Rare fossil find on roadside (Extraordinarily preserved pterosaur)

News.com.au ^ | November 2, 2006 | Laine Clark

[DaveLoneRanger]

DISCOVERING a rare, 100 million-year-old fossil is amazing enough.

But not as surprising as the way Queensland Museum palaeontologist Alex Cook found it.

Keen for a break after more than three hours of driving, Dr Cook thought he would stretch his legs at the northwest Queensland town of Hughenden - and literally stumbled over the fossil.

"I found it literally on the side of the road. It's serendipity, a happy accident," Dr Cook said today.

It is the third jaw fragment of a pterosaur - a winged, fish-eating reptile that lived in the time of the dinosaurs - found in Australia.

It also is one of the "most exquisitely preserved" pterosaur specimens found in the world.

Dr Cook said pterosaur bones were "rare worldwide".

Only 50 pterosaur bones have been found in Australia in 140 years of collecting.

No wonder Dr Cook couldn't believe his luck.

"We were getting a little tired ... so we stopped at Hughenden, had some lunch, had a bit of a look around and I literally kicked it over," he said.

"It is a little bit like finding an extraordinarily endangered species that you have been looking for - they are that rare."

Dr Cook was on a fossil-finding trip in northwest Queensland with fellow palaeontologists - Colin McHenry, from the University of Newcastle and Adam Morell of the Richmond Marine Fossil Museum, near Hughenden about 500km from Mt Isa - when he made the surprise find in 2004.

[Smokin' Joe]

Thanks for the spelling correction. (lost my 's' there somewhere..(8^D) )

[Tim Long]

The boys at DarwinCentral think we really believe that picture!

Why wouldn't we believe it? Dave?... Dave?... : )

Seriously, though, the site I got it from seems to think that one of the pictures is real.

I feel really sorry for Kent Hovind. Say what you will about him, I think he is a very well-meaning individual.

[csense]

In their defense Dave, there was someone that actually read the thread and corrected that view.

Reciprocation

[Jim Robinson]

"You have no evidence other than stating that its in the bible, well, I refuse to accept the bible as a scientific text."

And therein lies the rub. In order for you to prove the theory of evolution and to have it universally accepted by all people as true fact, you must first completely destroy the Holy Bible and all it teaches us.

There can be no Creator. No God. No miracles. God cannot possibly have created the Earth or the Heavens or Man and every Creature that walks swims or crawls. There was no Adam and Eve. No Garden of Eden. No original sin. There was no Noah. No Ark. No flood. No Moses. No burning bush. No Ten Commandments handed down from God. Jesus cannot possibly have been the Son of God, nor could he have died on the cross for our sins. The Resurrection could not possibly have happened. There is no Saviour and no Salvation. No life after death. No Heaven. No Hell. No God. No Satan. No good vs evil.

Therefore all of Christianity, in fact, all of all religions are simply mythical fairy tales based on lies and superstition.

The theory of evolution does not allow for the Holy Bible, or miracles including the miracle of Creation, the miracle of life, etc, or God our Creator, or Jesus Christ, or Christianity, Judaism, etc.

The Declaration of Independence is therefore also a lie. If there is no Creator, our rights cannot possibly have come from God. In other words, we have no unalienable rights. Our rights would only be what the government allows us.

The Declaration would be null and void and the founding would have been based on lies rather than "these truths we hold self-evident."

The first amendment would simply be a cruel joke. The Bill of Rights would have no foundation on truth or unalienable rights from God and that would also make the entire Constitution of the United States null and void. All laws based on the Ten Commandments would be null and void. There would be no God to guide our judges and no reason not to bear false witness.

Our entire American history, in fact all of civilization would be based on nothing but lies. Our ancestors passed down lies to our grand parents and parents and they lied to us and we have taught our children nothing but lies.

This is exactly what the Marxists (leftists) would have us believe.

If you destroy belief in the Creator, you destroy belief in God, Christianity, Judaism, etc. You destroy our entire civilized society and reason for being. We would be left with nothing but chaos and anarchy. A Marxist dream come true.

Believers in the theory of evolution may not be Marxists, but they are pushing exactly what the Marxists want pushed. And that makes it political.

And I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with science. Along with everything else, God created all knowledge and that includes the modern miracle of science.

[TN4Liberty]

Personally, I don't care if you are a creationist or not,

Respectfully, based on your comments, it is evident that you do care.

[Jim Robinson]

Extending my remarks, besides having to deny God the Creator, my next problem with the theory of evolution is it is being used as a political tool. When government teaches the theory of evolution to our children, while at the same time disallowing any mention whatsoever of God or of the biblical version of Creation, then they are advancing the leftist (Marxist) political agenda of destroying our constitutional freedoms.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Public schools should not mention God, unless they then mention any other gods that any of the other kids may worship. I don't want any religious dogma in public school. If you want your kid to learn religion, send him to a religious school. My parents did, I went K-12 to Catholic school, and I'm glad I did so.

But, honestly, calling evolution Marxist? Hyperbole!

[AndrewC]

I notice Conservative is the after-thought in your tagline. Tell me, exactly what God does "God" name?

[Ditter]

I wouldn't know a pterosaurs if it jumped up and bit me. I think it helped that he was an expert.

