Really. What do you mean?
It keeps me up at night.
Sometimes I can’t sleep at night. I say sometimes. It’s been a thing since roughly 1995.
Anyway, to try and doze off, I’ve taken to listening to long YouTube essays on things that sort of interest me. Boring stuff. Like the tactical deployment of the East Indies Squadron during WW2 (one escort carrier and three light cruisers, if you’re struggling to sleep yourself) or the contention around the ending of the computer game Mass Effect 3 (I thought it was fine).
Last night though. Dinosaurs. A three hour lecture on the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Mate. I know dinosaurs. Terrible lizards, bopped on the head by a big rock 65m years ago, now survive in one amazing Jurassic Park film and far too many bad sequels.
We all know what a dinosaur is. Giant ancient lizard, roars a bit, rocks up in films and time-travel themed TV shows.
Oh. Oh ho ho.
That’s not what a dinosaur is at all.
Do you know what the actual, biological definition of a dinosaur is?
A dinosaur is any creature descended from the last common ancestor of Ceratops Horridus (Triceratops) and Passer Domesticus (House Sparrow)
Birds? They’re dinosaurs. The big, horned, toothed, roaring ones? Non-avian dinosaurs.
We’re still in the first 20 minutes of this lecture by the way, and we’re re-writing the question on the fly.
“What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.”
Well, nothing. Because sparrows and chickens and parakeets still exist and they’re dinosaurs.
So the question is now:
“What caused the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago.”
Over the next hour of this four hour lecture, the paleonerd in question had to pick apart the entire question.
There wasn’t one single event that caused the extinction - die off had begun before the giant rock.
Not all dinosaurs died (look outside, see pigeon). Many not-dinosaurs died (look outside, see distinct lack of ammonites).
Oh, and it was 66m years ago. Carbon dating’s improved.
By this point, even I had stopped checking the hockey scores and finally begun to drift off. But it made me think.
When we say something as seemingly clear as “A big rock killed off all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago,” we’re wrong.
For two reasons.
Clarity and accuracy.
But it’s something we all know and never think to interrogate or examine. We just assume we’re right and file it away under “stuff I know.”
That’s fine for ancient reptile trivia, but it’s one of those points that adds friction to a marketing process. You wheel off the line that you know, a copywriter runs with it, and suddenly it’s not quite right.
Suddenly you’ve killed off the pigeon and prevented the invention of the Turkey Dinosaur.
Don’t fall victim to the giant space rock of irony. Ask yourself. Really.
What do you mean?
And are you right?
Yep, questions always questions. Dinosaurs are prob too interesting to be sleep-inducing. I think the sleep doctor advice would be to get out of bed and read something dullish and dry. That's if you can be bothered to get out of bed and read anything, just don't make it to engaging. A level up from a microwave instruction manual and a level down from an OK novel.