Stereotypical Media Portrayal of Tyrannosaurus Rex Essay -- Explorator

Stereotypical Media Portrayal of Tyrannosaurus Rex Since kindergarten, our heads have been filled with fantastic pictures and stories about the great dinosaurs that have extensive been extinct. But like a lot of our childhood education, scientific information is often simplified and exaggerated by teachers, parents and the media. The case of the T- Rex is an exceptional example of how the media rat create a stereotype based on incomplete and outdated information, which ends up asserting itself back in mainstream popular last. Thus,a certain myth of the Tyrannosaurus Rexbeing a speedy eating machine, becomes a social fact based on fiction. If someone asked a five or sestet year old boy what he thought the Tyrannosaurus rex looked like, he would probably draw an angry, large dinosaur with sharp teeth, small arms and long deoxidise legs. If asked, the same boy would probably describe the T- Rex as the meanest, fastest scariest dinosaurs of all. While fact and fiction arent always separated for children, its interesting that today shut up as college students we would respond as the child did. Having seen Steven Spielbergs Jurassic Park, its obvious that children and college students arent the only ones who think of T-Rex as the fastest and meanest dinosaur of them all. Throughout the movie T-Rex is feared by the main characters not only because he is a carnivore, but because of his speed. But recent studies have confirmed that the belief that T- Rex could run as fast as say, a Ceolophysis could, is nothing more than a myth. On treat 2, 2002 Science News (The Weekly Newsmagazine of Science) ran an article by Sid Perkins, No Olympian Analysis T. Rex ran slowly, if at all. In his a... ... what, where, when and why we perceive things as a society. As a whole,Americans have the idea of T- Rex being the meanest, fastest and scariest of dinosaurs, when other carnivorous dinosaurs like the Velociraptor were just as much a predator as they. And as long as the Sp eilbergs of Hollywood portray the popularized and stereotypical aspects of culture in their movies, people will continue to believe that what they see is fact, not fiction.Works CitedGarcia, Mariano & John R. Hutchinson Tyrannosaurus was not a Fast Runner temper Journal 415 (Feb 28,2002) 1018-1021 Anonymous, How Fast Could Tyrannosaurus rex Run? Physics Today, Copywrite 2002 American Institute of Physics www.physicstoday.com/vol-55/iss-4/p18.htmlPerkins, Sid No Olympian Analysis hints T. Rex ran slowly, if at all. Science News March 2. 2002 Vol. 161, No. 9, P. 131