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From the Beeb's report [1] "I rang up the county council and I said I think I've found a dinosaur," explained Joe Davis, who works at Rutland Water Nature Rese
by mellosouls 5y ago
From the Beeb's report [1]
"I rang up the county council and I said I think I've found a dinosaur," explained Joe Davis, who works at Rutland Water Nature Reserve.
:
The council said to Mr Davis: "We don't have a dinosaur department at Rutland County Council so we're going to have to get someone to call you back."
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59915689 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59915689
- tomalpha 5y agoI love this quote, but to be fair it's immediately followed by: A team of palaeontologists were brought in for a closer look. Which, assuming it was done by Rutland County Council, is actually pretty cool. (Edit: where "it" is the act of bringing the team in from Manchester Uni)
- reaperducer 5y agoSometimes small towns get excited about things like this and do a much better job than you might think for a municipality of their size. If you're ever tragically lost and end up in Shoshone, California (population 31), the tiny one-room town museum is an absolute treasure if you're into dinosaurs. It's been a few years since I was last there, but IIRC, the tiny town museum had to go to court to get its largest dinosaur find back from some big California university that tried to keep it. See also: The Franklin Mineral Museum in Franklin, New Jersey. An amazing place for rockhounds. Especially if you're into ones that glow.
- NotVerstappen 5y agoThese austerity measures have just gone too far!
- hutzlibu 5y agoI like that dry and sometimes dark humor part of the british culture very much.
- JdeBP 5y agoBecause, despite the long discussion thread here, the relative size ranking of Rutland County Council doesn't matter here. The wry observation would have happened in other counties too. Pretty much no English county council has a dinosaur department, or a palaeontology department come to that. Calling in the boffins from a university/museum, that does, would be the response pretty much everywhere.
- iso1210 5y agoYes, Rutland is the smallest county, I expect they'd have to ask for help from the Leicestershire or Cambridgeshire dinosaur departments
- JetSetWilly 5y agoExtremely boring fact check: Rutland is not "the UK's smallest county" - it is England's smallest county, once again English organisations find it hard to tell the difference between England and the UK. Clackmannanshire (159 km2) is significantly smaller than Rutland (382 km2).
- iso1210 5y ago> Rutland is not "the UK's smallest county" Who are you quoting?
- dragonwriter 5y agoThe headline, both on HN and the source article.
- OJFord 5y agoI did pause, tempted to change the headline, but decided to leave it for mods if desired. Not because I was fact-checking though - I just think it's irrelevant and uninteresting!
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 5y agoRutland is not even England's smallest county [1], it's the fourth according to definitions laid out in the Lieutenancies Act of 1997 [2]. I guess the copy editor kiboshed "Britain’s largest ‘Sea Dragon’ discovered in England’s fourth smallest county". 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_counties_of_England#Lieutenancy_areas_since_1997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_counties_of_England... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenancies_Act_1997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenancies_Act_1997