This has been a
conundrum concerning
palaeontologists for
aeons.
It all started once upon a time in a great big friendly forest. The dinosaurs roamed freely, supping on smaller dinosaurs and the native vegetation of the huge landmass named Gondwanaland (Muslim for “thumping great mass of land with nasty dinosaurs with big sharp pointy teeth on it”).
In the summer of 165,000,000BC, a plesiosaur was wandering along on a nice summers day, the wind whistling through the trees, the sun filtering through the leaves, a large piece of goanadon sticking out of his teeth, when he happened upon a small woolly sheeposaur.
Very little is known to this day about the daily habits of the sheeposaur, but it is thought that they were one of the first known mammalian/reptilian crossbreeds – a distant cousin’s, uncles, great, great step mother-in-law, adopted at birth, divorced twice, and removed entirely from the will of great aunt Shirley before her untimely death for reasons too saucy to mention, of today’s sheep.
The sheeposaur appeared to be stuck in the middle of a huge peat bog at the top of a carefully shaped branch. Upon reconstruction of the events, revealed by archaeologist Oswald Jeremiah Bubonic Plague (who later went on to discover he had been born 13 years too early to name anything of significance after himself, and was the laughing stock of his peers Geoffrey Pneumonia, Alfred Syphilis and Harold Big Pustules Of Pus And Mucus Growing On Your Anus) that the following had occurred:
The sheeposaur had been trundling along the banks of a prehistoric river when a fishosaur (thought to be either a troutosaur or a herringosaurus) started taunting and hassling him about his afro hair style and lack of gills. The sheeposaur, suffering from low self-esteem, paranoia and a nasty case of daggs retorted with some witty comeback (unknown at this time because that was 165 million years ago, and there was no record of it kept).
The fishosaur, incensed and enraged at this cutting, hurtful, but somewhat funny comeback from the sheeposaur challenged the sheeposaur to appear in the forthcoming Gondwanaland Olympics 165M BC (these ones they could sell the tickets to).
A couple of months later the fishosaur and sheeposaur met up again to catch up on how the other’s training was going. The fishosaur said that his backstroke, freestyle and synchronised swimming events were going well. The sheeposaur, which was entered into the decathlon, stated that he was OK with the long-jump, shot-put and 2000m, but was struggling a bit with the polevault. The fish, having never heard of the polevault (this is 165M years ago remember, the discus consisted of a flattened and dried plesiosaur dropping for goodness sake) wanted the sheeposaur to demonstrate.
Looking for a nice soft landing, because he still wasn’t very good, the sheeposaur decided upon a nice peaty bog. With a huge run-up the sheeposaur heaved himself up on his polevault, which promptly sank into the bog, and he was stuck. 35 years went by and the fishosaur, having returned some time ago with a gold medal for the 100m freestyle, soon grew bored of laughing at the dumb-ass sheeposaur, and moved out into the country (there were more than 3 fishosaur per mile in his river, so it was a little too crowded for him). The sheeposaur soon turned to stone, as appears happened to most creatures of that time, otherwise how could the bearded, long-haired hippie archaeologists dig them up? And it is from that day forward that the saying came.
True fact!