Tag: #Dinosaurs

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Pushing the Boundaries of Dinosaur Knowledge

Kajmeister’s calendar is ready and waiting!!!!

In honor of World Dinosaur Day, I’ve decided to inaugurate the first ever annual World Dinosaur Day post. I’ll start by reminding you, dear reader, that I have written a book all about paleontology, The A to Z Dinosaurs, full of fun little tidbits about these magnificent reptiles. With that sponsor’s message out of the way, let’s talk about some of the latest dinosaur research. I’m going to call it DRAMA, INDUSTRY, MAGIC! That is, drama among the paleontologists, industrialists helping out their scientific friends, and magical new technology uncovering hidden secrets.

World Dinosaur Day was designated as such by cartoonist Joe Wos back in 2016. Wos is a well-known illustrator who helped found a small cartoon museum in Pittsburgh, had a website, was noted as a visiting cartoonist to the Schulz museum here in Northern California–the guy does a lot of things. Lots of ideas. Lots of projects. Museum now closed; website gone; lots of 404 links. He’s available for speaking events but has not, according to his personal site, said much about dinosaurs. However, his Dinosaur Day idea caught on, and museums and educators have enjoyed pitching a tent on it, even if Joe seems to have wandered away. Thanks anyway, Joe Wos! Who wouldn’t want another excuse to celebrate dinosaurs?

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The Dragon Hunt

Dragon from San Francisco New Year parade, 2020. Kajmeister photo.

A few weeks back, while still wrapped in the blanket of dinosaur research, I started thinking about serpent gods, flying monsters, and dragons. I wondered how scholars had addressed this question, but when a few glances at research led to papers on children’s stories and the ancestral memory of tree shrews, I gave up quickly. It was Christmas; I had presents to wrap and muffins to bake. Those few who discussed the possible origins of dragons appeared limited to art museums, mythology experts, or psychologists, rather than historians or paleontologists.

But last Thursday was of all things, Appreciate a Dragon day, according to Sandra Boynton. And we are finishing the Year of the Dragon, after all, with January 29th ending this most auspicious year and moving on to a different animal in the Chinese calendar, Year of the Snake.

Perfect timing to take another dive into the topic.

It seemed a simple question. After all, dinosaurs once covered the earth, which, at the beginning of the Triassic, was a single land called Pangaea. The continents split up after the dinosaurs proliferated, so dinosaur fossils now cover the globe, with similar species now found flung far apart in Argentina, the Rockies, and the Gobi Desert. Dragon stories also span the globe. It seems a question with a fairly obvious answer: Were human ideas and stories about dragons influenced by dinosaurs, by fossils found by ancient, primitive paleontologists?

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Z is for Zuul

Zuul crurivastator (Zuul, destroyer of shins), wikipedia.
Zuul, the Gatekeeper of Gozer, photo from collider.com.

Yes, Zuul from Ghostbusters. Zuul who inhabits Sigourney Weaver’s body in order to search for the Keymaster, schlubby Rick Moranis, so that their coupling will release the demon Gozer into the world. A nerdy fantasy written by nerds for nerds.

I was never a fan of the movie, but yesterday, when I was running down the list of which “Z” dinosaur would get the honor to front my very last post, and I said Zuul, my spouse immediately said Oh! The Gatekeeper of Gozer. Paleontologists, I suppose, are as nerdy as romance writers, medieval historians, and Hollywood directors, so, yes….

They did indeed name a dinosaur for Zuul.

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