Archive for the ‘Unexplained Artifact’ Category

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?

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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

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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.

 

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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.

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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

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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

Recent Post: Human and Dinosaur Inner-Action; Unfortunate Humans Provide Evidence of Interaction with Dinosaurs from Inside Their Stomachs

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

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Human and Dinosaur Inner-Action; Unfortunate Humans Provide Evidence of Interaction with Dinosaurs from Inside Their Stomachs

Church of Darwin, Crypto, Dinosaurs in Literature, Giants in Those Days, s8int.com, Science, The Flood of Noah, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Sep 13 2011

Photo: One of thousands of Acambaro Figurines from Pre-Hispanic Peru

Why are there no fossils showing that man interacted with dinosaurs; dinosaur bones which have been gnawed or perhaps dinosaur fossils in association with human fossils or even dinosaur tracks along with human tracks? If you believe that that kind of evidence has not been found, you are assuming facts that are not in evidence.

They’re not in evidence largely because facts that don’t fit the dinosaurs and man never intereracted paradigm are systematically; ignored, suppressed, explained away or relegated to the fringe.

Here are three historical articles that seem to tell another story. By the way, sea monsters (aquatic reptiles) aren’t dinosaurs but they are said to have gone extinct more than 65 million years ago along with the dinosaurs…..s8int.com

FOSSIL PUZZLES IN LOS ANGELES
The Los Angeles Times
December 2, 1900

“Lately there have been unearthed at the north end of Eastlake Avenue, in the foothills surrounding East Los Angeles, some of the most curious fossils ever seen. Nothing just like them has ever been found, and the puzzle is, how they came to be there.

Nature, in her mysterious way, has hidden the explanation, but she has not concealed the fact of their existence; for there they lie, in two great strips, probably forty feet long and ten feet wide. Whoever chooses may go see for himself.

By far the greater number of these unique specimens resemble in and general outline the vertebrae of some enormous animal”.

The article goes on to puzzle over related fossils that appear to bear a very close resemblance to leg bones, noting a rough surface and that they are “somewhat hollow.”

By leg bones, the author soon lets it be known-he means human leg bones in association with a huge animal that could only be a dinosaur.

According to the writer, behind the leg bones was a great very heavy piece which to all the world appears to be a “gigantic human skull”. In proximity to the skull are what appear to be a gigantic pelvis and a correspondingly large thigh.

These items may be noted in a photograph that appears with the article. (If anyone lives in Los Angeles and has access to an archive of the paper they might want to take a look at that photo; Dec 2, 1900).

The author explains that the soil in which these fossils were found has the chalky, carbonous character of soil in which oil is often found.

“The Geologists Have Their Theories

The geologists had been out to see the fossils and so immediately their creative abilities were put to use in order to “normalize” the discovery. One popular theory is that a highly impregnated, mineral rich stream of water had flowed over tree roots or other vegetation to form the large, regular shaped spine like fossils and leg bones.”

Among those clinging tightly to this theory were Prof. John Merriam of Berkeley and E.W. Claypole of Pasadena.

Claypole believed in a variation of the theory that just barely excluded fairies. The author of the 1900 article thinks that these theories fall a bit short on account of the various sizes and shapes of fossils which stubbornly continued to look like animal remains.
The author and perhaps Mr. Towner, the discoverer, believe that the bones are the vertebrae and the remains of a giant saurian.

Mr. Towner invited everyone who had a theory to share it.

“One day this week there was unearthed something that passes all the other specimens, a shape that can barely be mistaken in its identity, and yet from its position, condition and surroundings, is a wonder study. How such a piece could have been preserved so long, or where it came from, or whether it be really the head bone of prehistoric man or not; all these are questions to be answered.

Yet the same skull is apparently that of a human skull, with perfect ridges on the sides. It hardly seems possible that the gigantic leg and other bones could have belonged to one with so small a cranium, yet scientists tell us that the troglodyte, or cave-dwelling man was of enormous stature, with very small brain capacity.”

Photo: From the Original Article


According to the article, there appeared to be a head wound on the skull which no doubt contributed to the man’s death. This explains why the bones of man and dinosaur are “so weirdly intertwined”; the giant man and giant saurian were locked in mortal combat and both had perished as a result.

