The story behind my username

Posted in response to Losmios 's poll here.

I had a great fascination with dinosaurs when I was very little, drawing them, writing stories about them, and running about pretending to be one.  This didn't go over well with the fundamentalist teachers at my school who told me either there never were any such things as dinosaurs, and "fossils" are just fakes put in the ground by God to test our faith; or that dinosaurs were evil monsters that Satan mutated out of nice normal animals and God destroyed by sending the Flood.  But dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are so obviously beautiful and charismatic, and not so strange or vicious compared to many animals still sharing the Earth with us now.  Why wipe out the dinosaurs, but keep sharks and Nile crocodiles?  Why lose Eohippus but keep both dogs and deer?  And what about the duckbill platypus?  Whose bright idea was that one?

I was also told that drawing dinosaurs, dragons and my own fantastic creatures was sinful, because only the creatures God had created were worthy subjects.  Horse okay, unicorn not.  There was also an incident when I corrected a teacher's spelling of Archaeopteryx, much to her annoyance, and earned myself the hatred of the whole class for the crime of being right.  

So, as a creature neither fish nor fowl myself, I chose one of the most famous transitional fossils ever found as my symbol.  The dancing fossil, living contradiction, and spawn of Satan in some folks' opinion.  Archaeopteryx lithographica means "stone-written ancient wing", so I hope to leave my tracks also written for the ages, or at least the curious.

Pteryxx has two X's to distinguish me from all the other wing-folk out there, and is shorter than Archaeopteryx but just as difficult to pronounce.

~ 8 >