DINOSAURS

The story of the dinosaurs is a romantic but tragic tale. Whether the dinosaurs were destroyed by the climatic conditions resulting from the crash of an asteroid onto Earth's surface or by the excessive emission of methane gas or some other ponderable will be debated for eons. Most of the publicity garnered by these creatures has centered around the glamorous members of the species, such as Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.

It is unfortunate that what was probably the most intelligent of the dinosaurs has been almost totally overlooked. This was the Thesaurus. Perhaps one of the reasons it has not been more noted is that, unlike the other members of the dinosaur family, the Thesaurus did not have a single distinctive appearance. Some Thesaurii resembled, but were not quite identical to, the Brontosaurii. Other Theaurii resembled, but were not quite identical to, the Tyranosaurii. Every branch of the dinosaur family has its Thesauric counterpart.

The Thesaurii also were insistent on differing slightly from the habits and lifestyles of the other dinosaurs. If one dinosaur family ate mice, its Thesauric counterpart would eat rats. If another ate frogs, the Thesaurii ate toads. Many dinosaurialontologists feel that the failure of the Thesaurus to clearly define its own unique niche may have caused it to die out somewhat earlier than the other dinosaurs and also explains its lack of attractiveness for those who write about zoologicalisticism.

But in fact the Thesaurus lives on today in a much more meaningful sense than all the other dinosaurs, since it has given its name to a major reference work used by all scholars. This reference work identifies words which mean almost, but not quite exactly, the same thing as other words - an appropriate legacy for the creature which was closely related to the chameleon.