A Really, Really Ex-Parrot

Posted by kdawson on Friday June 20, 2008 @02:32AM from the joining-the-choir-invisible dept.

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."

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Re: Danish Blue by eln · 2008-06-20 02:37 · Score: 4, 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:I'm no expert by soliptic · 2008-06-20 11:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

the only other species that ever reached sentience
Off topic, but when you have elephants that recognise themselves in the mirror, apes that can plan tool usage ahead of time, parrots that grasp the concept of zero, and so on, I'm personally honestly no longer convinced claims like this can be made so easily.