Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

More on The Megalithic Rock Wall of Rockwall Texas; Aaron Judkins and Joe Taylor On Site

Church of Darwin, Science, Sophistication of Ancestors, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Apr 16 2012


Aaron Judkins PhD of Man vs Archaeology wrote in a week or so ago to inform that he and Joe Taylor of the Mount Blanco Fossil Museum had made an on site investigation of the mysterious 25 square mile rock wall that gave Rockwall Texas its name. We had done a number of stories on the wall here at s8int.com.

Further, Aaron mentioned that he was going to be on a television program re his work on the subject of humans and dinosaurs; History Channels; Ancient Aliens. This is where we blew it! I din’t notice that it was to be on so soon; April 13th!

Aaron, my apologies. I was trying to figure out how I was going to pay my taxes.

Maybe Aaron will write back to let us know exactly how to catch the episode on History Channel; however the segment may be the one posted on Youtube;The Rock Wall, Man vs Archaeology with Aaron Judkins (XIndianaJones1), Season 1, Episode 7

The rockwall is a mysterious, ancient, largely buried 20 mile long (3.5 miles x 5.6 miles) wall near Rockwall Texas. Archeologists mostly consider the wall to be a natural formation. The information concerning the wall comes to us from old newspaper articles and those stories even contain references to giant human skulls. In the past few years there have been new investigations.

Aaron’s blog post about the site and the visit can be found here: Man vs Archeaeology-The Rock-Wall-Phenomenon

Denial Is Not Just A River In Egypt: Suppressed Evidence of Human, Dinosaur and Other “Extinct” Fauna Interaction in First Century Roman, Nilotic Art

Church of Darwin, Crypto, Dinosaurs in Literature, s8int.com, Science, Sophistication of Ancestors, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Mar 24 2012


By Chris Parker (Repost from s8int.com)

PART 1

PART II


Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

I was reminded of that little witticism this weekend. I left the downtown branch of the public library with a plan to stop by Raul’s for a super burrito, a burrito so large that Ive actually had to take a nap right there under one of Raul’s tables after polishing one off.

I was shocked to discover that Raul’s was no longer there. It had been replaced by a new sushi place.

Raul’s place had replaced a deli restaurant, which had in its turn replaced a pizza shop. I recall that some time ago it had been some kind of smoothie/coffee shop.

Only denial could explain why each new owner believed that his restaurant would succeed where all the others had failed-and why a bank would keep making loans at the location.

“Denial is the refusal to acknowledge the existence or severity of unpleasant external realities or internal thoughts and feelings.”(free Dictionary) Denial is the Lingua Franca of the human race and the state of denial is larger than the State of California.

When it comes to the issue of dinosaur and human co-existence, denial is also of course in operation. On the Christian side, some but not all have chosen to deny that dinosaurs even existed for fear that there existence might somehow discredit the Bible.

Materialists, rationalists, and/or Atheists similarly seek to discredit any evidence that proves or might tend to support the fact that dinosaurs and humans coexisted for fear that such proof might discredit evolutionary theory.

Palestrina Mosaic. CLICK HERE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION NILE MOSAIC IMAGE

In this article s8int.com will once again, (as weve tried to do on more than 50 pages of this section), provide visual evidence that dinosaurs and humans did in fact coexist; this time in the art of the 1st century. In this article we will seek to show that not just dinosaurs but that other fauna said by science to have become extinct millions of years ago were still living up to at least the time of the 1st century A.D.

I was in the library this week poring over literally thousands of pages of early Roman art, including the art of 1st century Pompeii. I spent this time in the library after spending weeks trying to find more copies and higher resolution photos of the pieces being presented here online.

If and when I did find them, in the great majority of cases the representations of the art had been cropped so that the offending details had been eliminated. Other companion works were often shown in their entirety and often in higher resolution, but these were not.

Although these art masterpieces should be easy to find, they are not.

As you look at the evidence s8int.com presents here, remember that the keepers of the evolutionary paradigm did everything overtly or subtlety possible to keep us from seeing them. That might tend to lend them additional credibility as evidence supporting interaction since there would be no need to surpress or deny information which does not threaten the paradigm.

The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina and the hunting mosaic from the House of the Physician are incredible works that should be well known to the public in their entirety, but if in fact they were well known, they would be very controversial with respect to the evolutionary timeline.

What we really wonder about is; with respect to the powers that be who conspire to keep this information out of the public eye, do they themselves manage to maintain the belief that dinosaurs and man never coexistedor is it just the great unwashed true believers out there who have the pure religion? Is the power of denial really that strong?

What we do know is that whatever we do stumble upon here at s8int.com or whatever anyone else discovers is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Nile is not just a river in Egypt.

The Nile is the longest river in the world, stretching northwards for approximately 4,000 miles from East Africa to the Mediterranean. In addition to Egypt, it flows through the African countries of Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, DR Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia,. Nilotic art like the first century Nile Mosaic of Palestrina detailed life along the Nile.

“The vast Nilotic mosaic (21.3 x 17.3 feet) set into the floor of the apsidal hall adjacent to the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste (Palestrina) provides important evidence for what Roman triumphal paintings using topographical conventions may have looked like.

On the mosaic, the Nile winds past vignettes representing exotic landscapes and settlements; the more recondite details are carefully labeled in Greek, underscoring the Alexandrian source of the genre. The precise nature of the relationship between the mosaic and cartographic practices is controversial.

Recently the Palestrina mosaic has been interpreted as an actual topographic map of the Nile: the upper part of the mosaic represents Ethiopia, the upper zone of the lower section represents Egypt, and the foreground represents the Delta, top to bottom understood as south to north, the standard convention for ancient maps.

More likely, however, the mosaic provides a large, coherent landscape composition of the Nile during the flood season, nevertheless dependent on topographical conventions”.( Meyboom )

Dinosaur Art From the House of the Physician-Mid First Century A.D.

“Pompeii is a ruined Roman city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the commune of Pompei. It was destroyed during a catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD.

The volcano buried the city under many metres of ash and it was lost for 1,600 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1748. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire”……Wikipedia

IMAGES: Both of the images on the left are from the “Hunt” mosaic discovered in the House of the physician in Pompeii, Rome.

When the images are discussed, it is within academia, not with the general public.

The apology given for the oversized reptiles is that they are simply nile crocodiles. This is not the case. As we will show, the crocodiles on these Nile works were rendered realistically and accurately as shown in this rendering from the Nile Mosaic on the right.

Note that in the image on the left, and in the complete mural below a man is battling a reptile taller than himself with a shield and a spear. Compare the man, the dinosaur and the building at the center of the image.

The creature on the right has a dermal ridge, unlike a crocodile but exactly like certain dinosaur types which might be safer to sit astride as we will explore below.

Hunt mosaic..

CLICK HERE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION MOSAIC IMAGE

Low stature, armored dinosaur comparison.
.

There are many armored dinosaur types that fit this reptile portrayal at least as well as the crocodile. Most of them had “low slung” bodies with heights of six feet high or less. One can make up his/her own mind but the hunter astride the reptile is between “plates” on its bck. In addition to the examples shown here, other candidates can be seen by following this link.

Another denial tactic is to label the dark skinned peoples in these mosaics as pygmies (to account for reptile towering over native). However, authorities on Roman art note that its not just blacks who are made dimunitve in Roman art but that it was a way of making the Romans seem superior.

African-Roman hercules

African-Roman Hero, Hercules. Fresco, Imperial Roman Pompeii.

Title: Hercules stands beside the enthroned Lydian Queen Omphale

Not only blacks were diminutive in the pieces, white or light skinned persons were dwarfed as well. As a matter of fact, Snowden, in his book “Before Color Prejudice” makes note of the eligaritan nature of the Roman civilization, and apparent lack of color discrimination, using examples from ancient Roman Art; many works showing scenes involving both dark skinned and light skinned citizens.

With respect to the three pieces found at the House of the Physician, all portray light skinned and dark skinned dwarves.

This includes “Judgment of Solomon”, (NOT SHOWN) which depicts the Jews as dwarfed and as both dark skinned and light skinned peoples.

The work below is also first century, from the House of the Physician at Pompeii.

Dinosaur Depiction on Roman Mosaic at Sepphoris?

From the Top of the Page: Detail from floor mosaic discovered at Sepphoris. This is a nilotic scene incorporated into the Dionysos Mosaic.

The mosaic is dated between the first and third centuries. A great earthquake destroyed Sepphoris in 363 A.D.

Note that here warriors/hunters battle the “large reptile” using shields and large rocks.

Science: Oh Ye of Little Faith From the Beginning

Church of Darwin, Fin De Siecle, Religious, s8int.com, Science | Posted by Chris Parker
Feb 24 2012


Genesis 1 The Beginning

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

… And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

…….And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

 

LiveScience: In the Beginning
by Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer

— “Just as species are thought to have evolved over time, the individual molecules that form the basis of life also likely developed in response to natural selection, scientists say.

Life on Earth first bloomed around 3.7 billion years ago, when chemical compounds in a “primordial soup”*somehow sparked into life, scientists suspect.

But what turned sterile molecules into living, changing organisms?

That’s the ultimate mystery.”

*Last year, many Science News Outlets reported that the 80 Year “Primordial Soup” theory had been rejected. New Research Rejects 80-Year Theory of ‘Primordial Soup’ as the Origin of Life….s8intcom

Three Cryptozoological Mysteries: The Penn State Dinosaur that Was?; the Ancient Chinese Rhinoceros that Wasn’t; and the 19th Century Pterosaur Displaying Previously Unknown Morphological Features That Might Have Been

Church of Darwin, Crypto, Dinosaurs in Literature, s8int.com, Science, The Flood of Noah, Uncategorized, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Feb 04 2012


By Chris Parker

I’m thinking that maybe the best part of my articles are the titles. Should I just stop right here? After all these years I’m still a hunt and peck typist and that took something out of me already. Where’s that Dragon Naturally speaking program?

The Penn State Dinosaur that Was?

Dragon? Oh yeah, naturally, let’s start with the Penn State “dragon”.

To be fair, they don’t call this one a dragon; they call it “zoomorphic”. If you’re interested in looking for dinosaurs in the art of the ancient peoples-in the art of people who lived within the last 5,000 years or so and have an opportunity to search a database of objects, try the words; dragon, zoomorphic, mythical, beast, grotesque, reptile or unknown creature.

This is not to say that these objects will necessarily be depictions of dinosaurs, I’m just saying searching ancient art using the term “dinosaur” is not a profitable enterprise.

I grew up believing that dinosaurs and man lived together as the Bible would have us believe, (calling them dragons). There was a time when I was less than convinced and so set out to find out the truth for myself. Subsequently it’s been confirmed by me after I’ve had the opportunity to search university databases and to view hundreds of thousands of pieces of ancient art in museum collections and for sale in private auctions that we did live within the time of the dinosaurs and that the proof is there.

As for ancient artifacts, the more they resemble a dinosaur, the less likely they will be on public view in a museum and the less valuable they will be. No museum wants to buy your ancient Aztec dinosaur.

Anyway, I read recently that the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was opening its collection of over 1 million objects to public view through a free online archive;

“Since its founding in 1887, the Penn Museum has collected around one million objects, many obtained directly through its own field excavations or anthropological research. Search the Penn Museum’s digital collections including 326,000 object records representing 660,000 objects with 51,500 images.”

Naturally, my immediate thought was; “I wonder if I can find some dinosaurs in that collection”. First, I searched for the word, “dragon”. Slim pickings. Then I searched the word zoomorphic. This is one of the items I discovered.

