Saturday, 21 October 2017

The problem with extinct animals

Dear my fellow friends, this week's big question is: the sixth extinction that may happen or not?

I have a big brain, live a long life, and I am advanced; in other words, I am a human. Yet the human also has a mind-boggling dark side.

My all time favourite dino is the extinct Deinonychus. In the making of the first Jurassic Park, the production crew really loved the creature. But didn't allow its actual name to gain notice, because that same word is harder to pronounce! Therefore, why did that creature gain its embarrassingly funny nickname? Rightly so, it turned out to be the rough-sounding 'Velociraptor'.

The Triceratops is one of the more popular herbivorous dinosaurs, because she had three horns on her face. Baby Bop of Barney & Friends fame is that kind of species.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex also turns out to be weirder. Even though he technically had excellent vision, he's slow but very patient. On the impressive side, he had two claws on each hand of his puny arms, making him a showy beast! Barney the dinosaur, from Barney & Friends, is a miserable old T-rex now. These three dinosaurs are the ones that I like a lot.

There are weird dinos with great names (and nicknames) as well: the outrageously beaky Pinocchio Rex (actual name: Qianzhousaurus), the feathery herbivorous Nothronychus, the outrageously spiky Stygimoloch, the nosy Rhinorex, and the divine Kosmoceratops.

But most others are not so weird: the quintessential Allosaurus, the swaying Diplodocus, the unkempt Stegosaurus, the greedy Apatosaurus, the peckish Velociraptor (yes, the same true one!), the ancient Protoceratops (B.J. is that one!), the gliding Archaeopteryx, the slinky Brontosaurus, the duck-billed but land-living Parasaurolophus (Riff is of that species!), the fancy and clever Troodon, the small but rowdy Compsognathus, the smart but slow-waddling Iguanodon, the huge but patient and slow-paddling Spinosaurus, the swift and nifty Procompsognathus, and the knightly Ankylosaurus.

More prehistoric animals coming up! The Thylacosmilus is an extinct marsupial, or more correct, a metatherian. She superficially resembled a feline sabretooth, but had young born in a pretty early stage.

The Smilodon, our familiar sabretooth, is a true prehistoric feline. Though not related to the tiger and the fellow big cats, he was a bloody old beast indeed. He had two nasty sharp canines that were too big to fit inside his mouth. but on the impressive side, he could compete with the terror birds for food.

The biggest ape of all is the extinct Greater Gigantopithecus. She is a magnificent prehistoric creature who once lived in southwest China's subtropical montane forests. Both her smaller fellows, the Common and Lesser Gigantopithecus, might have also lived there.

Poor apes, they've become extinct long ago. Poor sabretooth is also dead, boo hoot. The dinosaurs have now been gone as well.



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