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A Really, Really Ex-Parrot
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."
...until you dug it up, you insensitive clods!
Anybody want my mod points?
Er... Shouldn't that be the 'Norwegian Blue'? :o\
It's not dead, it's resting!
Misquoting Monty Python is a time-honored tradition in geekdom. After all, if they got it right what would Slashdot readers post about?
Besides, Danish Blue is a type of cheese, and Danes sure as hell don't have any fjords.
Article-reading for the win. Still, the blurb was misleading. Disregard, cocks etc.
The particular fossil they found was of the "Humerus" bone.
*rimshot*
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I discovered the only reason that it appears to be 54 million years old in the first place was that God had NAILED it there.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
...were vicious with their domesticated parrots.
Man do I need to remember to set the alarm clock...
I didn't want to be a Slashdotter anyway..
*tears off black t-shirt from Thinkgeek, revealing a plaid shirt underneath*
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Exactly which part of "the oldest and most northerly remains of a parrot ever discovered" translates to you into "a known parrot that was around at that time"? No, seriously.
Dude, let's put it like this:
- this thing is 54 _million_ years old
- humans, as in Homo Sapiens, are about 200,000 years old
- even Neanderthals, the only other species that ever reached sentience, isn't that horribly much older. The proto-neanderthals reached Europe some 350-500 thousand years ago, but the fully evolved Neanderthals are a mere 130,000 years old.
- the split between the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees happened some 6 million years ago. Which is to say that at that point, the most evolved form of life was something that was dumber and more primitive than the chimp. It's _not_ something that would build ships and sail the fjords.
So exactly what species would that captain be, 54 million years ago. Are we talking some time-travelling alien that took a different species of parrot from a later time, and then went back to 54 million years ago to dump its skeleton there and confuse a species that didn't even exist yet? Or what?
Heh.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Excuse me, is this the right room for the cheese shop sketch?
Some have speculated that birds are descended from dinosaurs. I used to think this was a bunch of crap until I owned an African Congo Grey parrot. I don't know who is the closest direct bird descendant of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but after my experience I'm pretty sure it must be a Congo Gray named Max.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Norwegian, Danish, what's the difference?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When you do things right, people won't be sure if you've done anything at all.
Golgafrinchan? Unless he wasn't spending a lot of time in the bath tub...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
No, the cheese shop is in 12a, this is abuse
...
Stupid git!
I thought you Danes had plenty of fjords in Greenland.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
What do you mean I can't return it?? A warranty that doesn't last at least 55 million years isn't worth the paper it's written on!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
He would remark, "Tastes like me"?
FYI, the Danish Blue is mentioned in Monty Pythons 'Cheese Shop' sketch.
:)
Intentional or pure fluke? Python did do a lot I guess
Actually, I'd heard they did nickname it the Norwegian Blue, even though it was found in Denmark, on the grounds that it probably existed in Denmark as well. This story has been out for several weeks now - I posted it to the queue the moment the BBC covered it, and they're not always the first on the science stuff - so there may be more information out there. Congratulatons, btw, to the submitter who made it through the queue, it's a better writeup than the one I did and the front page is better for it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Beautiful plumage.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
... the archeoligists who discovered the parrot sceleton described its plumage as 'lovely'.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Where was Scandinavia 54 million years ago, if it was in the tropics then it is no surprise there were parrots there then. Or have the scientists forgotten about continental drift.
Now now, I wasn't talking about Bush this time ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If Slashdot readers were the type of people to read the article, they'd know the people that named it Danish Blue were aware they were naming after the Norwegian Blue. But then again, there's not much call for reading the article around here.
This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
Maybe Denmark did have fjords when this bird was somewhat more active. Even if the Danish fjords didn't have Danes yet, thus no Danish pet shops.
Wouldn't there have been fjords resulting from previous glaciations? It's not as if they're unique to the last one.
I'm pretty sure Danish Blue is a cheese. Perhaps they confused the Dead Parrot Sketch and the Cheese Shop Sketch. Both feature Palin as an inept shopkeeper and Cleese as a disgruntled customer.
Thats what killed the Parrot. They had to burn down the trees to control inflation of the leaf.
Cripes they must all have been so rich with the trees gone.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
Maybe a Palin-tologist could tell us...
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
Norway, Norway, Norway, the country where I quite want to be...
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I just find it creepy. Even if I know what parrot tastes like.
http://www.klimt02.net/jewellers/index.php?item_id=5860
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty