The Rhedosaurus is a fictional dinosaur that debuted in the 1953 monster film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms , directed and co-written by Eugène Lourié . The Rhedosaurus is depicted as a giant, destructive, prehistoric reptile that is immune to most modern artillery in its major on-screen appearance, and would later appear in the 1977 science fiction film Planet of Dinosaurs .
127-563: The prehistoric sea monster that became the Rhedosaurus was initially conceived by the writer Ray Bradbury for his short story " The Fog Horn ", which appeared in the June 23, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . Prior to deciding to adapt Bradbury's creature from the story and the artwork by James R. Bingham, Ray Harryhausen , and Eugène Lourié went through many draft designs for producers Hal E. Chester and Jack Dietz , who desired to make
254-530: A Plesiosaur . The beast also appears in the second and fourth issues of the 2013 comic book series Dinosaurs Attack! by IDW Publishing . In the latter issue it is shown together with several monsters, including: Gertie the Dinosaur , Godzilla , Anguirus , the Paleosaurus from The Giant Behemoth (1959), Gorgo from its 1961 self-titled film , and Reptilicus from its 1961 self-titled film . Poster art of
381-1003: A Swedish immigrant , and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power and telephone lineman of English ancestry. He was given the middle name "Douglas" after actor Douglas Fairbanks . Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family during his early childhood and formative years in Waukegan. An aunt read him short stories when he was a child. This period provided foundations for both the author and his stories. In Bradbury's fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes Green Town, Illinois. The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona , during 1926–1927 and 1932–1933 while their father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan. While in Tucson, Bradbury attended Amphi Junior High School and Roskruge Junior High School. They eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934 when Bradbury
508-636: A slush pile , which led to its publication. "Homecoming" won a place in the O. Henry Award Stories of 1947. Bradbury first published The Fireman , a short story about 25,000 words long, in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1951. Bradbury was asked to extend it by 25,000 words so that it would be published as a novel. Bradbury got the title after the Los Angeles fire chief told him that book paper burns at 451 °F. In UCLA 's Powell Library , in
635-478: A Los Angeles bookstore with British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood gave Bradbury the opportunity to put The Martian Chronicles into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed. Bradbury attributed his lifelong habit of writing every day to two incidents. The first, when he was three years old, was his mother's taking him to see Lon Chaney in the 1923 silent film The Hunchback of Notre Dame . The second occurred in 1932, when
762-563: A Thursday-night conclave at age 16. Bradbury cited Verne and Wells as his primary science-fiction influences. He identified with Verne, saying: "He believes the human being is in a strange situation in a very strange world, and he believes that we can triumph by behaving morally." Bradbury admitted that he stopped reading science-fiction books in his 20s and embraced a broad field of literature that included poets Alexander Pope and John Donne . He had just graduated from high school when he met Robert A. Heinlein , then 31. Bradbury recalled: "He
889-452: A carnival entertainer, one Mr. Electrico, knighted the young man with an electrified sword and intoned: "Live forever!" Bradbury remarked: "I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico ... [he] gave me a future ... I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago." At that age, Bradbury first started to do magic , which
1016-521: A dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleep walking , helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction. Bradbury stated that the novel worked as a critique of the later development of political correctness : How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand up in 1994? R.B.: It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness
1143-537: A few (very) basal forms have been discovered, the most derived Rhaeticosaurus . The subsequent evolution of the plesiosaurs is very contentious. The various cladistic analyses have not resulted in a consensus about the relationships between the main plesiosaurian subgroups. Traditionally, plesiosaurs have been divided into the long-necked Plesiosauroidea and the short-necked Pliosauroidea . However, modern research suggests that some generally long-necked groups might have had short-necked members. To avoid confusion between
1270-404: A film to be associated with an atomic weapon. The monster and its 1953 film, inspired film monsters such as Godzilla and Gamera and set the template for giant monsters and kaiju in films, including: Them! (1954), Godzilla (1954), The Deadly Mantis (1957), 20 Million Miles to Earth , The Giant Claw (both 1957), The Giant Behemoth (1959), Gorgo (1961), and Gamera,
1397-472: A formative event of his youth: I suppose the most important memory is of Mr. Electrico. On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was twelve years old, he came to my hometown with the Dill Brothers ... He was a performer sitting in an electric chair and a stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end. I sat below, in
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#17328978343701524-487: A full and complete life." In high school, Bradbury was active in the poetry and drama clubs. Planning to become an actor, he became serious about writing as his high-school years progressed. He graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he took poetry classes with Snow Longley Housh and short-story writing courses taught by Jeannet Johnson. The teachers recognized his talent and furthered his interest in writing, but he did not attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at
1651-534: A large skeleton of a plesiosaur was found in the continent of Antarctica, the oldest creature on the continent, and the first of its species in Antarctica. Not only has the number of field discoveries increased, but also, since the 1950s, plesiosaurs have been the subject of more extensive theoretical work. The methodology of cladistics has, for the first time, allowed the exact calculation of their evolutionary relationships. Several hypotheses have been published about
1778-534: A larger collaborative work that would tell the family's complete history, but it never materialized, and according to a 2001 interview, they went their separate ways. In October 2001, Bradbury published all the Family stories he had written in one book with a connecting narrative, From the Dust Returned , featuring a wraparound Addams cover of the original "Homecoming" illustration. Another of Bradbury’s close friends
