Happy Endangered Species Day!

It’s the 17th annual international holiday for endangered species–and specifically, for raising awareness and taking steps to help them. I thought a lot about what to post today. I wanted to make it fun and maybe add in a hint of Belville magic, the way I did for Earth Day. But to be honest, there’s not a lot of ways to make light of entire species dwindling and eventually going extinct.

So, for some inspiration, today I’m drawing on history. Did you know that some historians and archaeologists believe that myths about elusive monsters (for example, dragons!) have their root in fossils? The idea is that ancient people discovered fossils of massive animals, say, dinosaurs, and thought to themselves, “hmmm–I haven’t seen anything around these days that has huge bones like this, thank goodness! What must it have looked like, and who could have been mighty enough to kill it?” (Which, to be honest, are the same kinds of questions we as modern people ask about fossils, too! But we have a much better understanding of things like geologic time and asteroids.) And as the ancient people puzzled over massive bones, voila–stories about giants, dragons, world-eating snakes, and other such creatures were born.

I’m something of a geology and history nerd already, so I happen to like this theory because it connects science and myth in a very human way. Today I’m taking it a step farther, though. In honor of Endangered Species Day, let’s think about not letting creatures slip into the fossil record to become the nightmare monsters of tomorrow, shall we? 🙂

If you want to learn more about Endangered Species Day, it has its own website here. As for the fossil theory, there’s a brief discussion of it in this Smithsonian article, and a more in-depth article on it from Live Science. The First Fossil Hunters from Adrienne Mayor is also a fascinating book on the subject!