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One of my dinosaur books rather dubiously claims that Archeopteryx is "perhaps the most famous extinct organism in the world". I find this doubtful - surely Tyrannosaurus Rex holds that distinction?

Still, the discovery of the first Archeopteryx fossil in 1861 is a hugely important point in the history of our understanding of dinosaurs, bird evolution and evolution in general. B. has occasionally bombarded Archeopteryx specimens with fundamental particles.

Crossposts: http://louisedennis.livejournal.com/348424.html

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From:

ed_rex

Agreed, T. Rex is much more famous than Archeopteryx. I'd hazard the guess that even old Brontosaurus (or whatever "he" is nowadays named) is ahead of the old bird.

I wonder if the author of your book wasn't an ornithologist in their second career; certainly a good case can be made that Archeopteryx should be the world's most famous, er, extinct organism. (But that wording ...!)

From:

purplecat

Someone over at t'other place made a plausible suggestion of the Dodo, which is pretty much a byword for an extinct organism.

TBH, I think all the dinosaurs us 1970s kids had models of (T. Rex, Brachiosaurus (Brontosaurus), Triceratops, Stegosaurus) are probably better known than the Archeopteryx and, thanks to Jurassic Park, you can probably add Velociraptors to that list as well.

From:

ed_rex

The dodo suggestion really struck me, but on second thought, I suspect it applies only to a small demographic. "Everyone" (ahem) plays with toy dinosaurs, but only bio-nerds (or fans of Adams' era Doctor Who and or the Alice books) are likely to be familiar with the dodo.

From:

purplecat

It's impossible to tell, particularly since I've no idea which examples various education systems push these days, because frankly "what everyone knows" boils down to "what everyone got taught in school". I think the Dodo gets wheeled out a lot in the UK, but I think dinosaurs are a pretty popular topic in primary education as well, so who knows.

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