Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Dinosaur emojis
Emojis representing dinosaurs From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
T-Rex (🦖) and Sauropod (🦕), collectively the dinosaur emojis, are two emojis depicting Tyrannosaurus and Sauropoda dinosaurs that are part of the Unicode Standard, originally added in Unicode 10.0 in June 2017.
The T-Rex emoji (left) and Sauropod emoji (right), as depicted in Noto Emoji
In addition to their literal depictions, the emojis have been used to note the perceived obsolescence of an idea. The dinosaur emojis have also been used to represent both transgender and trans-exclusionary radical feminist groups on the Internet.
Remove ads
History and design
Summarize
Perspective
The T-Rex emoji (left) and Sauropod emoji (right), as depicted in the Fluent Design System
Following interest expressed online for the addition of a dinosaur emoji to Unicode, multiple proposals for its creation were submitted to the Unicode Consortium in 2016, each differing on the number, style, anatomical structures, and species of dinosaur depicted. The proposals and their subsequent discussion noted that a dinosaur emoji would have both a high expected usage rate and multiple construable meanings.[1][2]
Dinosaur emojis were released in Unicode 10.0, as part of Emoji 5.0, on 20 June 2017.[3] The release features full-body depictions of a Tyrannosaurus rex, as a green dinosaur standing on its hind legs,[4] and a sauropod, as a blue, grey, or green dinosaur standing on all four legs.[5]
The Unicode Consortium was criticized during the emoji design process because of its lack of scientific consideration; Keith Winstein, a computer scientist at Stanford University, noted the lack of paleontologist involvement during the Unicode Consortium's design of the Standard.[6] Apple faced similar criticisms following its implementation of Unicode 10.0, with Thomas Carr of Carthage College noting that Apple's design of the T-Rex emoji lacked "basic anatomical accuracy".[7]
Remove ads
Usage
Summarize
Perspective
The dinosaur emojis can be used literally to represent a Tyrannosaurus and a sauropod. According to Emojipedia, both dinosaur emoji are also used to express the idea of being "old-fashioned or out-of-touch with modern sentiments".[4][5] An original proposal for the dinosaur emoji from 2016 by Dominik Schwartz suggested that it could also be used to represent the ideas of large size, obsolescence, or extinction.[2]
Transgender representation
Dinosaur emojis have been used by both transgender and trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) communities on the Internet to represent their respective groups.[8][9] In an interview on WBUR, paleontologist Riley Black, who is a transgender woman, speculated that the transgender community's use of dinosaur symbols may reflect what Black described as their attraction to "aspect[s] of falling into more than one category at once and ... transformation through time", qualities emphasized in the dinosaur renaissance. The podcast also suggests that TERF groups may have began using the emojis as a method to signal their beliefs to others in their community, following a comment by David Lammy describing them as "dinosaurs" for their ideas.[9]
Remove ads
Encoding
Both characters are categorized as "Symbol, Other" (So) in the Unicode General Category, with a bidirectional class of "Other Neutral" (ON), meaning they follow the overall text direction without inheriting strong directional properties.[10]
See also
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads