This article is more than 1 year old

Cretinous hacks in Cretaceous – Jurassic outrage

What's 80m years between friends?

Letters Time is a funny thing. Arrive five minutes late for a meeting, and no one really minds. Skip 80 million years of evolution and its just moan, moan, moan, moan, moan.

You may want to give electricnews a bit of a slap for feeding you duff info, Tyrannosaurus Rex lived in the late Cretaceous period, not the Jurassic. Spielberg lied.

In defence of our colleagues over at electricnews, we have to confess that it was entirely our fault. The Jurassic reference was introduced, according to international headline troubleshooter Lester Haines, to give the story more, er, bite. Ahem.

Hello The Register,

The dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex did not live during the Jurassic period, it's fossilized remains are found in rocks from the Cretaceous period.

He’d also like to point out that he does know that the Tyrannosaur lived in the late cretaceous. But, as he points out: “There's a reason why the book and film were called Jurassic Park rather than Cretaceous Park”.

Basically, dear reader, Jurassic fitted in the headline better than Cretaceous. What's more: "Has anyone asked why they've named a bloody server after a frigging dinosaur?” asks an enraged Lester.

His roars perhaps reminiscent of a T-Rex, although without time travel or some boffins opening a real-world Cretaceous Park, we’ll never know, of course. (All you pendants happy with that? Good.)

Time for one more? Lovely:

Just to be pedantic, but the Tyrannosaurus rex did not actually exist in the Jurassic period, but evolved instead in the Cretaceous, several tens of millions of years later.

It also doesn't seem to have been a top predator, either; it was not the biggest meat eater about at the time (some South American Allosaurids were bigger) and it doesn't seem to have been primarily a predator, either; it was more likely mostly a scavenger most of the time, only killing those dinosaurs too sick or injured or sleepy
to escape it.

The top predator in the Jurassic on land was the Allosaur, BTW. Please at least try to check your facts before publishing; I know this goes against all tradition in IT journalism, but you would look so much more professional if you tried it.

We do try, but find our efforts hindered sometimes. Lager can cause problems, as can a good joke.

Anyone who wants to find out more about the giant reptiles should have a look here. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like