Michael Swaim
Why You Could Take It: Better known as âcompys,â these are the little guys from Jurassic Park II that are basically the only dinosaurs in the movie the humans donât consider a threat at all. In fact, in the video game version, you ate them for health. Thatâs how pathetic they are; they were relegated to the status of a power-up. To further their humiliation, Compsognathus were even the stars of their own childrensâ book, Pernix and Viva, which taught kids that itâs okay to be small as long as you have love (and donât get devoured alive by bigger kids). Killing a mess of compys wonât do tons for your reputation, but at least the other dinosaurs will know youâre willing to crush those weaker than yourself.
Together, theyâre considered part of the evolutionary bridge between dinosaurs and birds. The downside of being an evolutionary bridge is that, while youâre good at getting creationists to shut the hell up, youâre not so good at any of the things your various component parts are good at.
Itâs not like these are airborne stegasauri. No, these guys are basically dinosaurs with feathers instead of protective scales, who canât fight and donât really fly very well either. Itâs thought that they probably just glided, and if they did fly, they did so clumsily. So in the end, youâre left with a dinosaur the size of a pigeon warbling drunkenly through the air a few feet off the ground.
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Instead of flying, they climbed, probably to hide the fact that they look like boiled monkeys who are perpetually flipping you off as emphatically as possible. One of their finger-like claws was a third the length of their entire body, although in fact itâs not their middle fingers which were elongated, but their pinkies, meaning that they were also the fanciest dinosaurs of all time.
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Although an herbivore, the Nigersaurus had 50 rows of teeth that got replaced at a rate of one a month per row. Luckily for you, those teeth were all oriented around a flapping, rubbery hole through which the animal sucked up its food, earning it the nickname âthe vacuum of the dinosaur kingdom.â Not jet engine. Not Sarlacc pit. Vacuum.
Itâs all part of the game; ask Turok. In fact, Therizinosaurs grew up to 30 feet in length. Plus, they had giant claws and their name means âscythe lizard,â which conjures the image of a cloaked Grim Reaper with foot-long teeth and a reptilian tail.
Yet none of that changes the fact that these were basically giant turkeys. Or zebra-turkeys, depending on what tactic the illustrator used to try and make them look less awkward.
While superficially resembling their more deadly cousins, Carneys are much smaller (only nine feet tall) have Gandalf-caliber eyebrows that they try to pass off as bull horns and were stuck with arms somehow even more retarded than Rexâs.
Not only are they smaller in comparison to their body (seriously, weâre talking Q-Tips here), but the hands are facing the wrong way, palms out, as if pathetically awaiting a high five that will never come, eternally left hanging by its less laughable counterparts.
Special thanks to my friend Brian for his extensive field-testing during the research phase of this article. He will be missed, as will several neighborhood dogs and the massive fistful of PCP he ate.
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