Zoomorphic Vessel,
Object Number:
35618
Provenience:
Bolivia
Cachilaya
Section:
American
Materials:
Stone
Description:
In shape of a lizard
Credit Line:
Max Uhle, William Pepper Peruvian Expedition, Funded by Phebe A. Hearst
Other Number / Type:
362 / Field No SF

In the shape of a lizard! But no lizard ever looked like that in my estimation. However, being able to call the object; “zoomorphic” and a “lizard” is why you’re getting to see the object in the first place. Any objects which would have to be classified a “dinosaur” are by definition; fakes.

On the other hand since my impression of the object is that it represents a dinosaur, I have to ask myself; what kind of dinosaur? It appears to be a quadrupedal dinosaur, but it is not long necked like a sauropod or even a prosauropod and it is not an armored dinosaur, nor one of the horned dinosaurs of the ceratopsian family.

This is what I did; I Googled; short necked South American dinosaurs and began perusing that group to see if modern day paleontologists had discovered a short necked, squat, quadrupedal dinosaur in South America, preferably in the Bolivian area which corresponded with an ancient artists depiction of a dinosaur living in his time. Did you follow that?

Here’s what I found.


“Brachy-trachelopan is an unusual short-necked sauropod dinosaur from the latest Jurassic Period (Tithonian) of Argentina. The holotype and only known specimen (Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio MPEF-PV 1716) was collected from an erosional exposure of fluvial sandstone within the Cañadón Cálcero Formation on a hill approximately 25 km north-northeast of Cerro Cóndor, Chubut Province, in west-central Argentina, South America.

Though very incomplete, the skeletal elements recovered were found in articulation and include eight cervical, twelve dorsal, and three sacral vertebrae, as well as proximal portions of the posterior cervical ribs and all the doral ribs, the distal end of the left femur, the proximal end of the left tibia, and the right ilium. Much of the specimen was probably lost to erosion many years before its discovery. The type species is Brachytrachelopan mesai. The specific name honours Daniel Mesa, a local shepherd who discovered the specimen while searching for lost sheep. The genus name translates as “short-necked Pan”, Pan being the god of the shepherds.”…Wikipedia

Distance from Bolivia to Argentina? 1500 Miles. So could Brachytrachelopan have had a range of 1500 miles on the South American continent? Is this the least scientific investigation possible?

No, see paleontology.

Could this ancient piece represent in an artful, non literal way a quadrupedal dinosaur like Brachytrachelopan living not millions of years ago but less than a thousand years ago on the South American continent or; is it just a fat lizard?

You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

 

The Ancient Chinese Rhinoceros that Wasn’t


I was saving this as an entry in Part 2 of my Article: Crouching Dragon, Hidden Dinosaur; How Evolutionary Science Hides Historical Man and Dinosaur Interaction in Plain Sight but since that hasn’t been compiled yet I’ll place two planned entries for that article here.

Along with euphemisms like “zoomorphic”, “mythical” and ‘dragon” that it turns out are often appended to the rare depiction of the dinosaur found in museum collections and at private auction sales is the tendency to misidentify animal depictions.

This is because when the curator is not sure what creature it is that is being represented by the ancient artist he still likes to come up with an answer that is not outside the realm of currently accepted science and which satisfies the potential customer.

It’s an ancient Chinese bear, a new owner might say proudly to his houseguests as they stare into his lighted display case at what is actually a ground sloth. Everyone still oohs and ahhs.

This particular piece was sold at auction at Christie’s auction house in 2007 for $216,000. Here is the description:

Lot Description A RARE AND SMALL BRONZE FIGURE OF A RHINOCEROS
TANG DYNASTY (618-907 AD)

Shown standing four-square with tail flicked to the left, the head well cast with two horns of different length, ears pricked back, small eyes and downward curved, overlapping muzzle sensitively cast along the upper edges of the mouth with folds in the skin, which can also be seen in the skin of the neck and chest, the thick hide indicated by overlapping wave pattern diminishing in size on the head and legs, with a rectangular aperture in the belly, the dark brownish surface with some patches of dark red patina and green encrustation.

Lot Notes The depiction of the rhinoceros in bronze is very rare, especially during the Tang period. Earlier depictions do exist, however, as evidenced by the late Shang rhinoceros zun in the Avery Brundage Collection, illustrated by d’Argencè, The Ancient Chinese Bronzes, San Francisco, 1966, pl. XIX and another large zun (22 7/8in. long), ornately decorated, but quite realistic in its depiction of a rhinoceros, of late Eastern Zhou/Western Han dynasty date, found in Xingping Xian, Shaanxi province, included in the exhibition, The Great Bronze Age of China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980, New York, Catalogue, no. 93


Here’s the problem though; this is Not a depiction of a rhinoceros! (I studied economics in college so….). For one thing, I’ve looked at hundreds if not more than a thousand photographs and depictions of rhinoceri and you’ll not find a single one of them who has horns that point forward. All rhinoceros horns curve backwards.

Small detail, I know but if you look closely at and compare this depiction with that of the rhinoceros you’ll begin to see the differences. For instance, this creature has a beak! No self respecting rhino would sport a “beak” because rhinos do not have “beaks’. Additionally, this rhino has a horn that projects straight up out of the top of his skull. That would appear to be a rhino no no.

There are other differences; the rhino has a sway back, this creature’s back is convex, etc. etc. Did you notice that he’s not wearing the little rhino coat that rhinos seem to wear where there legs seems to be poking out of the short sleeves?

Is there an ancient, perhaps extinct creature with perhaps the size of a rhino, (or larger) horned but with a “beak”? (I may have tipped my hand with the adjacent photo).


Well, the ceratopsia certainly had beaks and ceratopsia does mean “horned face”. After studying members of the ceratopsian family it appears that the comparison with this artifact is pretty solid but; there is one thing missing; the neck frill.

Most if not all known ceratopsian dinosaurs were supposed to have a neck frill although there are some differences among scientists as too how the neck frill appeared.

Also, I can find no photo of the object that shows the tail; only the statement that it curves off to the left. But can a rhino tail do anything but hang? Seeing the tail would answer some questions perhaps because a ceratopsian like tail would certainly rule out the rhino while a rhino like tail would create more questions.

Could this be a yet undiscovered version of a ceratopsian dinosaur without the neck frill? I am put in mind of the Emela-ntouka.
(Although it could also be perspective. The outline of the frill along with the convincing detail of the ceratopsian ‘cheek” may be in evidence).

“The Emela-ntouka is an African legendary creature in the mythology of the Pygmy tribes, and a cryptid purported to live in Central Africa. Its name means “killer of the elephants” in the Lingala language.

In other languages it is known as the Aseka-moke, Njago-gunda, Ngamba-namae, Chipekwe or Irizima. The Emela-ntouka is claimed to be around the size of an African Bush Elephant, brownish to gray in color, with a heavy tail, and with a body of similar shape and appearance to a rhinoceros, including one long horn on its snout. Keeping its massive bulky body above ground level supposedly requires four short, stump-like legs.

It is described as having no frills or ridges along the neck. The animal is alleged to be semi-aquatic and feed on Malombo and other leafy plants. The Emela-ntouka is claimed to utter a vocalization, described as a snort, rumble or growl….Wikipedia

For more information on Emela-ntouka here is a story on Cryptomundo

Here is another aspect of this mystery; Chinese unicorns.

I was researching ancient Chinese rhinos and discovered that somehow there had come to be a conflagration of the rhino and the unicorn; the combo is known today as the “rhinoceros unicorn”. The ancient Chinese unicorn has a frame around its head that somewhat reminds one of the ceratopsian neck frill.

One Chinese site (Chinese-Unicorn.coms) sets out to prove in what would be our 4th cryptozoological mystery that the supposed 50,000 years extinct Elasmotherium is the actual creature being depicted as the ancient Chinese unicorn. Since monokeros is the Greek word meaning “one horn” from which the word unicorn comes to us, the elasmotherium is accurately described as a unicorn whether or not it was the “unicorn”.

Elasmotherium (“Thin Plate Beast”) is an extinct genus of giant rhinoceros endemic to Eurasia during the Late Pliocene through the Pleistocene, documented from 2.6 Ma to as late as 50,000 years ago, possibly later, in the Late Pleistocene, an approximate span of slightly less than 2.6 million years. Three species are recognised. The best known, E. sibiricum was the size of a mammoth and is thought to have borne a large, thick horn on its forehead which was used for defense, attracting mates, driving away competitors, sweeping snow from the grass in winter and digging for water and plant roots”….Wikipedia

Here we show an artists depiction of elasmotherium along with two ancient depictions of the unicorn. Left, Eastern Han Dynasty, 206 B.C. – 220 A.D. right, also Eastern Han Dynasty.

What is the being depicted in the object that sold at Christie’s auction in 2007 for $216K? A mythical creature? A ceratopsian? Emela-ntouka?

What it is is a genuine crptozoological mystery.

What it ain’t is a rhinoceros.

 

20th Century Pterosaur Displaying Previously Unknown Morphological Features That Might Have Been

Iola Register, September 25, 1896
CAUGHT IN FLORIDA. MARKET REPORTS.
Marine Monster Tbat Is Part Fish Part
Bird Part Animal
.

“Sea serpents are becoming too common, and when Florida people decided to produce a marine monster the serpent family was ignored and the Diabolus Maris was produced.

The picture which is presented was made from a drawing sent to the Kansas City Journal by Capt. George Bier, of the United States Navy.


The animal was caught off the coast of Florida, at Malanzas inlet, in 72 feet of water. It was caught on a hook and line, and when dragged aboard the boat was full of fight.
In order to preserve the strange monster it was found necessary to kill it, for it was so vicious that it could not be handled.

This remarkable relic of the antediluvian monster seemed to be part bird, part fish and part animal.

Capt. Bier described it as follows:

“It has no scales, although it can swim. A portion of its body is covered with hair and when it wants to fly it inflates two windbags behind its wings. This Inflation is through its gills, which are situated on its breast. It stands upright upon its feet, which are shaped like hoofs. Its face and body are more human like than anything else and its mouth is like that of a raccoon, garnished with two rows of teeth. It stood about 20 inches high and strutted like a rooster.”

Above and below the creature compared to a “modern” pteosaur depiction and below to an antique African pterosaur depiction.

>
After its capture the monster was christened DIABOLUS MARIS, and was transferred to Tampa. Fla. where it has since been on exhibition. Naturalists who have seen it can find no other name for it, and it’s like has never been seen before.

Some fish have fins that resemble wings, and can be used for flying, but fish do not wear hair.

The presence of legs prove that it is not a fish, and its ability to live under water and the gills
prove that it is not a bird.”…End of article

Question? If pterosaurs had an air bladder on their backs that could be filled with air to assist them in flight would we be able to determine this from fossils?

Would an air bladder help to explain how such large creatures could get off the ground? Paleontologists are so confused by the subject that they recently released to widely separated “studies” reported heavily in the media that reached two opposite conclusions; pterosaurs could not fly and alternatively they were the best flyers ever. (Couldn’t Fly-Mar 2009
Could Fly 10,000 Miles-Oct 2010)

Did we know that pterosaurs had “hair” or that they may have been able to breathe under water? That they had gills?

“The pterosaurs seem to have been able to fly soon after birth ( as possibly were some ancestral birds which means that during this prodigious growth their aerodynamics had to be functional at all times. In contrast, modern birds are born flightless and only begin to fly at nearly adult size.” .BBC Science

It makes more sense that God created pterosaurs with the ability to fly utilizing wings and air bladders than to believe that mutation and survival of the fittest created winged flightless creatures, eh Paleontologists?

