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by torben-friis 60 days ago
>Why does “as if the waters had but newly retired” mean there’s a lot of water (and thus mud)? “As much mud as” clued me in, but I don’t get this part.

"Imagine everything here was flooded and then the water leaves. The land would be left super muddy right? That's how much mud there is now".

I'm surprised it's a difficult phrase, I'm not even a native speaker.

The part with the stegosaurus is harder in that it relies on a biblical reference, but there is no way for it to be interpreted by a decent reader as a literal animal, it should at most make you wonder why he's suddenly bringing up that idea ("it would not be wonderful...).
2 comments
tripdout 60 days ago
I guess I could see that, but if all the water left, it could be dry like a desert too.. (although even though that was my initial interpretation, I did understand that's not what he meant)

And yes even without the reference it's not that there's a literal animal there.

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d0liver 60 days ago
> if all the water left, it could be dry like a desert too

This is just a contextual interpretation thing. It's clear that's not what he means because he says it's muddy, so it must be the other thing. Also, it becoming a desert is more extreme, so in that case the writer would probably offer up a more detailed explanation.

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d0liver 60 days ago
It's clear that the article is mostly talking about the reader's ability to interpret figuratively, regardless of the specific reference. However, I'm not even sure it's a biblical reference, because I think dinosaurs are generally incompatible with the story of Noah's Arc. I'm guessing it's probably more along the lines of some theory of continental movement that was prevalent at the time. Maybe it's just a weird mismash of dinosaurs and Noah's Arc, though?
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d0liver 60 days ago
"If you travelled back in time, the coastline itself would be unrecognisable to modern eyes. In the Jurassic Period, most of what later became Britain was under the sea, apart from Scotland, East Anglia and a series of small islands in the southwest."

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/life-in-jurassic-oceans.html

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