Tyrannosaurus rex: on Our Stamps and on Our Mind

Abstract

Humans have never lived consecutively with dinosaurs, despite the images that Jurassic Park has left in our collective consciousness. However, had that happened, humans most probably would not have survived. Dinosaurs would be the predominant species on earth, and yet, despite this nearly certain outcome, the images of the Tyrannosaurus rex hunting, chasing, or eating its prey, never escape our imagination. We can’t seem to leave the most fearsome predator of the Cretaceous alone.
Perhaps this explains why the arrival of such a ferocious animal was greeted with simultaneous excitement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and at a post office near you. But, let’s not get ahead of our story. Rather we go back to the actual date that the real, very dead, fossilized T. rex made its way to the nation’s capital and onto a quartet of postage stamps.