MESOZOIC MIX-UP
As production of this book nears its closing stages, I’m
pleased to learn that that amorphous and indefinable entity, the ‘Scientific
Community’ has found itself able to restore existence to the brontosaurus.
You might think a creature anything up to a hundred feet
in length, whose tail was capable of breaking the sound barrier, would be an
unlikely candidate for hide & seek, but we’re here witnessing another
miracle of the new godhead – the ability to create and uncreate at will, as
long as you don’t mention creation.
Not that long ago in a very long scheme of things, Bronty
was dinosaurus non grata, a SORNed saurian. So how did he manage to
overturn the ‘scientific’ verdict?
He was first discovered by palæontologists alongside
another swamp-dweller of similar proportions. Both creatures’ skeletons were
fairly complete, but both were lacking their heads.
It’s probably best not to dwell
on how they lost them. What we do know is how they acquired replacements: the
palæontologists stuck some on from other creatures.
Thus the specimens were
exhibited, transfixed and transplanted long enough to enter the minds of the
general public and Ray Harryhausen.
The two differed in the way
things tend to, especially when they have had to ‘evolve’ from a whelk or a
fungus into something the size of Tesco’s.
Probably because of the noise no
one had heard it make with its tail, or perhaps because it lived on a diet of
vegetables, the marketing department christened one ‘thunder lizard’, or brontosaurus.
The other composite was
distinguished by the title, apatosaurus, meaning ‘deceptive lizard’. In
what way deceptive is not clear. Did it pretend to be a lizard, or pretend not
to be one? Can something be deceptive without something or someone to deceive?
There seems not to be a corresponding classification for ‘deceived
palæontologist’.
As it turned out, Bronty was
actually the more deceptive of the two, appearing to be just another apatosaur,
so he was air-brushed out of prehistory and the world became a poorer, and
still less accurate, place.
Bronty was dead, but he wouldn’t
(probably couldn’t) lie down. Non-existent though he was declared to be, he
remained a children’s favourite and the one with the star quality – even with
his new pin-head, which was apparently so short on grey-matter that he needed a
second brain at the other end of his body, like a pantomime horse.
For his come-back this
partnership has also been dissolved.
So good old Bronty is not only restored to us, he’s got a
new solo act and is lighter headed. He still holds his thunder-producing tail
in the air for no better reason than that he is forbidden by the aforementioned
‘community’ to float it on the abundant water with which he was surrounded in
life.
He’s not taking any chances. He knows from experience that
what ‘science’ giveth it is just as ready to taketh away.
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