Man on left: "Jeeze, that's a big drumstick."Man on right: "Yum."
We now travel to Beijing, China where we will dive into the language of paleontology.
From Wikipedia:
Paleontology, palaeontology or palæontology (from Greek: paleo, "ancient"; ontos, "being"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils.In China, however, paleontology means "lunch".
This, according to Yahoo news, villagers in central China dug up a ton of dinosaur bones and ground them up for soup and traditional medicine. Up until last year, the bones were being sold as "Dragon Bones" in Henan province for about 50 cents per kilo.
Now, I'm not one to argue with local customs and indigenous cultural practices, but please. That's just ridiculous. Dragon bones? Apart from the irreplaceable scientific data that have been lost, it's just plain silly. Dragon bones?
We all know that Dragons with femurs that size are endemic to Europe. In contrast, Chinese Dragons have short legs and serpentine bodies, perfectly adapted to forest and riparian habitats. But seriously, if you are interested in the fun and amazing "science" of Dragonology, please check out this wonderful website. We could all use a bit of magic in our lives, eh?
A European Dragon, (Draco occ. magnus)Back to reality. Dragon bones? I just don't get the practice of eating fossils.
Can you help me translate?
