Posted on 06/06/2007 9:45:09 PM PDT by my_pointy_head_is_sharp
EiU, p 222.
Dying hurts. Who knew?
My very thought.
Early Volcano Victims DiscoveredWhole communities of ape-like creatures may have been killed in East Africa 18 million years ago by the once active volcano Kisingiri. Proconsul lived in a semi-arid environment close to the mountain and the research suggests they may have been caught by a pyroclastic flow. The abundance of the hominoid fossils may represent "death assemblages" - whole populations wiped out simultaneously by "glowing cloud" eruptions. The fossils of the Rusinga Formation form a crucial link between the early primates of the forest habitats, and human forerunners of the more open-country habitat, who lived in drier conditions than had been supposed, on a landscape that experienced repeated volcanic eruption.
BBC News
Monday, May 3, 1999
Dinosaur life was brutish and short.
When, therefore, the earth, covered with mud from the recent flood, became heated up by the hot and genial rays of the sun, she brought forth innumerable forms of life, in part of ancient shapes, and in part creatures new and strange.
-OVID, Metamorphoses
EiU p 19
The same platform in Orkney as at Cromarty is strewed thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted, curved; the tail in many instances is bent around to the head; the spines stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in fish that die in convulsions...
The Fossil Record:
Another very startling finding that demonstrates the sudden/catastrophic burial of very large creatures is a 1971 finding in Southern Mongolia of a perfectly articulated Protoceratops and a Velociraptor frozen in a life and death struggle with each other. Obviously these two creatures were buried suddenly by a huge catastrophe of magnificent proportions. The dinosaurs didnt even have time to fall over.
some sort of preferential preservation like Pompeii( or is it Herculaneum..sorry to offend you on your turf). Thanks for taking the time to inform.
It's called the human imagination. With Evolutionists (née Darwinists)imagination is an overwhelmingly powerful force able to link two completely unrelated fossils ( or a series of each).
Yes, exactly.
I saw that one in school. [rimshot!]
Thomas Hobbes was a paleontologist? :)
This is a tremendous oversimplification.
Opisthotonic posturing is not diagnostic of a specific cause, but it is clinically observed in a variety of conditions that affect the central nervous system. These conditions can be broadly classified under the following categories: infectious (including bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic and protozoal), congenital, and acquired conditions (including neoplasia), traumatic injury, toxic insults, and nutritional deficiencies (Swank 1940; Wyatt et al. 1975; Filippich and Cao 1993; Klein et al. 1994; Van der Lugt et al. 1994; Ondo and Delong 1996; Park et al. 2000; Palmer 2002; Austin et al. 2004; Olby et al. 2004). Opisthotonus is observed after hypoxic damage in a variety of conditions: in bacterial and viral meningitis, secondary to administration of certain drugs including some anesthetics, secondary to poisoning with strychnine, thiamine deficiency, edema of the brain, and cerebellar swelling or atrophy (Swank 1940; Sullivan 1970; Sukoff and Ragatz 1980; Saunders and Harris 1990; Ersahin et al. 1992; Filippich and Cao 1993; Klein et al. 1994; Palmer 2002; Olby et al. 2004).
Faux, C. M.; Padian, K. "The opisthonic posture of vertebrate skeletons: postmortem contraction or death throes?" Paleobiology 2007, 33, 201.
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