Page 22 - Kyalami_Issue 1_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 invented by a fellow journalist reporting on
were known only through the the event. This new dinosaur is the longest
discovery of its fossilised neck bones, four-legged creature that has ever lived. It
T it might well have been deemed to be weighed around 60 tons and was at least
another bizarre creation of the weird Jurassic 40m in length.
Period – the era that produced creatures with
the most unlikely necks. The first of its bones were discovered in
the 1970s, when they were thought to
Just before Christmas, the American Society be the remains of two dinosaurs. Now
of Vertebrate Palaeontology, at its annual palaeontologists believe they belonged to
meeting in Minneapolis, revealed details of one animal.
a newly-discovered long-necked dinosaur
that defies the imagination. Try to imagine this creature walking in
city traffic, dwarfing double-decker buses,
Long-necked? Just two of haplessly squashing cars underfoot and
its almost dustbin-sized stretching to press its nose up
vertebrae were the against office windows five
length of an entire storeys high.
giraffe’s neck.
Which brings me back
Fossil hunters to earth . . . and to
now call it our comparatively
‘Supersaurus’ dainty giraffe.
– a name

Masai giraffe

20 Kyalami Estates • CONNECT • Issue 1 • 2022