John Ostrom,
the man who led the Dinosaur Renaissance
It’s the 1960’s and the world of palaeontology is in love with the idea that dinosaurs were dull, stupid laggards that had come to the end of their time. Then everything changed when a dinosaur called Deinonychus was found by palaeontologist John Ostrom which forced him to change his views on dinosaur behaviour and evolution. Read on to find out more >>>
Now, if you were a palaeontologist and found a dinosaur like Deinonychus, you would be forced to change your views on how dinosaurs walked, behaved, hunted and interacted with the world.
Forced to change his views
Deinonychus’s light build, fused tail and long, slashing claws forced Ostrom to revise his thinking on dinosaurs which led the palaeontological community to change theirs too,based on the overwhelming evidence that he presented. He led the way in what is known as the Dinosaur Renaissance, assisted by his capable student Robert T Bakker.
Ostrom proposed that dinosaurs were closer to big, non-flying birds than they were to lizards, an idea first put forward a hundred years earlier by Thomas Henry Huxley.
Initially there was a great deal or resistance to Ostrom’s ideas about feathered dinosaurs until everyone had to eat their words when they found feathered dinosaurs in China.
This was holy ground for Ostrom
Ostrom was born in New York and studied at Union College. He first thought that he would become a doctor but that plan changed when he read a book on evolution. He signed up at Columbia University and studied under Edwin H Colbert, then went on to teach at Brooklyn College, following which he spent five years at Beloit College before moving on to Yale where he became a professor and Curator Emeritus of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. The Peabody was where Othniel Charles Marsh began his career and which houses Marsh’s collection of fossils, mostly collected during the Bone Wars. So this was holy ground for Ostrom.
Archaeopteryx from the Munich Paläontologisches Museum
Not only did he discover warm-blooded Deinonychus, but he also revised the classification of the Haarlem Archaeopteryx - a bird-like fossil from Holland which supported the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Then he studied Hadrosaur track-ways, coming to the conclusion that they were sociable beasts, travelling in herds across the Mesozoic landscape.
This was all palaeontological heresy
It is all seen as self-evident today, but back in the sixties and seventies this was all palaeontological heresy. But when he died in 2005 his theories had been vindicated. So hats off to John Ostrom and his great science, his revolutionary thinking and his courage to believe in his convictions.
Deinonychus_skeleton_FMNH
A fossil, Rahonavis ostromi (meaning “Ostrom’s menace from the clouds”) was named in his honour by Catherine Forster in 1998. The fossil is that of a winged creature with a 60 cm wingspan, feathers and a sickle-shaped claw on its second toe designed for slashing prey. A flying Deinonychus! An honour indeed.
Here’s a lovely final snippet. The Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut was established in 1966 because the governor of the state was swamped by letters from dinosaur mad school children influenced by the work of John Ostrom.
And seeing that you are here, grab yourself a copy of our free colouring book, which is full of wonderful dinosaurs and other Mesozoic creatures for you to bring back to life.
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[…] The Dinosaur-Bird Connection: Perhaps the most transformative discovery was the mounting evidence supporting the idea that birds are the direct descendants of certain groups of theropod dinosaurs. Fossils of feathered dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis provided clear links between dinosaurs and modern birds, sparking intense research into avian evolution. Read more about the work of John Ostrom and how his work on the dinosaur-bird connection here. […]