Reinventing the Dinosaur

Plus: Donald Trump’s contentious testimony; the line between Gaza and America; and where does antisemitism come from? View in browser | Update your preferences Tuesday, November 7, 2023 In today’s newsletter, life after extinction, and then: • Donald Trump’s contentious testimony • The line between Gaza and America • Where does antisemitism come from? Reinventing the Dinosaur “Life on Our Planet,” a new Netflix nature documentary, renews our fascination with our most feared and loved precursors. Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli Can you picture a T. rex with feathers? What about lips? And can you imagine it moving like a “roadrunner from Hell,” as some scientists have posited, rather than lumbering like a muscly beast? “In the past few decades, paleontology has arguably advanced as dramatically as biotech or cat memes,” Rivka Galchen writes, in a fascinating story in this week’s issue, which tracks how recent discoveries and technological innovations have upended our understanding of the hundreds of millions of species that came and went before our time. These big numbers, and hard-to-fathom ideas, are at the center of Netflix’s new documentary series “Life on Our Planet,” a collaboration between scientists, filmmakers, and visual-effects artists at Industrial Light & Magic, which aims to bring the fossil record to vivid life. Yet the series is about more than the past, Galchen notes, and “does as much to reveal the extraordinary and alien nature of the animals we currently share the world with as it does to make familiar the extinct ones.” Read the story Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » Dinosaur Classics From its earliest days, The New Yorker has kept a close eye on the dinosaur beat. In 1926, noting that renovations at the American Museum of Natural History had temporarily displaced the large skeletons on display, a reporter for Talk of the Town lamented that “without dinosaurs no museum is the same.” After some poking around, the reporter located the bones on a closed floor of the Asiatic Section. The story explained, “The monsters are in there—not any new ones, for dinosaurs collect but slowly—standing in confusion with affecting patience, waiting to be straightened out, motionless as the earth they inhabited many million generations ago.” In the years since, we’ve followed along with the latest developments in dino theory, many of which have gone from far-out to widely accepted in the relative (compared to geologic time) blink of an eye. Perhaps dinosaurs were warm-blooded? Closely related to birds? Maybe the last of them all died on one supremely lousy day sixty-five million years ago? While many questions remain, we have agreed, at least, to stop calling them monsters. Annals of the Former World The Day the Dinosaurs Died From 2019: A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth. By Douglas Preston A Reporter at Large Bones of Contention From 2013: A Florida man’s curious trade in Mongolian dinosaurs. By Paige Williams Annals of Technology Darkness Falls on the Dinosaurs From 2016: There was a searing blast of heat and a cloud of soot. Then nature’s most charismatic animals went extinct. By Marcia Bjornerud Annals of Technology Remember the Titanosaur From 2016: The American Museum of Natural History unveils its latest star. By Carolyn Kormann John Cassidy Donald Trump’s Contentious Day on the Witness Stand Source photograph by Michael M. Santiago / Getty During his testimony on Monday in a civil fraud trial in New York, Donald Trump made what appeared to be a “significant and damaging admission, even if [he] didn’t seem to think so,” John Cassidy writes in his latest column. Trump, meanwhile, seemed less interested in the particulars of the case than in using his testimony for his own ends. The judge in the case was left to play referee. “This is not a political rally,” he said at one point. “This is a courtroom.” Read more » From the News Desk News Desk The Line Between Gaza and America Fragments of life and death from Palestinians inside the Strip and their relatives abroad, four weeks into Israel’s war. By Rozina Ali Q. & A. Where Does Antisemitism Come From? Amid a dramatic increase in attacks on Jewish people and institutions, a historian traces the cultural and political forces at work. By Isaac Chotiner Culture Dept. The Front Row How the Film Distributor Zeitgeist Made History With the release of “Taste of Cherry,” the company definitively established the great director Abbas Kiarostami with American audiences. By Richard Brody Fun & Games Dept. Daily Shouts The Incredible Adventure of the Fortitude, by Herbrerm Pinkleton: Part 1 Experienced seamen were in high demand at the time, and I’d been left with a bunch of landlubbers, green hands, and shore dunces. By Mike O’Brien Crossword A Moderately Challenging Puzzle Mystery writer Josephine: three letters. By Anna Shechtman Daily Cartoon Tuesday, November 7th By Adam Douglas Thompson P.S. Barbra Streisand’s memoir publishes today. In 2018, she spoke to Rachel Syme about why the project was taking so long to complete. “There’s a fabulous archive on me that I never use, because I find that it’s hard to look at yourself,” Streisand said. “I don’t mean hard as in negative. I mean, it feels egotistic to look at something about yourself. That’s why I never read books on myself, you know?” Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the daily newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. 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