Just past the Creation Evidence Museum , which aims to prove that dinosaurs and humans lived together in accordance with God's plan, humans and dinosaur statues live together at the entrance to Dinosaur Valley State Park. The park itself shows off roughly 100 dinosaur tracks left down in the bed of the Paulxy River. But what we like most is what it has done with the two dinosaur statues it displays right near the parking lot when you come in.
One is a fierce looking Tyrannosaurus, and the other a huge brontosaurus. The 70-ft. long brontosaurus is angled to provide maximum shade from the blistering Texas sun, and most visitors congregate right under it, virtually ignoring the arguably more interesting beast.
Both statues are from the Sinclair Oil Company's 1964 World's Fair display. When the Smithsonian refused them after the Fair, the dinosaurs were scattered: Ankylosaurus went to the Cleveland Zoo, Corythosaurus to Independence, KS. Stegosaurus ended up at Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, UT, and Struthiomimus at the Milwaukee Museum. The Triceratops landed in Louisville, KY, but the whereabouts of the Ornitholestes are unknown. T. Rex and Brontosaurus landed in Glen Rose in 1970.
Other '64 World's Fair items, like the World's Largest Replica Cheese, the World's Largest Tire, have also found their way to permanent positions along the road, and still hold their own against more recent additions to the vacationscape (Oops. The Cheese vanished in 2005).
However, when it came out that there really wasn't such a thing as a Brontosaurus after all -- the original skeleton on which the Brontosaurus was based turned out to be an Apatosaurus body stuck with a Camarasaurus skull -- Texas Parks and Wildlife decided in 1987 to remake the dinosaur to conform to modern thought.
But as the posted explanation at the park reads: "When the correct head was finally installed it did not look right even though it was the right size...The new head looked like a pin head!"
Of course it didn't look right -- everyone had been looking at the wrong brontosaurus imagery for decades. So Texas Parks and Wildlife did what any politically-influenced natural science organization would do -- they changed it back!
What we especially like is the explanation for the change:
"By the 1990s the park recognized that the Sinclair models had become pieces of history in their own right and in 1995 decided to restore the models to the way they looked at the 1964 World's Fair. The old Camarasaurus head demonstrates that our understanding of these animals continues to develop."
Although we would wager that a tourist's understanding will develop slower as a result, we agree with the concept that the 1964 World's Fair should also be preserved, and can't believe the Smithsonian passed on the dinos in the first place.
