The Royal Family

By Gordon Hopkins For a guy who’s been dead for 65 million years, he sure it stirring up some controversy these days. I am, of course, talking about the king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex, or T-Rex, to use a now popular neologism that I hate but will still use for space-saving purposes.Scientists have been studying these big critters for a long time. One could be forgiven for thinking we’ve pretty much learned all there is to know about dinosaurs.But you would be wrong.That's the thing about science. The research is never done and new things are being learned all the time. After all, fossil records aren't set in stone. Well, I mean, of course they are but not in that way. Oh, come on! You know what I mean.While some discoveries are a big deal only to the scientific community, others capture the imagination of lay people at large. Remember the kerfuffle when Pluto got demoted to a dwarf planet? A lot of folks still aren’t over it.When science and pop culture collide, the effect can be seismic. And there is no science with more pop than dinosaurology (or whatever it’s called).Anyway, a little rag you probably haven’t heard of called the New York Times recently reported on a new debate going on in the land of the dinosaurs. It seems a group of scientists are arguing that his majesty, the T-Rex, isn’t a dinosaur after all.Specifically, he is three dinosaurs.According to this theory, all those bones we have been calling T-Rex bones come not from a single species but are different enough to be considered three distinct species.Differentiation between dinosaur species can be tricky when all you have to work with are a bunch of crumbly, fossilized bones. Things like the size and shape of a bone may be all the evidence science has.In designating three categories of Tyrannosaurs, scientists have opted for the fast-food soft drink approach: small, medium and large.The smaller, slimmer version is proposed to be called Tyrannosaurus Regina, which I guess would make her the queen of the dinosaurs. Then there is the classic Tyrannosaurus Rex. Finally, the big dog of this royal family would be called Tyrannosaurus Imperator.Boy, does this ever cause problems for the producers of the “Jurassic Park/World” movies, who are conscientiously dedicated to scientific accuracy as you know.This controversy is likely to rage for a long time. Other scientists, opposed to such egregious rewriting of prehistory, have already rebutted this theory in a dismissive and scathing paper that a lay person like myself can’t hope to begin to understand. The authors of the original paper are preparing a new paper in response to this response, guaranteed to be equally scathing.And, thus, science marches on.This is not the first time this has happened in dinoland. I remember the day I first heard the Brontosaurus was no longer a dinosaur. Scientists have decided the Brontosaurus was not distinct enough to be considered a separate species from the Apatosaurus.Apatosaurus? What a dumb name! Not like Brontosaurus. The Thunder Lizard! Was there ever a cooler name than Brontosaurus?That was a sad time for me. It was like losing an old friend. I used to draw pictures of Brontos on my book covers when I was a kid at school.In 2015, scientists relented and Brontosaurus was restored to his rightful place as the second most popular dinosaur ever.Still, the memories of those dark days haunt me. To this day, I can’t help but tear up whenever Fred Flintstone orders a Bronto Burger.

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