Update (8:20 a.m.): In an email to Newsweek, the 77-year-old author clarified that she was, in fact, joking.

it was meant as a joke.... many of my tweets are meant to be funny; but I guess that is not always a good idea. when you'd originally written, I could not open the link & really had no idea what you meant. now I remember. sorry! Joyce

And the mystery is solved. Good joke, Joyce!

Earlier: On Tuesday, Joyce Carol Oates, the American author whose Twitter feed is an jewel box of absurdist, vaguely offensive half-thoughts, showed her stripes as a true conservationist.

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Oh man, I bet that guy is so humiliated and will never post to another trophy hunting message board again!

Just kidding, the animal in that picture is a triceratops (which is a dinosaur which is extinct) and the killer is Steven Spielberg. It's a photo from the Jurassic Park set. Do you get it?

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There are only three possibilities. I will list them here, as well as their likelihood:

Oates was making a joke (5 percent chance) Oates didn't click on the photo and thought it was a picture of a slaughtered elephant (80 percent chance) Oates thinks a triceratops was murdered (15 percent chance)

Regardless, the tweet prompted some really wonderful responses (including from conservative pundit Dana Loesch who is, by all other accounts, an actual swamp witch):

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