In a paper entitled ‘The Final Fart’, Professor Horatio Dymwytte presented his findings to an enraptured audience of equally obscure and fusty professors at Oxford University, where he had been lecturing for the past thirty years to groups of bored, and largely sleeping undergrads. If it hadn’t been for the presence of a London newspaper reporter who was sheltering from the rain, and had wandered in expecting to find the tearoom, this earth-shattering event may have gone entirely unnoticed. Happily for humanity, he had missed a major story that morning and was now searching round for something to keep the editor from chewing his balls off. With a bit of titillating, he reckoned he might be able to turn the Professor’s dry lecture into a newsy item.
Palaeontologists are jumping up and down with excitement and archaeologists are over the moon. Steven Speilberg wants the film rights and is projecting a fourth remake of Jurassic Park and the man in the street doesn’t give a shit. The reason for this? Scientists have just discovered what actually caused the demise of the dinosaurs. Forget all that crap about a meteor hitting the Earth and dust storms blotting out the rays of the sun for four years. This is the real story.
In a paper entitled ‘The Final Fart’, Professor Horatio Dymwytte presented his findings to an enraptured audience of equally obscure and fusty professors at Oxford University, where he had been lecturing for the past thirty years to groups of bored, and largely sleeping undergrads. If it hadn’t been for the presence of a London newspaper reporter who was sheltering from the rain, and had wandered in expecting to find the tearoom, this earth-shattering event may have gone entirely unnoticed. Happily for humanity, he had missed a major story that morning and was now searching round for something to keep the editor from chewing his balls off. With a bit of titillating, he reckoned he might be able to turn the Professor’s dry lecture into a newsy item.
Sitting at the back of the hall, he heard the Professor saying, ‘There are two major discoveries. One was the finding of a series of fossils with heavy burn marks round their bums, and the other was the remains of a hitherto unknown plant, Legumus Giganticus, or giant bean. It had become clear to the said gentleman, in a flash of rare insight, how these great beasts had vanished from the face of the Earth. However, there was also a minor incident at the excavation site that puzzled the good professor, which was the discovery of a skeleton of a brontosaur flattened vertically against a cliff face. But he did not dwell on this.
”The ‘Nogard’ is distinguishable from the other dinosaurs by its’ short stubby wings and absence of a tail,” droned the professor. “It is really a backward dragon, hence its name. Whereas a dragon breathes fire from its nose, the Nogards blew it out of their bums, and not only were they the first flying dinosaur, they also were jet propelled!”
There was a gasp from the audience and the reporter started to take notes. The professor smiled at him, mistaking him for a student.
“Just to the rear of the anal orifice, there appears to be, what I can only assume, are biological fuel tanks. These were filled with methane, a highly inflammable gas commonly found in farts, and caused by the consumption of large quantities of these giant beans. This gas would be used by the Nogards for flight purposes. The only thing I am unsure of is how they ignited it. But the one thing I am sure about, is how these enormous prehistoric beasts came to their end.”
Here the great professor paused for effect, obviously waiting for the equally obvious question. At this point we must digress and take a look at a typical day in the life of a Nogard family. At home in their eerie, perched high on the edge of an active volcano, Farter and Mutter are trying to get their son, Breaking Wind, to finish his breakfast.
Farter: ‘Nice day for a trip round the Protozoic Swamp, what?’
Mutter: ‘That’s only for good boys who eat all their beans.’
B. Wind: ‘I’m sick of beans. Can’t I have a bit of Stegosaur steak instead?’
Farter: ‘No son. Nobody never got nowhere on Stegosaur steak. It’s beans what makes the world go flat. Can’t have you running out of gas halfway there, can we now?’
Mutter: ‘All the best dinosaurs are eating beans now. Just look at our neighbour, Billy Bronta. He eats five tons a day.’
B. Wind: ‘Then why can’t he fly?’
Mutter: ‘Not all God’s little chillun’ got wings. Now eat up. It’s time to go. Just one more sackful and we’re off.’
B. Wind: ‘Aw shucks. I wish I was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’d eat stegosaurs all day.’
(A rumble is heard from the volcano, and a flame appears over the rim.)
Farter: ‘Quick lad. Stick your bum over the edge. As soon as I give the signal, fart. One, two three.
All together now, and ……… AWAY WE GO !’
Crawling up the side of the volcano can be observed a particularly dim Brontosaur. He appears bloated, as well he should be, having dined on an extra ton of beans and stuck an oversized cork up his rectum. Reaching the summit, he sticks his arse over the edge and waits for the next flame to appear. It’s a bit of a time in coming, and all the while, Billy is getting rounder and rounder as the pressure builds up within. He’s about to blow his bottom, when a flame shoots out of the volcano, exactly coinciding with the dislodging of the oversize cork. With fire belching from his bum, Billy Bronta is airborne, and it is only at this point that a certain thought trickles dimly through his walnut-sized brain, which is situated close to the propulsion unit under his tail. There is a sudden realization as he approaches supersonic speed of the advantage of wings.
The Nogards, returning from their swamp trip, notice a large object newly flattened against the side of the adjoining cliff.
But back to the future. Obligingly the reporter asked the question. “I say, Prof, how did they come to an end?’
Beaming, Professor Dymwytte continued. “A giant Bar-B-Que. A zillion well-done steaks and a pot-pourri of boiled bronts. The effect of the bean was to flavour the entire atmosphere with fart. Forty ton beasts belching methane into the air at an incredible rate. Soon it was so polluted that it was almost unbreathable. The ozone layer was affected and there was a super-greenhouse effect, raising the mean average temperature about twenty degrees and causing the first great deserts. But dinosaurs are adaptable. They could have learned to live with that, but what really did them in was when the pong became so great and the gas content of the air rose beyond a critical level. As I said at the beginning of my lecture, somewhere in a foetid pool, a great dinosaur raised its head, and with a satisfied grin on its face, lifted its tail for the last time and gave that great ‘final fart’. Suddenly the atmosphere was now more than ten percent methane, and thus, highly explosive. In a flash, the Dinosaurs went to meet their Maker, and for them, the Universe ended as it had begun, not with a whimper, but a BIG BANG!”
It made headline news one hundred and forty million years later.
