FEATURE DINOSAURS
Dinosaurs are bigger than they’ve ever been as a craze for the lumbering lizards with brains the size of an Airdrie defender’s sweeps the nation’s playgrounds. Our resident balding palaeontologist saves you a fortune in ‘ part-works subscriptions and asks. . .
All ABOUT?
, as comic strips like ‘Flesh’ in ‘ 2000AD show. Now in its third series, one Flesh character ‘Old One-Eye’, an ancient ; Tyrannosaurus Rex featured in the comic’s first 3 issue, has even invaded the hallowed pages of
Judge Dredd. ' ' ‘Kids love violence,’ explains Tharg, the Betelgeuse-bom editor of 2000/10. ‘No matter what the tabloids tell you, kids love violence.’ I : With a cover price less than a Disney comic .3 and a readership starting at ten years old, Tharg ; has to be careful how he portrays that violence. ; ‘You can have dinosaurs ripping people’s heads off,’ he says, ‘Kids can’t get their pet ; dinosaur and set it on their brother, whereas . they could get a kitchen knife and cut
...- : somebody up.’
lesh. Be it the blood-oozing carcase of were pretty warped. In 1854 the first dinosaur A part-works magazine (collect those glow-
a dying sauropod, hacked to bits by a ’ theme park, in the grounds of the Crystal ' in-the-dark dinosaur bones), dinosaur poster
Tyrannosaurus Rex or a loinclothed Palace, featured four fantastical beasts mags, and several glossy dinosaur periodicals
prehistoric hero and his curvaceous designed by Professor Richard Owen, coiner of i form their own layer in the lower comic strata
heroine. Dinosaurs are an excuse for the term dinosaur (from the Greek: deinos, ’ at Menzies newsagents. Confirming Tharg’s
major flesh acreage and enough gore- ' ‘terrible’ and saurus ‘lizard’). They would not prediction that ‘93 is the year of the dinosaur’, filled violence to set John Major’s upper lip a- ‘ have been out of place beside the Griffin and i all dwell in loving detail on carnivorous trembling all over again. Mock Turtle with Alice in Wonderland. . dinosaurs’ eating habits, their knife-like teeth
Dinomania is nothing new, having first The Victorians’ love of the bizarre got the and voracious appetites. occurred in 1600 BC, when Chinese miners dinosaur a mention in Dickens’s Bleak House. . If knowing all about dinosaurs or even owning found ‘dragons’ teeth’, giving rise to Jules Verne had an ichthyosaur fight a a bit of one (dinosaur bones only £1.35 a little speculation of fire-breathing scaly monsters. plesiosaur beside a subterranean lake in his bit from Mr Woods Fossils, Grassmarket) is not The cult of the dragon was born. Over the 1864 Journey to the Centre of the Earth. But it ; enough, how about being one? Hit that ensuing centuries and across every continent took the 1920s American pulp writer Edgar interactive video game at Edinburgh’s City Art the myth was repeated with many gory Rice Burroughs to get back to basics. . Centre. ‘You are a Tyrannosaurus, you are in a variations. Rice Burroughs’s rippling muscled heroes small wood. Do you a) graze on the leaves, b) Such romantic storytelling was almost saved pneumatically appendaged heroines from 2 eat grass or c) search for meat?’ C? ‘Correct:
expunged with the scientific description of the ghastly flesh of massive beasts in steaming you are a meat eater. You find a small dinosaur fossil remains in 16th century Europe, although environments. This is what the I, f . . j hiding behind a fern. You tear off its head and
guesses at the mesozoic monster’s appearance . devour it.’
public wanted, and still wants
Meteor showers, aliens and even poor dental hygiene have been blamed for g the dinosaur’s extinction. We examine L some of the more probable causes. it ‘ I MVEIIS Dinosaurs could not taste i the alkaloid poisons in various plants. ‘ When a higher plant form developed the ability to synthesise MDMA (in the E-otherm) the Technosaurus started night-long dances. Through the Shamenychus and the Raventilodon
' ' 'n . 5'. z. p t L I' 4 .r ‘ i i: '__\.v ‘. ‘.' "i . It. ’50-.
asaurus
. Genie, the amiable, animated f Brontosaurus ambled on screen at the
this addiction quickly spread through .. w . . v , ‘ ,gfi. ' : turn of the century and launched a
the whole dinosaur world, The flesh- Judge Oredd: The real reason for the Olmr's dull”? cutesifing of the dinosaur which has eaters became too menow to continue © Fleetway editions. Used by permission of Titan Books. 3 lasted until today. The dinosaur has being carnivores and starved to death. and larger, the amount of methane they methane caused a hole in the ozone ' been portrayed as a creature somewhere I ALIVE! Dinosaurs have not in fact produced increased exponentially. This layer and as the sun-creamosaurs were ' between a monster and a soft toy. Yet died out. They are alive and well and did not matter very much (dinosaurs I on strike, they all died of skin cancer. 1 the prehistoric passion that gripped living all over Scotland. It‘s just they had limited olfactory capabilities, see I DEPRESSION The dinosaur economy L generations of children has only
didn't register on the Domesday Book above) until a precocious lguanadon collapsed in 5.000.898 BC when a recently been exploited. The marketing for tax purposes. Recent moves by the ’ invented fire and the dinosaurs were : massive craze in part-work magazines E possibilities of the humble dinosaur dinosaur council to go legit were wiped out in the resulting explosion. about the mythical Homo Erecrus swept l have been realised and a campaign stymied by the Poll Tax. I OZONE Other scientists point out that the world. Dinosaur parents were made launched with Ninja Turtle-like
I WIND It‘s well documented that as this is a stupid theory: the lguanadon ' bankrupt by their children‘s demands ; vengeance.
the plant-eating dinosaurs grew larger didn’t have any matches. Actually the for more and more human "Ma. 2 Available now in your local Shop. are
6 The List 5534.553 April 1993