1905-522: A length of up to seventeen metres, had the "pliosauromorph" build with a short neck and a large head; these were apex predators , fast hunters of large prey. The two types are related to the traditional strict division of the Plesiosauria into two suborders, the long-necked Plesiosauroidea and the short-neck Pliosauroidea . Modern research, however, indicates that several "long-necked" groups might have had some short-necked members or vice versa. Therefore,
2032-413: A lighthouse or building. The head, which is relatively small in proportion to his body has a single row of spines on being on the back of his head and continues running down from the top of his head to the end of his long, prehensile tail. In the low-budget 1977 film Planet of Dinosaurs , his physical appearance would remain relatively the same, however, this version would be colored brown and smaller than
2159-423: A model out of latex, which he revealed to the two producers. However, everyone, including himself, who saw this model voiced their disappointment with its "babyish" and "kind" appearance. Harryhausen took the model back to his workroom and broke the model apart, recreating it with a stronger, more reptilian head and thicker legs. In his book The Art of Ray Harryhausen , he stated that it gave the beast what he desired
2286-421: A monster film due to the successful 1952 re-release of King Kong (1933). After considering using existing dinosaurs such as an Allosaurus , Harryhausen and Lourié eventually decided to invent a new fictional creature; its appearance later infuriated scientists and students alike upon its release. Harryhausen ultimately made two models based on his concept art before concluding on a fearsome-looking design with
2413-409: A monster film in collaboration with Jack Dietz due to the successful 1952 re-release of King Kong (1933), brought Bradbury into his office to read the outline for a proposed monster film. Bradbury later recalled that upon reading the draft, he mentioned that it strongly resembled his 1951 short story and told Chester that their monsters were evidently the same one. Bradbury's friend Ray Harryhausen
2540-614: A month: their friendship lasted more than 70 years. Plesiosaur The Plesiosauria or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles , belonging to the Sauropterygia . Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period , possibly in the Rhaetian stage, about 203 million years ago. They became especially common during the Jurassic Period, thriving until their disappearance due to
2667-447: A new clade Neoplesiosauria, a node-based taxon that was defined by as " Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus , Pliosaurus brachydeirus , their most recent common ancestor and all of its descendants". The clade Neoplesiosauria very likely is materially identical to Plesiosauria sensu Druckenmiller & Russell, thus would designate exactly the same species, and the term was meant to be a replacement of this concept. Benson et al. (2012) found
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#17328978343702794-462: A new fictional one. In an attempt to placate them, director Eugène Lourié told reporters they invented the creature because the crew felt an unoriginal creation would not meet their intention of striking fear into twentieth century theatergoers: "We wanted a brand new monster who looks more frightening enough to throw a large city into a panic. So we concocted a forty-foot rhedosaurus. A more evil-looking, blood-thirsty, powerful creature than [the] thing
2921-483: A plesiosaur skeleton, which he donated to Cope. Cope attempted to reconstruct the animal on the assumption that the longer extremity of the vertebral column was the tail, the shorter one the neck. He soon noticed that the skeleton taking shape under his hands had some very special qualities: the neck vertebrae had chevrons and with the tail vertebrae the joint surfaces were orientated back to front. Excited, Cope concluded to have discovered an entirely new group of reptiles:
3048-512: A plesiosaurian nature and are today partly preserved in the Sedgwick Museum . In 1719, William Stukeley described a partial skeleton of a plesiosaur, which had been brought to his attention by the great-grandfather of Charles Darwin , Robert Darwin of Elston . The stone plate came from a quarry at Fulbeck in Lincolnshire and had been used, with the fossil at its underside, to reinforce
3175-480: A powerful jaw that is capable of tossing cars and allows it to grab humans and eat them (as shown when it eats a police officer while rampaging in New York). Upon being harmed by the armed forces, the Rhedosaurus' s blood is revealed to contain an ancient virus that the human immune system has no protection against once exposed to it. In Planet of Dinosaurs , the Rhedosaurus is a smaller and more defenseless creature and
3302-667: A rather small short-necked form. During the earliest Jurassic, the subgroup with the most species was the Rhomaleosauridae , a possibly very basal split-off of species which were also short-necked. Plesiosaurs in this period were at most five metres (sixteen feet) long. By the Toarcian , about 180 million years ago, other groups, among them the Plesiosauridae , became more numerous and some species developed longer necks, resulting in total body lengths of up to ten metres (33 feet). In
3429-808: A rich theatrical legacy as well as literary. He headed the Pandemonium Theatre Company in Los Angeles for many years, and had a five-year relationship with the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena. Bradbury is featured prominently in two documentaries related to his classic 1950s–1960s era: Jason V Brock 's Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man , detailing his troubles with Rod Serling and his friendships with writers Charles Beaumont , George Clayton Johnson , and most especially his dear friend William F. Nolan ; and Brock's The AckerMonster Chronicles! , which delves into
3556-515: A separate order in 1835. The first plesiosaurian genus, the eponymous Plesiosaurus , was named in 1821. Since then, more than a hundred valid species have been described. In the early twenty-first century, the number of discoveries has increased, leading to an improved understanding of their anatomy, relationships and way of life. Plesiosaurs had a broad flat body and a short tail. Their limbs had evolved into four long flippers, which were powered by strong muscles attached to wide bony plates formed by
3683-405: A smaller, brown dinosaur that is easily defeated by a larger Tyrannosaurus that chomped into his head, seemingly killing him. Stock footage of the Rhedosaurus eating a policeman in the 1953 film would appear in the 1990 horror film Gremlins 2: The New Batch , and an image of the creature from the 1953 film was also shown momentarily as an easter egg in the 2008 film Cloverfield , after
3810-510: A study room with typewriters for rent for ten cents per half-hour., Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book burning future, Fahrenheit 451 , which was about 50,000 words long, costing $ 9.80 from the typewriter-rental fees. Fahrenheit 451 was also published in serial form in the March, April and May 1954 issues of Playboy Magazine . Fahrenheit 451 remains a staple in discussions about censorship and dystopian futures. A chance encounter in