“What a fight that must have been! Fancy some great man with arms a foot or two longer than our current largest man, and of such stature as we have never contemplated, engaged in deadly struggle with a monster of the Saurian type.”

The author argues that this man was no slouch for he gave as much as he got.


Human Skeleton Inside Mammoth Carnivore with Eight Pound Teeth
Another What Was it?
November 2, 1877, Carthage Montana Patriot

“Mr. Henry Woodard owns a stock rancho in the Indian Territory, in the Peoria Nation, on which is situated the big sulphur spring. The spring is surrounded by a quagmire, which is very deep and slushy, and so soft that it will not bear any considerable weight.

Mr. W lately undertook to curb up the spring in order to get water more easily, and while working in the mire came upon what appeared to be an enormous bone. He at once began an examination which disclosed the fact that it was the head of some mammoth beast.

His curiosity was aroused, and, with the assistance of three other men, he began the work of excavation. For four days they worked, but did not succeed in bringing the monster to the surface. They threw off the marl, but could not lift the head of this golitic giant. They found the skeleton well preserved, and the immense teeth still sat in the jaws.

The jaws were both in place and the spinal column attached to the cranium. The earth was thrown off from the body to the length of twenty feet, but still the gigantic skeleton remained beneath. Three of the front ribs were forced out and proved by measurement to be each eight feet in length.

The dirt was removed from the inside of the osseous structure, and there lay the skeleton of a human being, with one hundred and two flint arrow points and fifteen flint knives. The cranium indicated that it was the skeleton of an Indian.

It would have been impossible for the man to have been inside the animal without having been swallowed by him, and this theory is substantiated by the fact that the bones of the right side of the skeleton were broken and mashed, apparently by force.

The monster, therefore, must have been carnivorous, which is also proven by the teeth, which exhibit the marked characteristics of a flesh-eating beast. A large molar and two incisors, taken from the upper jaw, were exhibited to us at our office yesterday, the largest one weighing eight pounds and measuring eight by four inches in size.

There are two large molars and two blunt tusks on each side of each jaw, the teeth between the molars and the tusks are incisors, having from two to six points and corresponding prongs to each tooth. In front of the tusks the teeth are similar to those of most carnivorous animals in shape.

All the bones indicate that they have lain buried for an incredibly long period, as they crumble rapidly when brought in contact with the atmosphere.

Every circumstance goes to show that these are the largest animal remains ever resurrected, and the teeth, tusks, and structure of the head and jaws prove unmistakably that it was of the carnivorous class.


River Monster that Ate, A Canoe, A Deer and an Indian
The Daily Times, August 25, 1877

Back in the 1800′s a family of “settlers” looks for a suitable Island on which to build a new home off the coast of Northern Alabama. This is an excerpt from the story of their encounter with a dying river monster/aquatic reptile.

“During their visit in search of homes they were induced to go on to the Islands to ascertain if they, or any of them, were of sufficient size to make a settlement.

In order to reach them they procured Indian canoes, made of the bark of trees, in which to cross over the water to the islands. These bark canoes were very small crafts, only of sufficient to carry one, or not more than two persons.

Having prepared themselves for the Inspection of the islands, they set out, and on approaching one, they saw a strange animal of immense size and length about the color of a cat-fish, but more In the shape of a snake, which seemed to have drifted upon the edge of a small island, and was partly in and out of the water, making movements and contortions like it was in the agonies of death.

They approached it. It was partly covered by the water and partly on dry land, but it was of such enormous size and strange shape it baffled all their ideas of such animals, or their knowledge of the whole animal kingdom, but it was certainly a water animal of the snake genre.

After watching its movements and holding a short consultation they determined to kill it if bullets would do so. They then approached more closely; to it and fired several rounds until they discovered that it was dead. Then they went to it for a close examination- to ascertain what it really was, and discovered from the sharp protuberance and unevenness of its body on one side an the evenness of the other that there must be something in it.

When they discovered that they had never seen or heard, or read of such an animal they proceeded with their tomahawks and butcher knives to open it and in doing so, to their utter amazement and surprise, they found in it a bark canoe, the horns and skeleton of a large deer, the skeleton of an Indian, also an old rifle gun such as the Indians of that day used, and bow and arrows.

