It's always nice to leave Lexington for a little while. Jon & I went to his parents' for the weekend. We always end up watching the Discovery Channel or CNN, and eating too many sweets. (I have yet to get used to this Southern proclivity to desserts so sweet they make your tongue ache).
There was a special on dinosaurs yesterday that was highly amusing. I think it was just another way to let adult boys have fun smashing things up. They were speculating on the ways velociraptors would have approached their prey. They were about the size of turkeys, with a large scythe-like claw on both of their feet.
To get an idea of how the ankylosaurous would have defended itself, the scientists constructed a working mechanical model of its tail with a club on the end. The beast was about 4 tons, and its tail, in full swing, would have had the power of a 2-ton car smashing into a wall. Then they wondered, could a turkey-sized velociraptor have attacked it? The answer was quite obvious, but they had to put a turkey carcass on a stump and let the tail have at it. Of course the pink carcass flew across the room, and of course all its bones were broken and its organs would have been irreparably damaged.