The Top 11 Science Stories of 2011 for Christians/Creationists

Church of Darwin, Fin De Siecle, s8int.com, Science, The Flood of Noah, Uncategorized, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Jan 11 2012


by Chris Parker

Last year we published The Top 12 Science Stories of 2010 for Christians and Creationists on January 7th so this doesn’t 2011 roundup is not that late after all..

These stories are the ones that strike us as having been the most interesting, the most impactful in terms of the evolution creation debate or because we didn’t want to rename this article the Top 7 Science Stories of 2011 for Christians/Creationists. This year we’ve only selected 11 stories but remember; we’re in a recession.

Our selections are printed here in no particular order.

1)Science Keeps on Marching Backward: Science ‘Walks Back Some Dubious Claims in 2011

In 2009 and 2010 Ardi and Ida were both effectively debunked as human ancestors within six to eight months of their worldwide discovery announcements, setting new records “for scientists had previously thought” reversals.

In terms of past dubious claims, it had taken NASA 11 years to march back from its 1976 alleged alien life on a meteorite discovery. On Friday, March 4th of last year NASA had another opportunity to march science backward with “alien claims”. Nasa scientist Richard Hoover published a peer reviewed article in the Journal “Cosmology” with the claim that that he had found tiny fossils of alien life in the remnants of a meteorite.


This story was published internationally under headlines like: “NASA Scientist Finds ‘Alien Life’ Fossils”. Naturally, the NASA connection seemingly provided some support to the alien claim which was met with excitement-and skepticism.

Hold that thought for a minute before; the rest of the story.

In another area of scientific dubiosity; “Twenty years ago the palaeontological community gasped as geoscientists revealed evidence for the oldest bacterial fossils on the planet.”..naturenews

The evidence here was a piece of rock found in Australia known as the Apex Chert and it contained it was said evidence of the earliest life on earth. Scientists declared that the Apex Chert was 3.5 billion years old, whereas Genesis would set its maximum age at 10,000 years or less. Late last year there was a development re the Apex Chert as described by this headline:

“Whoops! Scientists left red-faced as oldest ‘evidence of life’ turns out to be iron deposits.”

Whoops indeed. And what about all those evolution adherents who had snootily quoted this “fact” to non-evolution believers for twenty years? This ‘scientists had previously thought” item took even longer than the 1976 NASA “discovery” to reverse.

Getting back to NASA scientist Richard Hoover’s “alien life fossils”.

They were announced on a Friday and disavowed by “top scientists in different disciplines”, including NASA by the following Monday, by noon, setting new standards for scientists had previously thought type reversals. No alien fossils and quite probably no bacterial fossils.

Finally there were the international headlines about the “God Particle”. Science it was said was very close to discovering the “God Particle”, which is a major tenet of materialist beliefs about the creation of the universe is a supposed fundamenal particle reponsible for the creation of the mass of the universe’s mass. Two weeks after the banner headlines about the closeness the world of science was to the discovery we learn in less banner headlines that the particle may not exist.

What doesn’t exist any more are the billions of tax dollars that went into the constructiion of the giant CERN particle accellerator in Geneva.

2) A 2011 Gallop poll indicates that 92% of Americans affirm a belief in God. A surprise; Atheists are more likely to live on the East Coast than the West Coast.

Apparently, one of the un-cleverest things that a presidential candidate could utter these days is that they believe that Genesis is the literal story of how the universe was created and that they personally believe that man and dinosaur co-existed. Even the Republican candidates would be hard pressed to say that publically even if they’re trying to win South Carolina.

So, the Atheists and evolutionists must be winning, right? Not so fast.

“A poll released by Gallup yesterday confirmed what a deeply religious America continues to be 92 percent of Americans still say “yes” when asked the basic question “Do you believe in God?” In 1947, this number was 94 percent. Considering the events over the past 60 years, this is a remarkably stable statistic to say the least.

Gallup notes that in particular, the belief in God is high across all subgroups of the population, but there are variances. Women are more likely to believe in God than men. Liberals are less likely to believe than conservatives. Young people are the least likely to believe.

Those with a post-graduate education are less likely to believe than high school or college graduates. Finally, East Coast Americans are the least likely to believe in God, and Southerners are the most, with the West and the Midwest coming in equally in between.

But how do we stack up against other countries? A 2008 Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey reveal that only 1 in 4 of our neighbors up north believe in God. And a 2005 Eurostat poll indicated that the French, perhaps our cultural opposite, had the highest atheism in Europe — 33% responded that they believed in “neither a Spirit, God, or life force.”

Here is the breakdown of the Gallup poll for U.S. adults.”


In concert with these poll findings other recent polls continue to show that Atheists are the most distrusted group in America although Muslims and Scientologists have made up some ground.

Elsewhere:A University of Minnesota Study on “American Attitudes Towards Atheists & Atheism”
Finds that Atheists are Most Despised, Most Distrusted Minority..
The findings indicate that Americans are least likely to vote for an Atheist for President than any other group. What would happen if a Christian acknowledging that he believed in a literal reading of Genesis ran against an Atheist?

3) Darwinists Alarmed at Teachers’ Caution Over Evolution

Jan 29, 2011 — “Creationism” refuses to die in American high schools. Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania sounded the alarm in Science, with suggestions for what to do about it. The only suggestion off the table was to have debates about the evidence; no, that was completely out of the question: the report was focused on “Defeating Creationism.”

Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, professors of political science at U Penn, surveyed a “national representative probability sample” of 926 high school biology teachers about their teaching of evolution. Only about 28% of the respondents consistently teach evolution “unabashedly”.

The rest are either bashful or unabashedly “creationist” when teaching the subject of origins, the survey found. 13% of the teachers “explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design by spending at least 1 hour of class time presenting it in a positive light (an additional 5% of teachers report that they endorse creationism in passing or when answering student questions).”

This sounds like a very small amount of time to worry about in a semester-long course, but Berkman and Plutzer’s alarm was palpable: “The boldness and confidence of this minority should not be underestimated.”

Of greater concern, however, (to evolutionists) “the cautious 60%” who sit on the fence to avoid controversy. Some of them avoid the topic, or just teach to the test, or teach various views to let the students make up their own minds. Few of the fence-sitters are advocates of young-earth creationism, which Berkman and Plutzer said “would prevent them from becoming strong advocates for evolutionary biology.”

The authors worry that many students, who will take biology as their only science course, will fail to hear from these cautious teachers the “evidence that evolution has occurred,” and that instruction in evolution will be “absent, cursory, or fraught with misinformation” in American high schools.

They worry about a “cycle of ignorance” in many communities, especially the “socially conservative” communities, where more of the “creationist” and “cautious” teachers tend to reside. The cycle must be broken to prevent a “systematic undermining of science.” Source: The fantastic
CreationEvolutionHeadlines

4) Peer reviewed scientific paper claims that the geological time scale could be off as much as 99%.

Guy Berthault, the author of the study is a graduate of The Ecole Polytechnique, France, and a member of the International Association of Sedimentologists and lives in Paris, France. The article is entitled “Analysis of the Main Principles of Stratigraphy on the Basis of Experimental Data”, and although it reaches some startling conclusions it’s caused barely a ripple in the millions of years geological continuum.

They are walking by faith and not by sight (or site) so that mere evidence is not going to impact them.

“When I started my experiments on strata formation I was surprised to find how little work had been done on the subject in the past. Of course, sediments had been examined and flume experiments performed in connection with building and other projects, but none with the object of explaining the mechanics of stratification.

I searched the data banks but found little to help with my research. I began to realize that the basic principles of superposition, continuity and initial horizontality laid down in the seventeenth century had been accepted, albeit with developments, virtually without question. There seemed to have been little attempt to examine the actual mechanics involved.

Yet a few simple experiments, first with laminae and later with strata revealed that the time needed for micro or macro strata formation was of quite a different order to that generally accepted. The implications were far-reaching both as concerns the geological time-scale and the fossil record.” Source: Author’s Site

5) Archaeopteryx Feathers will fly: Archaeopteryx relegated. Reclassification Raises Fear of Creationists
July 28, 2011 by Steve Drury |EARTH PAGES

“This year, 2011, is the 150th anniversary of the first Archaeopteryx specimen being unearthed from the famous Solnhofen limestone lagerstätte. With its feathered, lizard-like tail; two-clawed, stubby wings; a bill-shaped muzzle with teeth but no keratin coating; feet capable of perching and unlike those of small dinosaurs; a ‘wishbone’ and lightweight bones, Archaeopteryx was just the half-and-half missing link in the fossil record so desperately needed to support Darwin’s Origin of Species, published two years beforehand.

It has remained controversial ever since, even having been claimed to be a forgery by such luminaries as cosmologist Fred Hoyle in 1985, despite its superbly preserved intricacies and the existence at the time of 6 slightly different specimens from the same source some discovered long after Hoyle’s supposed master craftsman must have died.

Creationists soon after the first discovery claimed it was simply a bird created on a Friday together with fish (Genesis 1:20) and must have predated dinosaurs by a day, as they were created on the 6th Day along with all the ‘cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth’ (Genesis 1:24-31).

That scurrilous sect will certainly leap gleefully on the new discovery of a feathered dinosaur from the ever productive Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation in NE China (Xu, X. et al.2011. An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of the Avialae. Nature, v. 475, p. 465-470) because ironically, by itself, it could be said to be a missing link too.”

In fact, Xiaotingia zhengi possesses features very like those displayed by Archaeopteryx but convincingly close affinities to deinonychosaurian dinosaurs. The shared features show that neither is a bird (Avialae) and nor are they part of the clade that evolved to birds: they are part of the growing group of feathered dinosaurs that may well have glided or even flown.

As Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University has observed (Witmer, L.M. 201. An icon knocked off its perch. Nature, v. 475, p. 458-459),

‘This finding is likely to be met with considerable controversy (if not outright horror)…’.

Source:Earth Pages

6)More Fear of Creationists: Pssst! Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don’t have a clue about how life began..

John Horgan writing for Scientific American wanted to use that headline 20 years ago when writing about the sad state of science with respect to the origin of life but couldn’t get away with it then. See, science is absolutely certain that life didn’t begin as it is described in Genesis but unfortunately science has no satisfactory alternative explanation. Well actually, they have dozens of alternative, mutually exclusive alternative explanations for the origin of life.

You’re not a scientist? Don’t know much about biology? How about life comes from life? Biogensis, life from life is all anyone knows but science is sure by faith that abiogenesis; life from non-life somehow occurred.

Mr. Horgan is letting us know from the inside that despite their assurance after many years no one has any idea how abiogenesis could have happened.

In 2011 the famous primordial soup grew cold and was thrown out. In our own article on the topic (Life is a Killer Problem for Science –And Hope for Alien Life; Dies Again. Plus, Shhh, Don’t Tell The Creationists we identified dozens of competing theories for the origin of life.

Source:Scientists Don’t Have a Clue How Life Began


7) 80 Whales Buried Mysteriously in Chilean desert .. Shhh, Don’t tell the creationists?
Marine graveyard is evidence for Noah’s Flood?

by Tas Walker
Published: 01 December 2011

“Researchers from the USA and Chile reported, in November 2011, a remarkable bone bed on the west coast of northern Chile near the port city of Caldera, about 700 kilometres (440 miles) north of the capital, Santiago. Excavations uncovered the remains of some 80 baleen whales of which more than 20 specimens were complete.

They also found other kinds of marine mammals including an extinct dolphin with tusks and a sperm whale.

The previous year, construction workers upgrading the Pan-American Highway discovered the fossil site in a road cut just north of Caldera. Since then, teams of scientists led by palaeontologist Nick Pyenson from the Smithsonian Institute and Mario Suarez from the nearby Museo Paleontologico de Caldera have been working to excavate the fossils while the road works were temporarily suspended.

