Mean Dinosaurs: Education through Humor

Two weeks ago in my Prehistoric Animal of the Week post about Ceratosaurus I included a cartoon I made for fun merging paleontology and one of my favorite movies, Mean Girls.  It had to do with the fact that Ceratosaurus remains are always found somewhat isolated from those of other dinosaurs.

Ceratosaurus, you're eating an ornithopod.  It's Monday.

 It received a lot of positive feedback from you all.  So much, in fact, that I decided to make two more!  Each one, despite being silly, brings across a real science-related point.  It's knowledge through humor!  Enjoy!

Back in the Triassic, there were a lot of different kinds of archosaurs running around in addition to the dinosaurs, which ended up being the most successful probably due to their upright posture hollow bones.  By the end of the Triassic, about 200 million years ago, there were actually a few kinds of archosaurs that each independently evolved the same adaptations.  Evolution is sort of like he fashion industry in a way.  If you are in style you survive, if not, extinction!  Full story here.

Aw poposauroid!  You are really beautiful no matter what you do...until yo go extinct of course.

One pet peeve of mine is that lots of people assume that all dinosaurs, especially the popular ones, co-existed with each other.  It's easy to forget that the Mesozoic lasted many millions of years, much longer than we have been around.  In fact, dinosaurs that lived during the late Cretaceous, like Tyrannosaurus actually lived closer in time to us than they did to dinosaurs like Stegosaurus, which lived during the Jurassic.  Click on the cartoon to read the dialogue better.

I had a lot of fun making these and I hope you all enjoy them too.  It's also healthy not to dig too deep into them! (Don't worry, science fanboysandgirls, I am aware dinosaurs didn't actually hold meetings about feelings or eat on tables and trays.)