Dave’s Diegesis: Dino Bite
I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers’ skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.
Ezekiel 16:10
Trying to break into the television industry isn’t as easy as it seems, despite the fact that Sam Horn has a regular gig. I feel out of place, like a tiny mammal in the Mesozoic, the age of dinosaurs. Looking for inspiration, I read about one mammal that turned the tables and preyed upon dinosaur young. One hundred thirty million years ago, Repenomamus giganticus, a carnivorous badger-like mammal, roamed what would become China. R. giganticus, who I will call Mama Cus (a roundabout play of its scientific name, which made me think of Big Mama Cass), might seem like a misnomer since it was about 3 feet long and weighed 30 pounds, or the size of most dogs. But Mama Cus towered over its warm-blooded contemporaries, most of which were mouse and rat-sized herbivores meekly scampering underfoot of terrible lizards. You wouldn’t find Mama Cus, a triconodont, eating at the local salad bar.
A recently unearthed fossil of Repenomamus robustus, a smaller cousin of Mama Cus, had a juvenile psittacosaur positioned so that it appeared to be have been eaten. In the same dig, Mama Cus fossils were found, confirming that these mammals weren’t limited to the size and diet originally assigned to them. This rich fossil find was part of the Yixian Formation, a perfect location for fossil formation with its sandstone and volcanic ash composition.
“This new evidence of larger size and predatory, carnivorous behavior in early mammals is giving us a drastically new picture of many of the animals that lived in the age of dinosaurs,” said Jin Meng, associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History. Much like Mama Cus and Dr. Meng, I have to buck the trend to forge ahead in my next stated objective. My family and I aren’t hurting for money or anything, though it would be nice to have a bit of an income since EE doesn’t pay whatsoever.
Every Friday, Dave McCarty will join us to discuss a topic of interest to him and probably no one else but the author of this site and other lone science geeks looking for a career in television.
Comments
Hilarious (and yet strangely informative) as always. Have you ever actually tried to get an interview with Dave? Maybe you have an I just missed it because I'm relatively new to EE, but I'd love to read it if for no other reason than to hear you tell him about 'his' columns.
mattymatty ∙ 30 July 2005 ∙ 10:44 AM
I've been shy about promoting the blog in general and this column in particular. I enjoy being somewhat under the radar, and I wonder if he'd exactly approve of what I'm doing in his name?
Anyway, as much as I love baseball, I knew I'd want to write about other things that interest me, and Dave's Diegesis provides me that outlet. It had its origins in the preseason when I wrote about Trot being possessed by an intelligent lifeform that spontaneously formed on his hat. Trot sought guidance from McCarty, and the rest is history. With some encouragement from Pine Tar Helmet (a.k.a. Piney or PTH), it became a recurring column.
Empyreal ∙ 30 July 2005 ∙ 11:48 PM