The fossils alongside the highway are confined to a sandstone ridge about 20 metres (70 feet) wide and 240 metres (800 feet) long. Most whales were about 8 metres (25 feet) long, and perfectly preserved. Some whales were so close together that they overlapped one another. The site in a corner of the Atacama Desert is now well above sea level and over a kilometre from the shore. Suarez said it was well known that whale bones jutted out of the ridge, which was given the name Cerro Ballena, or Whale Hill.

Paleontologists were thrilled to find the treasure trove, describing it as “very unusual”. Pyenson thinks the whales all died “more or less at the same time” after they were trapped in a lagoon. Others suggest they became disoriented and beached themselves.

Paleontologist Erich Fitzgerald from Museum Victoria in Australia said it’s possible the remains accumulated over thousands of years. Whale expert Hans Thewissen from Northeast Ohio Medical University thought the whales might have gathered in a lagoon and been stranded by an earthquake or storm. After the connection to the ocean closed, the lagoon dried up and the whales died.

The puzzle of how these marine creatures died has caught news headlines with one reporting “Fossil Bonanza Poses Mystery”. Another asked, “How did 75 whales end up in the desert?”

Interestingly, some of those posting comments on these news reports suggested the creatures perished in Noah’s Flood. Robert Raeburn of Western Australia said, “The whales probably swam there when the whole world was covered in water, about 4000 years ago at the time of Noah. They would then have been stranded when the waters assuaged (drained back) to expose the dry land. … This all makes sense when viewed from a ‘Bible’ perspective.” An email friend suggested the same to Mario Suarez, one of the lead paleontologists. Not surprisingly, this idea generated a deal of web comments.

What stops people making the obvious connection between these fossils and Noah’s Flood? It’s the million-year ages assigned to the fossils.

The field evidence for large-scale catastrophe is overwhelming as these research scientists have reported. What stops people making the obvious connection between these fossils and Noah’s Flood? It’s the million-year ages assigned to the fossils.

On one comments thread Holly from the USA responded to the Noah’s Flood idea with, “Nothing from the Bible perspective makes sense, since 4,000 years ago that area wasn’t covered with water. However it was about 2 million years ago.” “

The remainder of the article and the source: Source

8)Everything that You thought you knew about dinosaurs is wrong! Again!

Were dinosaurs cold or warm blooded? Bi pedal or quadrupedal? Did the hold their heads erect or down? Omnivore, carnivore or vegetarian?

An article written in 2000 in Discover Magazine informs us that no one knows what dinosaurs looked like (except the people who saw them?) A 2009 article in LiveScience suggests that paleontologists have overestimated the girth of certain dinosaurs by as much as a third to a half-all this time.

In 2009 also UC Berkeley paleontologist Mark Goodwin and his partner Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies concluded that many dinosaurs once thought to represent new or separate species may have been new or separate at all.

A miniature creature known as Nanotyrannus, the recently discovered “tiny tyrant” that resembled the ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex, may have been nothing more than a juvenile version of the big dinosaur. And a giant headed, frill-necked creature that its discoverers called Torosaurus turns out to be only an old-age stage of the well-known plant-eating Triceratops.

And Hogwartia, the famous dinosaur that looked like a dragon!!? Just a plain old Pachycephalosaurus!

(What now will become of Chrisparkerosaurus!?

Is the constant shuffling of dinosaurs and dinosaur identifications the result of scientists seeking personal glory or the results of a field, paleontology, which is to science what Denny’s is to haute cuisine?

Yes!

Elsewhere on Horner and Dinosaur Identification Problems: “Dinosaur Classification Is a Mess CreationevolutionHeadlines

May 13, 2011 — Are there a thousand species of dinosaurs – or far fewer? John Horner, a dinosaur hunter himself, thinks the classification is a mess and wants to clean it up. According to Science Magazine News Horner is worried that “with almost 1000 types of dinosaurs on record and a new species being named somewhere in the world every 2 weeks—too many supposedly new discoveries are actually duplicates of animals already on the books.” Another paleontologist, Michael J. Benton, estimates that over half of the named dinosaurs are misclassified.

Apparently human pride is to blame. “Part of the problem, Horner says, is that scientists are sometimes too keen on finding and naming new dinosaurs.” Naming a new dinosaur gets you noticed and published. As a result, fossil hunters tend to focus on the differences instead of the similarities.

Additionally, “paleontologists are coming to realize that the bones of an adult dinosaur can be very different from those of a juvenile animal of the same species and can easily mislead scientists into thinking they are two different species.”..….CreationEvolutionHeadlines

9) Some “Non-Avian Feathered Dinosaurs” May Have Been Birds
Oh, I see; some of your non sequential, ill-logical thoughts have been formed into words

Did you follow that? Some “non-bird” feathered dinosaurs may have been birds?

Science writer Jennifer Viegas in Discovery News summarizes a research paper which had been published in February 2009 Medical Hypotheses. What is a non-avian dinosaur? Or more to the point, why are certain of God’s creatures known broadly as non-avian dinosaurs?

After all, aren’t all creatures either avians or non-avians?

It’s because in the absence of that description people would think that they were birds! In order to support the evolutionists current dinosaur to bird mythology, however, science needs these birds to be dinosaurs.

Suppose evolutionists had a mythology that t-rex’s evolved into dogs. Certain extremely dog-like fossils would be named; –non-dog-ian dinosaurs. (non-canine-dinosaurs)That way everyone would “know”. Source: Discovery News

10)Scientists Continue to Marvel at How Much the Universe is Fined Tuned for Human Life

Existence: Why is the Universe Just Right for us?
by Marcus Chown NewScientist, July 29, 2011

“IT HAS been called the Goldilocks paradox. If the strong nuclear force which glues atomic nuclei together were only a few per cent stronger than it is, stars like the sun would exhaust their hydrogen fuel in less than a second. Our sun would have exploded long ago and there would be no life on Earth. If the weak nuclear force were a few per cent weaker, the heavy elements that make up most of our world wouldn’t be here, and neither would you….(Chown)

If gravity were a little weaker than it is, it would never have been able to crush the core of the sun sufficiently to ignite the nuclear reactions that create sunlight; a little stronger and, again, the sun would have burned all of its fuel billions of years ago. Once again, we could never have arisen.

Such instances of the fine-tuning of the laws of physics seem to abound. Many of the essential parameters of nature – the strengths of fundamental forces and the masses of fundamental particles – seem fixed at values that are “just right” for life to emerge. A whisker either way and we would not be here. It is as if the universe was made for us.

What are we to make of this? One possibility is that the universe was fine-tuned by a supreme being – God. Although many people like this explanation, scientists see no evidence that a supernatural entity is orchestrating the cosmos.

(What! See Prior Paragraphs in this article, genuises!…s8int.com)

Source: NewScientist

11) The Continued Rehabilitation of New-anderthal


“New investigations at an iconic cave site on the Channel Island of Jersey have led archaeologists to believe the Neanderthals have been widely under-estimated.” ..BBC UK

Enough all ready! Several years ago a DNA study showed that Neanderthal DNA matched human DNA to 99.97%. You match your neighbor’s DNA to 99.99%. Jack Cuozzo, a dentist discovered that Neaderthal reconstructions had been deliberately tricked up to push their faces forward in order to make their faces appear to be more apelike. Cuozzo Story

But even though science is reporting these recent truths about Neanderthal; that he was fully human, apparently the message hasn’t penetrated the entire paleontological community.

We get it. The truth is; we never thought otherwise and in fact creationists were there from the beginning–from Genesis. If it was me I’d start to get irritated if people kept making a big deal about how “fully human” I am…BBC News UK

Crouching Dragon, Hidden Dinosaurs-How Evolutionary Science Hides Historical Man and Dinosaur Interaction in Plain Sight

Amusing?, Church of Darwin, Crypto, Dinosaurs in Literature, s8int.com, Science, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Dec 13 2011


“Behold now, behemoth, which I made as well as thee; He eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, And his force is in the muscles of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: The sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are as tubes of brass; His limbs are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God….. Job 40

“So God created the Great Dragons” …Genesis 1:21 The Latin Vulgate; 5th Century

 

By Chris Parker, Copy Right 2011

Obi-Wan Kenobi is a fictional character and one of the primary protagonists in the Star Wars movie series. Portrayed by Alec Guinness in the original trilogy, he was one of the most memorable. In the world of the Star Wars films, Kenobi had a particular skill that he used to great effect known now as “conversational hypnosis”. He was able to convince his antagonists by speaking in a specific tone of voice to alter their intended courses of action or for example, to see something that wasn’t in fact there.

Someone or something with even greater abilities is at work here in the real world. When it comes to modern science’s ability to utilize that same skill in convincing the world that dinosaurs and man never interacted, I’m afraid that Obi-Wan Kenobi comes off as a Wookiee;/rookie. Of course, in the movie Obi-Wan had the virtue of not being on the “dark” side. Not true of modern science.

Citizen: ”Science, Shouldn’t I look into the dinosaur/ancient dragon connection more closely?”
Evolutionary Science: [with a small wave of its hand]’ You don’t need to look into the dinosaur question more closely”.
Citizen: ” We don’t need to look more closely.”
Evolutionary Science: [calmly, smoothly, head moving side to side; indicating no..] These aren’t the dinosaurs you’re looking for.
Citizen: [trancelike] “These aren’t the dinosaurs I’m looking for.”
Evolutionary Science: You can go about your business.
Citizen: “ I can go about my business”.
Evolutionary Science:” Move along”.
Citizen: “ Moving along, moving along.”

It’s a bit ironic how easily even evolutionists accept portrayals of man and dinosaur together in cartoons, television programs and movies. However, we have all been trained regarding when it is acceptable to see these interactions and when it is not. Dinosaurs in cartoons; yes-dinosaurs in ancient art museums, no!

(I know that this particular one isn’t funny, but how about; “When this game evolves we’ll be using pigskin instead of dinosaur skin, but they won’t be here ‘til the Olicene”?)

Click on the cartoon above for the rest of this story. The point; dinosaurs and dragons; change the context change the dragon.

 

Photo Right:Top-Rhamphorynchus fossil at the British Nuseum, 1922. Bottom- Aurora Defeating the Dragon, Aurora Consurgens, Published 1420.

When the British Museum put the fossil remains of Rhamphorynchus on display in 1922, it was labeled “Pterodactyl or Extinct Flying Dragon”, drawing a direct line from the pterosaur of modern science to the historic tales of dragons, flying and otherwise that had pervaded the written and artistic history of virtually every ancient culture.

A photograph of that 1922 exhibit is shown here along with a drawing from the 1420 Book Aurora Consurgens (Aurora Defeating the Dragon). This 1420 book depicts a version of the British Museum pterosaur some 350 years prior to their scientific discovery by Cosimo Collini in 1784. Collini thought that they were seagoing creatures.

It’s true that pterosaurs are not considered to be dinosaurs but ancient cultures considered them all (dinosaurs, marine reptiles and pterosaurs) as either dragons or flying dragons. So what happened? How did the clear reference made by the British Museum of the obvious link between, giant, dangerous, reptilian, land, air and sea monsters with the modern discovery of giant, dangerous, reptilian, land air and sea monsters that we call dinosaurs get severed? These dragons are not the dinosaurs you seek!

Let’s start with why before we consider how. Even prior to Darwin many people had become skeptical about such things as the Biblical chronology of the earth and biblical history. For many dragons were considered mythological and a reason to doubt the Bible’s veracity. In this same period, the theories of the geologic column and formation of the earth over millions of years served as grist for the evolution mill. The term dinosaur was coined in 1842. Origin of the Species was published in 1859. All these tended to provide some evidence or support for Atheists and skeptics.

