Byzantine Blog
Probably the only vaguely interesting thing about me is that with my wife, Mary Reed, I co-author the John the Eunuch mystery series set in sixth century Constantinople. But that doesn't stop me from dwelling here on the boring minutiae of the rest of my life, present and past, along with the occasional word about writing.
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--Michel de Montaigne
Who Are You Calling A Chicken?
An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus rex died 68 million years ago, but its bones still contain intact soft tissue, including the oldest preserved proteins ever found, scientists say.And a comparison of the protein’s chemical structure to a slew of other species showed an evolutionary link between T-Rex and chickens, bolstering the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
It was bad enough when scientists removed all the Martian canals and replaced them with a lifeless, rust colored, desolation. When they outlawed faster than light travel and made it impossible to traipse from galaxy to galaxy I was crushed. Being told that time wasn't something you could travel through was disappointing (although at least I could stop fretting about going back, stepping on an ant and snuffing myself and the rest of the human race).
But turning T-Rex into a big chicken is simply unforgivable. The king of the dinosaurs was the world's greatest predator, the most deliciously vicious, diabolical creature that ever shook the lawns we fled across shrieking as children.
Even those terrible old silent films we had snippets of on Super 8 reels used lizard tarted up with cardboard fins to portray dinosaurs. Lizards are appropriately cold-blooded reptiles. Not chickens.
T-Rex was no chicken. He didn't get eaten. He ate. T-Rex roared. He didn't cluck! T-Rex was too tough to just lay down and die for some weaselly rodents. It took an asteroid to blast him out of existence. Or so I thought. I'd much rather imagine T-Rex going out in a blaze of glory than devolving into a chicken.
Maybe human beings are devolving. In a few million years intelligent felines will be surprised to discover that the small, hairless, idiot creatures they breed for snacks, are the descendants of the violent species that once ruled the world.
A bit of T-Rex's dignity has been spared. Very little of protein was preserved. Unlike past-its-due-date mammoth, T-Rex is not going to be chowed down by gustatory adventurers. Not that it matters. We know what T-Rex tastes like now. Chicken.
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