RE: When Dinosaurs Ruled China

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Mike Taylor
>
> > A recent post mentioned that "When Dinosaurs Ruled China" was coming
> > to television.  Is this a new program?  Is it a new addition to the
> > "When Dinosaurs Ruled" series of videos or something completely
> > different?  Will it be available on VHS?  I searched on this title,
> > but didn't find out much about it.

I believe it is out on tape, but not positive.  I aired in the U.S. early
this year.

> _WDRC_, on the other hand, was rather disappointing, featuring some
> interesting talking-head stuff but also some nonsense -- e.g. the
> claim that the only other group to share the pinched-metatarsal
> condition with the Tyrannosauria was "the raptors".  The most bizarre
> thing about that was that the programme then immediately switched to a
> talking head shot of our very own Dr. Holtz, who went on to explain
> the tyrannosaurs were more closely related to "raptors" than to large
> Jurassic theropods.  Rather misleading juxtaposition there!

Quite so!!  The directors kept on asking me to say "raptor" for
"coelurosaur".  I said that would be okay, kind of, if they established that
they were using "raptor" for "small bodied bird-like theropod".  They said
they would.  Oh well...

Cut out some of my better lines, too, although they kept the "therizinosaurs
as dinosaurs built by committee".  For this I missed Ruben's SVP
presentation that year...

> So.  If you happen to notice that _When Dinosaurs Ruled China_ in the
> TV schedules, by all means watch it; but I wouldn't bother going out
> of my way.  To be brutally honest, the most interesting part was
> hearing Tom Holtz pronouncing "therizinosaur" with a long second "i",
> as in "therizynosaur".  Oh well.  Another to add to my list of
> mispronounciations.  (I shan't swiftly forget when I met Ray Stanford
> and he mentioned Die-NON-i-kus, and it took me several seconds to
> realise that he was talking about the animal I'd known for years as
> Die-noe-NYE-kus.)
>
Die-NON-ee-kus is Ostrom's preferred pronounciation.  (Pronounced like an
osculatory repast: dine on a kiss).

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796


> -----Original Message-----
>  _/|_  _______________________________________________________________
> /o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
> )_v__/\  "Good luck, everyone" -- Bob the Angry Flower after the WTC
>        disaster.  See http://angryflower.com/septem.gif
>