Sunday 13 March 2011

Post-osuchus

Last week, for my 27th birthday, my girlfriend gave me a super awesome Dinosaur encyclopaedia called The Dinosauria. It’s well good.

Essentially a comprehensive reference text for Palaeontologists and students, The Dinosauria is about as thick as two phone books, and is written in such a technical way that it occasionally makes me feel like a frustrated chimp. However, after much screeching and excrement throwing, I am able to remind myself of how an intelligent, well-evolved creature should behave, so I consult a dictionary in a civilized manner, and reward myself with a delicious banana.

The Dinosauria goes into immense detail about the clues regarding dinosaur behaviour and biology. My 2004 second edition also confidently pushes further the now widely accepted idea that small Theropod (‘real chickeny like‘) dinosaurs eventually evolved into modern day birds. So remember, Polly doesn’t actually want a cracker. She wants to eat you and everyone you care about.

New Dinosaur discoveries are unearthed all the time, such as the bizarre single-fingered Linhenykus, (or Mega-nipple-saurus, as I like to call him) found in January this year, so the fact that The Dinosauria is now seven years behind may make it seem extinct. However, it is clear that no better complete work currently exists on the subject of Dinosaurs.

Unfortunately — unlike my other favourite literary works —The Dinosauria contains no pop-up sections, nor any big colour pictures. Instead, the analyses of the scaly/feathery buggers are often aided with classy, indisputably accurate diagrams, depicting their proposed scale, posture and locomotion. There are also some intriguing closer looks at the various taxonomy groups’ unique anatomical features.

Yes, I am a massive nerd, I know, but I’m going to enjoy reading this bad boy. I do lovez me dinosaurs. Raar!