Quarantine entry #5 - March 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It seems that there is a cat in the neighbourhood, whether stray or not, I do not know – who is keeping all the birds away. Probably. Ah well, this is their business, and I do not really want to mess with Mother Nature. Where were we in terms of JFC?

Today let us try to talk about… the T-Rex. Yes, it is a stupid idea, because as the archetypical theropod dinosaur, everyone knows the T-Rex. Nevertheless, because the lockdown sucks, we are talking about it. First, though, yes, I will acknowledge that other stegosaurid dinosaurs aside from Kentrosaurus lived in what is now modern Europe - Miragaia and etc. Fair enough, my bad, let's try to move onto the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Where do we begin to talk about it? In JFC. Where JFC did began to talk about it? Right in their second episode, where a Tyrannosaur family faced against a Nanotyrannus. Pause.

Yes, that already is a loaded topic, because these days everyone is certain that the Nanotyrannus is a nomen dubium, or whatever – several Tyrannosaur juveniles with deviations – physical, oncological, and otherwise. Essentially, variations on the already-mentioned Tyrannosaur standard. Maybe so, but the problems with JFC’s depiction of the Nanotyrannus – and of the Tyrannosaurus itself, and of the rest of them – were rather anthropomorphic; the narrator, Dinosaur George Blasing and his cohorts – attributed distinctly humanoid motivations to the prehistoric animals that they were depicting, and this isn’t very good.

…Of course, JFC had plenty of other problems – for example, in their penultimate episode, ‘Raptor vs. T-Rex’, we were shown the T-Rex co-existing with dromaeosaurus and edmontosaurus. The punchline is that the T-Rex appeared on Earth when both of those other dinosaurs died out already. Yes, the final episode of ‘Walking with Dinosaur’ showed the tyrannosaurus coexisting both with duckbilled dinosaurs and with raptors, but the former were Anatotitan, different species from the Edmontosaurus, and the latter were Dakotaraptors, (acknowledged in hind sight), rather than the dromaeosaurs; the Dakotaraptors did coexist with Tyrannosaurus Rex, actually, so there.

…Wait, did we skip over something or other? Kind of, yes. Aside from the various references and flashbacks, JFC featured the Tyrannosaurus in three episodes. The first was the one with the Nanotyrannus. The last was the one with the dromaeosaurs. And the middle one was an atypical episode – instead of a face-off, this was a discussion of five of the theropod dinosaurs featured in JFC, to wit Allosaurus, Utahraptor, Majungasaurus, Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. And again, the sensationalism and the flawed information delivered in every JFC episode largely did any educational value that JFC might have had, or intended to have, at the start.

…Do I sound bitter? Yes, well, I am in a bitter mood, and even after watching another three of JFC episodes, my mood is not alleviated much. Everyone is largely stuck within his or her home for at least another week, and no one is getting out. This makes it boring as Hell, even with the availability of JFC to watch – JFC can be outright inane, I am afraid.

‘Allosaurus was the T-Rex before there was a T-Rex’! No, it was not – Tyrannosaurus was a much more derived carnivore than Allosaurus and the rest of its’ carnosaur cousins were. Because carnivorous dinosaurs were bipedal, (except for Spinosaurus and the rest of its’ cousins, maybe), the tyrannosaurs got rid of their forelimbs, (almost), and instead invested in their heads and jaws, making them true killing instruments. On the other end of the scale, we have Nothronychus and the rest of therezinosaur theropods, who went the other way – huge forelegs with massive claws, and tiny heads on long necks, a parody of prosauropod and sauropod dinosaurs, i.e. Sadly, none of the therezinosaurs’ ever appeared on JFC… oh well. Anything else?

Everything is getting delayed by at least another week because of COVID-19, which is proper. Of course, people are getting fed-up with everything COVID-19 related already and are testing the water…and are also getting into fights with one another, primarily over COVID-19…but also about anything else, really. I hope that things will change by the end of the next week, just change, because people cannot remain cooped-up forever in limbo, no matter what the world governments suggest. Until then, we will just have to wait and see, Tyrannosaurs or not. (Life in general is going on as usual, COVID-19 or not – the spring flowers, etc).

…This is it for now, (sorry that it turned out to be so brief, but I am in a curt mood today). See you all soon!