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A baby dragon, or a bad joke?
Electronic Telegraph ^
| 24/01/2004
| Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Posted on 01/28/2004 10:15:18 AM PST by aculeus
A pickled "dragon" that looks as if it might once have flown around Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire.
Yesterday the baby dragon, in a sealed 30in jar, was in the office of Allistair Mitchell, who runs a marketing company in Oxford. He was asked to investigate by his friend, David Hart, from Sutton Courtenay, who discovered it.
A metal tin found with the dragon contained paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s. Mr Mitchell speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts in the 1890s, when rivalry between the countries was intense.
"At the time, scientists were the equivalent of today's pop stars. It would have been a great propaganda coup for the Germans if it had come off.
"I've shown the photos to someone from Oxford University and he thought it was amazing. Obviously he could not say if it was real and wanted to do a biopsy."
The documents suggest that the Natural History Museum turned the dragon away, possibly because they suspected it was a trick, and sent it to be destroyed. But it appears a porter intercepted the jar and took it home. The papers suggest the porter may have been Frederick Hart - David Hart's grandfather.
Mr Mitchell said: "The dragon is flawless, from the tiny teeth to the umbilical cord. It could be made from indiarubber, because Germany was the world's leading manufacturer of it at the time, or it could be made of wax. It has to be fake. No one has ever proved scientifically that dragons exist. But everyone who sees it immediately asks, 'Is it real?' "
Yesterday the Natural History Museum said that it was interested in following up the find.
The scientific journal Nature once carried a tongue-in-cheek article on the ecology of dragons written by Lord May, who became the science adviser to the Prime Minister and is now the president of the Royal Society.
From the reported sightings, Lord May concluded that dragons are "both omnivorous and voracious", with great variations in diet: one made do with two sheep every day while another, kept by Pope St Sylvester, consumed 6,000 people daily. Their lifespan seems to range between 1,000 and 10,000 years.
Some scientists believe that dragons, though the product of imagination, were inspired by the extraordinary creatures that once roamed the Earth. As J K Rowling's alter ego Hermione Granger once suggested, legends have a basis in fact.
TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: dragon
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To: RightWhale
embryonic chicks have umbilical cordsSome of the chicks I used to date always tried to turn rheir umbilical cords into apron strings.
61
posted on
01/28/2004 12:43:08 PM PST
by
scouse
To: aculeus
Fake. It's in too good shape to have been pickled for a hundred years. There'd be junk at the bottom of the jar. Aside from the fact that we'd never get lucky enough to be handed one like this.
62
posted on
01/28/2004 12:46:58 PM PST
by
PLMerite
("Unarmed, one can only flee from Evil. But Evil isn't overcome by fleeing from it." Jeff Cooper)
To: aculeus
A quick MRI and DNA test should settle the issue......
63
posted on
01/28/2004 12:48:58 PM PST
by
Viking2002
(I'll go down with my fingers around a liberal's throat.......)
To: scouse
mmmmmmmmm... chicks
64
posted on
01/28/2004 12:49:04 PM PST
by
evets
(APPLAUSE)
To: evets
Son of a Gun! I was thinking of another kind of chick.
65
posted on
01/28/2004 12:54:12 PM PST
by
scouse
To: RightOnline
.........FAR too many incredibly complex "crop circles" all over the bloody planet to be a hoax.***
There was one that looked like WILL ROGERS! another looked like a GORILLA! another said EAT AT JOE'S! Farm magazines show them all the time, yet We don't have the technology to do these things?
To: Sabertooth; aculeus
67
posted on
01/28/2004 12:59:49 PM PST
by
MeekOneGOP
(Check out this HILARIOUS story !! haha!: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1060580/posts)
To: autoresponder; PhilDragoo
68
posted on
01/28/2004 1:00:34 PM PST
by
MeekOneGOP
(Check out this HILARIOUS story !! haha!: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1060580/posts)
To: aculeus
BTTT
69
posted on
01/28/2004 1:02:52 PM PST
by
knews_hound
(Out of the NIC ,into the Router, out to the Cloud....Nothing but 'Net)
To: BibChr
An umbilical chord on an alleged reptile? An uninformed hoax.
To: VadeRetro
Who says dragons are reptiles? Anything that breathes fire ought to be warm-blooded.
71
posted on
01/28/2004 2:19:26 PM PST
by
JenB
(yakusoku wa iranai)
To: aruanan
Hey, embryonic chicks have umbilical cords ... attached to yolk sacs. Where does this one go?
To: RightWhale
Where is the fire and smoke generating organ?Here
and
Here. See the section titled "The Fire Breathers."
73
posted on
01/28/2004 2:26:31 PM PST
by
Consort
To: VadeRetro
... attached to yolk sacs. Where does this one go?
Probably nowhere.
74
posted on
01/28/2004 2:27:09 PM PST
by
aruanan
To: JenB
Who says dragons are reptiles? Anything that breathes fire ought to be warm-blooded. I'm not saying it can't be warm-blooded. Birds are warm-blooded, as were some of the dinosaurs. That long and unterminated cord looks wrong. We only have evidence for one development of placentalism, the one that happened in us hairy mammals. Not even marsupials (opossums, kangaroos) or monotremes (platypi and echidnas) have umbilical cords like that.
To: zx2dragon
Actually it appears to be a baby Pern firelizard
76
posted on
01/28/2004 2:32:37 PM PST
by
Oztrich Boy
(It is always tempting to impute unlikely virtues to the cute)
To: aruanan
I'm probably not explaining my objection very well. The thing exquisitely mirrors the appearance of a late-term human fetus. Well-developed, very recognizeable features and a long, placental-mammal type cord. By comparison, when a baby kangaroo is "born" and starts crawling toward momma's pouch, it looks more like a slug than a kangaroo.
This thing is a mammal with six limbs, or it's a fake.
To: Sabertooth
Thanks for the ping. A whimsical thread.
To: Scenic Sounds
Too cute!
79
posted on
01/28/2004 2:50:58 PM PST
by
Amelia
To: Indie
There are medical museums full of organic material preserved sealed in formaldehyde for 100 years or more. I believe a museum in Washington DC has the pickled amputated leg of a general from the Civil War actually.
X-rays or other scans could easily tell. It wouldn't surprise me though if such testing is never done... as such a critter wouldn't fit into accepted scientific dogma. Wouldn't want to rock the boat now, eh?
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