Triceratops and Brontosaurus are Alive and Well on Pluto

My childhood took a double barrel blast to the heart this week when scientists announced that one of my very favorite dinosaurs, Triceratops, may have never actually existed, at least, in the way that I thought it did. Researchers at the Museum of the Rockies have suggested that the three-horned helmet-headed dino may actually be an immature version of Torosaurus, a similar creature with a neck “frill” rather than the armored shield Triceratops was supposed to have had. Then, just to add salt my wounds, the same article stated that my beloved Brontosaurus never actually existed at all, that it too was the result of early mistakes in the science of paleontology. Apparently, this second fact has been known since 1975. Sadly, I had to learn on the same day I was burying Triceratops.

Like most little boys, I was absolutely nuts about dinosaurs. I memorized stats, names, descriptions. Drew pictures of them. Played with cheap plastic and rubber replicas of them. Even took them into the bath with me. Dinosaurs were my thing…at least until I got into sharks…and some of my fondest memories involve setting up elaborate scenes of prehistoric terror using the dinosaur playset my grandmother got me one Christmas from the Sears Wishbook. Sure, I had cavemen throwing boulders at dinosaurs, and more often than not, my incredibly lethargic house cat would wake to find that he had become involuntarily embedded in a prehistoric mise-en-scène, but hey, those were good times: a childhood chronological free-for-all of saurian mayhem. And now, thanks to the progress of science, at least one of my childhood pals has died again. Extinction wasn’t enough the first time around, eh science?

I first felt this pseudo-scientific sentimentality in 2006 when astronomers declared that Pluto was not a planet. It hurt, especially when I realized that I could never say “My Very Energetic Mother Just Sold Us Nine Peppers” with any degree of conviction again, but I got over it. Much like that wrestling fan of internet meta-fame said, “It’s still real to me, dammit!” Now, I find these same wounds opened again, all in the name of scientific progress.

Really, though, I’m okay with this. Sentimentality has no place in science, and I’d rather lose every imaginary dinosaur and planetoid I ever held near than to live in a world where people’s feelings were more important than scientific advancement and the truth. Actually, you know, maybe it’s not too bad. It’s not like I ever saw a Triceratops or went to Pluto. They all existed in my imagination in the first place, at least to some degree. Now I can lay claim to them completely.

On my Pluto, Brontosaurus and Triceratops live forever, roaming the verdant purple fields of Pluto. They’re happy there, tended as they are by the other great figures of my own childhood mythology: Stormtroopers saddle Triceratops like the Dewbacks on Tattooine. E.T. and ALF meet for drinks on the deck of the Poseidon, safely floating upside down in low-gravity. Even that old house cat of mine is wandering the Plutonian landscape, chasing mice made of pure catnip. And me? One day, I’ll join them all.