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 4/10 Good --- www.dailynewstribune.com http://www.dailynewstribune.com/opinion/rss
Friday, April 25, 2008 --- 84 days ago http://www.dailynewstribune.com/archive/x2103873972
| There is within the human race a need to be safely terrified - ghost stories around the campfire, scary movies, tales of horror and the supernatural - and nothing filled that need better than Tyrannosaurus rex, the king of tyrant lizards.
T. rex is perhaps the largest carnivore the world has known, 43 feet long, weighing over 7 tons, the massive skulls with their chilling rictus of huge teeth. Frightening, yes, but also gone for the last 65 million years, leaving us free to fantasize about these huge beasts.
Comes now disquieting news. Scientists led by Dr. John Asara of Harvard Medical School succeeded in extracting protein from a T. rex skeleton and testing the amino acids in order to create a family tree, so to speak.
Alligators and T. rexes have a common ancestor. OK. Sounds reasonable. But here's where it gets ugly. T. rex's lineal descendant is the common chicken. So this magnificent predator has been reduced to a bucket of KFC? One scientist even cruelly jibed that T. rex probably tasted like chicken.
We have lost something here. Could you take seriously a "Jurassic Park"-like movie that began, "Return with us now to the Cretaceous era, when giant chickens roamed Earth"? Of course not. Or when you look at those nasty T. rex fore claws and think, "You know, I could really go for some hot wings"? Oh, the shame, the ignominy. ... |
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