A Really, Really Ex-Parrot 91
gyrogeerloose writes "According to a National Geographic News story, what may be the fossilized wing bone of an ancient parrot has been dubbed by its discoverers 'The Danish Blue' in honor of the famous Dead Parrot Sketch. If the 54 million year old bone did in fact belong to a parrot, it would be 'the oldest and most northerly remains of a parrot ever discovered.' There is some dispute among paleontologists about whether the bone was indeed that of a parrot. If it turns out to be so, however, it never had a chance to pine for the fjords — they were not carved out until an ice age millions of years after the bird lived."
Re: Danish Blue (Score:5, Insightful)
Misquoting Monty Python is a time-honored tradition in geekdom. After all, if they got it right what would Slashdot readers post about?
Re:Polly is a pain to take care of (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife's parents owned two cockatoos (unfortunately, one passed away a few years back, so it is down to one now). When both birds were in the midst of a screech-fest and the phone rang, my father-in-law would answer it "Hello, Jurassic Park!"
BTW, the current theory is that the chicken is the closest living relative of the T-Rex: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/apr/13/uknews.taxonomy [guardian.co.uk]
Imagine the drumsticks you could have eaten back in the Cretaceous! That is, if they didn't eat you first.
Re: Danish Blue (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. It was discovered in Denmark, not Norway. While the "[Scandanavian Country*] Blue" name may have inspired by Monty Python, it was not copied from Monty Python.
*Yes, Denmark is in Scandanavia, in spite of what some people think.
Re:I'm no expert (Score:4, Insightful)
Off topic, but when you have elephants that recognise themselves in the mirror [livescience.com], apes that can plan tool usage ahead of time [sciam.com], parrots that grasp the concept of zero [alexfoundation.org], and so on, I'm personally honestly no longer convinced claims like this can be made so easily.