Dinosaurs.
What did you think I meant?
See, it's a little appreciated fact that Dinosaurs are actually festive as fuck. This is something that I had never even fully appreciated, until a particular nugget of information caught my attention and wouldn't let go. If I might quote from my textbook for a moment;
"If you compactedEarth time into a single year, from January 1 (the formation of the Earth) to December 31 (the past 100,000 years) then dinosaurs were on Earth from about Deember 11 to December 25."So right there you can begin to see what I'm getting at. December is basically DINOSAUR ADVENT.
Of course, the wonder of Science is that you don't actually have to take anybodies word for anything. You can always go and check the workings yourself. So, with this tantalising idea as my starting point, I wondered to myself. Would it be possible to create a scientifically accurate Dinosaur advent Calender?
The answer, surprisingly, is yeah, pretty much. With the obvious proviso that we'll be making some pretty heavy approximations. But even so, everything lines up pretty damn well.
So, to start with we need to check the age of the earth. Which, according to wikipedia, is something in the region of 4533 million years ago. Taking this as our start on January 1st, with December 31st as as close to 0 Million Years Ago as we can manage we arrive at a rate of just under 12 and a half million years passing every day. Using this maths we then find that the Mesozoic era does indeed start roughly on the 11th of December and end on the 25th.
What does this tell us? That Christmas is actually about DINOSAURS.
Obviously.
So far so good. But how much further can we take this? Down to the Epoch level, more or less. Although this where things will start to get a little messy. I admit I had some difficulty in working out the days around the Triassic / Jurassic boundary. These sort of things are inevitable when you're dealing in units of 12.46 million years at a time. And if I'm honest were primarily confusing because everything past the Early Jurassic fitted just fine. But with a little bit of tweaking I've arrived at the following table of events:
My original version had 1 day each for the Early, Middle & late Triassic, which is where most of my problems came from. Maths-wise it was an Epoch too short to actually warrant a full day, thus throwing out the subsequent entries. But combining it with the Middle solved a rather more important issue: The lack of actual Dinosaurs in the time period.
See, if there's one problem in taking this particular approach to organizing the chronology into advent calendar form, it's that pretty much all the big, well known, cool Dinosaurs are from the Cretaceous. Specifically the Late Cretaceous. This is fairly fundamental, but not something I really came to appreciate until undertaking this little project. After all, the Late Cretaceous is the time closest to us, and probably the height of Dinosaur diversity, thus yielding the most fossils. Older is rarer, generally speaking. Thus if we're going to be taking a one example Dinosaur per day of this tentative calendar we're going to be a little starved of diversity to start with, and somewhat overwhelmed towards the end. Although on the bright side it does mean we can build up to a big finish.
Mentioning no names....
Still, what we have is a viable framework for a fun little project. Simply picking out one suitable example per day should prove quite educational. You can even expand the scope beyond just Dinosaurs and start your calender on the 1st of December at the end of the Permian with Dimetrodon or such like, and then work your way up through primitive Archosaurs and what have you.
Stop looking at me like that, Dimetrodon. You're not a Dinosaur. Deal with it.
But there are larger implications from this previously publicized connection between Dinosaurs and Christmas. And the connection is there, make no doubt about it. Beyond even the evidence I've presented so far. After all, what's the traditional meal for Christmas day? Turkey. What sort of animal is a Turkey? A bird. Or, as Science would remind us an AVIAN THEROPOD DINOSAUR. Coincidence? I don't think so.
At first I must adit I found the connection somewhat troubling. After all, christmas day represents not only the peak of Dinosaur dominance over the planet, but also it's destruction. Could it be that Jesus in some way killed the Dinosaurs?
No, of course not. Christmas is, after all connected to the birth of Jesus, and extensive tests have shown that it's practically impossible for a human baby to beat a T-Rex in a fight. Even scaling up to a fully grown Jesus the chances are remote at best.
Which is kind of ironic when the Dinosaur in question is basically prehistoric Satan.
No, the answer had to lie elsewhere. And then, much as the Dinosaurs themselves might have said where they not extinct and incapable of speech, it hit me. The evidence for the root cause of the mass extinction of the Dinosaurs points towards an impact from an asteroid. But let's just think about that for a moment. An object of great mass, capable of travelling at tremendous speed and connected with Christmas? There's only one thing I can think of that fits the bill here.
That's right. SANTA KILLED THE DINOSAURS. Some 66 million years ago, Santa collided with the Earth with tremendous force (we know he's capable of moving at relativistic speeds after all), wiping out some 75% of all life. You'll note the elevated levels of Iridium at the K/T Boundary. That's the remains of his sled, vaporized by the impact.
Why else do you think it is he feels compelled to go handing out presents every year on the anniversary of his crime? GUILT, that's what. The terrible gnawing guilt that through his actions we have all been deprived of a world populated by gigantic, ravenous terror lizards. That's why toys are made out of plastic. he's trying to give us back a little piece of what we lost.
Who says conspiracy theorists have all the fun?
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