An ode to the Titanosaur

Winter break was too short, passing by with driving around with old friends, playing Settlers of Catan with my parents, and, oh yeah, seeing one of the most acclaimed musicals of all time on Broadway #hamiltonbro. One of my personal favorite memories, however, is when I visited one of my favorite places in New York City: the American Museum of Natural History. This monument to millions of years of human and animal history has gained a new resident since the last time I stopped by to visit. Welcome to Manhattan, Titanosaur.

A low-down on the Titanosaur: it was 122 feet long and weighed about 70 tons when it roamed the earth. Only a cast is up at the museum, since the real bones are too heavy to be displayed upright. (Don’t worry, the real bones are pictured on the wall across). The cast itself is too big to be contained in one room, so the head of this magnificent creature peeks out into another room. The species doesn’t even have a real name yet, since it was discovered so recently.

Why do I care so much about this dinosaur? After all, I’m weeks away from declaring myself an English major, and my brief brushes with science at Duke sent me running in the other direction. I certainly don’t have much of an academic interest in it, since I can barely distinguish a tibia from a humerus.

My fascination with the Titanosaur, and with all dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History, started when I was a small child. This obsession goes back at least to my third Halloween, where I dressed up as a Triceratops. I’d ask to go to the museum all the time whenever my family would be heading into the city, not really grasping the fact that there was anything else of interest to do in one of the biggest cities in the world. Upon arrival, I’d watch the introduction video, silently taking in Meryl Streep’s brief discussion of some of the largest animals that ever lived and the one meteor that wiped them all out. It blew my mind that the birds who woke me up every morning at 5:30 were in fact modern dinosaurs (according to Ms. Streep, who knows all). I’d then find the few dinosaurs I knew from the "The Land Before Time" series and stare at them, amazed that I got to see (at least parts of) something that lived millions of years ago. My favorite was always the T-Rex due to it being the biggest, until now. The Titanosaur now takes the #1 spot in my heart. I mean, it’s even bigger than the T-Rex, and its herbivorous tendencies mean it also wouldn’t eat me given a Jurassic Park-type situation.

Despite the fact that 16 years have passed since this obsession started, I still asked my parents if we could make a quick stop at the American Museum of Natural History when we went into the city over break. And all these years later, I still felt that same sense of wonder when I stared up at the Titanosaur, the sense of wonder that’s harder to come by as the years pass and we all become jaded about life. And I still watched Meryl Streep explain a short history of dinosaurs, just as interested as my younger self had been, despite the fact that I could probably find better information on the Internet. So I suppose the ~deep~ moral to this editor’s note is to never stop nerding out over whatever interests you, whether it be dinosaurs, Disney movies, or board games, regardless of whether it relates to what you want to do with your life. Just because we’re all growing up and have to get real jobs and real apartments doesn’t mean we have to stop caring about those little obsessions. After all, aren’t those interests what life is all about? If your 9-to-5 is a little slow, you can still look forward to the fact that "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" is now on Netflix, or that your March Madness Bracket hasn’t completely fallen apart yet.

To conclude, 1) Hold on to whatever excites you, no matter how irrelevant it is, and 2) The Titanosaur is an incredible and majestic creature, and it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.