Kentucky Fried Dino

No doubt by now many of you have heard the recent big news in paleontology: An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus Rex who died 68 million years ago was discovered whose bones still contained intact soft tissue, including the oldest preserved proteins ever found. A comparison of the protein's chemical structure to other species showed an evolutionary link between T. Rex and...

Chickens.

You know, those strange cocky little birds who walk in their own poop and make incredibly annoying sounds the moment the sun peeks over the horizon.

Chickens.

If this turns out to be true, it's amazing, isn't it? I mean, here we have the most incredible killing machine ever to walk the earth, a creature who devoured other great thunder lizards and probably brought stark terror to all the other dwellers in Dinoland. A creature with an even bigger mouth than Rosie O'Donell. A terrible force of destructition that now...well, comes extra crispy in a bucket. McRex Nuggets, anyone?

It's ironic, I suppose, but on the other hand it makes one wonder. If this can happen to a beast so powerful it had no natural enemies, what might become of us in 63 million years? Will we end up as Happy Meals for whatever species supplants us? Granted, The T. Rex wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box. In fact, he was kind of at the low end of the little brain in a big head department. But the fact he didn't evolve into a race of Gorn (for all non Star Trek fans, an intelligent, if hostile, reptilian humanoid species capable of space travel) and might have ended up as a spicy Superbowl snack is a bit worrisome. They had 63 million years. And became chickens.Man has been around an infinitely shorter span of time. Man is a hell of lot smarter (well, mostly), probably a lot more adaptable. Despite that, man has the capacity for much greater destruction than this wondrous beast of eons past.

If there's a a hopeful sign here, it's that Man has other traits the T. Rex did not--compassion, a capacity for hope and love and growth and learning from His own mistakes (a point that may be debatable, given His history but I like to think the potential is there.) A T. Rex probably never thought about how stepping on a weaker dino wasn't a very nice thing to do. He just said oops and bit its head off. I know some people like that; perhaps they will evolve into French Fries. T. Rex probably never thought about living in harmony and caring about his fellow dinos, even those yummy tasting vegetarian thunder Lizards he was so fond of munching. T. Rex probably never got addicted to Girls Gone Wild, but I digress...

What I am hoping is that all those points T. Rex lacked are available to us to use as human beings--the capacity to care about those not as fortunate as ourselves, to help those sick or burdened with sadness. The ability to put aside our differences and accept one another as human beings instead of obstacles or objects of ignorant hate. The ability to become addicted to Girls Gone Wild. Um, nevermind that last one. If only we stop to realize our existence is a gift, not a necessity.Something to think about the next time we get the desire to step on that little guy at Walmart and bite his head off...

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