NOVEMBER 21 ― The country's archeological team recently discovered the fossil of Iguanodon dinosaur in northern Terengganu. The dinosaur existed from the late Jurassic Period to Cretaceous Period, or about 160 million to 66 million years from now.

So, these creatures were the prehistoric ancestors that dwelled on this land.

I was reminded of the 10-meter long Iguanodons in the movie Jurassic Park, with short front legs and long hind legs, its long, flattened skull at the end of the elongated neck, simply grotesque looking and terrifying.

Member of the archeological team Prof Dr Mohd Shafee Leman said the discovery showed dinosaurs indeed lived on the soil of Malaysia and more dinosaur fossils were expected to be unearthed in the future.

Very much so, and I am looking forward to more sightings, wondering what a major archeological breakthrough it would be if the complete dinosaur fossil could be discovered in the country some day. And the country might even become a new dinosaur research hub.

Talking about dinosaurology, people would tend to think it is a dead science as dinosaurs last roamed the planet tens of millions of years ago and the researches would not produce any substantial value for human civilization.

Not true. dinosaurology is not about this particular group of prehistoric creatures but also entails our environment, climate, astronomy, biology and a melange of other sciences.

The question on why dinosaurs have gone extinct alone offers a glimpse into climatic change, evolution of species, meteoric clashes, movements of earth crust and a host of other theories.

But before we have discovered more dinosaur fossils, we do have problems with the walking fossils in our midst.

These living dinosaurs are very much in existence in our human society, and their physical features are exactly the same as us although there is a world of differences between how we think and perceive things.

For instance, Kelantan's PAS deputy mentri besar said Malaysia would need to refer to the guillotine used during the French Revolution more than two centuries ago in order to come up with our own guillotine-like contraption to implement the hudud law.

Sure enough Mohd Amar Abdullah has denied making the proposal after his speech was quoted by the media. However, he has described in great details how the entire process of lopping off a criminal's hands should be carried out, giving us little reason for thinking that he has indeed been misquoted.

Moreover, he reiterated that this would be handed over to the technical committee for consideration.

It looks like the Kelantan hudud law technical committee is prepared to fly to Paris to study the guillotine on display at the museum. It is said that the drawings of guillotine's inventor Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin were still kept complete at the library, and I think this is another thing the committee must not miss.

But to the Frenchmen, retaining the guillotine is meant to warn the world not to repeat the human world's violent and bloody past, not to offer a glue to how the contraption should be duplicated by modern human beings.

Perhaps the living fossils of Kelantan have little idea that our planet Earth has evolved its way into the 21st century, their brains still very much frozen in time to the Arab world of several thousand years ago. To them, the 200-year-old guillotine was such a sophisticated equipment that fascinated them tremendously.

For Kelantan dinosaurology, perhaps the experts could look into the issue from the environmental, political and religious perspectives as for why such a species has ever existed.

As for why the dinosaurs which roamed our planet millions of years ago went into extinction, the conclusion couldn't have been more straightforward: They could not adapt themselves to the changing environment.

Of course, we should take cue from why dinosaurs became extinct in order not to be wiped out like the dinos in future. ― Sin Chew Daily

* This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.