Dinosaur renaissance

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The dinosaur renaissance^[1] was a highly specified scientific revolution that began in the late 1960s and led to renewed academic and popular interest in dinosaurs. It was initially spurred on by research indicating that dinosaurs may have been active warm-blooded animals, rather than sluggish cold-blooded lizard-like reptilians as had been the prevailing view and description during the first half of the twentieth century.

This new view of dinosaurs was championed particularly by John Ostrom, who argued that birds evolved from coelurosaurian dinosaurs,^[2] and Robert Bakker, who argued that dinosaurs were warm-blooded in a way similar to modern mammals and birds.^[3] Bakker frequently portrayed his ideas as a "renaissance" akin to those in the late nineteenth century, referring to the period in between the Dinosaur Wars and the dinosaur renaissance as "the dinosaur doldrums".^[3]

The dinosaur renaissance led to a profound shift in thinking on nearly all aspects of dinosaur biology, including physiology, evolution, behaviour, ecology and extinction. It also sparked public imagination and inspired many cultural depictions of dinosaurs.