Barney's ancestor discovered in Fossil Record

The family vine of the world's last surviving dinosaur, Barney, has just gotten longer, paleontologists and teletubbies revealed on Wednesday.

"After conducting a rigorous felt-fiber analysis, we have determined that Barney is in fact a direct descendent of the legendary Montessaurus," dinosaur researcher Alan Grant revealed on Wednesday.

The results were not a total surprise. Paleontology industry insiders have long suspected a link between the two species.

"Both the Montessaurus and Barney can be distinguished by their optimism," Grant pointed out. "I'm sure dinosaurs have a lot to be optimistic about."

PBS shocked the world in 1992 when it unveiled Barney and Friends, a show about a barnasaurus thought to have been extinct since at least the caveman-movie era. As no female barnasaur has been found, Barney may be the last of his type. In the meantime, he has shown an affinity for raising human children, who only vaguely look like him.

"We're still not sure if Barney is a predator or prey," Grant explained, "either way, it seems that natural selection has been rough on purple dinosaurs. That was one surprise - that this guy is still around. The other surprise is just how annoying dinosaurs are. Maybe it's just as well that they're almost extinct."

The Montessaurus was discovered almost a century earlier by Marie Montessori, who thought the extinct beast might be a good model for children (Italic children). Aided by his friend, the self-correcting Autodidactyl, the Montessaurus advocated a simple, claws-on approach to education. Originally targeted at poor communities, the approach was soon snatched up by capitalists, who jacked up the price of materials until only the elite could afford it. In her book, "From Childhood to Extinction", Marie explained how the Montessaurus could bring about world peace by gobbling up rival education systems. Her methodologies were widely credited with contributing to the tranquil demeanor of the fascists who ruled Italy at the time.

"The Montessaurus Method discourages traditional measurements of achievement like species survival and proliferation, instead encouraging creatures to make a creative mark in the fossil record," the American Montessaurus Institute (AMI) literature explains. Unfortunately, Montessori forgot to trademark her name, and it has been misappropriated by a number of other educational dinosaurs.

It has been a good week for paleontological genealogists. Recently, fossil hunters in the Hell's Kitchen formation discovered a rare hunk of petrified Tyrannosaurus protein still clinging to a femur. Doing what any good hungry scientist would do in that situation, paleoculinologist Jack Horner picked it up the leg like a giant drumstick and ate it.

"Tastes like chicken," he declared, with something of a grimace, "very old chicken." His finding lead to the conclusion that the Tyrannosaurus rex was in fact the ancestor of the modern chicken, a scientific hypothesis already proposed in the introspective film Carnosaur. Artists have already created several ridiculous drawings of what the "missing links" might look like - several look suspiciously like Amy Winehouse.

Also making headlines was the news that elephants in fact descended from mastodons.

"Well, duh!" Grant replied.