3937-407: A time. He later described how he undertook this projection process: "I split the screen in front of the 16mm camera by using a glass with blacked out portions where the model was standing. After photographing one portion, I would rewind the exposed film, black out the already exposed half, and then photograph the blacked out portion of the projection plate. Theoretically, the whole thing would look like
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4064-450: A while, Marsh suggested that a simpler explanation of the strange build would be that Cope had reversed the vertebral column relative to the body as a whole. When Cope reacted indignantly to this suggestion, Leidy silently took the skull and placed it against the presumed last tail vertebra, to which it fitted perfectly: it was in fact the first neck vertebra, with still a piece of the rear skull attached to it. Mortified, Cope tried to destroy
4191-459: Is NHMUK PV R.1330 (formerly BMNH R.1330). It is the earliest discovered more or less complete fossil reptile skeleton in a museum collection. It can perhaps be referred to Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus . During the eighteenth century, the number of English plesiosaur discoveries rapidly increased, although these were all of a more or less fragmentary nature. Important collectors were the reverends William Mounsey and Baptist Noel Turner , active in
4318-414: Is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's a Greek myth , and myths have staying power. Bradbury recounted when he came into his own as a writer, the afternoon he wrote a short story about his first encounter with death. When he
4445-408: Is called a " stem clade ". Such a definition has the advantage that it is easier to include all species with a certain morphology . Plesiosauria was in 2010 by Hillary Ketchum and Roger Benson defined as such a stem-based taxon : "all taxa more closely related to Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus and Pliosaurus brachydeirus than to Augustasaurus hagdorni ". Ketchum and Benson (2010) also coined
4572-459: Is currently on display at the geological museum of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology . In 2008, fossil remains of an undescribed plesiosaur that was named Predator X , now known as Pliosaurus funkei , were unearthed in Svalbard . It had a length of 12 m (39 ft), and its bite force of 149 kilonewtons (33,000 lb f ) is one of the most powerful known. In December 2017,
4699-439: Is easily defeated by a Tyrannosaurus rex that chomps on its head. Upon the release of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the Rhedosaurus initially received widespread pan from dinosaur enthusiasts, especially scientists and students of paleontology. They considered the creature's design and portrayal in the film to be unrealistic and complained that the filmmakers should have used an actual dinosaur instead of creating
4826-505: Is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can't say certain things. The homosexual groups don't want you to criticize them. It's thought control and freedom of speech control. In a 1982 essay, he wrote: "People ask me to predict the Future, when all I want to do is prevent it." This intent had been expressed earlier by other authors, most of whom attributed it to him. On May 24, 1956, Bradbury appeared on
4953-570: Is today called the Jurassic Coast . It was acquired by the Duke of Buckingham , who made it available to the geologist William Buckland . He in turn let it be described by Conybeare on 20 February 1824 in a paper read at the Geological Society of London , during the same meeting in which for the first time a dinosaur was named, Megalosaurus . The two finds revealed the unique and bizarre build of
5080-541: The New York Herald Tribune , Will Cuppy proclaimed Bradbury "suitable for general consumption" and predicted that he would become a writer of the caliber of British fantasist John Collier . After a rejection notice from the pulp Weird Tales , Bradbury submitted "Homecoming" to Mademoiselle , where it was spotted by a young editorial assistant named Truman Capote . Capote picked the Bradbury manuscript from
5207-469: The 1964 New York World's Fair and wrote the narration script for The American Journey attraction there. He also worked on the original exhibit in Epcot 's Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World . He focused on detective fiction in the 1980s. In the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, he hosted The Ray Bradbury Theater , a televised anthology series based on his short stories. Bradbury
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5334-567: The Brown Derby to watch the stars who came and went for meals. He recounted seeing Cary Grant , Marlene Dietrich and Mae West , who, he learned, made a regular appearance every Friday night, bodyguard in tow. Bradbury was free to start a career in writing when, owing to his bad eyesight, he was rejected for induction into the military during World War II . Inspired by science-fiction heroes such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers , he began publishing science-fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. He
5461-530: The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 66 million years ago. They had a worldwide oceanic distribution, and some species at least partly inhabited freshwater environments. Plesiosaurs were among the first fossil reptiles discovered. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists realised how distinctive their build was and they were named as
5588-627: The Polycotylidae , which had short necks and peculiarly elongated heads with narrow snouts. During the Late Cretaceous, the elasmosaurids still had many species. All plesiosaurs became extinct as a result of the K-T event at the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 66 million years ago. In modern phylogeny , clades are defined groups that contain all species belonging to a certain branch of
5715-420: The Rhedosaurus in the production later partially inspired his monster Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). In the original film, the Rhedosaurus is depicted as a massive dinosaur, belonging to the fictional species of the same name. Standing at forty feet in height, and weighing five hundred tons, is mostly quadrupedal behavior, with the occasional bipedal stance when destroying structures such as
5842-540: The Rhedosaurus is briefly shown in the Godzilla Singular Point (2021) episode "Gamesome". The prehistoric sea monster that became the Rhedosaurus was originally conceived by the writer Ray Bradbury for his short story " The Fog Horn ", which appeared in the June 23, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . At the start of the scripting of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), first-time science fiction film producer Hal Chester , who wanted to make
