Dinosaur Poetry

The Dino soars! (or Icarus allsorts!)

So; it would seem that Thomas Henry; (Huxley) got it right,
when he first hypothesed of dinosaurs in flight.
He was the first to state, in print, that he had seen a link,
that he had noticed, what one day, would surely make us think.
But then the arguments rolled on for near two hundred years,
until some Chinese dinosaurs brought experts close to tears.
What he was first to postulate, what he first put in words,
was, dinosaurs appeared to link the reptiles to the birds.
It long had been accepted that birds from reptiles came,
the problem's been `the missing link'; their legs; they look the same.
Compare tortoises' with chickens', they both have scales upon,
and both lay eggs, with shells on, not wet, and in a pond.
So now, we have another group, we have another word,
to join in the nomenclature, enter-the `dinobird!'
It's true, we think it's therapods that first did take to flight,
and not some bird-hipped dinosaurs, (which first might seem so right).
And all those pterodactyls, that certainly could fly,
were neither birds nor bats, nor dinosaurs on high.
Those creatures, incidentally are really pterosaurs,
but books and films get some things wrong, a fact, I find that. bores.
But dinosaurs did several things we now consider; `bird',
and some of these you may not know, may even think absurd.
They were the first to lose their teeth and swallowed `rocks' instead,
these stomach stones are often found; some distance from the head.
Known as gastroliths, these stones; they worked like grit and gravel,
the length of many of the necks gave these some way to travel.
Some laid their eggs in clutches like many birds still do,
and signs are such, they'd brood their eggs, in `rookeries'; that too...
It seems as if these nesting sites for decades they were used,
or centuries in fact, no less; imagine all the poos.
So when a Chaffinch makes it's call, and when it goes "pink-pink",
perhaps it's really saying, "hey, you see; I'm not extinct!".
Though both a bird and dino' lover, I'd give most anything,
if I could just discover; how did they learn to sing?

Dave Hubble (Pencombe)

A Matter of a Pinion!

From the Gobi to Saskatchewan,
from Cowlease Chine, on 'Wight,
Nevada in the Badlands
and Bernisart, there's quite
a lot of them discovered,
and a lot of them that might
be disinterred in future,
if the omens are just right.
Their bones, oft' of contention,
have for centuries been dug,
or 'roded from the matrix,
piece by piece and tug by tug.
The first of them discovered,
by the Chinese or the Sioux,
were somewhat misconcepted,
were put in Noah's 'Zoo'
and thought of as just dragons
or of giants' scrotal pairs,
or men drowned in 'The Deluge'
or of 'Baddies' who 'got theirs'.
Then Mantell came, and Buckland,
and Richard Owen who,
coined * 'Dinosaur', in Plymouth,
in **1842.
Most end in a 'Saurus',
but quite a few do not,
Diplodocus, Iguanodon
and Deinonychus don't
and Hadrosaurus still lives,
so; things don't fit, or won't.
Most Dinosaurs were mighty beasts,
some relatively small,
and some were very horned types,
but some, no horns at all;
not even the Iguanodon,
the first that, I suppose,
(like Swann & Flanders--,
'found that horn'),
was wont to thumb it's nose.
Now they've all gone,
nowhere extant;
or live a life of ease:
a-singin' and a-twitt'rin'
and a-flappin' in the trees...

*Strictly of course 'Dinosauria'.
* *Actually Friday 30-7-1841

Dave Hubble ( `Hubbleosaurus Wrecks' )

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