Paleontologist watches dinosaurs move to top of pop culture food chain

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. You-know-who remains buried in Grant's Tomb. But reports of the dinosaurs' demise are greatly exaggerated.

Not a believer? Tell that to Olivia McMillan, 3, who was roaring away, T. rex style, last weekend as she worked a dinosaur shadow puppet she made at Fernbank Museum of Natural Science. Fernbank, amid a 90 Days of Dinosaurs celebration, is one of many museums across the United States featuring the supersized vertabrates this summer.

Dinosaurs also are starring at megaplexes from sea to shining sea, in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" (a big hit with kids) and Will Ferrell's "Land of the Lost" (opening Friday and sure to be big with '70s kids who grew up watching the TV series). Finally, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," depicting dinos in an era millions of years past their reported expiration date, starts July 1.

Seeking to get to the bottom of this bottomless popularity, we turned to David R. Schwimmer — no, not the actor who played a paleontologist on "Friends" — a real-life paleontologist at Columbus State University.

One of 10 or fewer accredited paleontologists based in Georgia, Schwimmer, 62, has chronicled the Lophorhothon atopus, a Georgia dino that had its remains discovered in the 1940s. He advised Fernbank on bronzed statues of that species recently unleashed on its entrance plaza.

Why do you think dinosaurs are hot at this late date?

The resurgence of interest had a lot to do with the discovery of "hot-blooded" dinosaurs in the '70s. And that discovery led to the "Jurassic Park" book and movies. When we started reconstructing dinosaurs as active intelligent, pack-hunting, warm-blooded animals, "Jurassic Park" was a direct spin-off. That, in turn, sparked a lot of dinosaur research. Roughly half to two-thirds of the dinosaurs we know about today were not known before 1975.

Did you want to be a fireman when you grew up or a paleontologist?

I grew up 10 blocks from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. By time I was 5, I knew the name of every dinosaur in that museum.

I've had a lifelong interest in paleontology, but ironically I never considered it as a career growing up. I trained in pre-med. All my life, I was going to be doctor, like my uncle. But when I took my first geology course at the University of Wisconsin, I discovered how much more interesting that was than studying sick people.

You know, the American Museum is where the first "Night at the Museum" was set.

I'm a research associate there, so I've spent a night at the museum — well, worked overnight. I slept with the fossil fish collections in the sub-basement twice. And not one thing came out of its case, trust me.

In the '90s, one of my greatest thrills was getting into its Big Bone Room, a warehouse-size room filled with bones that had never been studied. There were things that, going back to the 1880s, had been packed into field jackets and sent to the museum. It was the most incredible place to be because you just don't know what's in there.

Do you have a favorite dinosaur movie?

I used "Jurassic Park," the first one, in the classroom. It's quite good. I love "Godzilla" [the 1956 original]. I've seen it more times than I could say, but not for the paleontology.

Is Georgia a good place to be a paleontologist?

I'm lucky being located between two major field research areas, to the south and north. In Atlanta you're sitting on rock that's useless for my purposes — that silly piedmont. You have to go northwest of Rome or straight north past Cartersville. I'm much closer. The rocks south of me are the only ones in the state that have any potential for dinosaurs. West Georgia and across Alabama, that's the good stuff.

Are you still studying the Lophorhothon atopus?

In '93, I published a major paper on dinosaurs in Georgia and Alabama. But I don't know about doing additional research. I don't have enough material to get very far. I work with what comes up. Right now, I'm working with coelacanth (hollow-spine) fish. We've found pretty fine specimens in Alabama and Georgia. I'm also now working on crocodile bite traces, big holes in dinosaur bones and turtle bones. Basically, I'm looking at fossil food chains.

What's the most satisfying aspect of being a paleontologist?

The sense that, unlike most other fields, you can actually do something new on earth. I can describe something no one's ever described before. This is my way of climbing Everest.

If you could be a dinosaur, which species would you be?

We suspect the tyrannosaurus ate a lot of scavenge; I wouldn't want to eat rotten meat. And I wouldn't want to be prey, like duckbills. I'd want to be something that doesn't have to be in constant panic. I'd want to be, I guess, one of the ankylosaurs, the armored dinosaur — they're like little tanks.

To be perfectly honest, despite what Disney told us, I don't think most dinosaurs lived happy lives. Natural life is not pleasant. We just think it is.