From finding the above named articles in it and their appearance they concluded that some weeks previously an Indian had-killed a deer, put it into his canoe, and, while crossing the river, the monster had swallowed the canoe, with the Indian, deer and other articles In it. The flesh of the Indian and deer had been digested but the canoe, the gun, the bow and arrows and bones were so indigestible as to sicken the monster, and so enfeeble it that it had floated to where they found it and could not escape from them.

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Why is the Universe So Fined Tuned for Life? God Some Believe. However, Super Smart Scientists Conclude that There are an Infinite Number of Invisible, Undetectable Universes Occupying the Same Space and that The Earth is Carried on the Back of a Giant Tortoise

Church of Darwin, s8int.com, Science, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Aug 02 2011

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Rom 1:18-20

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.

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)

The known laws of physics can explain the existence of the universe that we observe. To paraphrase astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace when asked by Napoleon why his book MĂŠcanique CĂŠleste did not mention the creator: we have no need of that hypothesis.

Another possibility is that it simply couldn’t be any other way. We find ourselves in a universe ruled by laws compatible with life because, well, how could we not?

This could seem to imply that our existence is an incredible slice of luck – of all the universes that could have existed, we got one capable of supporting intelligent life. But most physicists don’t see it that way.

The most likely explanation for fine-tuning is possibly even more mind-expanding: that our universe is merely one of a vast ensemble of universes, each with different laws of physics. We find ourselves in one with laws suitable for life because, again, how could it be any other way?

The multiverse idea is not without theoretical backing. String theory, our best attempt yet at a theory of everything, predicts at least 10500 universes, each with different laws of physics. To put that number into perspective, there are an estimated 1025 grains of sand in the Sahara desert.

Fine-tuned fallacy

Another possibility is that there is nothing to explain. Some argue that the whole idea of fine-tuning is wrong. One vocal critic is Victor Stenger of the University of Colorado in Boulder, author of The Fallacy of Fine-tuning. His exhibit A concerns one of the pre-eminent examples of fine-tuning, the unlikeliness of the existence of anything other than hydrogen, helium and lithium.

All the heavy elements in your body, including carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron, were forged inside distant stars. In 1952, cosmologist Fred Hoyle argued that the existence of these elements depends on a huge cosmic coincidence. One of the key steps to their formation is the “triple alpha” process in which three helium nuclei fuse together to form a carbon-12 nucleus. For this reaction to occur, Hoyle proposed that the energy of the carbon-12 nucleus must be precisely equal to the combined energy of three helium nuclei at the typical temperature inside a red giant star. And so it is.

However, Stenger points out that in 1989 a team at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa showed that, actually, the carbon-12 energy level could have been significantly different and still resulted in the heavy elements required for life.

There are other problems with the fine-tuning argument. One is the fact that examples of fine-tuning are found by taking a single parameter – a force of nature, say, or a subatomic particle mass – and varying it while keeping everything else constant. This seems very unrealistic. The theory of everything, which alas we do not yet possess, is likely to show intimate connections between physical parameters. The effect of varying one may very well be compensated for by variations in another.

Then there is the fact that we only have one example of life to go on, so how can we be so sure that different laws could not give rise to some other living system capable of pondering its own existence?

Article Remainder; Page 2

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“Ancestor of all Birds Knocked from its Perch”; Paleontologists Eat Crow? Horsefeathers Fly

Church of Darwin, s8int.com, Science, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Aug 02 2011

Genesis 2:19
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky.

The idea of feathered dinosaurs and the theropod origin of birds is being actively promulgated by a cadre of zealous scientists acting in concert with certain editors at Nature and National Geographic who themselves have become outspoken and highly biased proselytizers of the faith. Truth and careful scientific weighing of evidence have been among the first casualties in their program, which is now fast becoming one of the grander scientific hoaxes of our age—the paleontological equivalent of cold fusion. If Sloan’s article is not the crescendo of this fantasia, it is difficult to imagine to what heights it can next be taken”. .. Storrs L. Olson, Smithsonian, November 1999 Article

“The theory that dinosaurs gave rise to birds has been dealt a blow by palaeontologists who have examined critical evidence from a Chinese fossil. The discoverers of the turkey-sized dinosaur Sinosauropteryx say it would have had primitive feathers, supporting the bird-from-dinosaurs theory. But the latest research says these “proto feathers” are really frilly structures on the creature’s back.” Dinosaur “Feathers” Are No Such Thing-ABC NewsOnline, May 2007

Ancestor of all Birds Knocked from its Perch

By Laurent Banguet Yahoo News Jul 27, 2011

….The winged Archaeopteryx, long venerated as the forebear of birds, has been knocked off its hallowed perch on the tree of evolution, according to a study released Wednesday.