5969-470: The Streptosauria or "Turned Saurians", which would be distinguished by reversed vertebrae and a lack of hindlimbs, the tail providing the main propulsion. After having published a description of this animal, followed by an illustration in a textbook about reptiles and amphibians, Cope invited Marsh and Joseph Leidy to admire his new Elasmosaurus platyurus . Having listened to Cope's interpretation for
6096-616: The Upper Triassic . One of these, the Nothosauroidea , kept functional elbow and knee joints; but the other, the Pistosauria , became more fully adapted to a sea-dwelling lifestyle. Their vertebral column became stiffer and the main propulsion while swimming no longer came from the tail but from the limbs, which changed into flippers. The Pistosauria became warm-blooded and viviparous , giving birth to live young. Early, basal , members of
6223-619: The Vale of Belvoir , whose collections were in 1795 described by John Nicholls in the first part of his The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire . One of Turner's partial plesiosaur skeletons is still preserved as specimen NHMUK PV R.45 (formerly BMNH R.45) in the British Museum of Natural History; this is today referred to Thalassiodracon . In the early nineteenth century, plesiosaurs were still poorly known and their special build
6350-503: The coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space . Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen
6477-402: The phylogeny , the evolutionary relationships, and the morphology , the way the animal is built, long-necked forms are therefore called "plesiosauromorph" and short-necked forms are called "pliosauromorph", without the "plesiosauromorph" species necessarily being more closely related to each other than to the "pliosauromorph" forms. The latest common ancestor of the Plesiosauria was probably
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#17328978343706604-539: The 1955 film It Came from Beneath the Sea ), a leviathan , and a giant shark but Harryhausen expressed his dislike of these, leading him to "experiment" with other concepts such as an octopus-like alien and a beast akin to a dragon. When the pair decided to make the creature a dinosaur based on the sea beast, Harryhausen said he did not want a "normal" dinosaur such as the Allosaurus , Tyrannosaurus or Brontosaurus , with
6731-553: The 1990s near Herschel, Saskatchewan were found to be a new species, by Dr. Tamaki Sato, a Japanese vertebrate paleontologist. In 2006, a combined team of American and Argentinian investigators (the latter from the Argentinian Antarctic Institute and the La Plata Museum ) found the skeleton of a juvenile plesiosaur measuring 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) in length on Vega Island in Antarctica. The fossil
6858-542: The Giant Monster (1965). Homages to the creature appear in media such as a 1956 issue of the comic book series Batman , the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , and the comic book miniseries Dinosaurs Attack! . Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( US : / ˈ b r æ d b ɛr i / BRAD -berr-ee ; August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of
6985-490: The Giant Monster (1965). Homages to the creature appear in media such as a 1956 issue of the comic book series Batman , the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , and the comic book miniseries Dinosaurs Attack! . Since his debut in 1953, the Rhedosaurus has been featured in various entertainment media, including films, comic books, novels, and television programs. With each appearance, artists would slightly change
7112-780: The Sauria" or "near reptile" than as "near lizard". Parts of the specimen are still present in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History . Soon afterwards, the morphology became much better known. In 1823, Thomas Clark reported an almost complete skull, probably belonging to Thalassiodracon , which is now preserved by the British Geological Survey as specimen BGS GSM 26035. The same year, commercial fossil collector Mary Anning and her family uncovered an almost complete skeleton at Lyme Regis in Dorset , England, on what
7239-507: The Stars (2001). The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream". Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois , to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury (1888–1966),
7366-504: The alienation of people by media: In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in
7493-440: The animals, in 1832 by Professor Buckland likened to "a sea serpent run through a turtle". In 1824, Conybeare also provided a specific name to Plesiosaurus : dolichodeirus , meaning "longneck". In 1848, the skeleton was bought by the British Museum of Natural History and catalogued as specimen NHMUK OR 22656 (formerly BMNH 22656). When the lecture was published, Conybeare also named a second species: Plesiosaurus giganteus . This
7620-519: The authors of EC Comics 's line of horror and science-fiction comics. Initially, the writers plagiarized his stories, but a diplomatic letter from Bradbury led to the company's paying him and negotiating properly licensed adaptations of his work. The comics featuring Bradbury's stories included Tales from the Crypt , Weird Science , Weird Fantasy , Crime Suspenstories , and Haunt of Fear . Bradbury remained an enthusiastic playwright all his life, leaving
7747-568: The character's design. The Rhedosaurus made his first on-screen appearance in Eugène Lourié 's 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms . In the film, the dinosaur is awakened from its over-100-million-year slumber in suspended animation under the Arctic by an atomic bomb detonation and travels south towards the location of its original home, now New York City , on a devastating rampage. After it creates $ 300 million in damage while wandering around
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#17328978343707874-400: The city, it is ultimately killed on Coney Island by a radionuclide that is directly shot into the wound on its neck created by a bazooka earlier in the film. The Rhedosaurus ' next official appearance would be in the low-budget 1977 film Planet of Dinosaurs . In that film, it inhabited a Mesozoic era Earth analog which a human crew becomes stranded; this time, however, it is
8001-459: The clades Ichthyosauria and Mosasauria , the genera in Plesiosauria are not part of the clade Dinosauria . Skeletal elements of plesiosaurs are among the first fossils of extinct reptiles recognised as such. In 1605, Richard Verstegen of Antwerp illustrated in his A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence plesiosaur vertebrae that he referred to fishes and saw as proof that Great Britain
8128-479: The corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. In regard to his education, Bradbury said: Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. So I graduated from
