Dinosaur Sighting: Fermented Stegosaurus

Long ago, I was told a simple rule about wine—if you’re not sure what you want, don’t pick up the bottle with the coolest looking animal on the label. That strategy is almost always a mistake. Or, as The Onion once put it, “The quality of a wine is inversely proportional to the viciousness of the animal depicted on the label.” Given my love of dinosaurs, though, I might have to overlook these truisms should anyone ever offer me a glass of Terra Fossil wine.

Sent in by reader Tim Goodwin, these (noticeably empty) bottles of dino wine were spotted at a Manhattan party. I had never heard of the brand before, but according to their website, Terra Fossil wines carry dinosaurs as a tribute to the rumor that fossil bones were once found on the Argentine vineyard where the wine’s grapes are grown. This could be true—many, many dinosaurs have been found in Argentina, including the sauropod Mendozasaurus from the same province as the vineyard.

As is too often the case, though, the dinosaurs on the labels aren’t quite anatomically accurate. The Apatosaurus drags its tail, the Tyrannosaurus takes up a Godzilla-like posture and, worst of all, poor Velociraptor has a bad case of “bunny hands” in which its wrists are broken so that its palms face downward instead of towards each other. The unfortunate dinosaur could not hold a glass of wine even if it wanted to.

Have you seen a dinosaur or other prehistoric creature in an unusual place? Please send your photo to [email protected].

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.