A new dinosaur species unearthed in northern China reveals that the iconic 150 million year old “original bird” is probably just another dino with feathers, of which there are many, the researchers said.

It is hard to imagine a harder fall from evolutionary grace.

Since its discovery 150 years ago in Bavaria, most scientists placed Archaeopteryx squarely at the root of the broad group of proto-birds, known as Avialae, from which our modern feathered friends have emerged.

The emblematic creature was also held up as a case study — THE case study during the late 19th century — of evolutionary transition, to wit, from dinosaur to bird.

Over the years, a few scientists have gingerly expressed doubts, pointing to supposedly defining bird-like characteristics — feathers, the wishbone, three-fingered hands — that were also showing up in non-avian dinosaurs.

But without hard proof that Archaeopteryx was not really where it belonged on the so-called phylogenetic tree, the presumed progenitor continued to reign over its feathered kingdom.

Enter Xing Xu, a professor at Linyi University in China’s Shandong Province and discoverer extraordinaire of dinosaur fossils.

In the new study, published in Nature, Xu and colleagues describe the attributes of a previously unknown dinosaur the fossil of which was found in Liaoning Province, in China’s northeast.

About the size of a chicken and probably weighing less than a kilo (about two pounds), Xiaotingia shared a host of key characteristics with Archaeopteryx but seemed, at the same time, to fall into another group of non-avian dinos called Deinonychosauria.

A standard computer analysis confirmed as much, but at the same time produced a stunning result: Archaeopteryx had been reclassified into the same group.

“In other words, Archaeopteryx was no longer a bird,” Lawrence Witmer, a professor at Ohio university’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in a commentary, also in Nature.

Xiaotingia, it turns out, was the smoking gun that sceptical scientists had been looking for.

Surprised by their findings, Xu and his team ran the analysis again, but this time without the newly discovered species. Archaeopteryx was restored — in error, they now knew — to its previous perch.

Xu has called for further confirmation, but suggests that his discovery will overturn long-held assumptions about the “avian ancestral condition.”

“Perhaps the time has come to finally accept that Archaeopteryx was just another small, feathered, bird-like theropod fluttering around in the Jurassic,” Witmer said.

One reason it has been so hard for biologists to embrace this idea may have more to do with history than science.

The first Archaeopteryx specimen was discovered, with uncanny timing, less than two years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s game-changing Origin of the Species.

With an evenly matched blend of avian and reptilian features, it became — in textbooks and public debate — “Exhibit A” in explaining the transformative power of natural selection and evolution.

“The familiar fossils have guided almost all scientific thought about the beginnings of birds,” Witman said, including himself among those led astray.

It’s reclassification, he added, is likely to “rock the palaeontological community for years to come.”

Who are the new candidates for king of the roost?

No single species is likely to ever gain the stature that Archaeopteryx once had, said Xu.

But among the new pretenders, three newly discovered creatures stand out: Epidexipteryx, Jeholornis, and Sapeornis.

..

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On Propositioning Atheists, Giant Penguins in the Garden of Eden and How Science Works #173

Church of Darwin, Giants in Those Days, Religious, s8int.com, Science, Uncategorized, Unexplained Artifact | Posted by Chris Parker
Jul 14 2011


“God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodly behavior and the injustice of human beings who silence the truth with injustice. This is because what is known about God should be plain to them because God made it plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through the things God has made. So humans are without excuse. Although they knew God, they didn’t honor God as God or thank him. Instead, their reasoning became pointless, and their foolish hearts were darkened. While they were claiming to be wise, they made fools of themselves. .” Romans 1

Selfish Genes vs “Skepchick’s” Jeans

It turns out that sometimes Atheists like to gather together in halls and hotels for conferences where they seek to encourage one another in the faith and discuss ways to proselytize. They discuss the sacred writings of their high profs; book, chapter and verse. They listen to speeches (sermons?) from those skilled in dealing with their specific articles of faith and of course they socialize and talk about MythBusters.


