When the American Paleontological Society decided to hold their annual convention in New York last month, they thought they'd have a good time. They thought they'd see bright lights. They thought it'd be a change of pace.

Little did they know it would actually change the way we picture some dinosaurs.

"I remember a bunch of us were walking through Union Square one night," said society president Richard Vasquez, "just looking at all the New Yorkers, and I think Dr. Slakey first noticed it. 'Wow,' he said, 'I've spent the last forty years in mosquito-infested rainforests digging up fossilized dinosaur poop, but the people here actually give me the creeps.'

"At first I laughed, but then it made me think. We were all from smaller cities scattered across the U. S., and had never seen so many screwballs, weirdos, and pinheads all confined to one place. We'd literally never imagined that you could have such a massive cadre of misfits confined to such a tiny tract of land.

"Naturally our minds started working. 'Ten thousand years from now,' Dr. Eingang said, 'if some advanced civilization dug up homo sapiens fossils in New York, the inferences they'd draw from these pinheads and fast-food-eating fatties would lead to a totally warped view of mankind. Now, is it possible that our existing fossil record for dinosaurs has come from such an unrepresentative group? A Cretaceous period New York City, if you will?'

"I sat there stunned. 'You mean -- ' I said.

"'Ja,' he confirmed. 'What if all the bones we've found were from retards?'"

That night the scientists retreated to their offices with much work ahead of them, but finally this morning two preliminary sketches of revised dinosaurs have been released. More updates, they promise, will be coming soon.

T. Rex:


Apatosaurus: