I chuckled ...
Naturally, the joke is really about how scientists, who like to think everything fits neatly into established frameworks, might react when something utterly impossible shows up. A Tyrannosaurs fossil clamped onto a flying saucer would blow up everything we think we know, yet the paleontologists just mutter, "This complicates things." It's funny because it captures that dry, understated way science handles paradigm-shattering discoveries — calmly trying to fit the unthinkable into tidy theories.
But would it complicate things, like overturn our understanding of evolution's timeline?
Let's consider other possibilities ...
1. Modern Crash into Ancient Fossil Bed – A recent alien or human-made craft crashed into exposed fossil strata, embedding within the remains of an already-fossilized T. rex.
2. Modern Hoax – A deliberate fabrication using real fossils or replicas and a manufactured craft designed to appear ancient, created to fool or provoke scientists and the public.
3. Geological Displacement – Natural processes (landslides, earthquakes, glacial movement) mixed strata, juxtaposing a modern or recent craft with an ancient fossil.
4. Post-Burial Erosion or Exposure – Erosion revealed the fossilized T. rex and a nearby craft, which later slid or collapsed into the same cavity, giving the appearance of association.
5. Ancient Alien Probe Event – A small extraterrestrial probe visited Earth during the Cretaceous, was attacked by a T. rex, and both were buried together.
6. Post-Burial Erosion or Exposure – Erosion revealed the fossilized T. rex and a nearby craft, which later slid or collapsed into the same cavity, giving the appearance of association.
7. Time-Travel Artifact – A future or interdimensional craft arrived in the Cretaceous, interacted briefly, and both it and the T. rex fossilized naturally afterward.
Can you think of any others?
If the object was determined to be of an ancient extraterrestrial origin, it would would be an astounding discovery — that intelligent life existed elsewhere in our galaxy/universe way before humans.
Think of how many questions that might render ...
“How long have they been visiting Earth?” — the scientific question.
“Are they still alive?” — the historical and biological question.
“Do they still occasionally drop in?” — the present-tense, unnerving one.
“Are they planning to use us for food?” — the primal fear at the end of that logical chain.
So, maybe it really would complicate things — just not in the way we might first imagine.
In truth, science thrives on moments like this — not by rejecting the impossible outright, but by asking why it seems impossible and how it might fit within what we already know. A discovery that rewrites our assumptions isn't a failure of science; it's the process at its best. Every paradigm shift, from heliocentrism to quantum mechanics, began as something that "complicated things." In that sense, even a T. rex biting a flying saucer wouldn't break science — it would simply give it something extraordinary to explain.