As more and more of these giant, mysterious creatures science called dinosaurs were discovered there was a chance that they could have been associated with the dragons of “recorded history” but instead were placed by science by use of the geologic column to an age millions of years ago.

This fit neatly with modern anti-biblical notions regarding the age of the earth and with evolutionary processes which needed millions and billions of years to complete. Of course any suggestions that dinosaurs were the dragons of the Bible and of ancient cultures would serve to undermine these theories and to support the Bible. The relatively new claim that birds evolved from dinosaurs would seem even more ridiculous if it was understood that dinosaurs were running around with birds –and man just a few years ago.

How Did They do it?

For one thing; scientific illustrators try to make sure that dinosaur depictions look nothing at all like ancient depictions of dragons. It may surprise you to know that scientists actually have no idea what dinosaurs looked like. Witness this rather long exerpt from a Discover Magazine Article in 2000 entitled:What Did Dinosaurs Really Look Like?

“In recent months, artists in the workshop have been putting finishing touches on a special exhibit called Fighting Dinosaurs. In a diorama for the new exhibit a fierce velociraptor, looking like a thinned-down turkey with frighteningly large teeth, stalks a protoceratops. With a flanged crest and beaked mouth that make it look like a goat-sized version of its larger and more famous cousin, Triceratops, the protoceratops sees the predator coming and snarls.


The scene is so vivid that some visitors may glance around nervously to be certain they haven’t been whisked back 80 million years by a hidden time machine. “When you come upon a diorama,” says David Harvey, the museum’s vice president of exhibitions, “it transcends all of the data. It becomes a real experience.”

Yet it is precisely that experience with which a growing number of scientists have a big problem: There is precious little data about dinosaurs to transcend. What the museum scientists know about Indians, whales, and elephants is more than enough to mimic real life. But when it comes to dinosaurs, all they really have to work with is an incomplete jumble of bones. Indeed, if the exhibits department were limited to just skeletal data for its dioramas and reconstructions, these halls would take on a most unromantic flavor. For instance, the Indians in the canoe would lack noses, ears, and breasts, and the diorama artists (ignoring for the moment that they are humans themselves) would be at a loss for what to cover them in—slick skin like a dolphin? Monkey fur? Gorilla hair? As for the blue whale, no one would know to make it blue. And the elephants are a special case. There’s a running joke among professional dinosaur artists that goes like this: Given just an elephant skeleton, they’d probably render a titanic hamster.

Does anyone know what dinosaurs really looked like? Sure we do. We see them everywhere, not just in the museums, but in magazines, movies, even in value meals at McDonald’s. But all of these lifelike renderings are mostly artistic interpretations based on very sparse scientific evidence. To begin with, dinosaur skeletons are rarely found intact, and figuring out how scattered bones fit together is not always clear. Then, making the leap of placing tissue and skin on those bones is a process fraught with unknowns.

Some paleontologists trained in comparative anatomy are beginning to analyze microscopic marks that soft tissues make on bones in search of clues to what dinosaurs actually looked like. But taking a pile of bones and conjuring up what snarling dinosaurs about to battle each other really looked like involves at best equal parts educated guesswork and complete artistic fancy. As Mark Norell, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum, puts it, dinosaur artwork “is a fantastic leap from what we know.” And most scientists say we may never know a lot more than we do now”….Discover Magazine, September 2000

Dinosaurs look as little like dragons as possible considering that they are both giant, reptilian ‘monsters”. Could artists render them with bonier heads, external ears, beards and the ferocious dragon mien? Not if they want them published or taken seriously. If dinosaurs looked more like dragons it would be even more difficult to get us to “move along” on this issue.

Just a few more things about dinosaurs here; there are not nearly as many types of dinosaurs as you think. Because of evolution theory, dinosaurs are supposed to differ from continent to continent but they don’t. This doesn’t stop science from giving them different names though.

This last note will be important as we begin to look at some actual dinosaur depictions from ancient China—the actual intent of this article –if I can get to it. An article describing a recent study was published in Live Science on June 22, 2009:

Giant Dinosaurs Get Downsized “Some dinosaurs were the largest creatures ever to walk on land, including the classic long-necked, whip-tailed Diplodocus, but a new study suggests it and its many extinct brethren weighed as little as half as much as previously thought.” A new equation for calculating dinosaur mass based on skeletons found that scientists have been overestimating the girth of many dinosaurs.” Giant Dinosaurs get Downsized

    Photo:Might down sized sauropods have looked like this 3,500 year old Mesopotamian Cylinder Seal depiction rather than the standard depiction on the right?

    More here.


Please keep the foregoing in mind and your mind open as you view a few of the many, many examples of dinosaurs catalogued by the ancient Chinese and classed as mythological dragons by modern science; “Crouching dragon? Hidden Dinosaur?” I picked China here today because China and Asia are thought to be the ancient source of the “mythological dragon”. In truth, they appeared in the art and written history of virtually all ancient cultures in some form because “dinosaurs” lived all over the planet within recorded history. Of course it must be said that many alleged mythological creatures were in fact fanciful.

It’s time for a little show and tell!
[whisper] chris parker; these are not the dinosaurs you seek…

Tang Dynasty Running Dragons

I’ve often particularly noticed these little gold Tang Dynasty (618 A.D. to 907 A.D.) running dragons at the Shanghai Museum. Known as running dragons, this little herd of “dragons” are versions of the same type of dragon that crops up in the art of a number of ancient Chinese Dynasties. What a curious way to portray a mythological creature! In a herd.

I thought that perhaps they might be depictions of actual creatures but I was never successful in finding anything similar in modern depictions of dinosaurs.

I noted that there are other versions of this dragon in ancient Chinese art, but I also came across a very similar dragon in the art of ancient Babylon. What strikes me about these dragons is their slight build but also the seemingly “exaggerated” distance between their front and back legs. They certainly don’t make one think of most modern depictions of dinosaurs.

Remember however, that 1) no scientist today has a clue what dinosaurs actually looked like and 2)there is some indication that artists have been placing a little too much meat on the bone; oversizing them as much as double according to the Live Science article quoted above.

The Tang Dynasty dragons are in the center; on the right of the graphic is the famous dragon of Marduk from the Babylonian Ishtar gate. The Babylonian dragon precedes the Tang Dynasty versions by 1,000 years. Is it a coincidence that two ancient societies created nearly identical mythological dragons?


Perhaps. But perhaps not.. The creature on the left is Massospondylus (above photo; skeleton is alongside this para) (“a genus of prosauropod dinosaur from the early Jurassic Period (Hettangian to Pliensbachian ages, ca. 200–183 million years ago).” Wikipedia), as it appears on a Canadian stamp.

Massopondylus’ skeleton is very slight and most artists have depicted it as a heavier creature. However, drawn as a slighter animal it bears a resemblance to the Chinese dragons. Certainly if this group of dinosaurs, including other similar dinosaurs such as plateosaurus (small prosauropods) had been depicted like this some of us would have drawn a straighter line between dinosaurs and dragons even without the external “dragon” features.

“fossil concentrations have suggested that Massospondylus was a herd animal, perhaps wandering through the ancient landscape of what is today South Africa – as well as the rest of Africa – like modern wildebeest. It was certainly widespread. Remains of Massospondylus have also been found in North and South America, China and India.

When Massospondylus was alive, today’s land masses were all joined together in the super-continent Pangaea (‘Pan-jee-a’, which is Greek for “All Earth”). This distribution of fossils indicates that the animals were present in large numbers over very large areas.” ….www.primeorigins.co.za/young_minds/massospondylus.htm

Let’s look at other slighter depictions of prosauropods like Massopondylus and compare them to depictions of ancient Chinese “dragons”.

At left, on top, is a Song dynasty dragon, (1127 A.D.-1279 A.D.) in silver and gold with turquoise inlays from the Musee Guimet, in Paris. Below is a depiction of plateosaurus, a prosauropod, similar to massospondylus. (Note to the detail oriented: the modern depiction has the rear left leg extended backwards at the same time as the forward left leg is extended forward. The mythological dragon seems as though he has the better gait?)

Do these dragons in fact represent truer versions of prosauropod? It could be. The point remains that no one knows what dinosaurs actually looked like.

 

 

I want to show you an additional dinosaur depiction that makes it clear that the same allegedly mythological dinosaur was modeled by as we showed the Babylonians on the Ishtar Gate, (604- 562 BC), the Tang Dynasty (618A.D. -907A.D.) and ancient South America from the Pre-classical Chupicuaro Culture (800 BC to 200 AD).

On top is a piece from the Julsrud collection; a collection of over 30 thousand miniature figurines found buried at the foot of El Toro Mountain on the outskirts of Acambaro, Mexico.

Of course, because the collection features so many obvious dinosaurs interacting with man it is not considered to be genuine. It is remarkable that the same dinosaur/dragon depiction has appeared on at least three continents representing cultures spanning 1,500 years.

The dinosaur/dragon on the bottom is also from the Tang Dynasty; it is a rare painted ceramic that recently sold at auction for over $23,000. The fact that the 1945 discovered Julsrud collection depicts dinosaurs not as modern artists do but as the ancients did provides credibility for the collection and the idea that these are real and not mythological creatures.


Here on the right an apparently clueless ancient Chinese hunter chases a “mythological creature” with either a bow or a bolo weapon. These Sketches (rubbings) of Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.)motifs are by Lampo Leong, a University of Missouri Professor. The dynamic movement is typical of Han art. This appears to be the same dragon depicted by the Tang Dynasty, the ancient Babylonians, the ancient South Americans and-the Canadians!?

Science does not know hat dinosaurs looked like but “it” is sure of this one thing; they did not look anything like dragons!

Moving on.

Liao Dynasty

This next beautiful piece comes down to use from Liao Dynasty, China. (Photo from Wikimedia). It is a drinking flask covered with a Sancai glaze.

“The Liao Dynasty, also known as the Khitan Empire was an empire in East Asia that ruled over the regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of northern China proper between 907 – 1125. It was founded by the Yelü clan of the Khitan people in the same year as Tang Dynasty collapsed (907), even though its first ruler, Yelü Abaoji (Yaruud Ambagai Khan), did not declare an era name until 916.” Wikipedia

This piece is interesting because it features two different dragons. I want to discuss the “dragon” on the top of the flask. First of all, as for it being a dragon; it instead reminds me very much of a ceratopsian dinosaur. After all “ceratopsian” is Greek for “horned face”. The ceratopsians, which includes triceratops; supposedly went extinct more than 65 million years prior to the Liao Dynasty.

I see the horned face, and I see what appears to be from the only angle we have, a rudimentary neck frill.

But do you know what else?

Yes! The feet!. The dinosaur feet! Well, feet that would make tracks similar to those three-toed tracks made by many types of dinosaurs (although there are wide variations in three-toed dinosaur tracks). Note here the leptoceratopsian dinosaur; his feet are very similar to that of our dragon aboard the flask.

Note: “Except in extraordinary circumstances, it’s pretty much impossible to identify the specific genus or species of dinosaur that made a given footprint. What paleontologists can figure out fairly easily is whether the dinosaur was bipedal or quadruped (that is, whether it walked on two or four feet); what geological period it lived in (based on the age of the sediment where the footprint is found); and its approximate size and weight (based on the size and depth of the footprint).”..About.com Dinosaurs

Early American naturalist Edward Hitchcock wrongly interpreted the thousands of dinosaur footprints that he encountered on the America plains as the footprints of giant, flightless birds who roamed the Americas in giant herds. His mistaken hypothesis was taken up by a number of other naturalists for a time.

