And so, it came to my attention that there is yet another
new dinosaur discovered in RL – Borealopelta, aka ‘northern shield’. It was an
armored dinosaur, and a nodosaur, and… it was related… to Zuul, however
distantly.
Wait, to whom?
Zuul, the armored dinosaur, described – and depicted – in the
June 2017 issue of NG. It was an armored dinosaur, but unlike, say,
Ankylosaurus, (featured in JP franchise and etc.), Zuul did not have a tail
club, but it had shoulder spikes – as does Borealopelta. Again, this isn’t a
problem, nor a surprise – another armored dinosaurs used to have it, as did
other reptiles, like Desmatosuchus, a denizen of the Triassic time period, a
distant cousin to the dinosaurs, but a closer cousin to the crocodilians,
(although Desmatosuchus itself was a plant-eater, to add further incredulity,
just as the armored dinosaurs did). Considering that the two dinosaurs were
related, (how closely the paleontologists will figure out in due time), it is
not very surprising that the two dinosaurs were physically similar; they did
occupy similar econiches, after all. What bothers me is how NG handled them – let
us discuss.
As I have written back in June 2017, that issue of NG did
not give Zuul the same respect as it did to Spinosaurus in a much earlier
issue, and I discussed this issue at length. Now, after reading the online NG article
about Borealopelta, I see that NG has added insult to injury – the text of the
online article is very similar to the text of the printed (and/or electronic)
June 2017 magazine’s article on Zuul. And what is more, the depictions of new
Borealopelta dinosaur are exactly that of Zuul (the dinosaur, not the first
original Ghostbusters’ movie villain) – NG just recycled them from June 2017
time period and that’s that. Given that right now it is just early August 2017,
this means that just about two months passed at most, nowhere near enough time
for people to forget about NG descriptive article of Zuul, which makes NG’s
decision kind of stupid, not just as in ‘foolish’ and ‘unoriginal’, but also as
in ‘unimaginative’ and ‘disrespectful’. Seriously, check out ‘The Making of a
Most Extraordinary Fossil’ special feature online, (on NG site), and then seek
out the June 2017 issue of NG. The two pieces are similar enough in content and
depiction that if anyone else did this sort of thing, NG would be full within
its’ right to sue them for copyright infringement; yet when they do it to
themselves, it’s fine?
End rant, or at least – put it on hold. NG has and will do ‘bloopers’
in the future; the last was probably in July 2017, when that month’s issue had
an article – ‘THE MAKING OF A MASSACRE’. It was written together with
ProPublica, ‘an independent, non-profit, investigative newsroom’, and it talked
about a massacre in Allende, Mexico. Briefly, DEA got the goods on two drug
kingpins, the Trevino brothers – and promptly shared this info with the Mexican
police, even though their Mexican counterparts could not be trusted. Sure
enough, the Trevinos learned immediately after this that they were sold out –
and started the titular massacre.
Honestly, I feel sorry for the people of Allende, and am not
impressed by the actions of the Mexican police or the DEA; I don’t know, who there was bribed, and who was just
too naïve and idealistic for their own good, but this brings us to NG, who
published the article both in paper and online – and then did their best to
bury it, metaphorically speaking: the article was quickly made hard-to-access
online, (even if one does have an online subscription to the magazine), and the
magazine itself was quickly removed from many places where it was sold,
(convenience stores, DrugMart, etc.). The online version of the article
promised some sort of a supplementary video material to be released online in
July – it never did. I do not know what went wrong here, but since the U.S.
politics were involved, conspiracy theorists are welcome to make their own
theories, of course.
However, as for Zuul and Borealopelta… I think that it was
an honest blooper, which is still hard to excuse, as NG is usually a solid and
respectful magazine and organisation. Was it really hard to figure out which
material belongs to which dinosaur species, and just what the magazine was
presenting the first time around (June 2017)? Moreover, once it was done, (the
figuring out part), once the initial mistake was realized, how hard would it be
to depict Borealopelta anew, from scratch, rather than reuse Zuul’s depictions
directly? Apparently too hard, since this is what happened here.
That is it for NG (at the moment); as for Borealopelta
itself… Ecologically, it was just like Zuul – a medium to large herbivore that
used shoulder spikes to protect itself from various carnivorous dinosaurs; in
the Early Cretaceous this meant early raptors (such as Deinonychus and
Utahraptor) and carnosaurs, (such as Acrocanthosaurus), carnivores that were
more similar to Allosaurus than to T-Rex. Neither group was well-suited to
handle an armored dinosaur, as I wrote earlier, (in June 2017), so neither Zuul
nor Borealopelta needed a tail club – not yet. Later armored dinosaurs, from
the Late Cretaceous, will evolve it, because their top predators will be the
tyrannosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus Rex itself…
The point that I am trying to make here is about the
camouflage – supposedly, Borealopelta had critical countershading in its
coloration; its’ back was darker than its’ belly. I let you in on a secret –
many animals have it, from all over the tree of life. The most typical example
are fish from the open seas, both bony fish and sharks like the mako and the
great white, and somehow no one makes a big deal about this. The land animals
too have it, just look at the wild horses and donkeys and their African
cousins, the zebras. Their backs are darker than their bellies are, so there is
no reason to assume that the dinosaurs did not have the same coloration scheme,
but rather than they did.
Well, that is it for now; see you all later!
PS: And as for Killjoys? Let us talk about it for some other
time…
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