I’ve discovered the solution to America’s oil dependency. Bring back the dinosaurs! Fuel efficiency would be a thing of the past—literally. You can’t have fossil fuels with no fossils. Not to mention, it would give a whole different meaning to road rage if your ride was a raptor.

Clearly Michael Crichton wasn’t thinking big enough. A theme park? Get real. What we need today are alternate forms of transportation. Forget the free downtown trolley—nothing could be greener than a 30-some-odd–ton Brachiosaurus that could pull cart loads of people no problem. Imagine one of those babies walking past 801 Grand.

Seriously, animatronic dinosaurs are way cool. Their real-life counterparts were even sweeter. If only they had survived after the Flood. Can you just picture it?

As I watched Walking with Dinosaurs, my eyes kept jumping from Huxley, the paleontologist narrator of the show, to the dinos, sizing them up. I was surprised that the Utahraptors were relatively small compared to some of the gigantic sauropods like Brachiosaurus. Perfect size for taming and riding, I’d say.

And if you need a good all-weather vehicle, Stegosaurus would be an excellent choice. You’d have to sit like the luge but those plates would protect you from all kinds of elements. (This is assuming, of course, that giant reptiles can survive an Iowa winter; it’s a miracle anything that can’t wrap itself in layers of insulated cloth can make it.)

Even T-Rex, the king of the dinos, was not as overwhelming as I imagined, though they definitely made the roaring loud enough to compensate. I’m completely convinced God made the little arms for strapping on a saddle. People must have wrangled them for Tyrannosaurus rodeos. Or Tyrannosaurus jousting.

If only.

Sadly, instead of my Model T dinos, all we get today are re-creations. No matter how realistic, nothing can really capture the grandeur God intended when he put the breath of life in these gigantic beasts.

Props to Walking with Dinosaurs. It’s the closest thing I know of to experiencing what a live dino might really have been like. Aside from that, there are only bones and imagination.

But you have to admit—I’m not the only one who wants to know what it’s like to ride an Allosaurus ala Swiss Family Robinson.

Photo illustration by: Justin Meyer