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ver Museum of Nature and Science. But to millions of kids around the world, he’s just “Dr. Scott,” host of the popular PBS children’s series Dinosaur Train. The show is broadcast in more than 100 countries and was nominated for an Emmy. For Sampson, it’s an opportunity to work toward a goal close to his heart—connecting children to nature. “When I started Dinosaur Train, I had no idea if a TV show could encourage kids to turn off the tube and go outdoors,” says Sampson. “But I negotiated so that my final line in every episode is ‘Get outside, get into nature, and make your own discoveries.’” His fans seem to be listening: since Dinosaur Train launched in 2009, Sampson has heard from hundreds of families who say the show has inspired them to explore the outdoors.
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You led a research team in southern Utah that recently discovered a new type of dinosaur. Tell us about it. Yes—we named it Nasutoceratops—which means “big nose, horn face.” It sounds like an insult, but it’s actually quite descriptive. Nasutoceratops lived in southern Utah 76 million years
ago. At that time it was a hothouse world, with no polar ice caps and much higher sea levels. Utah had a Mediter- ranean-type climate and spectacular beachfront property, thanks to a shallow sea that divided North America.
That’s fascinating. Kids must love to hear these stories. Yes! The kids are entranced by tales of these ancient worlds. And I tell them that if you want to be a scientist when you grow up, the most important thing to remem- ber is that there are still plenty of amazing discoveries to be made. People think we’ve already found most of the dinosaurs that are out there, but in fact, the opposite is true. We’ve discovered more dinosaurs in the past genera- tion than in all prior history—and the rate of discovery is not abating. The other cool thing I always tell kids is that dinosaurs
aren’t extinct. You don’t have to go get a PhD to study dinosaurs in some far-off country; you simply need to step 28 · LAND&PEOPLE · FALL/WINTER 2013
outside, because all birds are dinosaurs. There are more dinosaurs around today than mammals—about 10,000 species of birds versus 6,000 species of mammals.
n evolutionary biologist and pale- ontologist who recently discovered an unknown type of dinosaur, Scott Sampson is the new chief curator and vice president of research and collections at the Den-
Did you spend a lot of time outdoors as a kid? I was a child of the ’60s—after school, I was kicked outside to play and told not to come back until the streetlights came on. I definitely attribute my passion for nature to my parents. My family went camping multiple times a year. If I had not spent so much time sleeping in tents as a child, I’m almost certain I would not be a paleontologist today. By the time my mother gave me my first dinosaur book, I was already hooked on the natural world.
What about people who didn’t have these types of early experiences? Is there a basic human need to connect to nature, regardless of background? Absolutely. For early humans, passing on an intimate un- derstanding of local plants and animals and natural history to the next generation was a matter of survival. So I think that a genetic bias toward forming a bond with place would have been critical in the same way that a mother-infant bond is critical for healthy human growth. We know that children who lack the mother-infant bond have difficulties as adults. I think the same thing is true of people who never bond with nature—it leads to cascading negative effects throughout their lives.
How are those effects visible in the United States today? Kids currently spend an average of seven to ten hours a day looking at screens and just four minutes a day outdoors— that’s more than 90 percent less time outside than their parents had. Childhood has literally been transformed within a single generation. This is an experiment we’ve never run before—and so far, the results don’t look good. Our kids are contending with skyrocketing rates of serious health issues—among them diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression. This is the first generation that may have a life expectancy less than that of their parents.
We’re constantly barraged with news of threats to our land, air, and water. How does our children’s changing relationship to nature relate to these other environmental problems? I’d go so far as to say that our disconnect from nature is one of the three greatest challenges of our time, together with climate change and the loss of biodiversity and habi-
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