Page 12 - IFV_Issue 2_Feb_2022

Nature

Stretching the

imagination

BY JAMES CLARKE AND MARY BROADLEY

“There ain’t no such animal!”

– overheard at Bronx Zoo when an elderly woman saw a giraffe
for the first time in her life.

“Taller than an elephant but not so
thick”

– definition of the giraffe in Samuel Johnson’s 1775 Dictionary
of the English Language.

here is no doubt that, if the giraffe were known only
through the discovery of its fossilised neck bones, it
Tmight well have been deemed to be another bizarre
creation of the weird Jurassic Period – the era that produced
creatures with the most unlikely necks.
Just before Christmas, the American Society of Vertebrate
Palaeontology, at its annual meeting in Minneapolis, revealed
details of a newly-discovered long-necked dinosaur that defies
the imagination.
Long-necked? Just two of its almost dustbin-sized vertebrae
were the length of an entire giraffe’s neck.
Fossil hunters now call it ‘Supersaurus’ – a name invented by
a fellow journalist reporting on the event. This new dinosaur is
the longest four-legged creature that has ever lived. It weighed
around 60 tons and was at least 40m in length.
The first of its bones were discovered in the 1970s when
they were thought to be the remains of two dinosaurs. Now
palaeontologists believe they belonged to one animal.
Try to imagine this creature walking among city traffic,
dwarfing double-decker buses, haplessly squashing cars
underfoot and stretching to press its nose up against office
windows five storeys high.
Which brings me back to earth . . . and to our comparatively
dainty giraffe.
The good news is that the giraffe, the world’s tallest living
mammal, has strengthened its numbers over the last few years.
It is still ‘vulnerable’ according to the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. The list categorises
animals according to their likelihood to become extinct. There
are nine categories – Not Evaluated, Data Deficient, Least
Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically
Endangered, Extinct in the Wild, and Extinct (dead and gone like
the dodo).
Despite the upward trend in giraffe numbers – the animal is
Masai giraffe
unique to Africa – it is still in ‘urgent’ need of protection. This is

10 • Issue 2 2022 • The Villager