Saturday, March 08, 2008

Mammoths are not dinosaurs

Dinosaur and extinct are not synonyms. Any eight year old could tell you that, but it remains a point beyond the ken of most grown-ups. MSNBC is the latest offender. As a sidebar to their review of Roland Emmerich's woolly mammoth movie "10,000 B.C." they have a list of other famous prehistoric movies. The editor managed to stay out of trouble with the title: "Land before time: 11 great prehistoric flicks." Then he went on to add a subtitle: "‘10,000 B.C.’ is the latest movie to take us back to when dinosaurs roamed." This is above a picture of a mammoth chasing a primitive human. Even there the editor seems to have some trouble: "A woolly mammoth looks for a meal in Roland Emmerich's '10,000 B.C.'" I haven't seen the film yet, but I'll bet the mammoth isn't planning to eat the cave man. Since the mammoth appears to have a spear stuck in it's side, I'll bet it was the cave man who was looking for a meal.

To sum up: mammoths were not dinosaurs. Mammoths were not carnivorous. Never send a grown man to do an child's job.

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