[Central Scrutiniser]

You don't define me, I define myself. Maybe Republicans lost because so many of us act like you and demand litmus test. Being a conservative is not an afterthought, and I am going to stand up for what I believe in, believe it or not, there is room in the Republican tent for the religious right and the non religious right. You better hope so, or the tent will fold.

What God does God name? Depends on your religion I guess. Maybe we will all find out after we die.

[AndrewC]

You don't define me, I define myself.

I didn't define you. I emphasized the position of Conservative in your tagline, a tag line presented on a site which has the purpose of promoting Conservatism.

What God does God name? Depends on your religion I guess.

That seems to meet the criteria you required.

[wagglebee]

The left could care less about evolution, their sole objective is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture and replace it with Marxism by any mean necessary.

[RadioAstronomer]

And therein lies the rub. In order for you to prove the theory of evolution and to have it universally accepted by all people as true fact, you must first completely destroy the Holy Bible and all it teaches us.

I have to disagree. The theory of evolution does not address a deity in any way shape or form.

In fact, there is more evidence supporting evolution than there is gravitational theory.

[Dimensio]

In order for you to prove the theory of evolution and to have it universally accepted by all people as true fact, you must first completely destroy the Holy Bible and all it teaches us.

There can be no Creator. No God. No miracles.

The frequency of this level of irrationality and dishonesty is exactly why I do not post here anymore. The theory of evolution makes no such implications, and only someone fundamentally ignorant of the theory or someone who is dishonestly promoting another agenda would claim that it does.

There is no further purpose in posting on these discussions. When so many engage in repeated acts of shameless, fundamental dishonesty in lying about what the theory of evolution states or implies and falsely claiming that all who accept the theory of evolution are atheists, Marxists, fascists, racists and/or socialists, it is obvious that their motives are not about honest debate. It is clear to me that the false claims -- clams that the theory of evolution has direct political, social or racial implications; claims, debunked every time that they are made, purporting to show physical evidence "disproves" evolution; claims that evolution addresses the formation of the cosmos, planets, stars, solar systems, the first life forms, political parties, ice crystals, sitcoms, etc; claims that the theory of evolution is supported by frauds and fakes without any evidence, or with bogus "evidence", of any acts of fraud; claims that extensive references to evidence for the theory are inadequate or 'bogus' without any actual explanation or justification of the claims of inadaquecy; claims that those who accept evolution are liberals, communists, socialists, etc -- from most of the vocal creationists are not the result of ignorance, they are the result of those creationists willfully repeating the same lies over and over again, without shame and without concern for how many times their falsehoods have been exposed.

The theory of evolution neither states no implies that there is no God nor that there can be no God. If someone claims othewise either they are fundamentally ignorant of the theory or they are lying. This applies whether they accept that the theory is sound or reject it. There are no exceptions.

[shuckmaster]

Jim,
The theory of evolution simply states two things.
First, that (a) individuals within a population bear offspring, (b) every individual born is different from all others and (c) The differences in individuals affects the number of offspring each individual bears in a changing environment thus slowly changing the environmentally adapted population.
Second, that whenever a population splits into two geographically separated groups, different environmental factors leads to different adaptations in the two groups.

It's the foundation on which all modern study of biology is based and there's really no reason to stretch your imagination to read more into it than that.

[RightWingNilla]

Your logic is akin to saying since Zeus and Apollo don't exist, Euclidian geometery, Greek philosophy and all the contributions of the ancient Hellenistic world to western civilization is invalid.

[RightWingNilla]

The supreme irony in all this is that you are unlikely to find a group so feverently anti-Marxist as the pro-evolution posters here.

We accept evolution because it is currently the best way to describe reality.

Conversely, we deny Marxism not simply from a religious perspective, but because it bears no resemblence to the real world. It has failed every reality test. It is completely untenable and is anti-reason.

[Polybius]

Funny how fossils are dated by the level of earth that they are imbedded in, but in this case a 100 million year old fossil laying right on the top of the ground.

The phenomenon is called "erosion".

The land around this mesa was deposited long before the land at the top of the mesa was deposited. Erosion has created the mesa by washing away or blowing away the soil around the mesa thereby exposing much older layers.

[TChris]

in a 1979 interview with *Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland, asked him: "How do you date fossils?" His reply: "By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found." Sunderland then asked him if this were not circular reasoning, and *Fisher replied, "Of course, how else are you going to do it?" (Bible Science Newsletter, December 1986, p. 6.)

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

"The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity."—*David M. Raup, "Geology and Creationism," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, March 1983, p. 21.

"It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology."—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 48.

[RunningWolf]

Dimensio what the theory of evolution says it not nearly as important as what its adherents do with the theory (either consciously or unconsciously) and the ideologies and agendas they use it to promote. Where you fall in these groups must be done by looking the the weight of your post history, and not by any declarations or claims you make because you avoid that like the plague.

Your heated language and blanket charges of 'shameless liar' reveal what a deep personal emotional religious issue it is for you & the warped distorted world view & level of arrogance that you bring with you to the threads.

In reality the theory and its history has had so many adjustments, permutations, alterations, retracted evidence, retracted hypothesis, false leads, and out right fraud and hoax that it is very hard to 'lie about it'.

Your idea of 'debunking' seems to be of declaring that a person is telling falsehoods and is a shameless lair, then backing that weakly with a link to a propaganda site such as talk-origins, while the rest (of those who share your world view) all nodding in mocking derisive agreement.

W.