Rebecca Watson is a young Atheist who leads a team of “female activists” at Skepchick.org and who gets to travel all over the world delivering talks on science, Atheism, feminism etc. She appears on a number of Atheistic/Skeptical programs and has an internet presence. Considering that she is one of the few female stars in the Atheistic realm she is well known and is apparently sought after as a speaker.

Not long ago she mentioned on a podcast following a conference where she was a panelist with Richard Dawkins a story about being “hit on” in an elevator by a conference attendee. Her comment/request has engendered a fairly nasty response from the Atheist/Skeptic community.

“So I walk to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?’

Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don’t do that. You know, I don’t really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I’ll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and–don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner…”

Ms. Watson went on to mention that a number of women she knew did not like to attend these types of conferences because they were “hit on” so frequently and she avowed that this served to limit the number of women in the movement. She went on in a blog about the incident above;

“So here we are today. I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one. Every time I mention, however delicately, a possible issue of misogyny or objectification in our community, the response I get shows me that the problem is much worse than I thought, and so I grow angrier. I knew that eventually I would reach a sort of feminist singularity where I would explode and in my place would rise some kind of Captain Planet-type superhero but for feminists. I believe that day has nearly arrived.”

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous non-believer responded to her advice and concern regarding the elevator incident in a sarcastic message that began;

“Stop whining, will you”? From there it went down hill.

Now, much of the Atheist community is at war (of words). Ms. Watson has received more than 1,300 comments on her site alone and many other acrimonious conversations are taking place elsewhere on the web.

Here’s the thing; why is Ms. Watson surprised by any of this?

As a leader in the Atheistic religion hadn’t she studied its history? Didn’t she know that a powerful force behind the rejection of Christianity and religion in general was “sexual freedom”? It was the burden of morality and the requirement to adhere to societal standards (which drew their inspiration from the Bible and Christianity) that provided a primary motivation for unbelief.

This is something that Christians have been pointing out for decades and that Atheists have tried to argue against; that a powerful motivation for Atheistic beliefs both in the formation of modern Atheism and in many Atheists today is freedom from exogenous moral values.

Aldous Huxley, a famous and influential Atheist of the 1960’s and grandson of ground floor Atheist/philosopher Thomas Huxley explains:

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do . .

For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”—*Aldous Huxley, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, Vol. 3, June, 1966, p. 19

We could give additional examples but Ms. Watson probably now has hundreds if not thousands of additional, personal examples to draw from. How dare someone, and particularly a woman and particularly one from their own community suggest that there be any restriction on their sexual freedoms? Is she trying to describe a morality that Atheists and particularly male Atheists should have to adhere to, they wonder?

What’s the point in rejecting God if at the end one has to lead a moral life anyway? What’s the point in imagining an entire scheme that makes you an accidental life form in an accidental universe with no one as your boss only to have someone acting as your boss?

No wonder that Dawkins, the titular head of the Darwin party had to step in to try to set things right. As an Atheist, he probably has a hard time even figuring out why she would selfishly say no, anyway. What’s the big whoop he must wonder? Just selfish genes trying to replicate, after all. Dawkins made the notion of selfish genes famous in his 1976 book wherein every action and reaction of man can be seen as selfish genes seeking to propagate themselves. (No doubt many would object to this definition)

The signers of the Declaration of Independence had it right (borrowing from the French) when they said that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, a proposition that would hold true with respect to government for both Christians and Atheists. However, the cornerstone statement in the Declaration is “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” supersedes even the consent of the government and places those rights and moral responsibilities in the hands of a greater power, God. Moral systems must be obtained from a higher power than man himself since if all men are equal then they are each equally capable of deciding on their own what is wrong and what is right in their own eyes.

Atheists may accept the idea of government and laws based on the consent of the governed but certainly reject the notion that we are endowed with anything from a Creator. We’re surprised that Ms. Watson, as a high priestess of the faith didn’t know that.
As far as Atheists are concerned, heaven is here on earth and that means they don’t need women (or God) getting in the way of their liberation from restrictions, particularly sexual ones.

