"Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses" is a sketch from Episode 31 of ''

Monty Python's Flying Circus ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (also known as simply ''Monty Python'') is a British surreal humour, surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, w ...

'', " The All-England Summarize Proust Competition" (1972). The sketch features a television presenter (

Graham Chapman Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was one of the six members of the Surreal humour, surrealist comedy group Monty Python. He portrayed authority figures such as The Colonel (Monty Py ...

) interviewing

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

Anne Elk (

John Cleese John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and Television presenter, presenter. Emerging from the Footlights, Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinbur ...

in drag). The plot of the sketch is that Miss Elk (who is very concerned about being properly credited: "A. Elk,

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

, Miss, brackets") has severe difficulty presenting her new theory about

brontosaurus ''Brontosaurus'' (; meaning "thunder lizard" from the Ancient Greek, Greek words , "thunder" and , "lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. It was describe ...

es due to her bizarre mannerisms, which include

circumlocution Circumlocution (also called circumduction, circumvolution, periphrasis, kenning, or ambage) is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication (for example, to work around lexical ga ...

, repetition, and obnoxious, noisy throat-clearing. When she is finally able to state her theory, it turns out to be a very trite observation that "All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end." In the original broadcast version, the sketch is taken over by other jokes from within the same episode, and spills over into the set of a previous sketch where Miss Elk concludes the episode with a second theory about

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...

. This sketch was also performed on the album '' Monty Python's Previous Record'', under the title 'Miss Anne Elk'. In this version, before she begins her second theory, the interviewer shoots her. At Cleese's request, the sketch was performed as part of the team's 2014 live reunion show, ''

Monty Python Live (Mostly) ''Monty Python Live (Mostly)'' (also billed as ''Monty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to Go'') was a variety show by the Monty Python comedy group at The O2 in London in July 2014. Planned as a single performance for 1 July, it was expanded ...

'', with

Eric Idle Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943) is an English actor, comedian, songwriter, musician, screenwriter and playwright. He was a member of the British comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band the Rutles. Idle studied English at Pembroke Co ...

playing the interviewer. This version concluded with an extended coughing fit, before linking to the "Dancing Teeth" animation. The sketch inspired the concept of "Elk theories" to describe scientific observations that are not theories but merely minimal accounts. The character A. Elk and her "Theory of Brontosauruses" is used in the American Psychological Association Style Guide to illustrate how to reference a periodical article in a learned journal.

References

{{Monty Python 1972 works 1972 in British television Monty Python sketches Films about Brontosaurus Television episodes about dinosaurs