Another part of my childhood mutates

Currently in Earphones: Two Journeys by Tim O'Brien


So I had heard rumblings that a number of dinos had been reclassified as, indeed, being feathered creatures. It didn't hit home until today, when I was perusing Wikipedia and found the pages on our favorite raptors all of a sudden had new pictures. It was jarring only in that I'd known these guys from my dinosaur books of old for so long as scaly, grim lizards.

The bird/dino connection has been around for a while, and makes perfect sense. Archaeopteryx has stood as a testament to that since when I was a wee one. Despite it's faulty portrayal of Velociraptors, Jurassic Park made sure to point out how similar the Dromaeosauridae are to birds. Now I'm not sure what new discovery prompted the feathered shift that seems to have just occurred, if the cultural image was considered too ingrained or the new one too jarring. Whatever the reason, I wonder how the Walking with Dinosaurs aggregate (touted as damn-well researched series, which I quite agree with) will cope, given that they've now started their Live tour around the US with decidedly old-school dinos.

I don't feel robbed or anything, just slightly off kilter. Eventually I'll get used to it, but it certainly feels quite the shift, even though this is information about a species long since extinct. That's cultural relevance for you, I guess.


Enough, More Later.
- James