On Giant Penguins and Conditions That Must Have Existed in the Garden of Eden and the Early Years of this Planet

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that…Genesis 6:4

In September 2010, UPI.com had a report about a giant penguin fossil discovered in Peru:

“The fossil of a giant red penguin, nearly twice as tall as the largest living species, has been discovered in Peru, U.S. paleontologists say. Standing 5 feet tall, nearly twice the height of an Emperor penguin, the fossil, discovered in Peru’s Reserva Nacional de Paracas and nicknamed Pedro, is 36 million years old, the BBC reported.” UPI, Sept. 30, 2011

For those gentle readers who like to play “stump the creationist”, take note. All penguins do not live in the the Arctic or under Arctic conditions. There are penguins living today in a warm South Africa (rather that a cold South Pole) for instance and that’s how Noah found penguins in “Palestine” for the ark.


Science has given these giant penguins its own species name but the fact of the matter is; they are simply penguins. If you were to see one today you would recognize it not as some evolutionary predecessor to the penguin, but as a penguin—albeit a very large one. These giant creatures of the earth’s past are an unexamined and an unexplained problem for the theory of evolution and the life of this planet.

When Genesis reports that there were giants in those days, I think many Christians assume that the text suggests that some of the people in those days were giants and that some survived after the flood. Fossil evidence suggests an alternative; perhaps every creature was created as a relative giant in those days and after the flood, some vestiges of the time of the giant creatures remained.

Fossil evidence suggests that besides giant reptiles, there were giant turtles, penguins, clams, humans, dogs, sheep, fish, deer, rodents, rhinos, insects, birds etc. in the past life of this planet. These giant creatures are as recognizable as are there smaller relatives living today. Evolution does not explain why there was a period in the earth’s history when all creatures were gigantic forms of the same creatures living today.

Kansas giant print 44 inches long-from Valley of the Giants by C.N. Dougherty.

Mary Leakey was one of the discoverers of chimpanzee bone fragments which became known as Lucy which was put forward by paleontologists as a human ancestor back in the early 1970s. You remember that. You don’t remember that her husband Louis Leakey found an “inexhaustible supply of human bones” along with “traces of dinosaurs” in Kenya at Nakeru back in the 1920s because that’s how “science” works. Source: The Montreal Gazette – Sep 24, 1927

Louis Leaky made an even more amazing discovery in keeping with our giant penguins and Garden of Eden theme. As reported in the New York Times of May 11, 1958 Leakey discovered the complete skeletons of gigantic animals along with evidence of giant humans at Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. The New York Times article was entitled; “Gigantic Fossils of Animals Found, East African Expert Cites Sheep as Big as Horses, Hogs with Elephant-Like Tusks”.

Here are excerpts from the article:

“London May 10—The remains of gigantic animals, including sheep as big as present-day carthorses and hogs with tusks like elephants have been dug out of an ancient gorge at Olduvia, in East Africa.

Two giant human teeth have also been found….”

“…Specimens have been brought to London for comparative studies by the man who found them. He is Dr. Louis S.B. Leakey, director of the Coryndon Museum at Nairobi, Kenya.”

“….But the most remarkable character of the Chellean Age was he says, the gigantic size of the animals existing at that time. Dr. Leakey has found the complete skeleton of a Pleistocene sheep with a horn-span of fourteen feet. It was about as big as a big cart-horse, he says. He has also unearthed the bones of wild hogs the size of a rhinoceros with elephant sized tusks.

He has found a giant giraffe, baboons as big as modern gorillas, massive zebras and antelopes. But his most important find from the point of view of the evolution of man is two giant teeth. They are either from a Chellean child or they are from another species of man hunted and eaten by cannibalistic Chelleans. (They appeared to be primary or “baby” teeth).

They are undoubtedly human and larger than any previously discovered. One molar is bigger than that of the mature molars of Peking Man (up to 9 feet tall).” NYT

Leakey attributed the gigantic size of the animals of this time with “trace elements” washed down into the gorge and then consumed by the animals of the gorge.


Despite their protestations to the contrary, Darwinists have no answer for these gigantic versions of currently existing animals. A beaver the size of a modern black bear; an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen, giant oysters in the mountains of Peru 12 feet wide, a type of deer 7 feet tall at the shoulder 8 foot roly poly’s, dragon flies with two foot wingspans, a super croc the size of a boxcar, rodents the size of a bull are outside of current Darwinian understanding to say nothing of 5 foot penguins.

