This post deliberately contains false information mixed with facts as a critical thinking exercise.
An odd relative of the monstrous T-Rex dinosaur not shown in the Jurassic Park- Jurassic World movies lived 66 million years ago. Recall the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, which translates to “theropod king,” weighed 18,000 pounds (equivalent to about 90 men). Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, the forelimbs of Tyrannosaurus were short but unusually powerful for their size, and they had two clawed digits. T-Rex had massive teeth, up to 12-inches long for one tooth, with massive power could eat 500 pounds of meat, about the size of a calf, with one bite! T-Rex became the apex predator and enjoyed a wide spread of savannah swamplands in western North America.
Fossils found along the southern United States and border with Mexico are pinkish-white with much thinner bone structure was named T-Mex. Paleontologists have discovered the fossil distribution among species at sites like Big Bend National Park in Texas along the Rio Grande. Here’s a great article by the National Park Service on the “ghost of the past.”
Mutation and inbreeding combined with cosmic-solar radiation that resulted in Frankenstein-type genetics. T-Mex lived like a scavenger for what T-Rex left behind, similar to today how turkey vultures eat road kill. Scientists also think that perhaps T-Mex didn’t like the darker gray color of T-Rex which often happens among groups of different skin colors. Not only did T-Mex eat the remains of the T-Rex king’s feast, fossil evidence shows he targeted minority species like sitting ducks. T-Mex only shows up in the fossil record a very short time period appearing just before the Chicxulub impact, which is widely believed to have caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, leading to the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. The impact created the Chicxulub crater, which is buried beneath the Yucatan Peninsula in the former Gulf of Mexico and now known by the current U.S. President as the Gulf of America.
We thought we knew how the story ended for Tyrannosaurus when a large asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago and what survived, evolved and thrived. Here’s an article from the American Museum of Natural History:
“To explain what caused this mass extinction, scientists have focused on events that would have altered our planet's climate in dramatic, powerful ways. The leading theory is that a huge asteroid or comet slammed into Earth 65 million years ago, blocking sunlight, changing the climate and setting off global wildfires. In recent years, however, researchers have also been investigating whether other forces, including massive volcanic eruptions and changes in sea level, may have contributed to the general environmental decline.”
Amazing that anything living could have survived years of cataclysmic change but somehow flying dinosaurs survived to become birds and small mammals could live underground according to AMNH.
Recently, a very surprising finding when building the Wall between the U.S. and Mexico border, illegals are building tunnels beneath the wall and finding new T-Mex fossils! Even more surprising, while the mighty T-Rex became just a thin layer of asteroid-derived iridium dust in a burnt layer of rock, the fossils of T-Mex are intact just beneath the extinction boundary. This means that T-Mex died in other ways. It appears that many smaller species, such as red fire ants and killer bees, preserved in amber, combined their efforts to destroy T-Mex. What would have caused such an uprising? Perhaps the power of the masses cooperating together are more powerful than even the greatest monster that nature can conceive.
Reader Beware: The purpose of this story is to inform, entertain, and deceive the reader. The text above contains both factual scientific information and alternative facts, deception, fabrication, falsehood, lies, untruths, etc. Were you able to separate fact from fiction? Being aware of an author’s viewpoint with critical thinking, we can ask ourselves questions and check facts. In this story, I tried to offer some clues to the deception:
Paleontologists study fossil bones usually as casts and have not discovered preserved skin of dinosaurs so would have no way of knowing skin tones and preferences. The articles by NPS and AMNH discuss T-Rex but not T-Mex. The targeting of minority species like sitting ducks was meant to be humorous. To my knowledge, no dinosaur fossils have been found by digging tunnels and I distain using the word “illegals” to represent all immigrants as there is a legal asylum and naturalization process in the U.S. Furthermore, amber can fossilize insects but would not have been preserved beneath the burnt asteroid impact layer.
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong.
Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.
The APA states spread of misinformation and disinformation has affected our ability to improve public health, address climate change, maintain a stable democracy, and more. By providing valuable insight into how and why we are likely to believe misinformation and disinformation, psychological science can inform how we protect ourselves against its ill effects.
Sorry if I’ve caused any heartburn and please leave me a comment for my duplicity at being two-faced by combining facts and fiction.