Sunday, May 29, 2011

Prehistory and the Press - Part 1


Gravity cannot reach us anymore















  1. It's a very widespread problem. In Russia the media is often called dinosaurs any extinct organisms. As well as spiders and mites are "insects".

  2. Argh, yes! Also quite annoying when people refer to plesiosaurs as dinosaurs, to me! Though of course, your particular point regarding "flying dinosaurs" is well-taken!

  3. Argh, these basic errors are most annoying.

  4. In Brazil it's the same pattern: every extinct creature turns into a "dinosaur", specially when it's big. And add to misunderstanding problems the translating problems. I remember a very old newspaper notice that convert a "kangaroo-like dinosaur" (described so to show that the dino was biped) into a "kangaroo's ancestor". Another, that represented a horrible fail in edition, in a Portugal edition of Stephen J. Gould's Panda's Thumb, translate a notungulate (Order Notungulata, South American extinct ungulates, from Greek "notos", south) as a not-ungulate.

  5. As you alluded to earlier in the post, the mass audience of any given newspaper will most likely be attracted to the word 'Dinosaur' rather than a tongue-twistingly accurate name. Other than us lot, who the hell has ever heard of a Pelycosaur?
    Another reason that this ignorance festers (and even prospers) is that the majority of these articles are short puff pieces designed to fill up space. Unfortunately, it seems no one really cares..

  6. "Kangaroo's ancestor?" That might be the worst mistake I've heard of!

  7. @Dani Boy - it's true that the word 'dinosaur' uis more likely to draw in a casual reader, but that doesn't excuse its use for an article that's not about dinosaurs at all. Surely 'prehistoric beasts', or something along those lines, would be equally enticing but more accurate?

  8. Mark - Absolutely! I'm not for one second excusing ignorance, just suggesting reasons for its proliferation.. And, I must say, I'm an advocate of 'prehistoric beasts'. :)

  9. Well, when you become a famous science journalist (which oughtn't to be too far off), hopefully you can begin setting these things to rights...

    That comment about not needing to know any more about dinosaurs 'because they're dead' is utterly astonishing. I have no propensity for violence, but a response like that makes me want to throw something...

  10. Is there a place where I can download this series of posts to print out and read all together? It is hard to read onscreen and I don't think I can print them individually without wasting a lot of paper via web formatting. Keep up the good work, thx

  11. @lizziewriter I'm afraid there isn't, but if you like I can send you my thesis via e-mail. Just get hold of me at (Or I can send you a document that's just these posts mashed together, but I'm sure you can do that yourself...)


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