Many of these creatures simply couldn’t exist or function under current gravitational conditions. Sauropods likely could not have lifted their heads. Argentavis magnificens, an eagle like raptor and the largest bird ever discovered could not have flown under current gravity conditions. Very ancient depictions of mastodons show them galloping like a horse. Currently living elephants are too big to run or gallop.


The question is when did these creatures live in the history of this planet? From an evolution perspective; what evolutionary advantage would giant versions of today’s animals have over there smaller cousins? Why is the only difference between the gigantic animals of yesterday and today’s smaller versions their size? Where are the other adaptations that must have taken place over allegedly millions of years? Why would they evolve to large size and then to small?

A 1987 article in Time Magazine might provide a clue; it was entitled Putting On Ancient Airs”, and informed that “two scientists stunned colleagues by reporting that 80 million years ago, (sic) the earth’s atmosphere contained about 50% more oxygen than it does now.”


Geochemists Gary Landis of the U.S. Geological Survey and Robert Berner of Yale were able to measure ancient air trapped in amber. Naturally we don’t subscribe to the age given as 80,000,000 years ago, but it does raise the possibility that at one time on this planet there was much more oxygen to breathe in the atmosphere than there is now. The comparison is 21% oxygen today vs. up to 35% oxygen in the past.

Why did gigantic versions of man and creature live in the earth’s past? Genesis provides the best answer; there were giants in those days…

‘Monstrously Big Ant’ Fossil Found in Wyoming
Giant “Sea Monster” Fossil Discovered in Arctic
Scientists Discover Giant Penguin Fossil (Video)
Giant wombat fossil found (Science Alert)
Giant Ant Fossil Unearthed: Big Pic : Discovery News
Arnold Schwarzenbunny: Giant Rabbit Fossil Found

Spanish island yields giant rabbit fossil – UPI.com

Giant snake fossil hints at a hotter future – environment -
Giant spider fossil found in Mongolia – The Mumpsimus Blog site
Giant Beaver Fossils with Facts and Pictures.
Scientists Discover “Giant Fossil Frog from Hell” –
Giant Condor Fossil | Flickr –
Discovery of a giant fossil bird with teeth – PetHobbyist.com Site …
Cryptomundo Âť Giant Fossil Rodent Discovered
Giant Stork Fossil was found in Flores, Indonesia. – Cultural …

Giant prehistoric fish species found in forgotten fossils (Wired UK)
Fossil of Giant Crocodile Found in Cuba ÂŤ Repeating Islands
[News]: Ark. students discover giant cephalopod fossil
Pampatheriidae (Fossil Giant Armadillos) | Skulls Unlimited …
Giant Clam Shell Fossil
Giant Fossil ‘Strange Shrimp’ Found
Amblyrhiza Inundata: Giant Fossil Rat- Anguilla Local News
400-Million-Year-Old Mystery: Giant Tree-like Object in Epoch
Giant Tree Fossils

How Science Works #173

First of all, we have no idea whether we’ve correctly numbered these “How Science Works” articles. That’s how we work.

Recently, we noted that archaeologists had virtually been forced to acknowledge that an incised bone discovered at Vero Beach Florida was an actual ancient artifact that proved that elephants or mastodons had lived in North America in the ancient past.

They then declared it to be the first such representation in North America. We can’t figure out if that is a bold faced lie or simply a demonstration of real ignorance on the subject as literally hundreds if not thousands of similar depictions have been found in North America over the last several hundred years. Science just managed to declare all previous artifacts “fakes” or simply ignored them.

This is how archaeology works. Theories are promulgated. A consensus is formed and later a paradigm is created.

Evidence that fits the paradigm is catalogued and embraced; evidence that contradicts the paradigm is ignored or falsified. This process is absolute since one countervailing piece of evidence that is permitted to “exist” could weaken or threaten the paradigm.

This is actually how many human systems work to be honest; it’s just that many believe that science is exempt. It is not.

A number of gentle readers of a certain persuasion have asked; where is the scientific evidence, for example of human and dinosaur interaction? Why they ask, haven’t dinosaur fossils ever been found along with evidence of human bones or artifacts? Why are no human fossils found in such and such a strata? We have to assume that these questions are sincere and that they simply don’t know how science works.

Here is a simple case of how science works that may serve to illustrate the paradigm protection apparatus in action.

