Word: dinosaurs
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...were writing about rampaging dinos today, though, Crichton might have to deal with just such a poultry problem. The reason: a team of paleontologists from China, Canada and the U.S. announced last week that they've discovered not one, but two new species of small dinosaur, each of which was clearly covered with feathers. According to their report, which appears in the latest issue of Nature, the specimens not only cement the increasingly popular theory that birds are descended directly from dinos. They also suggest that many kinds of dinosaur, including the vicious velociraptors that slashed their way through Crichton...
That has been enough to convince most dinosaur experts, but some paleontologists who specialize in birds didn't much like the theory. Both birds and dinosaurs, they contend, evolved from some older common ancestor. Any similarities between the two groups, they say, have to do with that parentage, and also with the fact that evolution can often produce the same features, even in utterly unrelated animals. Sharks and dolphins, for example, have comparable body shapes, though one is a fish and the other a mammal. Such disparate creatures as bats, birds and butterflies all have wings in common...
...when the number of shared features reaches critical mass, scientists have to consider a direct evolutionary relationship. A dinosaur with feathers would clearly tip the scales: they're by far birds' most characteristic feature, and they had to evolve from somewhere. The skeptics have always contended that birds' ancestors were tree-dwelling lizards, and that feathers evolved to help the lizards flap their way from branch to branch. Fast-running, ground-dwelling dinos like velociraptors would never have needed feathers...
...Thanks a lot." The beast acknowledged him in a silent goodbye. It touched my heart. And in Godzilla 85, when the beast was lured into a volcano, I cried and thought, This cannot be the end of Godzilla! Now Hollywood has created a real monster--a souped-up, emotionless, dinosaur-like killing machine sans the charisma of the original Godzilla. Shame on you, Hollywood! What's next? A sequel to E.T. with the lovable little alien transformed into a terrifying Alien 3 or a Predator? DONALYN GROSS Springfield, Mass...
...true that a few other cartoon characters might try to claim Bart's place of honor. This century is gaily strewn with them, from Winsor McCay's benign Gertie the Dinosaur (cinema's first animated icon) to Fox's other cartoon glory, King of the Hill (whose Bobby Hill, all perfect circles and mute yearning, is the anti-Bart). The Warner menagerie--Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, Wile E. Coyote--energized three decades of Saturday matinees. And when cartoons invaded TV, creatures from Bullwinkle Moose to Tex Avery's Raid insects kept alive a hallowed comic tradition. Bart fits in snugly here...