8255-456: The creative people he met were special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns . Bradbury's first pay as a writer, at age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show. Bradbury was fascinated with carnivals from a young age, and they would feature in such works as The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes . He related
8382-658: The definitive use of Green Town is in Summer Morning, Summer Night , a collection of short stories and vignettes exclusively set in the town. Bradbury returns to the signature locale as a look back at the rapidly disappearing small-town world of the American heartland, which was the foundation of his roots. Bradbury wrote many short essays on culture and the arts, attracting the attention of critics in this field, using his fiction to explore and criticize his culture and society. He observed, for example, that Fahrenheit 451 touched on
8509-536: The devil, during a pre-Adamitic phase of history. Hawkins eventually sold his valuable and attractively restored specimens to the British Museum of Natural History. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the number of plesiosaur finds steadily increased, especially through discoveries in the sea cliffs of Lyme Regis. Sir Richard Owen alone named nearly a hundred new species. The majority of their descriptions were, however, based on isolated bones, without sufficient diagnosis to be able to distinguish them from
8636-526: The earlier Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus as it is derived from πλεῖος, pleios , "more fully", reflecting that according to Owen it was closer to the Sauria than Plesiosaurus . Its specific name means "with a short neck". Later, the Pliosauridae were recognised as having a morphology fundamentally different from the plesiosaurids. The family Plesiosauridae had already been coined by John Edward Gray in 1825. In 1835, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville named
8763-454: The early twenty-first century, with about three or four plesiosaurs being named each year. This implies that about half of the known plesiosaurs are relatively new to science, a result of a far more intense field research. Some of this is taking place away from the traditional areas, e.g. in new sites developed in New Zealand , Argentina , Chile , Norway , Japan , China and Morocco , but
8890-579: The entire edition of the textbook and, when this failed, immediately published an improved edition with a correct illustration but an identical date of publication. He excused his mistake by claiming that he had been misled by Leidy himself, who, describing a specimen of Cimoliasaurus , had also reversed the vertebral column. Marsh later claimed that the affair was the cause of his rivalry with Cope: "he has since been my bitter enemy". Both Cope and Marsh in their rivalry named many plesiosaur genera and species, most of which are today considered invalid. Around
9017-463: The evolutionary tree . One way to define a clade is to let it consist of the last common ancestor of two such species and all its descendants. Such a clade is called a " node clade ". In 2008, Patrick Druckenmiller and Anthony Russell in this way defined Plesiosauria as the group consisting of the last common ancestor of Plesiosaurus dolichocheirus and Peloneustes philarchus and all its descendants. Plesiosaurus and Peloneustes represented
9144-429: The fact that the first two letters in the dinosaur's name are the same as his initials are coincidental, despite some people saying the beast's name was partly derived from his. Warner Bros. later gave it the nickname "Herman". Following a few rough sketches of the beast's structure on paper and discussing storyboards for the film, Ray Harryhausen constructed a clay prototype of the Rhedosaurus and then used it to make
9271-477: The flagship theater for MGM and Fox . There, Bradbury learned how to sneak in and watched previews almost every week. He roller skated there, as well as all over town, as he put it, "hell-bent on getting autographs from glamorous stars. It was glorious." Among stars the young Bradbury was thrilled to encounter were Norma Shearer , Laurel and Hardy , and Ronald Colman . Sometimes he spent all day in front of Paramount Pictures or Columbia Pictures , then skated to
9398-640: The front row, and he reached down with a flaming sword full of electricity and he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose and he cried, "Live, forever!" And I thought, "God, that's wonderful. How do you do that?" ... So when I left the carnival that day I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of " Beautiful Ohio " and I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had happened to me that day because of Mr. Electrico. I felt changed. And so I went home and within days I started to write. And I've never stopped. Throughout his youth, Bradbury
9525-423: The group, traditionally called " pistosaurids ", were still largely coastal animals. Their shoulder girdles remained weak, their pelves could not support the power of a strong swimming stroke, and their flippers were blunt. Later, a more advanced pistosaurian group split off: the Plesiosauria. These had reinforced shoulder girdles, flatter pelves, and more pointed flippers. Other adaptations allowing them to colonise
9652-523: The insights without too much extra comment." He studied Eudora Welty for her "remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character, and motion in a single line." Bradbury was once described as a " Midwest surrealist " and is often labeled a science-fiction writer. He resisted that categorization, however, defining science fiction as "the art of the possible." First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451 , based on reality. Science fiction
9779-520: The latter because he did not want his creation to seem similar to his mentor Willis H. O'Brien 's dinosaurs featured in The Lost World (1925). Therefore, Harryhausen and Lourié eventually invented a new fictional giant four-legged creature, with a menacing appearance. Sometime during designing, the creature was dubbed the " Rhedosaurus " by a crew member who Harryhausen suggested may have been Chester, though this remains unconfirmed. He also considered
9906-643: The leg—I respond by writing them down—everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off". An imagined version of Waukegan, Green Town is a symbol of safety and home, which is often the setting for tales of the macabre and the dark fantastic. It serves as the setting of his semiautobiographical classics Dandelion Wine , Something Wicked This Way Comes , and Farewell Summer , as well as many of his short stories. In Green Town, Bradbury's favorite uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal supernatural powers, and his grandparents provide room and board to Charles Dickens . Perhaps
10033-503: The library when I was twenty-eight years old. He told The Paris Review : "You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don't." He considered science to be 'incidental' to his writing. He claimed not to be interested in the development of science, but hoped to use it as a form of social commentary and as an allegorical technique. He described his inspiration: "My stories run up and bite me in
