I know we now know they went extinct 66 million years ago, and 64 millions is another date I’ve seen around, but how long how we known it was definitely way more than 40 millions ? I’m asking because it’s the date given in the the song “walk the dinosaurs” by Was (Not Was), and I wondered why such a number. Would it have seed credible at the time, or was it just arbitrary?
65million was the number I learned as a kid born in 1980.
While you’re fact-checking Was (Not Was), be aware that some of the historical events alleged in “I Feel Better Than James Brown” may not have occurred literally as described.
I was attending Mardi Gras with Fidel Castro
Buxom cross-dressers threw fake gold coins at our feet
As we discussed the fate of the Revolution.
Suddenly, CIA men dressed in bikinis
Tried to stab us with fountain pens
But Fidel blew mustard gas through his cigar
And immobilized the lot of them.
Nineteen tequilas later, we had a deal:
Havana goes back to the Mob,
And Fidel and I open up a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken shops.It is, alas, unknowable whether Mr. Was actually felt better than James Brown. How do you feel?
I feel pretty good!
Like I knew that you would!
I feel nice.
Like sugar and spice?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say, Was (Not Was) did not fact-check their lyrics while writing Walk the Dinosaur. The whole song is basically an acid trip stream of barely-consciousness. One of the writers has said it was about nuclear armageddon, so there’s that.
Elvis landed in a rocket ship
Healed a couple of lepers and disappeared. But where was his beard?One of the writers has said it was about nuclear armageddon, so there’s that.
To be clear, it was the '80s. Everything was about nuclear Armageddon.
Yeah, I’ve heard the nuclear interpretation from there. The number still could have a meaning tho…
In the 80’s you believed anything anyone told you because there was no convenient way to look it up. Oh, you want to verify it? Better take the bus across town to the library, spend 30 minutes finding 4 dinosaur books, and then 3 hours pouring through them to see if they mention when they went extinct.
I subscribed to all sorts of newsletters, and at least one was dinosaur specific. I would also write professors at local colleges with questions and usually get a response.
Also worked at the library and could order just about any book available. At that point most libraries would order books if they didn’t have them already.
But mostly newsletters and science journals until BBS became more common and user friendly when we first started having available computers.
My mom bought us an encyclopedia set, and I read it cover to cover. A lot of people didn’t have those though.
If you really spent three hours pouring through them, you should’ve listened to your teacher explaining how the index works.
As for the rest, yeah, this was true even going into the 90s before everyone had internet. No way to AskJeeves the question because mom was on the phone and she didn’t like it when you turned on the digital satanic screams while she was using it.
Why aren’t all musicians paleontologists?
Man I have tried so often to play them but in the almost three years of her existence my kid just hated recorded music. Sometimes I am allowed to sing mammal and that’s it.
The first song I ever sang to my daughter on the day she was born was “Oh Do Not Forsake Me” and she ate that shit up.
It probably just rhymed better.
Dinosaurs still exist today, so technically they were also around 40 million years ago. I don’t think many people knew birds are dinosaurs before the internet, though, and “walk the bird” sounds a bit strange.
We’ve known that birds were descended from dinosaurs for a long time. Best I can tell, it was first proposed in the 1800’s, largely abandoned by the early 1900’s and then revived in the 1970’s. It was not new information about the lineage of birds that caused us to start saying ‘birds are dinosaurs’, but a different method of classification: Cladistics.
My fave dinosaurs are still kiwi birds and emus. Such goofy little things!
“walk the bird” has cursed crossover potential with my understanding of British slang
I don’t understand this at all but I’m upvoting it anyway.
We did not have the level of wanton ignorance and denial of evolution that we have now. Back then, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that half the country turned out to be so stupid.
Like did we believe in dinosaurs in the 1980s? Yes. Yes we did. Was our dinosaur theory up to today’s current science, no. But we knew dinosaurs existed.
The difference in 40 vs 60 years is big but 4 million vs 6 million is not. For 40 million vs 60 million, most people probably didn’t notice unless they were pretty tuned into dino history.
2 million years isn’t big? Pssssshhhhh!!! Doubt YOU’LL live that long.
most people knew about geological ages and the dinosaurs where in some millions of years ago but the average person did not know how many.
Try “11 miles an hour”, I think they’re right on with that one.
But “Elvis’s Rolls Royce”, not so much.
What other band had Ozzy and Mel Torme on the same album? And Mel sang about an accidental strangulation.
