April 2, 2012
Dinosaur Sighting: Our Lady of Sauropods
Burning the midnight sauropod. Photo courtesy Cody Burkett.
Dinosaurs are excellent April Fool’s prank inspiration. We want to see a living ceratopsian or tyrannosaur so badly that it’s easy to whip up a fake press report about someone finally finding a surviving non-avian dinosaur. But reader Cody Burkett decided to do something a little different. Burkett explains:
So as an April Fool’s joke this year, I made a sauropod candle, lit it, and put it under the icons at my church, which also happens to be the seminary in which I attend graduate classes. Everyone seemed to be amused, except for the ecclesiarch, but I suppose that’s to be expected.
Have you seen a dinosaur or other prehistoric creature in an unusual place? Please send a photo to dinosaursightings@gmail.com.
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Though your ‘idol’ was intended to be a prank, according to the Biblical Book of Numbers, Yahweh commanded Moses to indeed build an idol of a Seraph (fiery flying serpent), which the bible records was worshipped for many centuries all thorugh the glory days of David and Solomon, and only after its destruction by Hezakiah did Jerusalem fall to invaders. Yahweh is described several places in the Bible with great wings, fiery breath, talon-like ‘hands’ and a decidly carnivorous diet to include lamb, calf, first born children and captured Midianite virgins. Was He actually a species of Pterosaur that survived the KT event and gave rise to the dragon legends we see around the world? At one time, half the Chnristian world understood he was a ‘dragon’, and his image in that form can still be seen on the ancient depiction of the Menorah from Herod’s temple. In fact with its long neck these ‘dragons’ looked a great deal like your sauropod-idol!
I thought it was a rather curious/high-larious coincidence that you’d have a photo of a ‘flaming dinosaur’ the very day FoxNews ran this story: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/02/when-dinosaurs-roamed-wildfire-was-foe/