Wonderchicken

As individual states begin implementing phased lifting of quarantine, we wonder if, in the shifting attention of many Americans, folks will soon begin to forget much of what we’ve collectively experienced for the past two months.

Will they forget about social distancing and toilet paper hoarding? Will they forget about masks and zoom meetings interrupted by children and spouses in underwear? Will all this fade happily into memory? Doubtful. No. More likely we won’t quickly forget much of this. But no matter the short attention spans of some of us or the desire to go back to our old ways of doing things, there is one thing we know none of us could possibly forget: the Wonderchicken.

What? Don’t tell me that you never even heard of a wonderchicken!

Are you saying that when the news of wonderchicken broke – at the same time the COVID-19 pandemic was truly heating up here in the US – you weren’t paying attention to the discovery of the 67-million-year old ancestor of our beloved fowl? Well, sit back. Let’s get you caught up.

During the Cretaceous period, wonderchicken would have been wandering around with the likes of triceratops, parasaurolophus, stegosaurus, and the maiasaurs. Maybe running around the legs of the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex. Perhaps little wonderchicken stared up into blue skies at a flying pterosaur, or was caught stargazing when a large asteroid headed her way.  Perhaps that’s why she was named Asteriornis maastrichtensis, after Asteria, the Greek goddess of falling stars who could transform herself into a quail.

This quail looks like it's wearing a hat, or a crown, depending on your point of view...

Wonderchicken made her debut on this planet just two million years before the great asteroid strike is theorized to have wiped out the giant dinosaurs, and may provide scientists some much needed information to fill in the gaps of how our modern day birds descended from their dinoancestors.
Dr. Daniel Field of the University of Cambridge, provided details of this unique specimen of the only nearly complete skull of an ancestrally modern bird from the age of dinosaurs discovered thus far.

Dr. Daniel Field of the University of Cambridge with the 3-D printed skull
of Asteriornis maastrichensis, aka Wonderchicken. Photo credit: D.J. Field/Univ of Cambridge

Found in a quarry on the Netherlands-Belgium border, and weighing less than a pound, wonderchicken appears to be the tiny great grandmother of modern chickens, ducks and other poultry. Perhaps she was the original Turducken, despite being close the size of a Cornish Hen?

We also know that wonderchicken had long, slender legs, well-adapted to living on a tropical beach.

Wait, I thought he said wonderchicken lived in the Netherlands-Belgium area….not Hawaii. Well, climate change happens. It is also possible, paleo-ornithologists tell us, that wonderchicken could even fly. Winging her little way around the Belgium Bahamas, looking for dinner….avoiding becoming dinner.

This newly discovered fossilized bird could be the earliest ancestor of every feathered fowl on our planet.
Photo credit: Phillip Krzeminski/BBC

This news originally broke March 18th in Nature and Science News and was immediately picked up by National Geographic and others. California was on whatever euphemism we are using for COVID-19 lockdown and most of the nation was headed that way as well. As we start to lift our heads cautiously up and out, peaking around at our surroundings, let us remember brave little Wonderchicken. The survivor. She braved the great T-Rex and her children survive to this day. We can do it, too. The sky is not falling.

Long Live Wonderchicken!

Dinosaurs in the Desert

After spending a quiet Sunday afternoon watching, or to be more exact, re-watching Jurassic Park, two issues were quite apparent. Being a leisurely Sunday afternoon meant not really thinking too deeply into this marvelous film adapted from the novel by Michael Crichton, but two points did resonate with J.

First, there were no T-Rexes during the Jurassic Period (which was roughly 145 million to about 200 million years ago). The Tyrannosaurus existed during the Cretaceous period around 66 – 145 million years ago, probably more like 66 to 68 million years ago. The reason the film was named Jurassic instead of Cretaceous was probably the sound – Jurassic has a better ring than Cretaceous and really, how many people could pronounce that era anyway.

