Dinosaurs and the Founding Fathers

I read something interesting a while back in the New Yorker. At the time of our founding, people did not understand that species had become extinct over time. They could not imagine such a concept. They thought the animals were still in existence - just some undiscovered part of the world. In fact, when Thomas Jefferson was talking to Lewis and Clark, who were about to depart on their famous trek across America, he warned them to keep an eye out for woolly mammoths. No one knew what was out there so Jurassic Park seemed possible.