Jurassic Punk

Parents of difficult teenagers can take some solace in a recent news item that found even dinosaurs had to deal with juvenile delinquents.

According to an article posted on LiveScience.com , the remains of three juvenile Triceratops, a species thought to be solitary, were found in a 66 million-year-old bone bed in Montana, having died together in a flood.

This discovery gives more credence to the belief that “teen dinosaurs were gregarious gangsters,” the article said.

There is no mention of leather jackets, zip guns, or switch blades. I wonder if they danced and sang “When you’re Triceratop, you a Triceratop all the way…”

There are other recent discoveries of dinosaurs hanging out in cliques, but I’m sure none of them was a match for Predator X. That may sound like the name of a professional wrestler, but is actually a recently discovered species of pliosaur, which lived 147 million years ago.

Predator X was 50-feet long (!) weighed 45 tons (!!) and could crush a Hummer in its massive jaws, which makes me sorry that he's extinct. Imagine the poor fisherman who reeled that thing in. Sorry about the hook, dude. Can I have my head back?

Naturally to appreciate these and other such discoveries you have to believe the earth is actually billons of years old, as opposed to a few thousand.

I saw one Christian/psycho blog that says Predator X is bogus and that his bones were actually planted by Satan to fool dim-witted humans. I think this person was serious in this belief, which is far more frightening than Predator X could ever be.

I wonder if the devil wears overalls and a straw hat while doing his planting—or does he hire illegal immigrants like everybody else?
Predator X brought back memories of all my favorite monster movies--Godzilla, Gorgo, The Giant Behemoth, and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

I loved those pictures, even though they pretty much follow the same formula. The big monster is supposed to be long extinct and what do you know?—he’s alive and well and rather pissed.

Bat Squeeze

Radiation is usually the culprit in these movies, as it defrosts or revives the monster in some way so he can stomp all over some hapless metropolis, crushing buildings and eating Hummers to his heart’s content.

There’s the shots of toy buildings being knocked over, crowds of people running through the streets screaming, and the vain attempts to kill the thing with conventional weapons. Honestly, why do they bother with guns and bombs? We all know all this crap is not going to work.

After much damage and a lot of brainstorming, the scientists come up with a crazy, ridiculous scheme to kill the monster—that…just…might…work. And, of course it does.

Tokyo usually bears the brunt of these reptilian attacks, but London got the business in Gorgo and The Giant Behemoth . The beast in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms did his thing right here in New York City with the climax taking place at Steeplechase in Coney Island. Thankfully Nathan’s was spared.

If Predator X is too much for you to handle, try Hesperonychus elizabethae, a meat-eating dinosaur that scientists said was about the size of the average chicken.

It’s hard to imagine millions of Japanese people running away from a chicken-sized monster, but attitude counts for a lot.

I guess if they ever did a movie about this guy, the Army would call in Col. Sanders to fry up the little bastard Cajun style.

However, I’m not sure even the Colonel could take on the space bat, an apparently garden variety flying mammal who was last seen hitching a ride on the space shuttle.

Scientists think the bat met his maker on the flight out of earth’s atmosphere, but what if he didn’t? What if he was exposed to radiation, grew to gargantuan size and is winging his way back to earth to crush our cities and eat our Hummers?

We could try taking him to Nathan's and entering him in the hotdog eating contest, but he may not like the beach. We're going to need help.

Come back, Predator X, all is forgiven.