Hollywood has a license and that license is known as a poetic one. And that is defined as - the freedom to depart from the facts of a matter or from the conventional rules of language when speaking or writing in order to create an effect.

In other words – they lie, but as professional writers we at J and L prefer to call it ‘embellishing’ the facts. A lie is such a nasty turn of phrase.

The second point was that not all dinosaurs are gone from this earth. In fact, in Southern California, a sleepy little area known as Cabazon, there exist two behemoths just north of Interstate 10. That stretch of asphalt is the home of both an Apatosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Both of these creatures roamed the globe during the Cretaceous Period when the earth in which they resided was warm and tropical. They flourished for millions of years until, according to most scientists, a huge asteroid decided to play bumper pool with the earth down in the Yucatan about 65 million years ago. Large clouds of dust blew up into the atmosphere blocking sunlight for nearly two years which killed off the herbivores and then when they perished, the carnivores, having no food source, were next.

Only certain land dwelling creatures still existed after the tragic present sent to earth from outer space - primarily rats but let's not talk about politicians.

Claude K. Bell at the beginning of Dinny

The two large dinosaurs are actually the creation of Claude K. Bell who had a restaurant named the 'Wheel Inn Restaurant' in Cabazon. The restaurant started in 1958 and made it all the way to its closure in 2013. Bell decided from his time as a sculptor and portrait artist for Knott's Berry Farm, that what he needed was  a little sideshow to draw more customers to the restaurant. With that in mind, he started working on Dinny the Apatosaurus  (Dinny, short for dinosaur) in 1964. And Dinny was a huge undertaking. She measures 156 feet in length and 45 feet in height. That is one big old dinosaur. It took nearly twelve years to complete the steel framed sprayed concrete colossus, at a cost of $300,000. Dinny is hollow inside, with a steep staircase upon which the hearty can troop up into the belly of the herbivore and shop for trinkets while learning a little of the history of this tourist attraction.

The completed project - well not really

This concept of Bell's worked very well and business boomed - thus part of the reason the restaurant was a success for 55 years. Of course, Bell wasn't done with Dinny alone - no, the T-Rex was next. But Rex wasn't started until 1981. Today this prehistoric beast stands 65 feet tall. It had a slide for a tail, but that didn't last long, and it was filled in with concrete. Rex stands watch gazing southward toward the Interstate and watching the visitors who pay tribute to a creation by a very talented and patient artist by the name of Claude K. Bell.

That's one big dude, er dudette!

Unfortunately, Bell passed away in 1988, and so his dream of a Woolly Mammoth and prehistoric garden never came to fruition.

"Oh Yeah - I'm bad to the bone," yells Mr. Rex

The land and everything Bell had built was sold by his heirs in the 1990's to a partnership which received approval from the city of Cabazon to erect a motel, restaurant, and other financially sound ideas for the rest stop. The area is now known as a 'creationists dream' where evolution is poo-pooed and a museum located near the dinosaurs explains their belief.

Here at J and L will not go into this area but all views are valued and must be looked at on their own merit. It is up to the people reading explanations and doing research on their own to come up with the truth they desire to believe in. But, we thought it was an important aspect to add to this blog.

So, there after an afternoon of watching a film about dinosaurs chasing and eating people around a fictitious island the idea of Cabazon came into J's mind.  And it so happened that J and L's travelling buddy Paul Bakas had been on a recent trip with them and stopped to investigate these giants looming over the skyline of Cabazon.

The really positive side of this is that there are no Raptors running loose - if there had been, no stopping by this research team would have occurred.

No taking sides at J and L - that would be too much to bite off

On a side note and an important one - Dinny and Mr. Rex are celebrities. They had made appearances in the 1985 comedy - Pee Wee's Big Adventure, in the 1985 music video for Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World, in 1988 on the album cover for Notes from the Lost Civilization by Tonio K's and numerous other documentaries, music albums/videos and the like. The two are as famous as perhaps the original ones during the Cretaceous period - yeah, and not the Jurassic Period.

Attention - this tram will not be stopping any time soon