I’ve got something that qualifies as nerdy water cooler talk for you. Try this one out:
What do you get when you mix Ancient Chile, Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer, and the Empire Strikes back together?
Glyptodonts.
That’s what I said, alright. What does it have to do with service? Not a heck of a lot, unless you lived in prehistoric Chile.
Now, I’ve talked about Chile before and how I’d love to swim there. I’ve also talked about The Empire Strikes back (in a customer service context) - remember those crazy AT-ATs? (thanks to kottke.org, I now know where Lucas got it from).
So…if you put 1 and 1 together, you’ll get some crazy number that doesn’t look anything like 2 in this case. Nevertheless, I thought these little guys (whose remains were recently found in Chile) were really cool:
Looks like an Armadillo, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too. In true Biology 101 form, these moving tanks were known as Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis (I like Glyptodonts – just think of the Scrabble stardom…mind you, I don’t think I could touch a 603-point game).
I should probably re-phrase that as these ‘little guys’ weren’t all that little considering they could rival the size of a Smart Car.
According to the experts at National Geographic:
The animals—which perished at the end of the Ice Age several thousand years ago—could grow to the size of a small car.
The newfound fossils are from the Miocene epoch (about 5 to 23 million years ago) and offer important insights into the evolution of the strange creatures, paleontologists say.
Like the Monchichis were in the ’80s, Glyptodonts are a little bizarre and interesting both at the same time.
Darren
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