10160-481: The life of former Bradbury agent, close friend, mega-fan and Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J Ackerman. Bradbury's legacy was celebrated by the bookstore Fahrenheit 451 Books in Laguna Beach, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. He and his favorite illustrator, Joseph Mugnaini , attended the opening of an addition to the store in the mid-1980s. It closed its doors in 1987, but in 1990, another shop of
10287-488: The locations of the more original discoveries have proven to be still productive, with important new finds in England and Germany. Some of the new genera are a renaming of already known species, which were deemed sufficiently different to warrant a separate genus name. In 2002, the " Monster of Aramberri " was announced to the press. Discovered in 1982 at the village of Aramberri , in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León , it
10414-514: The longest plesiosaurs, reaching up to fifteen metres (fifty feet) in length due to very long necks containing as many as 76 vertebrae, more than any other known vertebrate. Pliosauridae were still present as is shown by large predators, such as Kronosaurus . At the beginning of the Late Cretaceous , the Ichthyosauria became extinct; perhaps a plesiosaur group evolved to fill their niches:
10541-519: The main subgroups of the Plesiosauroidea and the Pliosauroidea and were chosen for historical reasons; any other species from these groups would have sufficed. Another way to define a clade is to let it consist of all species more closely related to a certain species that one in any case wishes to include in the clade than to another species that one to the contrary desires to exclude. Such a clade
10668-463: The middle of the Jurassic, very large Pliosauridae evolved. These were characterized by a large head and a short neck, such as Liopleurodon and Simolestes . These forms had skulls up to three metres (ten feet) long and reached a length of up to seventeen metres (56 feet) and a weight of ten tonnes. The pliosaurids had large, conical teeth and were the dominant marine carnivores of their time. During
10795-479: The middle of the twentieth century, the USA remained an important centre of research, mainly through the discoveries of Samuel Paul Welles . Whereas during the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, new plesiosaurs were described at a rate of three or four novel genera each decade, the pace suddenly picked up in the 1990s, with seventeen plesiosaurs being discovered in this period. The tempo of discovery accelerated in
10922-464: The model was part of the picture." The process, later dubbed "Dynamation" by producer Charles Schneer , was an inexpensive and successful technique for Harryhausen and consequently would refine throughout his career, becoming a hallmark of his work. Additionally, Harryhausen designed and supervised the creation of all the large models that the Rhedosaurus destroys in the picture, which Willis Cook assembled. Harryhausen said that his experience utilizing
11049-771: The money to head to New York for the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York City, and funded Bradbury's fanzine, Futuria Fantasia . Bradbury wrote most of its four issues, each volume printed in limited number due to publishing costs. Between 1940 and 1947, he was a contributor to Rob Wagner 's film magazine, Script . In 1939, Bradbury joined Laraine Day 's Wilshire Players Guild, where for two years he wrote and acted in several plays. They were, as Bradbury later described, "so incredibly bad" that he gave up play-writing for two decades. His first paid piece, "Pendulum", written with Henry Hasse ,
11176-400: The most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy , science fiction , horror , mystery , and realistic fiction . Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include
11303-464: The museum people have uncovered." In contrast, critics have mostly praised the Rhedosaurus , especially acclaiming its animation by Ray Harryhausen . Many retrospective commentators have praised this iconic and influential film monster due to it possibly being the foundation of the Atomic Age giant monster genre , the first entirely fictional dinosaur to appear on-screen, and even the first monster in
11430-515: The open seas included stiff limb joints; an increase in the number of phalanges of the hand and foot; a tighter lateral connection of the finger and toe phalanx series, and a shortened tail. From the earliest Jurassic , the Hettangian stage, a rich radiation of plesiosaurs is known, implying that the group must already have diversified in the Late Triassic ; of this diversification, however, only
11557-768: The order Plesiosauria itself. In the second half of the nineteenth century, important finds were made outside of England. While this included some German discoveries, it mainly involved plesiosaurs found in the sediments of the American Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway , the Niobrara Chalk . One fossil in particular marked the start of the Bone Wars between the rival paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh . In 1867, physician Theophilus Turner near Fort Wallace in Kansas uncovered
11684-481: The other species that had previously been described. Many of the new species described at this time have subsequently been invalidated . The genus Plesiosaurus is particularly problematic, as the majority of the new species were placed in it so that it became a wastebasket taxon . Gradually, other genera were named. Hawkins had already created new genera, though these are no longer seen as valid. In 1841, Owen named Pliosaurus brachydeirus . Its etymology referred to
11811-616: The popular quiz show You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx . During his introductory comments and on-air banter with Marx, Bradbury briefly discussed some of his books and other works, including giving an overview of " The Veldt ", his short story published six years earlier in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "The World the Children Made". Bradbury was a consultant for the United States Pavilion at
11938-471: The previous incarnation. In its debut film, the Rhedosaurus is depicted as able to easily adaptable to different environments, having survived in suspended animation for over 100 million years, and equally capable of moving on land and swimming under the ocean. He uses the latter to travel from Baffin Bay to the location that was originally its home millions of years ago, now known as New York . The beast also has
12065-526: The producers' approval and portraying the creature in the film via stop motion animation . The Rhedosaurus is one of the most influential and iconic fictional monsters in the history of cinema. It inspired film monsters such as Godzilla and Gamera and set the template for giant monster and kaiju in films, including: Them! (1954), Godzilla (1954), The Deadly Mantis (1957), 20 Million Miles to Earth , The Giant Claw (both 1957), The Giant Behemoth (1959), Gorgo (1961), and Gamera,
