Truth (plus lies) » dinosaurs

Claude K. Bell with an unfinished Cabazon dinosaur

Jefff — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:18:56 +0000

This is Claude Bell with his unfinished brontosaurus sculpture Dinney. In one of the most brilliant marketing moves in history, Bell wanted to attract customers to his Wheel Inn Cafe, so he built an enormous dinosaur statue. And it worked.

Sadly, after Bell died, the location was bought up by creationists and is now a creationist museum.

From It’s Late, via Ffffound.

Dinosaur news

Jefff — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:40:48 +0000

Remember how the Triceratops was just a juvenile form of a Torosaurus? Well, at least one scientist disagrees!

Among the fossil set that John Scannella and Jack Horner examined to combine the two species is a skull that they say is a transitional stage between Triceratops and Torosaurus. The skull was previously called Nedoceratops, yet another species.

But when Andrew Farke of the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California analysed the fossils in detail, he concluded that Nedoceratops was a distinct genera. In PLoS ONE, he reports that for the three genera to be different growth stages of a single dinosaur, “would require cranial changes otherwise unknown” in horned dinosaurs.

Also, even if Scannella and Horner are eventually judged to be correct, and Triceratops, Torosaurus, and Nedoceratops are all really the same creature, because of naming conventions, that species would be known as the Triceratops, since that was the first name applied to any of them.

In other news about dinosaur species, it turns out the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park are probably not Velociraptors. They’re too big and are instead Deinonychuses. It seems that Michael Crichton read a 1988 book that had decided — contrary to the greater Paleontology community — that the Velociraptor was the same species as the larger Deinychus.

Via Boing Boing and also Boing Boing.

Who invited the herbivore?

Jefff — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:07:10 +0000

By Gemma Correll, via Paper Tissue.

Dinosaur office

Jefff — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:30:18 +0000

From Loldwell, via The Daily What.

Prehistoric transport

Jefff — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:29:20 +0000

From This Isn’t Happiness.

Two new dinosaur species pick up the fallen Ceratops mantle

Jefff — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:29:33 +0000

Good news! We have replaced our old and broken Triceratops with the new and shiny Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, both discovered in the Utah desert.

The Utahceratops has a large horn over the nose and short eye horns that project to the side rather than upward, similar to a bison. Its skull is about 7 feet long, it stood about 6 feet high and was 18 to 22 feet long. It is believed to have weighed about 3 to 4 tons.

The Kosmoceratops has similar facial features at the Utahceratops, but has 10 horns across the rear margin of its bony frill that point downward and outward. It weighed about 2.5 tons and was about 15 feet long.

Via The Slatest.

All my friends are dead

Jefff — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:08:24 +0000

All My Friends Are Dead:

Via 9Gag.

Episode 4 – “The Valencia Club”

Jefff — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:08:47 +0000

After a slightly extended break, Dave & Jeff recorded a slightly extended Ueberfreundezeit. Many topics of this crazy summer of 2010 vied for their attention, but only these were up to snuff: Volvo’s heartbeat-detecting intruder alert, the sad tale of Travis Kevie & the Valencia Club, the also-sad tale of the coked up greyhounds, dinosaurs & their problems, and of course Montana Fishburne. Things happened in North Korea, but they ignored them.

Fuck polar bears and/or my future children

Jefff — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:48:58 +0000

From the Daily What.

Dinosaurs going extinct all over again

Jefff — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 14:43:15 +0000

For those keeping score, the Triceratops was just a younger version of the Torosaurus and the Brontosaurus was just another Apatosaurus.

Meanwhile, the Cabazon Dinosaurs, Claude Bell’s roadside sculptures that were featured in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, are being held captive by creationists who are forcing them to spread ignorance to passersby.