Posted on 11/26/2011 6:26:37 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Recreating the spectacular pose many dinosaurs adopted in death might involve following the simplest of instructions: just add water.
When palaeontologists are lucky enough to find a complete dinosaur skeleton – whether it be a tiny Sinosauropteryx or an enormous Apatosaurus – there's a good chance it will be found with its head thrown backwards and its tail arched upwards – technically known as the opisthotonic death pose. No one is entirely sure why this posture is so common, but Alicia Cutler and colleagues from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, think it all comes down to a dip in the wet stuff.
Cutler placed plucked chickens – both fresh and frozen – on a bed of sand for three months to see if desiccation would lead to muscle contractions that pulled the neck upwards – a previously suggested explanation for the death pose. The chickens decayed without contorting. When seven other chickens were placed into cool, fresh water, however, their necks arched and their heads were thrown back within seconds. Sustained immersion of the birds for up to a month slightly increased the severity of the pose, but the major movement of the head occurred almost immediately.
The result contrasts with a study carried out in 2007 by Cynthia Marshall Faux at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, and Kevin Padian at the University of California in Berkeley. The pair found that salty water did not alter the pose of dead quails. They concluded that the arched back seen in so many fossils was instead the result of the expiring dinosaur's final death throes (Paleobiology, DOI: 10.1666/06015.1) – an idea that was first suggested by pathologist Roy Moodie in 1918.
Why dunking dead birds in water produced different results in the two studies is not clear.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Would you then care to enlighten us with the evidence in the historical records of dinosaurs being both alive and numerous during the middle ages? And while you are at it please tell us how you differentiate between historical accounts and fictional entertainment.
As I said, you are challenged in that area.
I asked what I thought was a legitimate question. You were the one on this thread who made the claim that “they (dinosaurs) were still alive in the middle ages in sufficient numbers to have a huge representation in the written historical record”.
I only asked you to cite examples of such in historical documents and how you differentiate between historical accounts and fictional entertainment. I was genuinely interested in what you had to say to support that claim.
However, since you refuse to engage me in honest conversation or support your statement and instead choose to insult me, I think perhaps you are the one who is “challenged” or as we say down South, “Why bless your heart”.
BTW – there was a very funny movie some years back where aliens on another planet built their entire culture and technology on the “historical” documents they received from electronic transmissions from Earth. It turned out however that the “Historical Documents” were nothing but a Star Trek like TV show and purely fictional. You might want to check that out for a few laughs (or for a good look in the mirror).
While admittedly not an “expert” or scholar on the subject of European medieval history and literature, I am very well read and versed in both the literature of the time and of the history of that time period. And I know of no purely historical writings supporting that dino’s were still living during this period.
I do know that “dragons” “giants” and other mythical beasts were a popular character and plot devise in the romantic and epic fiction of the time. Some of these “beasts” were the literary descendent of Greco-Roman mythologies and Christianized for the audience. And when looking at something like Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, keep in mind that the writer (or writers) were not depicting something that happened during their lifetime but retelling a story set in ancient pagan Scandinavia.
If you are to put credence in the literature of ancient peoples and retold by people living a thousand years ago as some sort of proof that dinosaurs still walked the Earth long after their extinction some 65 million years ago, then you should also be willing to accept that Pegasus, Zeus, Cyclops, etc. were very real as well.
You may also want to consider (and the most plausible explanation for many myths of monsters, giants, dragons and other mythical creatures) that ancient people occasionally came across the fossils of very real dinosaurs and having no other way to adequately explain or account for them, created stories, some very fanciful and epic stories, that fit their understanding of their world at the time.
Yes
I’m sure that you’re already aware of several examples, and your ignorant bias makes it foolhardy to attempt to educate you against your will.
The fact of battles with “dragons,” as dinosaurs were known for millenia, is a dominant theme in history.
Educate yourself; it iasn’t my job.
The fact of battles with “dragons,” as dinosaurs were known for millenia, is a dominant theme in history.
Educate yourself; it iasn’t my job.
And it “iasn’t” my job to educate you either. I was willing at least to be “educated” by you and was open to hearing what you had to say on the subject; but that you can’t either put up or shut up or even spell correctly, just goes proves to me and perhaps at least a few others on this thread, that you have nothing to back up your original assertion and are just blowing smoke up your ass in hopes your can blow smoke up the asses of other as ignorant and gullible as you are – but “Bless your Heart. I'm sure you mean well. : ),
RE: Yes
OK, where’s the elaboration?
RE: Yes
OK, where’s the elaboration?
RE: Yes
OK, where’s the elaboration?
Petulant children celebrate typos as a victory for their untenable positions.
And what of petulant children that can’t or won’t support their ridiculous and untenable assertions?
The ball is still in your court. Put up or shut up.
Reality is in my court; denial is in yours.
And yet still not even one single example from you of any plausible historical record from the middle ages supporting your supposition that dinosaurs were alive and numerous during that time period?
And yet I’m the one who is in denial?
Come on. I know you can do better than that.
There has to be one crazy creationist web site where you’re getting your information that you are confident enough in to at least quote from.
You and your willfully ignorant kind are not worth the effort.
Have you considered that even if you deem me or “my kind” (whatever my kind is) unworthy of the effort; that others here might actually benefit from your vast knowledge? Come on, share your vast knowledge with us, if not for my sake but for the rest of us for the greater good of all concerned. Support your position with something other than the smoke you are feebly attempting to blow up everone’s ass.
I don’t care if you continue to insult me personally but you at least shouldn’t insult those that might actually agree with you.
You made the statement that dinosaurs existed and were numerous during the middle ages and that the historical records prove this. I’m only asking for something from you, anything at all from you that actually supports that position.
Have you considered that even if you deem me or “my kind” (whatever my kind is) unworthy of the effort; that others here might actually benefit from your vast knowledge? Come on, share your vast knowledge with us, if not for my sake but for the rest of us for the greater good of all concerned. Support your position with something other than the smoke you are feebly attempting to blow up everone’s ass.
I don’t care if you continue to insult me personally but you at least shouldn’t insult those that might actually agree with you.
You made the statement that dinosaurs existed and were numerous during the middle ages and that the historical records prove this. I’m only asking for something from you, anything at all from you that actually supports that position.
“Others here” appear to already understand.
Of course it would be really hard not to understand, with accurate depictions of various dinos on cave walls, temple walls and columns, and small stones scattered through the Andes, with 1000 year old moss growing in the etchings.
Cover your head, this stuff must be rough on you.
So God's Word makes it clear that the earth was covered with water before the seven days of (re)creation and 1000 years before Noah's flood. (True) science, as always, eventually bears out the truth of the Bible.
The “deep” was the initial creation. It was a sphere of water about two light years in diameter, that was expanded (Raqia) into the entire universe. The waters above the firmament are still there, bounding the entire universe. They have been observed by orbiting telescopes, and by the Keck.
When this water was expanded, time itself was also expanded, inasmuch as time and space are inseparable, and that is the source of the apparent contradiction of the obviously very young Earth, and the distant, thus ancient stars.
A little reading comprehension can go a long way on this. There isn’t any other creation mentioned anywhere, and such a previous creation would mock the meaning of “and God saw that it was very good.”
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