12192-527: The publishing rights for Fahrenheit 451 came up for renewal in December 2011, Bradbury permitted its publication in electronic form provided that the publisher, Simon & Schuster , allowed the e-book to be digitally downloaded by any library patron. The title remains the only book in the Simon & Schuster catalog for which this is possible. Several comic-book writers have adapted Bradbury's stories, particularly
12319-442: The purely descriptive terms "plesiosauromorph" and "pliosauromorph" have been introduced, which do not imply a direct relationship. "Plesiosauroidea" and "Pliosauroidea" today have a more limited meaning. The term "plesiosaur" is properly used to refer to the Plesiosauria as a whole, but informally it is sometimes meant to indicate only the long-necked forms, the old Plesiosauroidea. Like other ancient marine reptiles, such as those in
12446-718: The radio show Chandu the Magician , and every night when the show went off the air, he wrote out the entire script from memory. As a teen in Beverly Hills , he often visited his mentor and friend, science-fiction writer Bob Olsen , sharing ideas and maintaining contact. In 1936, at a secondhand bookstore in Hollywood, Bradbury discovered a handbill promoting meetings of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society . Excited to find others who shared his interest, he joined
12573-529: The same name (with different owners) opened in Carlsbad, California. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bradbury served on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Student Film Institute . Bradbury lived in his parents' home until, in 1947, at age 27, he married Marguerite McClure (January 16, 1922 – November 24, 2003). They remained married until her death. Maggie, as she was affectionately called,
12700-774: The same time, approximately 160 million years ago, the Cryptoclididae were present, shorter species with a long neck and a small head. The Leptocleididae radiated during the Early Cretaceous . These were rather small forms that, despite their short necks, might have been more closely related to the Plesiosauridae than to the Pliosauridae. Later in the Early Cretaceous, the Elasmosauridae appeared; these were among
12827-465: The scene where the main characters are in the New York Subway . The fictional prehistoric sea monster that the Rhedosaurus is based on first appeared in the short story " The Fog Horn ", featured in the June 23, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . It later reappeared in a slightly modified version of the story in the third issue of Ray Bradbury Comics (1993), where it has a design akin to
12954-433: The scene, people were saying, 'Oh my God, I'm so afraid.' I hate people like that—I call them the neo- Luddites " and: "In a sense, [computers] are simply books. Books are all over the place, and computers will be, too." He resisted the conversion of his work into e-books , saying in 2010: "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now." When
13081-438: The shoulder girdle and the pelvis. The flippers made a flying movement through the water. Plesiosaurs breathed air, and bore live young; there are indications that they were warm-blooded. Plesiosaurs showed two main morphological types. Some species, with the "plesiosauromorph" build, had (sometimes extremely) long necks and small heads; these were relatively slow and caught small sea animals. Other species, some of them reaching
13208-652: The slope of a watering-hole in Elston in Nottinghamshire . After the strange bones it contained had been discovered, it was displayed in the local vicarage as the remains of a sinner drowned in the Great Flood . Stukely affirmed its " diluvial " nature but understood it represented some sea creature, perhaps a crocodile or dolphin. The specimen is today on display at the Natural History Museum , and its inventory number
13335-633: The traditional Pliosauroidea to be paraphyletic in relation to Plesiosauroidea. Rhomaleosauridae was found to be outside Neoplesiosauria, but still within Plesiosauria. The early Carnian pistosaur Bobosaurus was found to be one step more advanced than Augustasaurus in relation to the Plesiosauria and therefore it represented by definition the basalmost known plesiosaur. This analysis focused on basal plesiosaurs and therefore only one derived pliosaurid and one cryptoclidian were included, while elasmosaurids were not included at all. A more detailed analysis published by both Benson and Druckenmiller in 2014
13462-405: The turn of the century, most plesiosaur research was done by a former student of Marsh, Professor Samuel Wendell Williston . In 1914, Williston published his Water reptiles of the past and present . Despite treating sea reptiles in general, it would for many years remain the most extensive general text on plesiosaurs. In 2013, a first modern textbook was being prepared by Olivier Rieppel . During
13589-461: The way they hunted and swam, incorporating general modern insights about biomechanics and ecology . The many recent discoveries have tested these hypotheses and given rise to new ones. The Plesiosauria have their origins within the Sauropterygia , a group of perhaps archelosaurian reptiles that returned to the sea. An advanced sauropterygian subgroup, the carnivorous Eusauropterygia with small heads and long necks, split into two branches during
13716-508: Was "a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is 'At play in the fields of the Lord'." Bradbury was a close friend of Charles Addams , and Addams illustrated 1946's "Homecoming", the first of Bradbury's stories about the Elliotts, a family that resembled Addams's own Addams Family , transplanted to rural Illinois. Addams and Bradbury planned
13843-418: Was 14. The family arrived with only US$ 40 (equivalent to $ 911 in 2023), which paid for rent and food until his father finally found a job making wire at a cable company for $ 14 a week (equivalent to $ 319 in 2023), allowing them to stay in Hollywood. Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club. He often roller-skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities. Among
13970-540: Was a boy, he met a young girl at a lake edge and she went out into the water and never came back. Years later, as he wrote about it in " The Lake ", tears flowed from him. He recognized he had taken the leap from emulating the many writers he admired to connecting with his voice as a writer. When later asked about source of the lyrical power of his prose, he replied: "From reading so much poetry every day of my life. My favorite writers have been those who've said things well." He said: "If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live
14097-413: Was a more scarify look, however, after making some test footage he "realized that it still wasn't right" and remade it a third and final time before using it for the film. To portray his stop motion animated model of the giant beast tumulting in a particular setting in the 1953 film, Harryhausen invented a method for screen projection that divided the plates into foreground and backdrop imagery one frame at
