A baby dragon, or a bad joke?

Electronic Telegraph ^ | 24/01/2004 | Roger Highfield, Science Editor

[scouse]

embryonic chicks have umbilical cords

Some of the chicks I used to date always tried to turn rheir umbilical cords into apron strings.

[PLMerite]

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.

[Viking2002]

A quick MRI and DNA test should settle the issue......

[evets]

mmmmmmmmm... chicks

[scouse]

Son of a Gun! I was thinking of another kind of chick.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

.........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?

[MeekOneGOP]

[MeekOneGOP]

[knews_hound]

BTTT

[VadeRetro]

An umbilical chord on an alleged reptile? An uninformed hoax.

[JenB]

Who says dragons are reptiles? Anything that breathes fire ought to be warm-blooded.

[VadeRetro]

Hey, embryonic chicks have umbilical cords

... attached to yolk sacs. Where does this one go?

[Consort]

Where is the fire and smoke generating organ?

Here

and

Here. See the section titled "The Fire Breathers."

[aruanan]

... attached to yolk sacs. Where does this one go?

Probably nowhere.

[VadeRetro]

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.

[Oztrich Boy]

Actually it appears to be a baby Pern firelizard

[VadeRetro]

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.

[VadeRetro]

Thanks for the ping. A whimsical thread.

[Amelia]

Too cute!

[AnalogReigns]

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?