The Penguin

Hello, patient readers. I've blogged about Raptors before, specifically Deinonychus and the problems of depicting dinosaurs in general. In an earlier post, I was wrestling with the then newly-popular preponderance of plumage on our favorite Terrible Lizards, and while I finally conceded that Deinonychus and Co. were probably fully feathered, I whined and hemmed about the amount of feathers and griped about how dinosaur lineages with no evidence for feathers at all were now being given fabulous coats. In the midst of this, I decried the new crop of bad paleo-art, using this image as my piéce de resistance: Credit: Luis V. Rey, from his blog . Essentially my big scientific argument ran along the lines of, "Looks dumb, therefore wrong". It seems now that I might have to eat that argument, slathered in Nelson Muntz' Gourmet Ha-Ha Sauce ...with one important caveat, which I'll get to later. Since writing that blog post - in fact, several years later - I'...

Pictured: A Weary Sigh. Yes my friends, in an age where Star Wars will soon have more sequels than Friday the 13th, the  doltish nephew of Jurassic Park begins its own inbred dynasty. Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom is set to be extruded into theaters June 6th. A few predictions: large rubbery-looking things will scream at each other; the rubberiest, screamiest, most epileptic one that opens its mouth the widest and with the most CGI drool-strings wins the Raddest Dino contest. There will be more eeeevil-eyed, crocodilian theropods with gaps between their snaggly teeth so wide it's a wonder the edible humans don't slip out between them. Characters will justify the creatures' unnatural behavior and really dumb designs with pretentious explanations ("She's been raised alone without social contact", or, "We designed the dinosaurs for entertainment", or, "They don't have dental insurance"). And yes, more amateur scientists will gr...