Thread by @LiataisLibrary

@FarrenDustfur This turned into more of a cautionary take or humorous anecdote than a myth, but I hope you enjoy all the same. x3

@FarrenDustfur "Dinosaurs. Pfah." The old necromancer shook her head at the wide-eyed novices who had asked the question. "If I had a nickel for every time someone's asked. You all see Night at the Museum or Jurassic Park and you wanna be the next John Hammond."

@FarrenDustfur "Listen, I'm gonna tell you a story my teacher's teacher told her, and then she told me. It's about a necromancer who had those same bright-eyed ideas as you've got floating around your skulls. Let's call him Jeff for convenience's sake."

@FarrenDustfur "This was before those movies, but still when dinosaur fossils were popular enough to have dedicated spaces in museums. Jeff gets this bright idea about these massive skeletons, and assembles a team. He's gonna make the biggest skeletal minion of all."

@FarrenDustfur "Now, Jeff wasn't a COMPLETE moron. He didn't go for T. rex or any theropods like that. He went for a saurupod. Yes, you, your question."

The student lowered his hand. "Why didn't he just reanimate a whale or elephant?"

"See?" She pointed at him. "He's smarter than Jeff was."

@FarrenDustfur "Jeff was pretty personable though, and he got a heist team together to break into this museum that had a sauropod on display. They did. Here's the first wrinkle in Jeff's plan. The bones in a display fossil like that are held together with metal rods through the joints."

@FarrenDustfur "Pop quiz. When you reanimate a skeleton, how does it move? Yes, you."

"Through the... sympathetic memories left behind in the bones? They remember how they used to be held and moved and you use that knowledge to command them," a student ventured meekly.

@FarrenDustfur "And that's why you don't need to move every bone manually to make a skeleton stand, much less walk." The old necromancer turned briskly and paced. "If you didn't have that, you'd have to position every carpal and metacarpal into a stable position individually. Every second."

@FarrenDustfur "But even then, you ain't gonna walk very far with steel rods rammed through your knees. Bones are strong, but SOMETHING'S gotta give in that tug of war and dry bone'll crack before metal bends." She pointed at the air. "Lucky for Jeff he figured that out BEFORE reanimation."

@FarrenDustfur "When he saw the metal rods, he changed tack and had the gang package up the skeleton to bring back to his lab. Carefully, mind. Fossils are fragile. He didn't want to damage it, just bring it back to animation."

@FarrenDustfur "All of you should learn from archaeologists in that regard. Practical folks. Know plenty of ways to keep remains intact." She paused. "Where was I. Jeff. Sauropod fossil. Back in his lab."

"Ma'am?"

"Speak up, I'm deaf in this ear."

"MA'AM!"

"BETTER. WHAT."

@FarrenDustfur "How'd he get it back? Sauropods are HUGE, you can't just load it in a truck."

"Yes you can. In boxes. How do you think they got it to the museum?"

"But... to reanimate it? It'd be a jumbled up mess, in parts."

"Who knows what Rick here is TRYING to ask?"

@FarrenDustfur Another student raised her hand. "I think he means how Jeff was going to get the skeleton back together in proper order before the police showed up."

"Oh that's easy!" another said. "The bones' sympathetic memories! They remember how they used to be held."

@FarrenDustfur "Right," the old necromancer said, clapping once. "That's how you can get proper skeletons out of a mass grave. Damn useful for identifying specific remains. Forensic necromancy, kids, there's a whole field out there waiting for people smarter than Jeff, like you."

@FarrenDustfur "So Jeff performs his ritual. In a big open space so he's got room to move his specimen around.

"The bones don't move. They stay in one big ol' jumbled heap.

"Who knows why?"

@FarrenDustfur "He botched the ritual?"

"Nope. Jeff was an idiot, but a smart idiot. He did his research and calculated everything out, made sure he had enough energy available to reanimate a corpse that size. The animating bonds got made just fine."

A pause for thought.

@FarrenDustfur Silence. So the necromancer provided a hint.

"They got MADE just fine, but making's the easy part. What's the hard part of reanimation?"

Hands shot up now. "Maintaining it!"

"The bonds didn't stick around!"

"Good. Why?"

@FarrenDustfur Silence again.

"Who knows how fossils get made? Come on, ONE of you had to be a dinosaur nerd when you were little."

Eyes shifted around.

"Oh come on, we're all boneheads here. That's how we get into this field half the time. No nerd shaming in MY house."

@FarrenDustfur A big burly fellow raised his hand. "I, uh... forget what it's called, it's been a while. But basically minerals seep in and fill in the spaces left behind by organic matter that's been buried. It makes a cast of where the -- OH."

His eyes lit up and he raised his hand higher.

@FarrenDustfur "Figured it out, eh?" The old necromancer's hollow eyes twinkled. "Save it a bit, let's see if the rest of the class gets it first. It's called permineralization for the record." She wrote it on the board.

@FarrenDustfur "Whaaaaaat? Come on! Finish the sentence!" Half the class turned to Daryl expectantly.

He looked at his teacher, who eventually nodded.

"There's no bone in a fossil at all," he said. "It's a CAST of where bone USED to be, filled in with rock!"

@FarrenDustfur Ah, there it was. That wave of understanding sweeping across the room. The sort of moment any teacher lives to see in their student body. The old necromancer savored it a while.

@FarrenDustfur "Wait, but --" One of the girls asked, raising a hand. "Wouldn't the rock carry the sympathetic memories of the bones?"

"That there, Latonya, is why the bonds FORMED." The old one wrote some things on the board. "And with a bit of tweaking, they might have stuck around."

@FarrenDustfur "There's another reason they didn't last, though. Daryl, any thoughts?"

"Uh."

"Or any other dinosaur geeks. There's a big problem with showing megafauna fossils."

A pause, then two more hands shot up, but they didn't wait to be called on. "Complete fossils are rare!"

@FarrenDustfur "And they get rarer the bigger the critter you're excavating," the old necromancer nodded. "So what do scientists do? They make their best educated guesses. And they make artificial pieces to help hold the rest together."

@FarrenDustfur "Oh gosh." A girl giggled. "He was trying to animate a statue, not a skeleton."

"Theeeeere we go. Takes a whole different set of rules and spellcraft tricks to make THAT work."

@FarrenDustfur "So Jeff got arrested and the sauropod went back into good hands." She tapped her chalk on the board. "Lessons to learn from Jeff's tale. If you're gonna reanimate dinosaurs, pick small ones. The fossils are more likely to be complete. But even then, you're animating rock."

@FarrenDustfur "And another lesson; don't mistake charisma for competence, and do your damn research before you undertake any project."

She underlined the last bit several times.

"Now let's get back to today's ACTUAL lesson. I've got forever, you lot don't. Yet."

@FarrenDustfur (end of story!)