Dinosaurus and their Biscuits

March 29, 2007 11:49 AM

Here is a nice site about dinosaurs and biscuits.Don't miss their answer to the age-old Jaffa cake controversy!
posted by thirteenkiller (26 comments total)

I tried Jaffa cakes once. Yech.
posted by serazin at 11:57 AM on March 29, 2007

Those aren't biscuits, they're cookies! It has been well-established that dinosaurs had an affinity for cookies. This is not really news.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:05 PM on March 29, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

As an American, I find the biscuit/cookie difference troubling. I often wonder if it's symmetrical -- does a "cookie" in Britain refer to, say, a sprocket wrench?

We should settle our differences. Henceforth all these things are "bookies". That shouldn't confuse anyone.
posted by gurple at 12:09 PM on March 29, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

thirteenkiller, I love this site! And now I think I know why monkey punch dinosaur - not enough biscuits to go around, probably.

Now I really want some of those dino cookies.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:09 PM on March 29, 2007

Interesting, although I wish the site touched even briefly upon the relationship between zombies and carrot cake, not to mention the controversial recent findings regarding Vikings and chocolate éclairs.
posted by brundlefly at 12:14 PM on March 29, 2007

I find their classification unconvincing. True, Jammie Dodgers and Fig Rolls are not as firm as most other biscuits, but they are clearly not composed of sponge, like the Jaffa Cake. I expect that compositional analysis would show that Jammie Dodgers are in fact far more closely related to Custard Creams. The Pseudobiscuit classification seems a specious grouping that could only be arrived at through a flawed methodology. Jaffa Cakes would be more accurately classified as a Microcake, along with Mini Swiss Rolls and Tunnocks Tea Cakes.

They're right about the dinosaurs though. They loved their biscuits.
posted by tomsk at 12:15 PM on March 29, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

I think it was the (now discredited) Robert Bakker who first suggested that the larger carnivores may have enjoyed Tim-Tams.
posted by everichon at 12:27 PM on March 29, 2007

The site it's hosted on is worth an FPP as well.

Bakker's discredited?
posted by brundlefly at 3:11 PM on March 29, 2007

The final link includes this, which is an outstanding anecdote/rant.

Yes the VAT man wanted it to be a biscuit. That way it would fall by virtue of its chocolate coat into a category of products liable to VAT at the standard rate, i.e. luxury biscuits. As a cake however it is zero rated for VAT, no matter how luxuriant, much to the VAT man’s continuing annoyance. In fact Wifey and I once had a chat with ex Tory Minister John Knott who brought in VAT when the Conservative Government of the time took Britain into the Common Market. He recalled that the whole VAT introduction went surprisingly well expect for the Jaffa cake which caused all sorts of problems. In 1991 the matter went to a tribunal (number 6344 in case you were wondering) in which the VAT man argued that the Jaffa wasn’t a cake and so should not be exempt from VAT (VATA 1983 Sch 5 Group 1 excepted item 2), trotting out all the old arguments. McVities countered with all of the other old arguments plus a specially prepared 12 inch Jaffa Cake, which focused the tribunal’s attention on the sponge base. The tribunal concluded that, while the product also had characteristics of biscuits or confectionery which was not cake, it had sufficient characteristics of cakes to be a cake for the purposes of zero-rating. (The tribunal also determined that the product was not a biscuit.)
posted by imperium at 3:30 PM on March 29, 2007

It is also now known that dinosaurs did not eat biscuits randomly, a custard cream here or a hob-nob there. They were picky; if a dinosaur didn't have its preferred teatime snack it would undoubtedly go ape.

This is nonsense. Apes hadn't even been invented back then.
posted by scalefree at 3:46 PM on March 29, 2007

I never knew dinosaurs had such big penises. I mean, biscuits! No, I mean penises.
posted by phaedon at 3:53 PM on March 29, 2007

Well, they're proportional I suppose.
posted by brundlefly at 3:54 PM on March 29, 2007

Proportional to what? Four-story buildings?
posted by phaedon at 3:56 PM on March 29, 2007

A post about cake and nobody e-mailed me?
Yeesh.
It is cake.
I repeat:
IT IS CAKE.
That is all.


Your Vice President of Cake.
posted by Dizzy at 3:57 PM on March 29, 2007

It's already been established I know, but Jaffa cakes are not cookies or biscuits. They are small cakes. And I think Dinosaurs invented small cakes.
posted by Arthur at 4:25 PM on March 29, 2007

To a Kiwi, JAFA means "Just Another F**king Aucklander".
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:02 PM on March 29, 2007

Awesome.
posted by Kudos at 5:04 PM on March 29, 2007

Bakker was thoroughly discredited on the Tim-Tam issue; recent developments in cookie dating have revealed T-Rex's biscuit of choice to be hazelnut Quadratini. He has since made some reckless claims about lady fingers, but I've had to just look away.
posted by everichon at 5:25 PM on March 29, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

How bizarre. Is he implying he's found lady fingers below the KT boundary? Right. And cavemen used sauropods as construction equipment.
posted by brundlefly at 5:55 PM on March 29, 2007

I understand that in England, Cookie is the person who bakes the biscuits.
posted by longsleeves at 6:14 PM on March 29, 2007

It actually showed up in Carnets de Geologie, and he had all this pretty hyperspectral data pointing to (Bakker maintained) pervasive Cretaceous tiramisu turnover in the eastern Alps. And I'm like, whatever, dude.
posted by everichon at 6:21 PM on March 29, 2007

Oh man, I could really go for a jaffa BAR right now.
posted by fillsthepews at 6:31 PM on March 29, 2007

Love it!
posted by amyms at 6:40 PM on March 29, 2007

An extra datapoint to the ongoing Jaffa debate:
In Finnish they are called Jaffa biscuits. And taste superior because of the better chocolate we have. Suck it, haters.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:58 AM on March 30, 2007

There are two types of cookie in England. The monster variety, which is imported, and the chocolate chip variety, also imported. I fear jammy dodgers are unable to stem the tide of invasion.
posted by vbfg at 3:09 AM on March 30, 2007

Loved his charming cladogram page.
posted by nickyskye at 7:20 AM on March 31, 2007