Here however, the Ancient Chinese somehow rightly associated dinosaur footprints with large dragon and dinosaur-like reptiles….

On the right here we compare the two right footprints of our Liao Dynasty dragon with those of the dinosaur. My guess is that the Ancient Chinese did not have to look at ancient tracks on the plain to figure out what sorts of creatures made them. The creatures; dinosaurs were still living at that time.

 

 

Late Eastern Zhou Sauropod

“The Shang dynasty (1766 BC – 1027 BC) ruled parts of northern and central China. Its capital city was located at Anyang near the border of Henan from about 1384 BCE. This dynasty was based on agriculture; millet, wheat, and barley were the primary crops grown.

In addition to the crops, silkworms, pigs, dogs, sheep, and oxen were raised. Aside from their agricultural prowess, the Shang dynasty was also advanced in metallurgy. Bronze ships, weapons, and tools were found from that era.” Thinkquest

This Ancient Chinese ornamental box of bronze features an unmistakable depiction of a sauropod dinosaur. To be more precise, likely a prosauropod dinosaur. A version of the object appeared in the book (The Great Bronze Age of China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980, p. 285.) Fong, Wen ed. This photo is from Zhengzhou, from the Henan Museum.

The sauropod dinosaurs are easily recognizable and difficult to miss, however, might science here again made its depictions of the creature to large? One alternative to consider is that the creature depicted is one of the group that modern science now calls prosauropods who among other things was generally smaller. The creature crawling up the side of the box is also making an appearance here out in the water in the introductory photo at the very top of the page.

Here also he is shown in comparison to several dinosaurs described as ancient Chinese prosauropods, extinct for over 65 million years.

Top, left Yunnanosaurus; “ a genus of prosauropod dinosaur from the Early to Middle Jurassic Period, a position in time that makes it one of the last prosauropods. It is closely related to Lufengosaurus. Known from two valid species, Yunnanosaurus ranged in size from 7 meters (23 feet) long and 2 m (6.5 ft) high to 13 m (42 ft) long in the largest species.” Yang Zhongjian (aka C. C. Young) discovered the first Yunnanosaurus skeletons in the Lufeng Formation of Yunnan, China…Wikipedia

Bottom, right: Yimenosaurus .”Along with its close contemporary, Jingshanosaurus, Yimenosaurus was one of the largest prosauropods, measuring about 30 feet from head to tail and weighing as much as two tons–not much compared to the plus-sized sauropods of the late Jurassic period, but beefier than most other prosauropods, which only weighed a few hundred pounds. Thanks to its numerous (and near-complete) fossil remains, Yimenosaurus is one of the better known herbivorous dinosaurs of early Jurassic Asia, rivaled only by another Chinese prosauropod, Lufengosaurus.”…Wikipedia

PHOTO;Lufengosaurus Skeleton

The point here is not so much to identify the actual species of prosauropod that the Eastern Zhou “dragon” represents but rather to show that the artist could have credibly meant to represent one of these animals which were thought to have gone extinct 65 million years prior to the Shang Dynasty. This crouching dragon was more likely a hidden dinosaur.

 

 

Han Dynasty Theropod Dinosaur

The Chinese dragon bronze sculpture (below right, faded) is on display at the Glendive dinosaur and fossil museum in Glendive, Montana.

It is dated to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.)and is approximately 2,000 years old. The piece looks remarkably like a Theropod dinosaur including the correct posture, dermal spines, and forearms that end in “hands”. It bears a remarkable resemblance to a Therizinosaur.

The larger and clearer photo of the figure to the left is a virtually identical artifact described as an “ancient Chinese artifact”. The item is for sale on EBAY. The seller claims that it is a bronze, ancient piece from the Bronze Age of China.

If the item is authentic, then it bears a close resemblance to a Therizinosaur with its exaggerated claws and bi pedal stance. One would have to be impressed that the ancient Chinese could have even mythologized a bi pedal dragon/dinosaur. (Note the “compare” drawing is actually of Harpymimus (Wikidino) which is basicallly the Chinese version of the same theropod dinosaur.)

 

 

Ancient Chinese Fu (Foo) Dogs/Lions and other Mysterious Buddhist Temple Creatures

Photo:Pair of Asian stoneware lions 18th century.(1700’s) Busacca Gallery.

Foo Dogs/Lions are neither dogs nor lions. No one is quite sure what they are/were other than mystical creatures. I’ve been interested in them for some time because they are so ubiquitous, because they appear elsewhere in the ancient world outside of China; in ancient India for instance.
From Wikipedia “Chinese guardian lions, known as Shishi lions (Chinese pinyin: shĂ­sh?; literally “stone lion”) or Imperial guardian lion, and often incorrectly called “Foo Dogs” in the West, are a common representation of the lion in pre-modern China.

They have traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, Imperial tombs, government offices, temples, and the homes of government officials and the wealthy, from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), and were believed to have powerful mythic protective benefits. Pairs of guardian lions are still common decorative and symbolic elements at the entrances to restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and other structures, with one sitting on each side of the entrance”.

Photo: Wall at the Ellora Caves

Some time ago I was struck by the following description; from India of a dragon which seemed to picture a creature somewhat similar to the Chinese Foo Dog. Later I found a photo of this Temple scene which also seemed to match the written description of a living creature.

“This kind also have beards, and lift their necks on high, while their scales glitter like silver; and the pupils of their eyes consist of a fiery stone, and they say that this has an uncanny power for many secret purposes.

The plain specimen falls the prize of the hunters whenever it draws upon itself an elephant; for the destruction of both creatures is the result, and those who capture the dragons are rewarded by getting the eyes and skin and teeth.

In most respects they resemble the largest swine, but they are slighter in build and ‘flexible, and they have teeth as sharp and indestructible as those of the largest fishes.”

(See the creature on the far left of the photo above). The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Philostratus {220 AD}On the Existence of Dragons …. Upon his visit to India

Let’s cut to the chase; I may have discovered what these creatures were and they were not mythological as modern science can attest. However, they weren’t dinosaurs either-which is why it took so long for me to identify these particular Chinese/Indian dragons.

For the final section of this somewhat long article I modestly propose to unmask in fact two ancient “mythological creatures”-by name, both of whom it is claimed lived 255 -260 million years ago. One key in examining this upcoming visual evidence is to remember that modern science and modern scientific illustrators like to draw their retrospective animal recreations “unadorned”.

“Moschops (meaning calf face) is an extinct genus of therapsid that lived in the Late Permian, around 255 million years ago. Therapsids were proto-mammals (non-mammal synapsids), which were the dominant land animals. Five metres long, Moschops was the largest land animal of its time, a herbivore preyed on by other therapsids. Its remains were found in the Karoo region of South Africa.

Here is a photo of “dragons” on the temple roof in Ellora.

It was the largest land animal at the time, with a body length of around 5 metres (16 ft). It was a heavily-built herbivore with short, chisel-like teeth for cropping vegetation. The forelimbs sprawled outwards, like those of a modern lizard, but the hind limbs were more mammalian in form, being placed directly under the body. The diet of Moschops was mostly plants, sometimes eating meat.”

“Ellora (Marathi) is an archaeological site, 30 km (19 mi) from the city of Aurangabad in the Indian state of Maharashtra built by the Rashtrakuta dynasty. Well-known for its monumental caves, Ellora is a World Heritage SiteEllora represents the epitome of Indian rock-cut architecture.

The 34 “caves” – actually structures excavated out of the vertical face of the Charanandri hills. Buddhist, Hindu and Jain rock-cut temples and viharas and mathas were built between the 5th century and 10th century” Wikipedia….


Are you familiar with the flack that has been caused by the discovery of a stegosaurus depiction at Angkor Wat? “(or the ceratopsian at Muktinath Temple?

This “dinosaur”/dragon depiction is much older. Here is an up close picture of the Ellora Roof Dragon and moschops or a close relative. Moschops did not live over 250 million years ago. He lived within the history of mankind. He was created by God during the six days of creation.

One could literally crop a close picture of the Ellora dragon, label it Moschops and when it came up in image searches for moschops the internet searcher would be none the wiser.

Another group shot of the ellora roof dragon and moschops should make it even more clear that these creatures were living in India during the 5th century A.D.

How did I get in India talking about moschops when I started out writing about Chinese dinosaur/dragons? I have to confesds that initially I believed that the Foo Dogs of China and India were moschops or one of its close relatives.

This just proves that like paleontology, cryptozoological historical archaeology is not an exact science. It’s not even an exacpt pronunciation. I have come to believe that the Foo dogs/lions of China might have been anotheir creature entirely.

Anteosaurus (meaning “previous or early reptile”) is the name given to an extinct genus of large carnivorous synapsid. It lived during the Capitanian epoch of the Middle Permian (266-260 million years ago) in what is now South Africa. They became extinct by the middle Late Permian.

Anteosaurus was a semi aquatic synapsid with a long tail and weak limbs, which indicate a lifestyle including water, much like that of a crocodile. Anteosaurus weighed approximately 500-600 kg and was around 5-6 m long…

Let’s compare a modern depiction of Antesaurus with an ancient one of the Foo Dog/lion.

There is a lot to like n this depiction of antesaurus as a possible model for the Food dog in China and India;.the musculature, the posture and the incisors to name a few.

This Marx toy version of Moschops by Marx toys is what first made me see a possible association with Moschops.

There are so many articles of ancient art that we didn’t get a chance to examine here that there will no doubt have to be, God willing a part two and three of this article.

These are the dinosaurs you seek.

I feel a disturbance in the farce.

 

Pair of Graphs Described in Paragraphs Prove Global Warming Proponents Uncool: Scientist Who Made Recent Claim that “Sceptics had been proved wrong” Accused of Hiding Truth by Colleague

Church of Darwin, Fin De Siecle, s8int.com, Science, Uncategorized | Posted by Chris Parker
Nov 07 2011


Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague

By David Rose, Daily Mail Online
30th October 2011

It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.
Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.

Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.

The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.

But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago..

Poles apart: Former sceptic Prof Richard Muller, right, says the latest findings settle the climate debate once and for all (warming). But Prof Judith Curry says such a claim is ‘a mistake’.(not warming)

Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.

In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.

‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’

1975 New York Times Headline shows that scientists were concerned about an inevitable worldwide global cooling through the 1970′s…s8int.com

However, Prof Muller denied warming was at a standstill.

‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.

A graph issued by the BEST project also suggests a continuing steep increase.

But a report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website. This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.

‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’

Prof Muller also wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal. It was here, under the headline ‘The case against global warming scepticism’, that he proclaimed ‘there were good reasons for doubt until now’.Media storm: Prof Muller’s claims received uncritical coverage in the media this week.
This, too, went around the world, with The Economist, among many others, stating there was now ‘little room for doubt’.

Such claims left Prof Curry horrified.

The Entire Article can be Found Here: continued…Daily Mail:

SEE ALSO:Why I Deny Global Warming, by David Deming

All The Really Smart People Believe in Manmade Global Warming

Post Article Making Claim that Global Warming was Proven

Why I Deny Global Warming, by David Deming

Church of Darwin, Science, Uncategorized, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Oct 23 2011

by David Deming, Oct. 19, 2011

I’m a denier for several reasons. There is no substantive evidence that the planet has warmed significantly or that any significant warming will occur in the future. If any warming does occur, it likely will be concentrated at higher latitudes and therefore be beneficial. Climate research has largely degenerated into pathological science, and the coverage of global warming in the media is tendentious to the point of being fraudulent. Anyone who is an honest and competent scientist must be a denier.

Have you ever considered how difficult it is to take the temperature of the planet Earth? What temperature will you measure? The air? The surface of the Earth absorbs more than twice as much incident heat from the Sun than the air. But if you measure the temperature of the surface, what surface are you going to measure? The solid Earth or the oceans?

