www.parascope.com/en/cryptozoo/predators10.htm
www.prairieghosts.com/tbirdaz.html
www.mysteriousworld.com/Sections/Edit/Thunder/Thunder.htm
Posted on 07/18/2002 8:21:03 PM PDT by AM2000
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have found the remains of one of the weirdest creatures ever discovered -- a big flying reptile that lived during the time of the dinosaurs that snapped up fish with a scissors-like beak as it skimmed over the water and had a head crowned by a huge, bony crest.
Brazilian ( news - web sites) scientists Alexander Kellner and Diogenes de Almeida Campos on Thursday described a previously unknown type of pterosaur (pronounced TER-oh-sawr), winged reptiles that were cousins of the dinosaurs.
The find is important both for the oddity of its cranial crest and for the insight that the animal offers into how pterosaurs hunted for food, the researchers said. They named it Thalassodromeus sethi (pronounced thal-ahs-oh-DROH-mee-us SETH-ee), meaning "sea runner" and "Seth," for the ancient Egyptian god of evil and chaos.
Kellner said Thalassodromeus, which lived 110 million years ago, had a head that measured 4-1/2 feet long due to the size of its crest, a wingspan of nearly 15 feet and a body length of about 6 feet.
"If you didn't have the fossils, you wouldn't believe that such an animal would have ever lived," Kellner said in a telephone interview from Rio de Janeiro.
"Can you imagine such an animal just cruising over the water and skimming over the surface in your direction? It must have been, really, a vision of hell," added Kellner, of the National Museum in Rio.
Searching for food, Thalassodromeus probably glided low over the water in a brackish inland lagoon, its lower jaw skimming the surface of the water, ready to nab any tasty fish or crustaceans it encountered, said Kellner, whose findings were published in the journal Science.
Similarities between this pterosaur's flattened jaws, which end in a scissors-like beak, and the beak of a type of living bird called Rynchops prompted the belief that Thalassodromeus, like these so-called skimmer birds, skimmed over the water's surface, with the lower jaw slightly submerged, Kellner said.
"The new pterosaur from Brazil gives us important information about the feeding strategy of pterosaurs," Fabio Dalla Vecchia, a pterosaur expert at the Paleontological Museum of Monfalcone, Italy, told Reuters.
A REMARKABLE FAMILY CREST
The most eye-popping characteristic of Thalassodromeus is its large, thin, cranial crest that looks with its V-shaped end like a giant spearhead or knife blade. The bony crest makes up about three-quarters of the animal's head. Proportionately, it is the largest such crest of any known extinct or living vertebrate, with the exception of one other type of pterosaur.
"This is pretty close to the far end of weird," said Christopher Bennett, a pterosaur expert at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut who has seen the new specimen. "But pterosaurs are really weird animals."
The crest is covered by a network of grooves that Kellner said represented an extensive system of blood vessels that the pterosaur may have employed to regulate its body temperature -- in this case, cooling off.
Bennett called this "a reasonable conclusion," but said there is "an awful lot of evidence to suggest that crests were used for sexual display" in other pterosaurs.
Pterosaurs were not dinosaurs, although both were highly successful types of reptiles. Both appeared about 225 million years ago during the Triassic Period and flourished until 65 million years ago, when an asteroid or other big extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth. Some fossils suggest that pterosaurs had a fur-like body covering.
Pterosaurs were the Earth's first flying vertebrates, appearing many millions of years before birds or bats.
Thalassodromeus lived in the middle of the Cretaceous period -- the final chapter of the age of dinosaurs.
Little is known about pterosaurs because their lightly built bones do not lend themselves to fossilization. Kellner describes Thalassodromeus in the journal Science based on a well-preserved skull found in 1983 at the fossil-rich Santana Formation in northeastern Brazil. He said bones from other parts of the body have been found there, allowing him to determine the animal's wingspan and body size.
Mainly because the people involved with the "science journals" you have in mind are too brainwashed regarding this particular topic to deal with reality. Same problem you've got, more or less.
when I watch a PBS or Discovery channel documentary (where evolution is pushed ad nauseum), I can sit there and blow holes in their logic without trying. But if you take the same data that they quote and plug it into a creationism model, it usually fits every time.
I don't see what the big deal is with adandoning evolution. Why the emotional attachment?It must have something to do with an innate resistance of scientists to 'religion'. I think it's a refusal to be confronted with the possibility that the Bible may be true. Scientists, feeling a need to think a matter through and formulate a system of logic, have used evolution as a shield against the conviction of God.
What I am always amazed at is why evolutionists have to constantly put down those who do not believe in evolution instead of just giving proof that evolution is true. The reason for that is that there is no proof of evolution. Even after 150 years of claiming evolution is true evolutionists cannot give one single example of a species that has transformed itself into another more complex species.
ANYTHING will "fit" a "creationist model". Unfortunately, no "creationist model" is science. It has zip to do with "emotional attachment". All "creationist models" are religion--not science.
That does speak volumes. No matter what internet forum the creation/evolution debate is held, most evolutionists try to ridicule all opponents. Some evolutionists will drop the ridicule game but that evolutionist is the exception. According to most evolutionists, if someone doesn't "buy" the theory of evolution that person doesn't understand it. Or the evolutionist will claim that person hasn't read anything on the topic because if they had they would accept it. Some of the more arrogant evolutionists will try to tell the anti-evolutionists what they should or what they do believe. That always makes me laugh.
