"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

one might say. Although, one would be wrong.

Haha, get it? The sky is falling? Chicken Little? The asteroid landing in Russia? Eh? Eh?

I'm sick. It's not my best, I'll admit. 

Anyways, I though I'd discuss the event that occurred in Russia last Friday. Because it's space, and current, and all sorts of fun things.

So.

In brief, here's what happened:

On last Friday morning, a relatively "small" meteor crashed on the earth (55 feet in diameter, weighing about 10,000 tons), near Chelyabinsk, Russia. The crash released the energy of more than 30 atomic bombs. The shock waves caused by it shattered glass windows and injured over 1,000 people.

Small fragments of the meteor have been found scattered around the site, ranging from very, very small, to just sort-of-small. This particular meteor came from the asteroid belt, and not from the moon or Mars, like many do. For those of you who don't know, the asteroid belt is pretty much a ring of floating space rocks in between Mars and Jupiter. They can be dislodged by comets, gravity, any number of things.

When these asteroids do approach Earth, they fly into our atmosphere. Most of them, if they're small enough, burn up there, and don't really cause a big splash, so to speak. You may have seen this during a meteor shower; however, sometimes they don't burn up entirely, and then bits land on the Earth. That's what happened on Friday.

Fun fact: according to the Wall Street Journal, "A meteor is what is seen burning up flying through the atmosphere. A meteorite is what survives the plunge and lands on the earth's surface."

 The event was filmed completely by accident by several drivers from little cameras mounted on their dashboards. Apparently, that's a thing in Russia, so that if someone assaults their car, they have proof for corrupt police or people trying to make faulty insurance claims. There's a segment on the Daily Show. You should watch it.

The terrifying thing, for me, at least, is not that this asteroid crashed as it did, but that NASA had no idea. Apparently, they're stepping up asteroid detection, but why haven't they yet? In my humble (cough not really cough) opinion, I feel like defending the Earth should be one of their top priorities.(Although, when you think of the Earth, you should remember that IT. IS. DEFENDED. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry (I'm not.)). Besides, you know, discovering new things out there, in space...

I think that everything in the universe is important. Not just because I watch too much doctor who, but mostly because I knowing what's out there, be it helpful aliens or mortally destructive space rocks, is so, so interesting and important. There could be, and I think there is, an entire universe full of wonderfully diverse life and planets and everything. The universe is infinity.

Your whole life is a lie.

Well. Most of it. Well, some of it. Well, a very, very, small, somewhat unimportant part of it. But nevermind that.

Let's talk about Apatosaureses. Apatosauri? Apatosaurs? Whatever the plural form may be, today I'm going to tell you about the species of dinosaur known as Apatosaurus. Okay.

Apatosaurus was discovered in 1877 by paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh.  In a nutshell, Apatosaurs are a type of plant-eating sauropod, those dinosaurs with the really long necks, from 154 million to 150 million years ago, or during the the Jurassic period. They lived hereish, in the woodlands of North America. They're really, really big, some of the biggest dinosaurs, about 75-85 feet long and 18 tons. It had to keep its head parallel to the ground most of the time because it's neck is too long and heavy and it would be hard to maintain its blood pressure.

I've always felt bad for apatosaurs. They're the saddest dinosaur, in my opinion. Not because they're wimpy or they died out quickly or anything like that, but because there's been so much confusion as to their identity.

Their name, Apatosaur, comes from greek words (like most dinosaur names) "apate/apatelos," which means "deceptive," and "sauro," meaning "lizard." Even from the beginning, apatosaurs (I guess that's what I'm calling them now. Bear with me) were mistaken for a different type of dinosaur-- Mosasaurus, which is an aquatic reptile.

Shortly after Marsh discovered an incomplete set of fossil remains and named them Apatosaurus, he discovered another set of remains, this one more complete, and named it Brontosaurus. Have you heard of them? Good. Now erase them from your mind. You've been lied too. We've all been lied to.

As it turns out, Marsh did not, in fact, discover a new dinosaur. What he discovered were a mostly complete set of apatosaurus bones and one camarasaurus skull. It took until the 1970s to figure this out, which is uncomfortably close to a whole century before the apatosaur was recognized for what it was. They are sad. See?

The reason that this mistake was made is because of something called the Bone Wars (also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush). Much like when everyone was rushing to discover new elements for the periodic table during the mid-late twentieth century (Hi, Ms. O'Donovan!), two of the world's greatest fossil finders, Marsh and another paleontologist named Edward Drinker Cope, were rushing to discover more dinosaurs, first. And also like the periodic table of the elements discovery war, the competitive nature of the scientist often led to rushed decisions, mistaking already found dinosaurs (and/or elements) for new dinosaurs (and/or elements), and, in one case, putting the skull of one dinosaur on the tail instead of on the neck. Yup. That happened to Cope, which sort of makes Marsh's little accident a bit ironic.

So it's sort of understandable why Marsh made the mistake that he did, but not that excusable. Can you imagine if, millions of years in the future, scientist shoved the skull of shark on a human skeleton and called it a completely new sort of being that lived on the earth, terrorixing the humans and keeping them as slaves?

Actually, that would be really cool. But the point still stands.

I feel like we sort of owe apatosaurs an apology, even if they are a species of lizard that has been extinct for millions of years. So, on behalf of the human race, apatosaurs, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

The reason that I know any of this (besides extensive Wikipedia research) is because of a band/group of storytellers called DinoRock. We had an actual tape thing of a bunch of songs about dinosaurs, one of them being about Alan Apatosaurus and his woeful history. I was going to find a video of this and share it with you, since it is vital to understanding this whole debacle (it's not, really), but unfortunately it can be found nowhere. I did find another one about a particular dinosaur named Harry, a parasaurolophus, though, so all is not lost. Here it is, and remember that this is my childhood.

I hope you enjoyed this small rant about dinosaurs. In the words of dinorock, "dinosaurs, dinosaurs forevermore!"

Some sources I looked at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatosaurus

http://www.livescience.com/25093-apatosaurus.html

http://www.wisegeek.com/was-the-brontosaurus-a-real-dinosaur.htm

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurdiscovery/a/bonewars.htm