There is twice as much water as land on Earth. If you decide to measure water temperature, at what depth will you take the measurements? How will the time scale on which the deep ocean mixes with the shallow affect your measurements? And how, pray tell, will you determine what the average water temperature was for the South Pacific Ocean a hundred years ago? How will you combine air, land, and sea temperature measurements? Even if you use only meteorological measurements of air temperature, how will you compensate for changes in latitude, elevation, and land use?

Determining a mean planetary temperature is not straightforward, but an extremely complicated problem. Even the best data are suspect. Anthony Watts and his colleagues have surveyed 82.5 percent of stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network. They have found – shockingly – that over 70 percent of these stations are likely to be contaminated by errors greater than 2 deg C [3.6 deg F]. Of the remaining stations, 21.5 percent have inherent errors greater than 1 deg C. The alleged degree of global warming over the past 150 years is less than 1 deg C.

Yet even in a technologically advanced country like the US, the inherent error in over 90 percent of the surveyed meteorological stations is greater than the putative signal. And these errors are not random, but systematically reflect a warming bias related to urbanization. Watts has documented countless instances of air temperature sensors located next to air conditioning vents or in the middle of asphalt parking lots.

A typical scenario is that a temperature sensor that was in the middle of a pasture a hundred years ago is now surrounded by a concrete jungle. Urbanization has been a unidirectional process. It is entirely plausible – even likely – that all of the temperature rise that has been inferred from the data is an artifact that reflects the growth of urban heat islands.

The “denier” is portrayed as a person who refuses to accept the plain evidence of his senses. But in fact it is the alarmist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. The temperature of the Earth and how it has varied over the past 150 years is poorly constrained. The person who thinks otherwise does so largely because they have no comprehension of the science. Most of these people have never done science or thought about the inherent difficulties and uncertainties involved.

And what is “global warming” anyway? As long ago as the fifth century BC, Socrates pointed out that intelligible definitions are a necessary precursor to meaningful discussions. The definition of the term “global warming” shifts with the context of the discussion. If you deny global warming, then you have denied the existence of the greenhouse effect, a reproducible phenomenon that can be studied analytically in the laboratory.

But if you oppose political action, then global warming metamorphoses into a nightmarish and speculative planetary catastrophe. Coastal cities sink beneath a rising sea, species suffer from wholesale extinctions, and green pastures are turned into deserts of choking hot sand.

In fact, so-called “deniers” are not “deniers” but skeptics. Skeptics do not deny the existence of the greenhouse effect. Holding all other factors constant, the mean planetary air temperature ought to rise as the atmosphere accumulates more anthropogenic CO2. Christopher Monckton recently reviewed the pertinent science and concluded that a doubling of CO2 should result in a temperature increase of about 1 deg C. If this temperature increase mirrors those in the geologic past, most of it will occur at high latitudes. These areas will become more habitable for man, plants, and other animals. Biodiversity will increase. Growing seasons will lengthen.

Why is this a bad thing?

Any temperature increase over 1 deg C for a doubling of CO2 must come from a positive feedback from water vapor. Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere, and warm air holds more water than cold air. The theory is that an increased concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere will lead to a positive feedback that amplifies the warming from CO2 by as much as a factor of three to five. But this is nothing more that speculation. Water vapor also leads to cloud formation. Clouds have a cooling effect. At the current time, no one knows if the feedback from water vapor will be positive or negative.

Global warming predictions cannot be tested with mathematical models. It is impossible to validate computer models of complex natural systems. The only way to corroborate such models is to compare model predictions with what will happen in a hundred years. And one such result by itself won’t be significant because of the possible compounding effects of other variables in the climate system. The experiment will have to repeated over several one-hundred year cycles. In other words, the theory of catastrophic global warming cannot be tested or empirically corroborated in a human time frame.

It is hardly conclusive to argue that models are correct because they have reproduced past temperatures. I’m sure they have. General circulation models have so many degrees of freedom that it is possible to endlessly tweak them until the desired result is obtained. Hindsight is always 20-20. This tells us exactly nothing about a model’s ability to accurately predict what will happen in the future.

The entire field of climate science and its coverage in the media is tendentious to the point of being outright fraudulent. Why is it that every media report on CO2 – an invisible gas – is invariably accompanied by a photograph of a smokestack emitting particulate matter? Even the cover of Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, shows a smokestack.

Could it be that its difficult to get people worked up about an invisible, odorless gas that is an integral component of the photosynthetic cycle? A gas that is essential to most animal and plant life on Earth? A gas that is emitted by their own bodies through respiration? So you have to deliberately mislead people by showing pictures of smoke to them. Showing one thing when you’re talking about another is fraud. If the case for global warming alarmism is so settled, so conclusive, so irrefutable…why is it necessary to repeatedly resort to fraud?

A few years ago it was widely reported that the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause poison ivy to grow faster. But of course carbon dioxide causes almost all plants to grow faster. And nearly all of these plants have beneficial human uses. Carbon dioxide fertilizes hundreds or thousands of human food sources. More CO2 means trees grow faster. So carbon dioxide promotes reforestation and biodiversity. Its good for the environment. But none of this was reported.

Instead, the media only reported that global warming makes poison ivy grow faster. And this is but one example of hundreds or thousands of such misleading reports. If sea ice in the Arctic diminishes, it is cited as irrefutable proof of global warming. But if sea ice in the Antarctic increases, it is ignored. Even cold weather events are commonly invoked as evidence for global warming. People living in the future will look back and wonder how we could have been so delusional.

For the past few years I have remained silent concerning the Climategate emails. But what they revealed is what many of us already knew was going on: global warming research has largely degenerated into what is known as pathological science, a “process of wishful data interpretation.” When I testified before the US Senate in 2006, I stated that a major climate researcher told me in 1995 that “we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”

The existence and global nature of the Medieval Warm Period had been substantiated by literally hundreds of research articles published over decades. But it had to be erased from history for ideological reasons. A few years later the infamous “hockey stick” appeared. The “hockey stick” was a revisionist attempt to rewrite the temperature history of the last thousand years. It has been discredited as being deeply flawed.

In one Climategate email, a supposed climate scientist admitted to “hiding the decline.” In other words, hiding data that tended to disprove his ideological agenda. Another email described how alarmists would try to keep critical manuscripts from being published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. One of them wrote, we’ll “keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Gee. If the climate science that validates global warming is so unequivocal, why is it necessary to work behind the scenes to suppress dissent? You “doth protest too much.”

As described in my book, Science and Technology in World History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization, systematic science began with the invocation of naturalism by Greek philosophers and Hippocratic physicians c. 600-400 BC. But the critical attitude adopted by the Greeks was as important as naturalism. Students were not only allowed to criticize their teachers, but were encouraged to do so. From its beginnings in Greek natural philosophy, science has been an idealistic and dispassionate search for truth. As Plato explained, anyone who could point out a mistake “shall carry off the palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend.”

This is one reason that scientists enjoy so much respect. The public assumes that a scientist’s pursuit of truth is unencumbered by political agendas.

But science does not come easy to men. “Science,” George Sarton reminded us, “is a joykiller.” The proper conduct of science requires a high degree of intellectual discipline and rigor. Scientists are supposed to use multiple working hypotheses and sort through these by the processes of corroboration and falsification. The most valuable evidence is that which tends to falsify or disprove a theory. A scientist, by the very definition of his activity, must be skeptical. A scientist engaged in a dispassionate search for truth elevates the critical – he does not suppress it. Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit.

Finally, I’m happy to be known as a “denier” because the label of “denier” says nothing about me, but everything about the person making the charge. Scientific theories are never denied or believed, they are only corroborated or falsified. Scientific knowledge, by its very nature, is provisional and subject to revision.

The provisional nature of scientific knowledge is a necessary consequence of the epistemological basis of science. Science is based on observation. We never have all the data. As our body of data grows, our theories and ideas must necessarily evolve. Anyone who thinks scientific knowledge is final and complete must necessarily endorse as a corollary the absurd proposition that the process of history has stopped.

A scientific theory cannot be “denied.” Only a belief can be denied. The person who uses the word “denier” thus reveals that they hold global warming as a belief, not a scientific theory. Beliefs are the basis of revealed religion. Revelations cannot be corroborated or studied in the laboratory, so religions are based on dogmatic beliefs conservatively held. Religions tend to be closed systems of belief that reject criticism. But the sciences are open systems of knowledge that welcome criticism. I’m a scientist, and therefore I must happily confess to being a denier.

October 19, 2011

David Deming [send him mail] is a geophysicist, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the books Science and Technology in World History, Vols. 1 & 2.

Copyright Š 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Were/Are Pterosaurs Bi-Peds or Quadrupeds? The Ancient Maya Weigh In?

Church of Darwin, Crypto, Dinosaurs in Literature, s8int.com, Science, Uncategorized, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Oct 21 2011

Photo: Mayan Peten Bowl
500 AD. to 800 AD. $1,895.00
“From ancient Mexico, Mayan, Peten region. Extremely fine and rare polychrome pottery bowl depicting the three failed attempts to create human beings – as published in the Maya Popol Vuh.” Gallery
Private collection

Well, here they are again; pterosaurs. If anyone out there consistently reads this blog it must seem as though pterosaurs are my favorite topic. That’s really not the case; they just seem to come up so frequently as a subject of ancient art is all. Honestly, my interests are broader than it would sometimes seem. I take them as they come.

Pterosaurs had three fingered “hands” attached to their wings at the pinky (a very long pinkie) and of course hind legs. Scientists have gone back and forth on the topic of pterosaur ground locomotion for years. Did they walk bi pedally or did they walk on all fours similar to a quadruped-or both?

The ancient Mayans weigh in with a partial answer; they could and did apparently walk on all fours. Prior specimens of ancient art that we’ve featured here indicate that they were bi pedal as well. The style and nature of this painting made it difficult for experts to identify the creature being portrayed on this ancient piece and they’ve concocted quite the story.

A comparison with recent mind’s eye depictions of pterosaurs on the ground may help the open minded see what the artist was apparently actually depicting; an out of time and place, pterosaur if you adhere to the current paradigm’s version of earth’s history.

“When setting out to restore fossil animals, an artist is faced with a unique problem that is not often faced by scientists. Where a scientist can reasonably reach the conclusion that something is not—or cannot be— known, a palaeontological artist is forced to reach conclusions on things which are unknown, and perhaps always will be.

An artist can’t paint a pterosaur in “don’t know” colours, or behaving in a “don’t know” way. Restoring pterosaurs, therefore, not only requires research into what is known about pterosaur’s anatomy, behaviour, and environment, but also a method for building up complete picture, even when there is little or no evidence to be had.”… John Conway Pterosaur Restoration.net

On Pterosaur Locomotion

“It didn’t take long for early pterosaur workers to figure out that pterosaurs were flying animals. Their hyperelongate forelimbs, fused torso elements, robust shoulder girdle and pectoral elements are clear indications that pterosaurs were adapted for self-propelled flight and, although some arguments have raged over the finer details of their flight styles, no-one has questioned their basic volant ability.


However, the same cannot be said for pterosaur terrestrial ability: for almost as long as pterosaurs have been known, little consensus has existed on both how and how well pterosaurs would be able to move on land. Early workers thought pterosaurs were probably relatively confident terrestrial locomotors, although no-one could agree whether they would stand in a bird-like, bipedal fashion, a lizard-like quadrupedal configuration or an erect, mammal-like quadrupedal stance.

