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Here's a test of your dinosaur knowledge: Did Tyrannosaurus rex stand upright, with its tail on the ground?

Scientists used to think T. rex stood tall, but they abandoned that idea decades ago. Now, the ferocious dinosaur is depicted with a bird-like posture, with its head pitched forward of its two massive legs and its tail in the air.

The change led major museums to update their T. rex displays, study authors said, and popular books have largely gotten the posture right since around 1990. So did the "Jurassic Park" movies.

But when the researchers asked college students and children to draw a T. rex, most gave it an upright posture instead. Why? They'd soaked up the wrong idea from toys like Barney, games and other pop culture items, the researchers concluded. "It doesn't matter what they see in science books or even in 'Jurassic Park.' They still believe the old ideas because they see them everywhere," said Warren Allmon, a paleontology professor at Cornell University and an author of the study.

This thought struck him at a grocery store when he saw a box of chicken nuggets that featured an incorrect representation of a dinosaur. If the explanation is correct, Allmon said, it's a sobering reminder of how people can get wrong ideas about science. It also demonstrates how important it is for movies and TV shows to get their scientific facts right.

The study's authors examined 316 T. rex drawings made by students at Ithaca College and children who visited an Ithaca museum. Most of the college students weren't science majors.

Seventy-two percent of the college students and 63 percent of the children drew T. rex as being too upright. Because the sample isn't representative of the general population, the results don't necessarily apply to young people in general.

But when the authors looked at other depictions of T. rex, they found that the obsolete standing posture remains in pop culture items like toys, games, clothing, comics and movies.

Mark Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who didn't participate in the study, said he doesn't know if the upright-posture myth is as widespread as the new study indicates. But he said it makes sense that children's first impressions of T. rex can persist. If they don't study dinosaurs later, "that's what they're stuck with," he said.

Common Misconceptions

• The sun is yellow — If you believe sci-fi movies, then you probably think that the sun is yellow. In fact, it is white. The sun only appears to be yellow to us here on Earth because its light scatters when it hits our atmosphere.

• We use only 10 percent of our brains — This "fact," which regularly appears in films, is completely false. In fact, we use virtually every part of our brain, and most of it is active almost all of the time.

• Napoleon was short — French Emperor Napoleon usually appears on screen as a very short man. In fact, he was slightly taller than the average 19th-century Frenchman.

• Lemmings take part in mass suicidal dives from cliffs — This false idea was popularized by a 1958 Disney nature film called "White Wilderness." The lemmings in the film were actually pushed off the cliff.

• The color red makes bulls angry — Bulls are colorblind. They only attack those holding a red cape because the movement of the cape annoys them.

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