Why do kids love dinosaurs? Science writer and amateur paleontologist Riley Black writes for Atmos about dinomania — her own, and society's, which she traces back to the 1914 animated short "Gertie the Dinosaur." "The fact that they are extinct makes them safe and child-appropriate — the logic goes — and so dinosaurs can do no harm," she writes. "If dinosaurs are so safe, though, why do we spend so much time imagining them chasing us down and eating us?"