Four Inch Anvil

 

In 1982, Gary Larsen drew a Far Side comic featuring cavemen attending a lecture. The lecturer pointed to a picture of the south end of a north-facing stegosaurus. The caption read, “Now this end is called the thagomizer . . . after the late Thag Simmons.” At the time, there was no specific term for the distinctive arrangement of four spikes at the end of stegosaur tails. In 1993, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science used the term “thagomizer” when describing a fossil at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Since then, the word has been adopted as an informal anatomical term. Admitting dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist at the same time, Gary Larsen has suggested a confessional where cartoonists could seek absolution for drawing them together. The world of science seems to hold no grudges, though. A species of louse has been named in his honor: the Strigiphilus garylarsoni.