Sunday, March 04, 2007

Something Good Comes Out Of Alberta (With Pic)


It is, unfortunately, long dead.

Meet Albertaceratops nesmoi, named after Cecil Nesmo, whose ranch it was found upon. Here's a good quicky story on the discovery of this new horned dinosaur. Here's its wiki entry, and some more relatively technical data, including the original press release. And above is the only picture I've been able to find of this handsome bastard.

I remember that whenever dad was posted back and forth across the country, we would stop in his home town of Drumheller to visit relatives and tramp through the badlands looking for dinosaur bones. That was before the Tyrell museum was built, a place that I hope to visit before I die.

And to this day dad insists that, when he was a child, he knocked the top off the last hoodoo, a claim which is patently false.

Anyway, here's a map showing the pin-horn grazing reserve, where Albertaceratops was discovered. It's far South of Drumheller, almost on the U.S. border.

Ah, Alberta! A phantasmagorical wonderland for a child to play in! Too bad about the people.

7 comments:

JimBobby said...

Whooee! Well BigCity, I'm gonna rap yer knuckles so get ready.

I know there's a couplafew Alien Alberts who make yer life miserable by postin' dumbass comments on yer boog an' there's a few who wanna see us eastern bastards freeze in the dark. I reckon they're what ol' LBJ useta call the "vocal minority" (sorta like the HarpoonTossers in the House o' Comments.)

I figger most Alberts is like LBJ's "silent majority" -- good Canajuns who love our home an' native land from coast t' coast t' coast. The Alien Alberts is itchin' fer a fight. They gotta bigass chip on their shoulder an' they think everybuddy in Ontariariario is a Trudeau Liberal who wants t' rustle their cattle an' trample their rodeo rights.

Alberts ain't a monolithic entity any more'n Ontariariarians is. We got plenty o' Cons here an' they got plenty of non-Cons there. It's all on accounta our dumbass FPTP votin' system that Alberts don't realize there's a buncha conservative central Canajuns an' that central Canajuns don't realize there's a heap of Alberts who don't vote fer the HarpoonTossers.

The Alien Alberts play this misconception t' foment regional rivalries and even regional hatred. I got nuthin' good t' say about the Alien Alberts who wanna bust up Canada like the rotten separatist BlocHeads do in Q-beck. If we play inta their hands an' start believin' all Alberts is oil-grubbin' air-pollutin' liberal-hatin' rednecks who got burrs under their saddles, then we're playin' inta the hands o' the separatists.

My Canada includes Alberty an' I reckon most Albert's Canada includes Ontariariario. Until the majority of Alberts vote t' separate from Canada an' raise an army an' start a war with TROC, I'm gonna work against regionalism... an' I'm gonna be glad we got so many bigass dinosaur bones in Canada an' we can marvel at what must o' been a marvelous world so many thousands o' years ago.

JimBobby

bigcitylib said...

Your timing could not be better. See next post.

Gayle said...

As an Albertan, I am with JB on this one :).

leftdog said...

I keep waiting for some right wing fundamentalist evangelical type to tell me why it is that Noah did not take any of these dinosaur creatures on the Ark and why he and his Gawd let all the dinosaurs die 3500 years ago??????

Anonymous said...

Ha ha leftdog, I was going to leave a comment about Stockwell Day and his Flintstone Fantasy. Either that or like Uncle Ralph says, maybe this dinosaur farted too many times and that's why we have climate change.

PS You should read the Calgary Sun letters section-people are still complaining about David Suzuki's visit last week!!

Ti-Guy said...

We'd be much poorer spiritually if we didn't have the spectacle of an entire province permanently in high dudgeon.

...oops. Now I've done it. They'll separate for sure this time.

Anonymous said...

I'll bet your dad and your other Alberta relatives are reeeeal proud of you.