My, What a Large Soup-Bone You Have, Granny...

[j d worthington]

Anyone else's jaw hit the floor with this one?

Chinese villagers eat dinosaur bones - Yahoo! News

Title: "Chinese villagers eat dinosaur bones"; from AP, datelined Wed., Jul. 4, 2007.

Ummmm... unicorn horn, anyone?

Seriously... how long has this been going on, and how many species of dinosaurs have had their remains used this way... species we might not otherwise know about???

 

[HardScienceFan]

YES JD<YES,it did

and it's so good to see you back,BTW

 

[HoopyFrood]

Ah, yeah, I've heard about this before...well, being used as medicines, anyway; using them for soup is a new one. Certainly does make you wonder just how many remains have been used in such ways...

 

[j d worthington]

Thanks, Ben. Good to be back.

Hoops: I've not heard of dinosaur bones being used for medicine, I'll admit; "unicorn's horn" and various other sorts of things, yes. But this one... yeesh!

 

[HoopyFrood]

Used to subscribe to a dinosaur magazine...provided me with many interesting facts including that one, and how the bones were thought to be from dragons.

 

[j d worthington]

That last I can well believe... I've always thought that finding such bones might well be where the idea of dragons came from in the first place; something that was given some credence with a report I saw a few years ago, where some fossils that had been found in ancient Greek ruins were matched up with some descriptions in various sources of that same period, indicating that such fossils may well be where the idea of a lot of mythical beasties came from, including the gryphon (the result of a mixing of triceratops with some other species' bones, for instance).

As the report said then: it wasn't that these people were stupid -- they just hadn't developed comparative anatomy or an understanding of geology to the point we have; so they saw these as comparatively recent remains, and from the same animals, as they were found together... and recreated the animal that would have resulted logically.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Yeah, it's easy to see how finding the huge bones of dinosaurs could have led to the idea of dragons.

And there have always been cases of mix-ups with dinosaur bones and other creatures from that era, even quite recently (in the scale of things!). Like how the Brontosaurus actually turned out to be like some kind of Frankenstein's Dinosaur, made up of bones from various dinosaur remains found near to it. Or the Iguanodon's nose/thumb spike mix-up. Or the guy who was laughed at by his colleague because he'd put the head of a Plesiosaur on the end of its tail, instead of on its neck! Ah, dinosaur mix ups make me smile...although my friends know never to mention a Brontosaurus to me, because they'll get a long lecture about it!

 

[j d worthington]

Apatosaurus, no? Yes, I remember that one.....

 

[HoopyFrood]

Apatosaurus, yes indeed.

Argh! Even my laptop is against me...it's saying Apatosaurus is not recognised by the dictionary and guess what the top suggestion is? Brontosaurus! I'm going to have to give it a stern talking to...