Pigs Have Flown

Well, the end of the world is neigh. I have spoken with God about the Endtimes, and He told me that, actually, armageddon is right around the corner. I asked for some sort of sign that would tell me when I should start building my subterranian city to avoid Satan's 1,000 years of rule, and God pointed me in this direction.

Among the more bizarre claims made by this institution of ignorance is that Tyrannosaurus rex, which has traditionally been interpreted as being a ferocious carnivore (or, perhaps, man-eater), was actually a gentle herbivore before the Fall of Man, at which point it started eating flesh. And, you know, one asks if Ken Ham and his cohorts are smoking crack. But no, no, there's a perfectly reasonable explaination: tyrannosaur teeth are vaguely similar to bear teeth, and bears eat plants. Sometimes. You know, they also tend to eat fish, deer, moose, goats, and people, but the Creation Museum tends to focus on the berries and vegetables.

But tyrannosaur teeth are really in no way similar to bear teeth. Superficially, a bear's canines are the same basic shape the average tyrannosaur tooth*, but otherwise bears have molars, premolars, and incizors. Teeth made for tearing and grinding. Tyrannosaurs only tore, and then just swallowed. There was no grinding. All of Tyrannosaurus' teeth were basically the same**.

*Even this isn't true. Tyrannosaur teeth are serrated and D-shaped in cross-section while a bear's canines are smooth and round in cross-section. Also, tyrannosaur teeth (and reptile teeth in general) are fairly brittle and broke easily. Dinosaur kill sites are often littered with shed teeth. Thankfully, dinosaurs continually regrew their teeth. Bears, however, have strongly-rooted, thick teeth and they only get two sets: a baby set, and an adult set (like us).

**Technically, tyrannosaurs have smaller, more tightly-packed teeth in the premaxilla and larger, more spaced out teeth in the maxilla. However, both "types" were the same overall shape. It's just that tyrannosaurs pulled meat away from bone with the premaxillary teeth and crushed bone with the maxillary teeth. This is not true heterodonty.

So at that very basic level of not being able to accept Tyrannosaurus rex's diet, the Creation Museum simply fails. Seems like they're just making stuff up as they go along (nowhere in the Bible to I remember it mentioning either Tyrannosaurus rex or that Tyrannosaurus rex was an herbivore), and so cannot possibly taken seriously. What really insults me, though, is that people are going to go to this museum and be educated. Educated incorrectly, of course, but educated nonetheless. And that's why Ken Ham is a bad, dangerous man. He knows better, yet he's peddling this lie in a glossy coat with a scientific label and big sign that says "museum." The Creation Museum is an affront to everything science and museums stand for, and I would like nothing more than to see it burn to the ground.

Actually, seeing a flood wash it away would be somehow more awesome.