For some reason, I’m reminded of a news item making the rounds. Emerging fossil evidence suggests that many dinosaurs had feathers, perhaps even most or all of them. This makes sense to me. Well within my lifetime, the idea that dinosaurs more closely resembled birds than lizards first gained public attention. It took years for this dramatic shift in perception to be generally accepted, but I thought it made a lot of sense the first time I heard it laid out. It didn’t make the idea of dinosaurs less terrifying, either. If you were a bug, which would you rather cope with, a sleepy anole on a limb over there, or a voracious hen rampaging around the barnyard? Anyway, I’ve wondered since if maybe dinosaurs didn’t have feathers, and now it seems maybe they did.
65 responses to “And an umbrella!”
I think we are going to Philadelphia soon and I will look for the backyard archaeology. In case anyone thinks we were little kids in that cistern, we were actually grown and I collected antique bottles at the time, so that was what got me started. We began to dig and never actually completely emptied the cistern but it was huge, brick walls and then filled in with about 100 years of trash.
Among the things I learned were what patent medicines, condiments, oysters, olives and other delicacies were eaten and came in jars. The metals all rotted away mostly but we found lots of glass and pottery. You would not have thought so many foods were eaten in a remote plantation in Louisiana by our ancestors.
My grandmother knew/suspected where the old outhouses had been but wouldn’t tell me by then!
Charlotte, it was indeed me!
And on the subject of dinosaurs, did anybody else see the photo of Steven Spielberg and the one he shot? http://www.wtsp.com/story/entertainment/2014/07/11/no-spielberg-didnt-shoot-and-kill-dinosaur/12521225/
Trapper Jean, good for you! Now I’m going to look at the dinosaur photo — have seen it mentioned online, and have been curious to see what the fuss is about.
Late to the discussion, but perhaps this is what Arlo saw from the back yard.
http://www.wtsp.com/story/tech/2014/07/07/extinct-bird-giant-wingspan/12087039/
Jean dear, one man who saw the “dead dino” picture said “I don’t care who he is, he should not have shot that animal”? A woman called him “ANIMAL KILLER”? Who ARE these people?
I fear for the future.
Funny that archaeology should come up. I just read this story earlier:
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/11583/20140729/origin-of-18th-century-ship-found-in-debris-of-world-trade-center-finally-explained.htm
emb: Yep, I’ll withhold judgment on parts of cosmology where the experts’ opinions aren’t the same as they were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. And I’m prepared to junk all of them should someone come up with ways of exploring the universe to test those opinions in ways we can’t imagine today. I like being surprised!
Here’s a lovely article by someone much smarter than I:
http://pleistocenecoalition.com/vanlandingham/VanLandingham_2011.pdf
My favorite line in that article: “Science can be as dogmatic as religious orthodoxy, and the scientific community also can be overly protective of its own ‘holy relic’, the status quo. Ironically, science is supposed to dispel dogma, but examples of persecution by the scientific ‘Inquisition’ abound.”
Just read that when all of the world trade center debris was removed they then found the remains of an old sailing ship under the building. Sounds like a Clive Cussler novel, but it’s apparently true.
Good morning Villagers…
There are days I wake up feeling like an old dinosaur…
…and Mark, you’re right, and I had to look that word up 🙂
Yesterday was interesting….in prepping for the removal of the hens, they have been dissected for samples of meat to make sure they are chemical free. Then yesterday, a young, and cute, rep from the Corp came in to take blood samples from the hens. I asked if I could watch as I watched the dissection ( I was shown the whole egg making canal).
He grabbed a hen, felt around her breast plate where the V is, inserted a syringe into her heart and withdrew blood, then he added “hoping we don’t kill her”. After he left, I checked the front eggs and found a couple of warm blooded dead hens in the front cages. Alas.
The reason they draw blood from the heart is that in chickens, blood coagulates at a much faster rate than in other animals.
Have a good breakfast….
later……………………..
GR 😉 Jimmy was doing both.
Also found out from another rep yesterday, they are dog food bound, so when you’re buying your Kibble-n-Bits…think of my girls
Trucker Ron:
We have seen that line in action on this site in the past.
Dinosaurs had feathers.
Wings have feathers.
Angels have wings.
DINOSAURS WERE ANGELS!
Ghost dear, I wish I knew who those people are just so I could avoid them. They’re kind of scary.
This looks to be very good news! I hope it proves its promise.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2709708/Revolutionary-new-blood-test-detect-ALL-types-cancer.html
I read an article in National Lampoon about the light opera companies dinosaurs organized and am really curious what dinosaurs sounded like, like proto-bird chirping ?
If that blood test turns out to be valid, too bad it wasn’t available 5 or 6 years ago.