What did the dinosaurs do to deserve this? The offence brigade have decided that dinosaur names are often racist and not sufficiently inclusive. Despite being dead for 65 million years, it seems that the poor dinosaurs have been “emanating racism and sexism” across the aeons.

The chief offence archeologist is a palaeobiologist named Emma Dunne, who must be running short of new fossils. She analysed the names of 1500 dinosaur fossils from the Mesozoic Era and complained that many dinosaur names derive from the colonial names for those lands where the species was discovered, rather than the Indigenous-language names. They should therefore be renamed in the light of this imperialist theft.

What will this achieve? Nothing, except to confuse people already acquainted with the original names. And the proportion of dinosaurs with “offensive” or “problematic” names is very small in any case. Just another example of the contemporary disease of looking for offence where none exists.

But the furore surrounding these racist dinosaurs refuses to go away. It’s even dragged in the blockbuster movie, Jurassic World. If you can take your eyes away from Bryce Dallas’s magnificent ass in that movie, you will note the presence of a dinosaur called “pachycephalosaurus”, a recognised Late Cretaceous species. The name means “thick-headed lizard”, from the Greek pachys-“thickness”. But that’s not stopped morons on the internet claiming that the dinosaur is “racist” and “problematic” because it sounds like it’s been named after Pakistanis.

Will it ever end?

Why Evolution is True

Hollywood Reporter

Nominated by: MMCM