Dinosaurs

It's been a while since I did a dinosaur post around here, and if we're going to get back into the groove, let's get serious.

I mean, seriously. The temptation to try and come up with something for Mitch to do… but I don’t see this ending well for anyone.

So yes. We must be cautious here, folks. This is bat country. Also, it’s the Queue.

Because giant lizard-cats four meters long with saber teeth are awesome, that's why. Inostrancevia was the largest of the gorgonopsids, a suborder of the theriodonts -- the order that included our own direct ancestors and thus, ultimately, us, and one that really deserves a lot more attention in video games.

Look, y'all remember that I love PBS Eons, right?

I fell down the Youtube video hole and found myself watching videos arguing about whether scythes were useful as weapons. One video argued no, another mentioned that the war-scythe was a thing but it usually involved taking the scythe blade and mounting it lengthwise so it was more like a standard polearm. The consensus seems to be that using a scythe unmodified as a weapon isn’t ideal — it’s not designed for it. So when I see WoW weapons like the Scythe of the Unmaker, I can’t stop thinking about how hard that weapon would actually be to use against someone else.

Then again, it’s World of Warcraft and I routinely use swords so ridiculously big they defy all reason, so come on, the Scythe of the Unmaker is almost sedate compared to Ashkandi or Armageddon. I mean, one of my favorite fist weapons is the hat of a dead Lich.

It’s the Queue. Let’s chat, y’all.

Amazingly, my inner paleontology nerd gets excited about things that aren't dinosaurs.

For us laymen, the difference between pterosaurs -- members of the clade Pterosauria -- and dinosaurs is often extremely hard to understand.

America has seen a lot of wars.

One of my favorite dinosaur/paleontology books is All Yesterdays. It's been out for six years edging towards seven, and it's a book with a simple but interesting premise: it renders dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals with a more speculative eye, and then uses modern animal skeletons to show the limitations of most paleo reconstruction art.

This is the last Queue I’ll be writing in 2018.

It’s been a heck of a year, some good, some really bad. It’s finally over. Next year will, I hope and pray, be slightly better for all of us. I hope you all had a good holiday if you celebrated it, and if not, I hope your week has been peaceful.