I know. I was shocked too. You can read more about it at the above website, and even from more biased sources. There's one small problem. I don't believe it.

"But Matthew J!" I hear you say. "It's on the Internet! It must be true!" I agree there is a magic filter that prevents falsehoods from being published on the World Wide Web, but there's the truth, and The Truth!

The Truth! is that I recently purchased a book for my kid brother featuring such classic dinosaurs as Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and of course, Diplodocus. "What," I hear you ask, "in the name of inevitable betrayal,, is a Diplodocus?" It turns out that it is a big long-necked dinosaur in the vein of the Brontosaurus (some would call it a cheap knock-off).

The problem is that another book I looked at called the same style of dinosaur an Apatosaurus, while another called in a Brachiosaurus. I'm not a paleontologist. I don't need to know a thousand different species of dinosaurs. I need a small handful that are easily recognizable by the majority of the population. Children of today still have many such dinosaurs, but without Brontosaurs, there no single dino fills the role of the giant thunder lizard.

Fred Flintstone did not eat Diplodocus steaks. Sludge did not transform into an Apatosaurus. Brachiosaurus was never on a postage stamp.

Brontosaurus is part of our culture, and we need to keep in alive.