I am interested in what I think of as “celebrity dinosaurs”–dinosaurs that we have imbued with personalities and cultural weight. Dinosaurs who you can have conversations about as if they were real individuals. Dinosaurs who are characters as much as any fictional creations.
This is a two-part participatory project. I am currently still working on the first part, which is to ask people for lists of celebrity dinosaurs. I don’t give people any specific prompts, I just as them to write down as many celebrity dinosaurs as they can think of. I want to know which ones they really remember, which ones are the closest to the tips of their tongues.
Much of my paleontology work revolves around the idea that dinosaurs have deeply seeped into human consciousness; celebrity dinosaurs are essentially the most obvious examples of that process. I usually want to know, why do we think dinosaurs looked the way we think they did? Celebrity dinosaurs lead the way to these mental impressions.
I could also harvest data from internet searches–does X have more hits than Y?–but that would necessarily involved me starting with some kind of list of my own, and I want to see which dinosaurs really exist in the current public consciousness.
The second step will be to take the list I generate from people and then do more surveys–“how many of the dinosaurs below have you heard of?”–as well as some internet analysis.
The list below was generated from 60 participants. They were asked to list celebrity dinosaurs from any medium, such as TV shows, movies, video games, visual artwork, books, etc.
People were also allowed to just name a show (etc.) if they couldn’t think of the names of the characters in it. You can see examples of this below, such as the 18 mentions of Land before Time.
This list contains a number of creatures that I wouldn’t consider dinosaurs, but seemingly the respondents do, or at least they think they are close enough. I included all responses unless they were flagrantly off-topic.
This list goes from the highest number of mentions to the least. There are 157 different dinosaurs/show listed here. There are actually some entire shows, comics, and books about dinosaurs (for instance, Dinosaur King, Dino Squad, Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Super Dinosaur, Dinosaur Comics, Dinosaur Bob, etc.) that aren’t even listed here, so this is just a start.
| Barney | 37 |
| Godzilla | 22 |
| Land Before Time: Little Foot | 22 |
| Dino, Flintstones | 19 |
| Toy Story: Rex | 19 |
| Land Before Time | 18 |
| Jurassic Park I | 12 |
| Super Mario: Yoshi | 12 |
| Jurassic Park: T-rex (Roberta) | 11 |
| Jurassic Park: Blue | 10 |
| Land Before Time: Cera | 8 |
| Land Before Time: Ducky | 8 |
| Land Before Time: Petri | 7 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Baby | 6 |
| Land Before Time: Spike | 6 |
| Tiny, Meet the Robinsons | 6 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show | 5 |
| Jurassic Park: Velociraptors | 5 |
| Reptar, Rugrats | 5 |
| Sinclair logo | 5 |
| Dino Train | 4 |
| Dino Train: Don | 4 |
| Dino Train: Mr Conductor | 4 |
| Disney’s “Dinosaur” movie | 4 |
| Field Museum’s Sue (notes she has a twitter persona) | 4 |
| Jurassic World | 4 |
| Land of the Lost: Grumpy | 4 |
| Night at the Museum’s Sue | 4 |
| Devil Dinosaur | 3 |
| Dino Train: Buddy | 3 |
| Dino Train: Shiny | 3 |
| Dino Train: Tiny | 3 |
| Dinobots | 3 |
| Disney’s “Dinosaur” movie: Alladar | 3 |
| Dragon Tails | 3 |
| Gertie | 3 |
| Jurassic Park: Indominus rex | 3 |
| Super Mario: Bowser | 3 |
| The Good Dinosaur | 3 |
| Barney: Baby Bop | 2 |
| Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (Rhedosaur) | 2 |
| Cecil the Coelophysis, PRI | 2 |
| Dino Train: Mr Pteranodon | 2 |
| Dino Train: Mrs Pteranodon | 2 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Robbie | 2 |
