Pumping the Past: The Dinosaur as a Symbol for Fossil Fuels

• In Event: On the Road with Environmental History: Travel, Transportation, and Tourism

Abstract

Dinosaurs occupy a peculiar space in the American cultural imaginary. Their material manifestations are inherently related to fossil extraction, and their representational forms have become cautionary tales of extinction. Such cultural narratives establish a fascinating intimacy between geologic time and humanity’s cataclysmic effects on our planet, forcing us to reckon with the unprecedented speed of anthropogenic mass extinction brought by climate change and habitat destruction. This paper explores the dinosaur’s emergence as a symbol for oil in the U.S. roughly from the 1910s to the 1940s. Drawing from Ross Barrett’s notion of “petro-primitivism,” I argue that the relationship between cultural production and the dinosaur was fueled by changing discourses surrounding oil extraction that naturalized fossil resource extraction as an eternal human endeavor by extending it into deep time. By the 1940s, the dinosaur has become a symbol of petroleum that not only indexes the prehistory of fossil resources. It also iconizes what Matthew T. Huber calls “liquid landscapes” that render ubiquitous access to gasoline in the U.S. an integral aspect of the geographies of American life. For this paper, I will examine how the Brontosaurus became the logo of the Sinclair Oil Corporation in the early 1930s. More precisely, I will trace the intersectional histories of the association between dinosaur fossil finds and oil extraction, the emergence of American car culture, and the growing investment in leisure spaces during the Great Depression by using the Sinclair Oil Corporation as a case study. In doing so, I will analyze primary sources such as promotional materials, newspaper articles, advertisements, and documents surrounding the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair to suggest that the common popular belief that oil is made from dinosaurs is rooted in cultural narratives that naturalize oil extraction and car culture by extending it into our planet’s deep past.

Author

• Henrik Jaron Schneider, The University of Texas at Austin