From all the hype we've heard on evolution one would think the evolutionists have a huge pile of supporting evidence. When asked for evidence, the evolutionist provides links or evidence that the objective reader looks at and asks again, where is the evidence for evolution? I encourage anyone reading to go read the "evolution evidence" links provided earlier on this thread. You'll see exactly what I mean. When you call the evolutionist on it they'll change the subject in some desperate attempt to support their theory.
Here's a quote from an evolutionist on this forum:
Lack of evidence isn't evidence against my theory, no matter how inconvenient you find that to be.Some evolutionists use subjectivity and bias to get the results they want in order to further their agenda. When you look at the major proponents of evolution in academia and the media you'll notice a common theme: atheism. That doesn't mean everyone who "buys" the theory of evolution is an atheist, it demonstrates it is atheists who are leading the evolution "charge." The concept of God does not fit into the atheists agenda which should raise a red flag for anyone who believes in God.
Take a closer look at your camp before throwing stones at someone else's.
You spout the same tired old religious crap as all the rest of the "creation nuts". We're talking SCIENCE, here, not religion. That is the point you crackpots can't seem to get through your granite skulls. I have NEVER heard a scientist, speaking as a scientist, talking aobut "mother Earth"--the only ones I know who use that language on a regular basis are the eco-nutcases. Anybody who actually understands the science behind evolutionary change would NEVER make the statement "the wonders of evolutionary design".
"Take a closer look at your camp before throwing stones at someone else's."
FIRST, you have to have a camp. You folks have none.
Frankly, I am sick and tired of having this creationist bullbleep constantly show up in "Breaking News". Such threads belong in the "Religion" interest section.
If You take a purely OBJECTIVE view of the creationist model (yes, it's a model), you can reverse engineer the timeline. When you do this, you will find that it fits the Bible. Creation scientists look at evidence- the exact and uncompromising science of what is there- and then see if it will fit with the Biblical record. Every time, IT DOES.
Like I said earlier, the evolutionists hit a constant reef of mysteries and disproven hypotheses, while making new discoveries which disprove old patterns of thinking. This is held up as proof that they're 'open minded', that they have no agenda. But when a creationist offers them a system that works, they discount it because it happens to fit with the Bible. Evolutionists are just as 'religious' as anybody. Secular Humanism ring a bell? The elevation of man as his own god? The mindset is the same, the trappings are different. (By the way, Jesus is always leading people out of 'religion'. It prevents free thought. I hope you know what I mean by this.)
Now then, please reconcile the problem with genetics that I mentioned earlier. Tell me, from a geneticists perspective, how one species mutates into another over time. It's IMPOSSIBLE. You will find very few geneticists who support evolution. (But the secular humanist church of science education won't tell you this.)
NONE of the "scientific" arguments you Creationist nutcases have put forth actually get the science right. Since you lie about what the science REALLY SAYS, no honest debate is possible.
Ultimately, you are no different from the Muslim Caliph who burned the library at Alexandria--to paraphrase "If God had wanted us to have the knowledge in these scrolls, it would have been in the Koran".
As for bullpleep, if evolution is a process, then it has no design nor logic guiding it. Your leading thinkers lend religious words and deeds to a process that supposedly is driven by genes and need.
And yes, ALOT of evolutionists call evolution's process as 'Evolutions' design' and other such drivel. Please, don't deny it. I'm sorry I sound like I am knocking your religion, but get a grip. Go back and read the article, THEN speak something intelligent. Or you can go back to the byssal ooze that is so worshipped (:-P among your 'camp'.
You sound like one of the scientists I am referring to. Short on grants? haha I love how you and your cronies like to assume so much about people and 'tell' them how to think. That's one of the reasons (besides thinking evolution on a massive scale is bunk) I have been so supportive of the Creationist Camp and their goal to send junk science back to the drawing board. Oh - and here are some famous quotes made by some famous scientists regarding evolution, since you obviously assume that evolution is so 'solid':
* "Biologists would dearly like to know how modern apes, modern humans and the various ancestral hominids have evolved from a common ancestor. Unfortunately, the fossil record is somewhat incomplete as far as the hominids are concerned, and it is all but blank for the apes. The best we can hope for is that more fossils will be found over the next few years which will fill the present gaps in the evidence.' The author goes on to say: 'David Pilbeam [a well-known expert in human evolution] comments wryly, "If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, 'forget it: there isn't enough to go on'."
(Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, Michael Joseph Limited, London, 1981, p. 43)
* "We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain. I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know it is bad, but because there isn't any other. Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact, which is a first approximation. . .'"
Professor Jerome Lejeune (From a French recording of internationally recognised geneticist, Professor Jerome Lejeune, at a lecture given in Paris on March 17, 1985. Translated by Peter Wilders of Monaco.)
There are a thousand more just like this.
And you really don't want to get into a link-posting contest do you? What do YOU think? What is your definition of evolution. Can you speak to why scientists, after over 150 years, have been unable to prove the transition of MORE beneficial genetic information from specie to specie, minus any mutations, which are basically harmful almost 100% of the time?
Oh - and I said I wouldn't put a link on here, but I lied. I like this one: http://www.rae.org/
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