The Great D(eye)no(sore)

"If it is a miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a fact, proof is necessary"

~Mark Twain

(AP) "Proof." In a society that has departed almost entirely from the theocracy from which it was born and moved well into the "age of reason," what term carries more meaning? With it, OJ Simpson may well have avoided his recent prison sentence in favor of a much longer one. Without it, the entire mathematical curricula of high schools and colleges throughout the world would be irrelevant, rendering countless chalkboards empty and an entire section of the SAT stricken from the record.

So when I hear these outrageous citations of so called "proof" by my colleague that the existence of dinosaurs is provable on this publication, which carries the burden of proof within its title, I must make some effort to save the pride of this once glorious news source. I expected more than Gary Busey and phonetics in Ms. Fallon's attempt to convince me that the existence of dinosaurs could be reasonably proven by an indicidual, and here I am to settle the score: It is impossible for one to prove that dinosaurs existed.

For starters let me present the story dino-hard-enthusiasts have come up with: a group of cold-blooded reptiles of all shapes and colors roamed the earth millions of years ago and then bit the proverbial dust almost all at once, leaving us with nothing but there remains. The event which brought about the demise is not clear, but it wiped them all out 65 million years ago, a date known as the K-T boundary.

Now allow me to dissect these "facts"







Here you see two photos of rocks. "Thanks, Adam, I didn't realize those were rocks." "Hush, let me get to the point."

Which of these two photos depicts dinosaur bones? Exactly. So-called "dinosaur bones" are not bones, but rocks. When individuals stumble upon them unwittingly, they have rarely, if ever, identified them as fossils without the help of experts. Experts, the authorities we appoint to decide what is what in science based on a ratio of wall-space-taken-up-by-collegiate-degree : addiction to nasal spray.

In 1912 a group of experts unearthed what was thought to be the missing link in human evolution. In 1953 the Piltdown Man was exposed as a hoax. If a 40,000 yr old fossil can be forged before it has completely fossilized, how hard can it be to fake a dinosaur?

2.- This weekend in New York City, a 9-foot tall Dryosaurus failed to sell at auction, even for the expected $500K. Adjusting for inflation, he must have been worth roughly $0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
when he was supposedly alive. And you claim to honor these behemoths of yore? Tusk tusk(puns intended) Anne Fallon.

C) In the Jurassic Park series, the trilogy responsible for most of the corpus of prehistoric knowledge present in the average person, it is asserted that Velociraptors would have taken over the world, perhaps even created a civilization if time had allowed. Now it could be just me, but I just don't see how any quantity of intelligence in a cold-blooded species that needs several hours a day in the sun just to live can result in a dominant world culture. Laziness does not breed ingenuity.

Finally, I again cite my show business colleagues at Jurassic Park Studios. This time in the form of one phrase by Dr. Ian Malcolm, aptly played by Jeff Goldblum: "Life...uh...finds a way." How astute I must say, after all, Dinosaurs did give us birds, crocodiles, alligators, and apparently Geckos, right? WRONG. They went extinct. Didn't they? Isn't that what you're saying happened? Dinosaur evolution and extinction are a contradiction in terms. And you claim science stands by you.

"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof"

~Henry David Thoreau