The scientific truth about Ventastega
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
You probably saw where scientists have unearthed the skull of the most primitive four-legged creature of all time, with the possible exception of my cat. The picture with the story showed the creature, Ventastega curonica, to be a happy fellow. It shows
him as being green and red, and if you put a little top hat on him, he would look like he was ready to go out on the town, laughing all the way.
The scientists have even made up a story about him. They say he had four stubby little legs, crawled over sandbars, and ate fish.
That seems like a busy life, and it must have been fun. Otherwise, why would he have been smiling? He was not found wearing clothes, but he might have put some on if he had known he was going to be dug up in just 365 million years.
Would he have worn a little tuxedo to go with his little top hat?
Surely, he would have wanted to be known for something other than just scouring sand bars for fish. If he had been found with clothes, or with a small sword, or even a little rusty pistol, the story about him in the journal Nature would have been even more interesting.
He was found in Latvia, which is across the Baltic Sea from Sweden. Latvia, where they pray daily for global warming, has had a troubled history, having been founded thousands of years ago by the Loopys, a band of traveling comedians who had been driven from every other country. They called their new country Loopia, but were soon conquered by the Latvies, a people suffering from chronic depression, and for whom comedy was no Latvian matter. It was they who caused the extinction of the Ventastegas, just to wipe the smiles off their happy little faces.
That part, of course, was not in the journal Nature, but I don’t understand why.
