Monday, March 28, 2011

The fine line between extinct and imaginary

By now we all know there was never any such thing as a Brontosaurus. It turns out what they had back then (about 150 million years ago) was the Apatosaurus. We were calling it the wrong thing all along. Just think. If you'd have time traveled back there and seen one of these honking great quadrupeds ambling along chewing contemplatively and smelling like a thousand compost piles, and you had hollered, "Yo! Brontosaurus!" it would have just kept right on walking. And you'd have said to yourself, "How rude." But no. You were just calling him out of his name.

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