A brontosaurus: we are willing to forgive this colossal dinosaur its tiny head | Helen Sullivan

Perhaps we introduce children to dinosaurs long before they understand evolution to teach them to imagine the past and to love doing so

It is a fact about people that we all love a brontosaurus. The long curved neck, the small head, the massive ribs. We don't mind a brachiosaurus either. We don't mind that its head is out of proportion with its body; we don't hold this against it as we do with the T Rex's puny arms.

We love to think of the brontosaurus with its head so far away from its tail, and of the brachiosaurus with its head so far above us, we who are at that moment dressed in animal skins. We forget that people were not there and then we remember and it doesn't matter. Look up and you will see the small head, soaring, saurusing above you, having just plucked a fern from the ground. The head is backlit by the prehistoric dinosaur sun. You can just make out the silhouette fern sticking out of its mouth, the jaws moving. Now look in front of you, and there are the elephant feet, there is the enormous shadow.