Frank Calvert (1828–1908) was an English expatriate who was a consular official in the eastern Mediterranean region and an amateur archaeologist. He began exploratory excavations on the mound at Hisarlik (the site of the ancient city of Troy), seven years before the arrival of Heinrich Schliemann. Calvert was the youngest of a family of archaeologists…Wikipedia

“In 1874, Frank Calvert found in a Miocene formation in Turkey (along the Dardanelles) a Deinotherium bone with carved figures of animals upon it. Calvert noted: “I have found in different parts of the same cliff, not far from the site of the engraved bone, a flint flake and some bones of animals, fractured longitudinally, obviously by the hand of man for the purpose of extracting the marrow, according to the practice of all primitive races.” Nature 27 March 1873

This report was made in scientific magazines of the day however; the elephant-like deionotherium was supposedly never seen by modern man. “Modern humans” were supposedly nonexistent in the Age science called the Miocene. On top of that, the deionotherium bone had a number of incised creatures upon it including what people with normal vision might call a dinosaur.
What happened next?

The paradigm protection system went to work.

“In Le Prehistorique, de Mortillet (prominent evolutionist/scientists) did not dispute the age of the Dardanelles formation. Instead he commented that the simultaneous presence of a carved bone, intentionally broken bones, and a flint flake tool was almost too perfect, so perfect as to raise doubts about the finds.” ..Forbidden Archaeology

The following denunciation of the discoveries is a classic of its kind:

“The pretended discovery by Calvert of human prehistoric handiwork in the Miocene of the Dardanelles near Constantinople proves to be unfounded, the supposed tracings on a piece of bone turning out, it is stated, to be merely the eroding work of some crustacean.” Harper’s magazine, Volume 49—Editors Scientific Record, 1874

Finally, here is someone, a scientist, trumpeting the destruction of all evidence proffered by members of their own scientific fraternity of the remote antiquity of man. It should be noted that the Christian view of this phenomena (remote antiquity of man) is that man has existed as long as the world has existed. Here is the “how science works” quote.

“Much of the evidence which had been prominently put forward in support of the high antiquity of man has, during the past few years, been completely abandoned. Thus:—

The Abbeville human jaw from the gravel of the Somme is acknowledged to be “a plant.”

The Paleolithic “beads” of St. Acheul are found to be organisms of the chalk.*

The human bone from the Victoria cavern, which Professor Boyd Dawkins once described as “establishing the fact that man lived in Yorkshire before the glacial period,” and who added, that “the man to whom it belonged was probably devoured by hyenas,” has now been pronounced to be the bone of a bear; \ and a “cut” bone, said to have been found in an undisturbed layer in association with the extinct mammals in the same cave, belongs to a domestic sheep or goat, both of which were unknown in Europe before the Neolithic age.

Some of the artistic drawings upon the fossil bones found in the ThĂźringen Cave in Switzerland, are now pronounced to be spurious, and the result of intentional deception. The same drawings are contained in a work published six years before the discovery of the cave.

The reputed discovery of relics of man 800 feet deep in a Miocene deposit at the Dardanelles, by Mr. Frank Calvert, is now utterly rejected.

The supposed dressed flints from Miocene beds at Theney,** the “worked ” flints from the Pliocene beds of St. Prest, and the supposed basket-work from lignite, in Switzerland, have all broken down under a searching examination.

And I claim, on the evidence adduced in former papers read before this Society, to have stamped out the evidence of Paleolithic man from the “famous” cavern of Brixham.

But above all we are indebted to the Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge for the important statement,—that the evidence for the antiquity of man has completely broken down in all cases where it has been attempted to assign him to a period more remote than the post-glacial river gravels.” THE SUPPOSED PALEOLYTHIC IMPLEMENTS OF THE VALLEY OF THE AXE. By NICHOLAS WHITLEY, C.E. 1883

Conclusion: In order to maintain the paradigm science lies to both creationists/Christians as readily as it lies to Evolutionists/Atheists.

We wonder if evolutionists even care? After all, it’s their paradigm that is being preserved.

See Also Mega Fauna Section
The Real Story of Vero Beach Wasn’t Ancient Mammoth Art but Rather; Ancient Mammoth Humans and Mammoth Archaeological Misdirection

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