Pterosaurologists of the mid-20th century took a dimmer view: these workers suggested that pterosaurs could barely stand, let alone walk, and would have to push themselves over the ground with dragging bellies and useless forelimbs held aloft.

Opinions changed in the 1980s when several pterosaur workers attempted biomechanical studies of pterosaur limbs in efforts to figure out their terrestrial competence: alas, this confused matters further as different interpretations of the same material led to drastically different conclusions.

In the space of a decade, pterosaurs were restored as dinosaur-like bipeds, penguin-like bipeds, sprawled-limbed quadrupeds and erect-limbed quadrupeds.”… Mark Witton Pterosaur Terrestrial Locomotion

So There You Have It?

“So there you have it. The answer is: Both.


Pterosaurs were both plantigrade and digitigrade. Pterosaurs were both bipedal and quadrupedal. Pedal digit 5 was useful for basal pterosaurs, but not for derived flatfoots. All of these traits are like those of living lizards, the ones capable of standing, walking and running bipedally.

At such times, these lizards turn from plantigrady to digitigrady without overextending the metatarsophalangeal joints, without having symmetrical pedes and without having all of the various morphological advantages that pterosaurs enjoyed, such as an anteriorly elongated ilium, an expanded sacral series for balance and prepubes to help elevate their femora. Pterosaurs likely took off bipedally, NOT with their forelimbs as described here.

They certainly had to land bipedally.”

Pterosaurs: Bipedal? Quadrupedal? or Both?
The Pterosaur Heresies

When Really Big Human Giants Left Their Imprints On the World; There Were Giants in The Earth in Those Days

Church of Darwin, Giants in Those Days, s8int.com, Science, The Flood of Noah, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Oct 07 2011

Left:”Goliath’s Footprint”; South Africa

Imagine that you’re sitting on your backyard patio sipping an iced tea when a dragonfly with a 30 inch wingspan flies over your fence and starts buzzing the pool. What do you do?

I’ll bet you won’t stay out in the backyard. You sure don’t want to encounter any relatively sized mosquitos that he might be after.

No need to worry though, because while dragonflies with 30 inch wingspans once did live on the planet, such a creature could never get off the ground today.

A large dragonfly today might weigh as much as an ounce but due to the scale effect, a dragonfly with a 30 inch wingspan would probably have weighed a pound or more.

In Genesis Chapter 6 we are told that “there were giants in the earth in those days”. Back in my childhood bible class days we were told that Goliath was about 9 feet two inches tall. That’s the way most believers take the whole “giants in those days” quote; that it referred only to human giants who might have been a couple of feet taller than the tallest of men today. However, the 30 inch wingspanned dragonfly advises us to think of giants in a different way.

Photo:Hornless rhino 17 feet at the shoulder and Argentavis Magnificens

If there once was a raptor bird with a 26 foot wingspan, beavers the size of a small car and dinosaurs 100 feet long; how big were the people? Maybe “there were giants in those days” means that at one time everything was much larger than it currently is.

What we know for sure is that we have fossils of creatures who were extremely large versions of their living cousins and/or who could not fly, run or hold up their heads under the current atmospheric and gravitational conditions.

In this article we want to take a look at some evidence of really big human giants. Not the giants of the Goliath variety; a bit over 9 feet tall but the kind of giants in whose eyes we would be like grasshoppers.


“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” Numbers 13:33

Frankly these giants are so big that they are almost embarrassing even to us; to those who do believe that there were giants in the earth in those days as the Bible says -but never suspected that they could have been as BIG as some of the evidence suggests….S8INT.COM

Goliath’s Footprint

“Did giants exist on earth?

This interesting rock formation may suggest so.


Goliath’s Footprint, as the locals dubbed it, is one of South Africa’s little-known secrets. Nestled in the forests near the Swaziland border of South Africa, this print is definitely not a tourist hot-spot. One may speculate that erosion caused the interesting shape of this upright rock formation, but it features exactly five “toenails,” and it looks like the earth has been pushed away around the big toe.

If I encountered this photo on the internet, I might have attributed it to Photoshop techniques and have had some doubts about its existence, but I have been to the spot, and felt the grooves with my own fingers. It is very real.

If this mystery of nature was indeed made by a giant human, I don’t think I would have wanted to encounter him! Locals in the area are all mystified by the footprint. South African folklore does contain mentions of giants, but up to date I haven’t heard any stories about the origin of this giant footprint. Some say that there are similar rock formations in India and in Australia, but an internet search has not given me any results.” Source: http://numbi.hubpages.com/hub/African-Mystery-Goliaths-Footprint

These next three articles all relate to some extremely large apparently human footprints discovered in the South Bay Area of California. Science has fallen into the habit of claiming that these footprints are carved-without showing in any way that the carving of giant footprints in rock as hard as granite in any way related to any cultural or religious practices or beliefs of the Native Americans they attempt to credit. The size of these footprints–on the side of a cliff-in granite make the idea of carved footprints rather incredible.

Dr. Louderback of the University of California is sent to investigate. He was one of the learned men who had decided that the giant human footprints (much smaller-only about 21 to 22 inches long) discovered near Carson Nevada were merely the fore tracks of a bear into the hind feet making what appeared to be left right human tracks-over 100 of them….s8int.com

Depressions on Cliff Near Mission San Jose Furnish Basis for Study
Oakland Tribune – September 19, 1926, Oakland, California
MISSION SAN JOSE. Sept. 18.—

With the finding near here of a cliff marked with depressions having the appearance of prehistoric footprints, gigantic in scale, science has been enlisted to study the mysterious markings. Some months ago similar markings were found near Livermore.


The cliff here is located on the John A. Bunting ranch, high in the foothills, three miles east of Mission San Jose. One of its indentations resembles a human footprint, and- measures five feet in length.

Close beside it is a second indentation, cast on the same gargantuan scale, and resembling the footprint of an animal. – Both imprints, or depressions, are on the face of the cliff.

The indentations near Livermore are of the same extraordinary size.

One of the depressions on the Livermore cliff measures ten –feet in length and even more strikingly resembles a human footprint than the same footlike depression found on the cliff on the Bunting ranch.

Specimens from the cliffs, which are of sandstone formation, have been sent to Prof. George D. Louderback, head of the department of geological science, University of California, who has expressed an interest in both the Mission San Jose and Livermore imprints and will determine their origin.

Giant Footprints Found at San Jose
BERKELEY, Oct. 6. 1926 Oakland Tribune—

The discovery by Professor George D. Louderback of the University of California of depressions resembling the footprints of prehistoric man and animals on a cliff near San Jose about five feet in length, are to present an absolutely new problem to anthropologists.

The prints tally somewhat with similar impressions found at Livermore some months ago, according to Professor Louderback, with the exception that the Livermore finds were about ten feet in length.

Professor Louderback is now working on this problem, using specimens obtained from each location.

MORE GIANT FOOT PRINTS DISCOVERED
IN WASH. TOWNSHIP
The HAYWARD SEMI-WEEKLY Tuesday, September 29, 1925

The footprint, thought to be of prehistoric origin, discovered by James Higgins high on the rock formations of Bushy Peak, is claimed to be duplicated in at least two other spots in Washington Township.

Pioneer residents claim a “footprint” similar to the description given by Higgins of the one on Bushy Peak, only of greater size can be seen on the John Bunting ranch near the Mission San Jose.

This footprint measures nearly eight feet in its length. It is said, and is very deeply embedded In solid rock.

The third mysterious foot mark is said to hare been seen on the Indian Reservation, near the Pleasant Valley road, between Sunol and Pleasanton. This foot-print, like the others, is of immense size and deeply marked on a granite cliff.

Attempt to locate these prehistoric marks was made several months ago by John Harrington, a representative of the Smithsonian Institute, who is investigating Indian lore In California.

Harrington was notified of the find made by Higgins and expects to be here in the near future to picture the foot print and lead the search to establish the exact location of the prints at Mission San Jose and the Indian reservation.


 

 

Re the following: But wait; I hear you skeptics (and you right thinking people as well) “what complete idiots they must have been in 1919 to believe that they had found a fossilized human just shy of 33 feet tall”. Need I remind you that many cling like Linus to his blanket to a theory by Chas. Darwin which was almost 70 years old at that time? Or that the atomic bomb was created only 26 years later? It was not simply some misidentified bone; it was an entire fossil over 30 feet long.

If not human, then still; what 33 foot vertebrate is there out there who at that length wouldn’t be mind blowingly large?…s8int.com

FIND FOSSILIZED MEXICAN GIANT

Vera Cruz. Mexico. Oct. 21, 1919 Syracuse Herald

— The fossilized remains of a giant, taller than any ‘human being on record, has been found by workmen in the tiny village of Nanacamilpa, near here. Several scientists are en route from Mexico City to investigate the find. Scientists admit that the fossil appears to resemble a human being, but are of the opinion that it is a vertebrate.

12/18/1919
FIND BONES OF 32-FOOT GIANT
Postville Herald – November 7, 1919, Postville, Iowa

Natives of Mexican Village Who Cling, to Ancient-Traditions, Guard Remains as Sacred.
Mexico City. The fossilized remains of a giant measuring 32 feet 10 Inches in height were, according to a report recently discovered by workmen near the little village of Nanacamilpa, State of Vera Cruz.

The natives, who still cling to many of the traditions of their Indian ancestors, declared the giant was related to the gods of their forefathers.

They erected a catafalque in the plaza on which the giant rested in state for many days, covered with flowers and
at night carefully guarded. The discovery attracted the attention of scientists here. Manuel Ganomo director of anthropology at the National museum, expects to leave soon for Nanacamilpa to investigate. He is inclined to believe the fossil is that of an prehistoric vertebrate not a human.

300 Pound Ancient American Ax
American Anthropologist Volume 8 1906 By American Anthropological Association

A Remarkable Stone Ax.

—”What is believed to be the largest Indian stone ax in existence has recently been placed on exhibition among the collections of the Missouri Historical Society, at St Louis, by its president, Dr C. A. Peterson, by whom the specimen was procured as a loan. This noteworthy object is of granite; it measures 28 inches in length, 14 inches in width, and 11 inches in thickness, and weighs more than 300 pounds.

The ax was obtained by George M. Huss, of Birchwood, Wisconsin, from an eminence in one of the wildest sections of the territory still occupied by the Chippewa Indians of Lac Court Oreilles and Lake Chetac, in Sawyer county, Wisconsin. When found the pointed end was embedded in a small mound of bowlders and pebbles, with the body and head of the ax exposed, the whole apparently forming a shrine or altar.

In shape the ax resembles a tomahawk pipe; its upper end or head is slightly hollowed out and in this depression was ceremoniously placed a small quantity of tobacco. A well-beaten moccasin trail led up the incline of the eminence on which the shrine stood, indicating that the place had long been used for religious purposes.

The ax for a time formed the keystone of a chimney, but was removed temporarily for a loan exhibit. According to Chippewa tradition the ax has been held in veneration by these Indians from time immemorial. The object will remain in the care of the Missouri Historical Society until spring, when it will be returned to Mr Huss, who, it is hoped, will deposit it in some public museum rather than permit a repetition of the vandalism to which it was once subjected.”

“Adam’s Footprint”

Sri Pada (also Adam’s peak; Sinhalese Samanalakanda – “butterfly mountain”, is a 2,243 metres (7,359 ft) tall conical mountain located in central Sri Lanka. It is well-known for the Sri Pada “sacred footprint”, a 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in) rock formation near the summit, in Buddhist tradition it is held to be the footprint of the Buddha, in Hindu tradition that of Shiva and in Muslim and Christian tradition that of Adam.

Source: Wikipedia Article

See Also:There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days-28 Pages

The Attenuated Gravity of the Antique System

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