Remember how stoked you were about dinosaurs when you were a kid? Don’t you miss those days? It didn’t take anything with a beep to keep you entertained. You didn’t need the latest version of Xbox or Wii or whatever; all you needed were a few dinosaur figures, maybe some dirt or a play mat, and you were set for the summer.

It was amazing to think of all of these incredible creatures that walked the Earth much earlier than we did—so humbling and at the same time simply delightful. That’s why I’m taking a personal offense against the news that some scientists are saying that a third of dinosaurs that have been catalogued don’t even exist.

The idea is a logical one; it really does make sense. The theory—deemed a controversial one at best by most scientists—claims that a third of dinosaurs never existed because they weren’t separate dinosaurs being catalogued; they were simply the baby versions of their parents.

According to paleontologists Mark Goodwin of the University of California, Berkeley and Jack Homer of Montana State University, these dino babies were so unalike their own parents that they simply seemed like completely separate species.

The two claim that the analyses they’ve run indicate that, like birds and many other animals, dinosaurs in juvenile stages of development went through such monumental changes as they grew that they wouldn’t have resembled their parents at all.

They say that because of this, at least a third of dinosaurs have been misidentified—including fossils of Tyrannosaurus Rex relatives. For example, according to Goodwin and Homer, the Nanotyrannus, up to this point identified as a smaller relative of the Tyrannosaurus, is really just a teenage T. Rex.

From increases in numbers of teeth to the steady growth of horn size to simple changes in height, the pair has studied a plethora of dinosaur fossils in a ten-year period and has concluded that the evidence points to aging dinosaurs rather than separate species.

It really does make sense. My main reason for not buying it? I don’t want to! Admittedly it could be possible; new research may even prove it so without a doubt someday soon. But until that day comes, I’d rather be enmeshed into the mystery and wonder of more species than I can count. The idea of a third of those species disappearing is like learning that your childhood itself was a sham, and that your mom didn’t really like making macaroni pictures with you on Saturday mornings.

Of course, anything is possible.