Posts Tagged ‘walking dead’

This comment was posted on an interview with Josh McDermitt, who plays the character Eugene Porter on The Walking Dead, on AMCTV.com. I’ll let it speak for itself.

I’m writing this on behalf of my son, Gideon, who is 6 years old. Because of him, I’ve learned a lot about dinosaurs, and I knew enough to realize that when Eugene Porter said last night that he would love to see a revived Ankylosaur fight a Diplodocus, the otherwise brilliant Dr. Porter had made an egregious and embarrassing error. I reported Dr. Porter’s comment to my son (since I don’t let him watch the show, of course), and he makes the following observations. First, both those dinosaurs were herbivores, and they would almost certainly never fight. If, for some reason, they did get annoyed with each other, it would not be the kind of bloody combat that Dr. Porter salivated over. It would probably just be a quick pushing match to get at some branches. Second, “ankylosaur” is an umbrella category of dinosaurs. It was not a specific dinosaur, unlike Diplodocus which was a specific dinosaur species. So it is not clear what dinosaur the Diplodocus would be fighting. Third, the archetypal ankylosaur, namely, the Euplocephalus, only appeared in the late Cretaceous era, whereas the Diplodocus lived in the late Jurassic. Tens of millions of years separated them, and they never would have encountered each other. Dr. Porter should be more careful than to perorate on dinosaurs, because the average 6-year old can be a merciless fact-checker.

It gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view. Other people responded, some slightly unkindly, to what this parent had to say.

And BTW… It’s Euoplocephalus. If your going to be snarky at least spell stuff right!

To be clear: we are talking about a fictional character. In the case of the commenters, they are directing their comments AT a fictional character. Some people take this stuff seriously.

Robert Kirkman has become a household name thanks to the success of Walking Dead, both the comic and the TV series. I’m also a fan of his Marvel Zombies, although I have to admit that it depressed the hell out of me. Now Kirkman is doing a book you can enjoy with your kids — Super Dinosaur.

Kirkman is a great writer and this series sounds great. A full press release follows, but this sentence was all I needed: Read more »