| Far Side’s smoking dinosaurs | 2 |
| Jurassic Park: Charlie | 2 |
| Jurassic Park: Delta | 2 |
| Jurassic Park: Echo | 2 |
| Mothra | 2 |
| Nessie the plesiosaur | 2 |
| Paciifc Rim Kaiju | 2 |
| Rodan | 2 |
| Super Mario | 2 |
| Toy Story: Trixie | 2 |
| Amazing World of Gumball (Tina, Molly. Mr. Rex) | 1 |
| Ancalagon the Black | 1 |
| Barney: Trixie | 1 |
| Big Al (Walking with Dinosaurs) | 1 |
| Carnosaur | 1 |
| Crystal Palace Dinosaurs | 1 |
| Danny and the Dinosaur | 1 |
| DeeDee | 1 |
| Denver “The Last Dinosaur” | 1 |
| Dinny, Alley Oop’s pet | 1 |
| Dino Croc | 1 |
| Dino the Beast | 1 |
| Dino Train: Hank | 1 |
| Dino Train: King Cryolophosaurus | 1 |
| Dino Train: Mikey | 1 |
| Dino Train: Mr Mayor the Kosmoceratops | 1 |
| Dino Train: Ned | 1 |
| Dinotopia | 1 |
| Dinotopia sequel | 1 |
| Dio, Jojo’s Bozarre Adventures 7 | 1 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Charlene | 1 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Earl | 1 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Fran | 1 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Grandma | 1 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Mr Richfield | 1 |
| Disney “Dinosaurs” TV show: Roy | 1 |
| Disney’s “Dinosaur” movie: Carnotaurus | 1 |
| Dragon from Shrek | 1 |
| Dry Bones | 1 |
| Dupree, Adventure Time | 1 |
| Extreme Dinosaurs show | 1 |
| Fantasia dinosaurs | 1 |
| Gamera | 1 |
| George? From kids book | 1 |
| Giant Behemoth | 1 |
| Gill-man (Creature from the Black Lagoon) | 1 |
| Glaurung | 1 |
| Gorgo | 1 |
| Jane the Dinosaur | 1 |
| Johnny Quest flying dino | 1 |
| Journey to the Center of the Earth | 1 |
| The Lost World: Jurassic Park | 1 |
| Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom | 1 |
| Jurassic Park: Clever Girl | 1 |
| Jurassic Park: Indoraptor | 1 |
| Jurassic Park: Mosasaurus | 1 |
| King Dinosaur | 1 |
| King Kong’s T. rex | 1 |
| Kong Long Bao Bei | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Cera’s dad | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Chomper | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Ducky’s mom | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Little Foot’s Grandma | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Little Foot’s Grandpa | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Little Foot’s mom | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Ozzy | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Petri’s mom | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Sharptooth | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Spot | 1 |
| Land Before Time: Trish | 1 |
| Land of the Lost: Scarface | 1 |
| Lego movie raptors | 1 |
| Lost World (original): brontosaurus | 1 |
| Most Power Ranger Zords | 1 |
| My t-rex ate your stick figure family car sticker | 1 |
| Old Lace | 1 |
| Pokemon: Aerodactyle | 1 |
| Pokemon: Axue | 1 |
| Pokemon: Charizard | 1 |
| Pokemon: Cubone | 1 |
| Pokemon: Ryperior | 1 |
| Pokemon: Tyranotaur | 1 |
| Pokemon: Tyrunt | 1 |
| Prehisteria | 1 |
| Prickle, Gumby | 1 |
| Red (Raptor Red?) | 1 |
| Rudy, Ice Age | 1 |
| Sigmund the Sea Monster | 1 |
| Smaug | 1 |
| Steve, Dilbert | 1 |
| Super Mario: Birdo | 1 |
| Super Mario: Bowser, Jr | 1 |
| Super Mario: Dry Bowser | 1 |
| Super Mario: Iggy Koopa | 1 |
| Super Mario: Lemmy Koopa | 1 |
| Super Mario: Ludwig Koopa | 1 |
| Super Mario: Morton Koopa | 1 |
| Super Mario: Pink Yoshi | 1 |
| Super Mario: Wendy Koopa | 1 |
| Swamp Thing | 1 |
| The Meg | 1 |
| The Waterhorse | 1 |
| Thuggo, The Terrible Thunderlizards (Brad Garrett voice) | 1 |
| Tricky, Star Fox Adventures | 1 |
| Valley of Gwanji Allosaurus | 1 |
| “We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story” | 1 |
| Wexler, Axe Cop | 1 |
| World of Warcraft theropod mounts | 1 |
| Zebo, iCarly | 1 |
| Zigra | 1 |
Chris Wildrick 