Finding dinosaur feathers

It’s 9:55am and I’m going to be late for GEOL205: Paleontology.

Shit.

I brush my teeth, throw on some jeans, and start hauling ass.

Paleontology is not the class to be late to. The professor is a stickler for attendance and, with a whopping 12 other people, it’s PAINFULLY awkward if you walk in mid-lecture.

As I dodge pedestrians and dumb pigeons alike, I regret signing up for the course. I thought it’d be an easy senior year elective — you know, watch Jurassic Park and look at dinosaur bones for a few hours.

Not the case.

We’re talking clades, and morphology, and other horrendously dry stuff. Third grade me might have been stoked, but some of this stuff is so boring that it’s hard not to fall asleep.

And yet I run anyways. I hate being late. As I finally get to the Vet School — 20 minutes over time — I brace for an awkward entrance and a disappointed look from the professor. I step into the the class and—

Nothing. Not one head turns.

Everyone is engrossed by the slide being presented.

And, for the first time, I am too.

On the top of the screen is just a short title — The Origin of Birds.

I sneak into the back of the class and take a seat.

Professor explains how, in recent years, consensus has become that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs (the exact group of which Tyrannosaurus Rex is a part). He outlines how the discovery of species like Archaeopteryx gave us the first clues that birds and dinosaurs were at least related, and how subsequent findings — like feathers in the fossil record — solidified a stunning conclusion:

That the birds walking amongst us today aren’t just related. They are, quite literally, dinosaurs.

I can feel my heart swell.

When the class ends and I step outside, I’m walking into a different world. I see the pigeons I had passed by earlier, but this time they look don’t look so dumb. I notice the claws on their feet — and how much they look like the dinosaur skeletons in our textbooks. A gentle reverence takes root as I realize just how much turbulence they’ve persisted through in their hundreds of million of years on this planet.

As I keep walking, I start noticing more. The grass, the trees, the fauna on campus. I don’t know their stories — yet — but something’s changed. I begin to comprehend just how much I’ve been missing.

I’m early to the next Paleontology class. And every one thereafter.

I have so much more to learn.

Till next week,
Mayank