verything I thought I knew about dinosaurs is wrong. Tyrannosaurus rex, the king of the dinosaurs, who has been a reptilian terror in countless Hollywood films, turns out not to have been such a king after all, but rather more of a court jester. Those Jurassic Park scenes of attempts to escape such a beast in a speeding car are wrong, for rather than being powered by a Rolls Royce engine, it appears that T. Rex was powered by a rubber band. Much like our collective dreams of the canals of Mars, or of giant ants towering above us, all the lessons that science fiction has taught us about these creatures has vanished, erased by the advance of scientific knowledge.
And all it took was a look at my morning newspaper.
That happens a lot these days, my science-fiction visions being turned upside down by opening a newspaper. I learned this particular bit of information thanks to the Feb. 28 issue of The Washington Post, a publication I turn to daily in search of science-fiction news. Sometimes I find it in the Post, sometimes The New York Times, and often in whatever daily newspaper is published wherever I happen to travel. But whatever the name of the paper, I guarantee that there's something each day to change our view of the universe and perceptions of science fiction, such as the estimates of the age of the universe being altered, or the speed of light stretched, or in this case, learning that T. Rex didn't really have a leg to stand on.
Walking—not running—with dinosaurs
On the day that I decided to take time in this space to show you that any random issue of a newspaper could do this, I didn't know what I'd find. So imagine my surprise when I turned to page 3 of The Washington Post that day to discover that all of my dinosaur dreams were false.
As reported by Post staff writer Guy Gugliotta, scientists have constructed a biomechanical computer model that demonstrates that for the large T. rex, achieving the speeds that science fiction had made us dream of is a statistical impossibility. The larger the creature, the greater the proportional amount of muscle needed to propel that creature at speed. For a T. Rex to move at 45 miles per hour, over 80% of its muscle mass would need to be concentrated in its legs. "It's the same reason you don't see elephants jumping over fences or galloping," said Stanford biomechanist John R. Hutchison.
Based on their bodies, a speed of 10 miles per hour is more like it, about what a jogger running a five-minute mile can do. There's still some debate over the matter, but all I keep thinking is this—there are some among us who could outrun the king of the dinosaurs, not even needing to climb into an SUV. Remember that the next time you see a breathtaking escape at the movies.
Every day, the news seems to turn more of my science fiction into fantasy. I'd better go now—I have to cancel my newspaper subscription before reality intrudes to steal yet another of my science-fiction dreams.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. A collection of his short fiction, These Words Are Haunted, has just been published by Wildside Press.