14224-516: Was a short-necked form later assigned to the Pliosauroidea . Plesiosaurs became better known to the general public through two lavishly illustrated publications by the collector Thomas Hawkins : Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri of 1834 and The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons of 1840. Hawkins entertained a very idiosyncratic view of the animals, seeing them as monstrous creations of
14351-542: Was a strong supporter of public libraries, raising money to prevent the closure of several libraries in California facing budgetary cuts. He said "libraries raised me", and shunned colleges and universities, comparing his own lack of funds during the Depression with poor contemporary students. His opinion varied on modern technology. In 1985 Bradbury wrote: "I see nothing but good coming from computers. When they first appeared on
14478-440: Was about 18. Bradbury's favorite writers growing up included Katherine Anne Porter , Edith Wharton and Jessamyn West . He loved the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs , especially his John Carter of Mars series; The Warlord of Mars impressed him so much that at age 12, he wrote his own sequel. The young Bradbury was also a cartoonist and loved to illustrate. He wrote about Tarzan and drew his own Sunday panels. He listened to
14605-485: Was also assigned to work on Chester and Dietz's film by this point and was given a copy of James R. Bingham's artwork of the creature published alongside the story in The Saturday Evening Post . Before adapting Bradbury's sea monster, Harryhausen and director Eugène Lourié had gone through many draft designs for producers Chester and Dietz. They made sketches of an octopus (foreshadowing Harryhausen's work on
14732-492: Was an avid reader and writer and knew at a young age that he was "going into one of the arts". Bradbury began writing his own stories at age 12 (1931), sometimes writing on butcher paper. In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan, reading such authors as H. G. Wells , Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe . At 12, he began writing traditional horror stories and said he tried to imitate Poe until he
14859-521: Was discovered, by a local fisherman, at Bridgwater Bay National Nature Reserve in Somerset, UK. The fossil, dating from 180 million years ago as indicated by the ammonites associated with it, measured 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) in length, and may be related to Rhomaleosaurus . It is probably the best preserved specimen of a plesiosaur yet discovered. In 2005, the remains of three plesiosaurs ( Dolichorhynchops herschelensis ) discovered in
14986-403: Was his first great love. He said that had he not discovered writing, he would have become a magician. Bradbury claimed a wide variety of influences, and described discussions he might have had with his favorite writers, among them Robert Frost , William Shakespeare , John Steinbeck , Aldous Huxley , and Thomas Wolfe . From Steinbeck, he learned "how to write objectively and yet insert all of
15113-622: Was invited by Forrest J. Ackerman to attend the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, which at the time met at Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. There he met Robert A. Heinlein , Emil Petaja , Fredric Brown , Henry Kuttner , Leigh Brackett and Jack Williamson . Bradbury's first published story was " Hollerbochen's Dilemma ", in the January 1938 number of Ackerman's fanzine Imagination! . In July 1939, Ackerman and his girlfriend Morojo gave 19-year-old Bradbury
15240-602: Was named, Plesiosaurus . The generic name was derived from the Greek πλήσιος, plèsios , "closer to" and the Latinised saurus , in the meaning of "saurian", to express that Plesiosaurus was in the Chain of Being more closely positioned to the Sauria , particularly the crocodile, than Ichthyosaurus , which had the form of a more lowly fish. The name should thus be rather read as "approaching
15367-411: Was not understood. No systematic distinction was made with ichthyosaurs , so the fossils of one group were sometimes combined with those of the other to obtain a more complete specimen. In 1821, a partial skeleton discovered in the collection of Colonel Thomas James Birch , was described by William Conybeare and Henry Thomas De la Beche , and recognised as representing a distinctive group. A new genus
15494-465: Was once connected to the European continent. The Welshman Edward Lhuyd in his Lithophylacii Brittannici Ichnographia from 1699 also included depictions of plesiosaur vertebrae that again were considered fish vertebrae or Ichthyospondyli . Other naturalists during the seventeenth century added plesiosaur remains to their collections, such as John Woodward ; these were only much later understood to be of
15621-423: Was originally classified as a dinosaur . The specimen is actually a very large plesiosaur, possibly reaching 15 m (49 ft) in length. The media published exaggerated reports claiming it was 25 metres (82 ft) long, and weighed up to 150,000 kilograms (330,000 lb), which would have made it among the largest predators of all time. In 2004, what appeared to be a completely intact juvenile plesiosaur
15748-506: Was published in the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in November 1941, for which he earned $ 15. Bradbury sold his first solo story, "The Lake", for $ 13.75 at 22 and became a full-time writer by 24. His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival , was published in 1947 by Arkham House , a small press in Sauk City, Wisconsin , owned by August Derleth . Reviewing Dark Carnival for
15875-469: Was the only woman he ever dated. They had four daughters: Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra. Bradbury never obtained a driver's license, but used public transportation or his bicycle. He was raised Baptist by his parents, who were infrequent churchgoers. As an adult, Bradbury said he considered himself a "delicatessen religionist" who resisted categorization of his beliefs and took guidance from both Eastern and Western faiths. He felt that his career
16002-544: Was the special-effects expert Ray Harryhausen , who was best man at Bradbury's wedding. During a BAFTA 2010 awards tribute honoring Harryhausen's 90th birthday, Bradbury spoke about having first met him at Forrest J Ackerman's house when they were both 18. Their shared love for science fiction, King Kong , and The Fountainhead was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. These early influences inspired them to believe in themselves and to affirm their career choices. After their first meeting, they kept in touch at least once
16129-577: Was well known, and he wrote humanistic science fiction, which influenced me to dare to be human instead of mechanical." During his young adulthood, Bradbury read stories published in Astounding Science Fiction , and read everything by Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke , as well as the early writings of Theodore Sturgeon and A. E. van Vogt . The family lived about four blocks from the Fox Uptown Theatre on Western Avenue in Los Angeles,
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