The State Dinosaur Song!

Thanks to folk musician Terry Kitchen for contributing this wonderful song to the State Dinosaur Initiative!

Here’s the new State Dinosaur song video:

Play the song “Podokey — The Swift Footed Lizard of Holyoke” right here:

Or download the song as an MP3 here: PODOKEY SONG

Song copyright 2021, Terry Kitchen; you may use this song for educational purposes.

Terry Kitchen can be found everywhere online via Google.  More about Terry from Wikipedia.

 

Scientific notes about the song: 

Note:  Songs are meant for enjoyment, so sometimes artists take a little artistic license during their creative process.  As Terry himself said, “It’s hard to be exact, when you’ve got to rhyme!”  Hey, if it gets people talking about Podokesaurus — we totally encourage that!  But, for the sake of scientific accuracy, we want to make sure we clarify a few things about the song.  This section is especially important for educators/mentors/parents who want to teach students about scientific accuracy in paleontology to avoid spreading misinformation.

Here are some minor pieces of misinformation we found in the lyrics:

• Although many reptiles came from a long way away to see the show of the dino foot race, dinosaurs were not actually reptiles.  Dinosaurs are actually much closer relatives of birds (actually birds are classified as living dinosaurs)
• Velociraptors weren’t really contemporaries (at the same time) of Podokesaurus.  They came a lot later in time, more than 100 million years later.  Prosauropods were around, and sauropods were just evolving, but the large sauropods we usually think of (like from the movies and museums), came much later in time.
• Podokesaurus probably didn’t have skin like an artichoke (I I mean maybe it could have been a little bit like an artichoke, but maybe not likely).  In fact, it was around this time that dinosaurs evolved feathers (for many reasons), so we believe it’s possible Podokey (which was a very birdlike dinosaur) may have had a body totally or partly covered in feathers like a bird.
• Madam Talbot actually wasn’t digging around with a rock hammer.  She found a portion of the Podokesaurus slab (which you can see below and on our homepage, including a 3D model of it) right out on the surface and people later came back to dig out the rest to bring back to the lab for preparation (preparation is what we call cleaning up the fossil).
• Implying that the Podokesaurus might be a ‘6 foot salamander’ (when Mignon Talbot still wasn’t sure what she found) is equating the Podokesaurus to an amphibian — yet another whole group of animal (closer to frogs, like the DNA used to fill in dinosaur DNA in Jurassic park) that came much earlier than reptiles and birds.  Amphibians came much earlier; in fact, amphibians were the first four-legged animals to come up on land, after a long time of evolution in the sea).
• If Podokesaurus could actually talk, as the lyrics state, he/she would probably speak up about being called a lizard so much.  To call Podokesaurus a lizard over and over again would probably make him/her cry.  As mentioned above, Podokesaurs were not reptiles, but in fact, were far closer to the pigeons and sparrows we see all around us today.  Podokesaurus was alive at a time when a major mass extinction had just occurred, so we’re sure he/she would definitely have an appreciation for taking better care of the earth.
• Podokesaurus didn’t really live in what we think of now as Holyoke — it didn’t even live in the United States; it lived in a whole other place known as Laurentia, part of the original supercontinent Pangea that once existed and broke up into smaller pieces, to make all the continents we know today.  So, Podokesaurus could unfortunately not be President of the United States, because he/she was actually a born in, and was a citizen of, Laurentia!

Fun classroom exercise for teachers/afterschool program instructors: See if you can have students identify any misinformation that they can find in the song themselves, and make a list.  See how it matches up to the above!

Song Lyrics for your own “Podokey Karaokey” (see below for a Karaoke-ready version of the song)

Children’s song celebrating Massachusetts’ new state dinosaur.

PODOKEY (THE SWIFT-FOOTED LIZARD OF HOLYOKE)

South of Northampton in the shadow of Mt Tom
Two hundred million years or so ago
The dinos had a footrace for King of the Swamp
Reptiles came for miles for the show
The sauropods lumbered, the raptors all sprinted
But when the dust settled, guess who was the winner

Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke
Podokey, Podokey
with scales like a great big artichoke
Three toes and the tooth of a carnivore
Massachusetts’ official dinosaur
Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke

In 19 and 10, as summer turned to fall
Madame Talbot was tapping with her hammer
She thought she saw the outline of an eagle’s claw
On the body of a six-foot salamander
She brushed off the bones and said I proclaim this
Podokesaurus holyokensis

Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke
Podokey, Podokey
with skin like a big green artichoke
Three toes and the tooth of a carnivore
Massachusetts’ official dinosaur
Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke

If Podokey could talk, I bet he would say
Take care of the earth ’cause it’s got to last us a whole lotta days

Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke
Podokey, Podokey
with scales like a great big artichoke
Three toes and the tooth of a carnivore
Massachusetts’ official dinosaur
Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke
Podokey, Podokey
The swift-footed lizard
Jurassic critter
The swift-footed lizard of Holyoke

Here’s the Podoke-Karaoke-ready version of the song (instrumental with melody), so you can record your own version of our state dino song:

And here’s the Podoke-Karoake version as an mp3: PODOKEY KARAOKE EDIT 3 20 21

And for those of you who don’t even need the melody, here’s the instrumental only version:

and here it is as a downloadable mp3: PODOKEY no vocal 3 20 21