Who is the Jurassosaurus?

Jurassosaurus nedegoapeferkimorum

Name: Jurassosaurus (just call me Jura)

Age: About 170 million years old.

Location: Xinjiang Province, northwestern China

How useful was the above information: Hmm..not very.

Personality

Iconoclast, misanthrope, disaffected loner, and just an all around nice guy >:)
Interests:
Anything involving natural history, including: taxonomy, herpetology, paleontology, biology, zoology (said: Zoh-OLL-ogy). I also enjoy videogames, movies, the behind the scenes work for both, Voice Actors and martial arts, and music.

Pet Peeves:

Politicians, activists (especially those "Truth" jerks), fundamentalists, hypocrites, stoopid people (aka willfully ignorant people), liability law, accepted stereotypes. Assumptions that "warm-bloodedness" is superior to "cold-bloodedness" (especially in the dino camp), Net lingo/Leet speak (e.g. What R U doing?), more...always more.
Occupation:
Webmaster for this & other sites.

Hobbies:

Debating, following the latest in technology, reading about videogame & movie technology and techniques, drawing extinct and extant fauna, working on this site, hunting down the names, pictures & work history of Voice Actors. I also enjoy doing lots of D.I.Y. computer projects (putting cases together, learning new programs etc.).
Favourite animals:
Partial to crocodylians, in particualr Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) and the dwarf caimans (Paleosuchus sp.), but am also fond of chelonians and squamates, in particular my pet box turtles (Terrapene sp.) and common iguana (Iguana iguana). I also like sharks such as tigers (Galeocerdo cuvier) and white pointers (Carcharodon carcharius), ants, bees, squid; pretty much anything that isn't furry or feathery. Oh, and mind you, this is just the living stuff. :)

Career of Choice:

Vertebrate paleontologist studying the biomechanics of crurotarsans, dinosaurs and other reptiles.
Things that I shall accomplish during my lifetime:
Have a pet crocodylian, swim with sharks, name a new species or genus of animal (preferably reptilian), explore the rainforests of South America and/or Madagascar. Just travel in general.

Things I would like to accomplish during my lifetime:

Skydive, go free swimming with a white pointer or tiger Shark, see a living giant squid (Architeuthis dux).
Things that I might not wish for, but would find cool to have happen to me nonetheless:
Get struck by lightning, get picked up by a tornado.

The Handle

A handle by any other name would smell as sweet...

Okay so it went something like that.

With the internet being the way that it is, there are often times when one is given the opportunity to create a new name, persona and even lifestyle for oneself. Much like being in a truck company, many of the people online use handles in place of their real names. The handle usually conveys who the person is or what his/her interests are. Sometimes the handle is a simple one (e.g. John Doe) in which the handle mearly states the person's real name.

OK, that's all fine and honest, but there are those of us who like to really take advantage of the opportunities made available through this medium. Hence why some names can be really dramatic or drawn out. At last one has the opportunity to take on the name that they always wanted and create a brand new life online.

Yeah okay, so this probably sounds like some strange RPG and in truth, only a few people go out of their way to completely recreate a totally new life on the internet. Most are content with just changing a few things and enhancing parts of their real lives that tend to stay dormant most of the time.

So how, you ask, did I wind up with a name like this? Well I assure you it was completely unintentional. At the time I was just looking for a suitable name to use while on this message board about dinosaurs and the Jurassic Parktm movies. Since this was a forum about dinosaurs, I figured it would help if I had a name that was dinosaurian in nature and one that had something in common with the films. So I perused the dinosaur genera lists until I found a name I could use. By a sheer stroke of luck, I found a dinosaur that had a direct connection to the Spielberg movie. It was the Jurassosaurus nedegoapeferkimorum

J.nedegoapeferkimorum was a fossil ankylosaur that was discovered in northwestern China in 1980. The bones had lain there unprepared for a decade until a generous donation from Steven Spielberg was made. In honour of this donation the last or species name of the animal was dedicated to the cast of Mr. Spielberg's latest film Jurassic Parktm. The name is made up from the first letters of the last names of the actors who played in the movie.
Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sir Richard Attenborough , Robert Peck, Martin Ferrero, Wayne Knight, Ariana Richards, and Joseph Mazzello.
Due to this strange coincedence I used the name and in fact quickly grew accustomed to it. Later as I moved on to other message boards I found myself continually using that same name, regardless of how out of place it might have been. Of course there were times where I would change, but the changes never lasted all that long and in the end it was the Jurassosaurus moniker that always won out.

As time went on the ankylosaur's generic name (which was unofficial at the time) got replaced by the name Tianchisaurus in honour of Lake Tianchi (Heavenly Lake) where it was found.

Strangely enough the species name also was rearranged. What makes this strange is the fact that the species name is usually the most static of the bunch (or as static as you can get with zoological classification). It went from nedegoapeferkimorum to nedegoapeferkirima. I believe this had a lot to do with the questionable last half of the name which is a tad hard to decipher.

So now the name Jurassosaurus nedegoapeferkimorum has been cast aside in favour of Tianchisaurus nedegoapeferkirima. I can't say that I really mind this though. With the Jurassosaurus title freed up and out of use it feels even more unique. And while I don't go around introducing myself as the Jurassosaurus nedegoapeferkimorum I do consider this my real name on the internet.

"And now you know the rest of the story." -Paul Harvey