Re: CNN: Giant Dinosaur-Age Bones in Antarctica Clue to WarmerClimaten

[Keith90291@aol.com]

<< > Popular image of dinosaurs: big reptiles from Mesozoic. Period.
  
  Don't forget _Dimetrodon_ -- neither Mesozoic nor reptilian nor terribly
  big, yet ask the average person on the street...  >>
 
 Guess we should make it "big prehistoric reptiles." Period. >>

Oh, you'll have to go considerably further than that.  I think in general 
usage, dinosaur is a cognomen for "extinct animal".  Today, a co-worker 
called my attention to a newspaper item announcing the perennial resumption 
of work at the La Brea Pit #91 -- where "they're excavating dinosaurs."  This 
co-worker, otherwise a pretty literate fellow, knows very well the animals 
found there are mammalian.  In a sense, his offense is no greater than that 
of a writer who slaps the label of dinosaur on an aged titan of industry.  
The co-worker showed slightly more grace at being set straight on the term 
dinosaur than I would have, had I been taken to task by a Classics professor 
over the fact that the industrialist in my example could not have been the 
offspring of Uranus and Gaea.  In short, words have a life of their own 
beyond the pikes and maces of the purists.    

Of course, what is offensive about the CNN story is that the writer was no 
better than the hoi polloi in his/her discerning use of language.  That's not 
even remotely surprising if you've seen the local & cable news beast up close 
(and I have for 15 years).  At this point, I am threatening to launch into a 
broken-record routine that's of no value this list, so I sign off:  blah, 
blah, blah.

I worked in television news for nigh on to 15 years.  I a