated with childhood. This feeling is probably shared by many millennials who grew up in the 1980s or 1990s, the media golden age of these « terrible lizards ».1
In a scientific study published in November 2007, researchers at Yale University characterized the interest of some children for these prehistoric animals as an « Extremely Intense Interest » (EII).2
The rise of these creatures in pop culture in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s was probably a major factor. Indeed, Denver, the Last Dinosaur (Peter Keefe, 1988), The Land Before Time (Don Bluth, 1988), Dinotopia, A Land Apart from Time (James Gurney, 1992), and above all, the famous novels Jurassic Park (Michel Crichton, 1990) and The Lost World (Michel Crichton, 1995), which were adapted for the cinema by Steven Spielberg (1993, 1997), popularized these creatures and shaped the representation that we have of them today.
Numerous objects, by-products and theme parks have also been created, playing on the growing interest of young people in the Jurassic and in science, but also on the spectacular aspect of this universe, this « sense of wonder », which in the realm of Science Fiction designates this sensation of vertigo in the face of an immensity that we cannot fully apprehend as human beings.3
These literary and cinematographic works, and other factitious memories of a time we have not lived, have not ceased to feed our fascination for them, to nourish our imagination, and consequently to inspire us in our creativity.
Another scientific study, published on 23 February this year, revealed that the meteorite that ended the Cretaceous era and caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, crashed into the Earth 66 million years ago, in the spring.4
Therefore, in this newfound spring, we, the gallery, Hugo Avigo, Camille Benarab-Lopez, Côme Clérino, Aurore Le Duc, Lulù Nuti and Julian Simon, have decided to pay them a tribute.
Welcome to DIN♡S. »
Chloé Salgado & Aurore Le Duc
1 The word « dinosaur » was coined by Richard Owen in 1841 from two ancient Greek words: deinós (« terribly large ») and saûros (« lizard »).
2 Planes, Trains, Automobiles - and Tea Sets: Extremely Intense Interests in Very Young Children, DeLoache, Simcok, Macari, Developmental Psychology Journal (2007).
3 « Émerveillement et « sense of wonder » : les leçons d’abîme de la science-fiction », Simon Bréan, De l’émerveillement dans les littératures poétiques et narratives des XIXe et XXe siècles. Grenoble : UGA Éditions, 2017. (pp. 313-323)
4 The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring, During, M.A.D., Smit, J., Voeten, D.F.A.E. et al., Nature (2022).
