Weird Fossilized Flying Reptile 'A Vision of Hell'

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.

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.

[Try actually checking out the "scientific community" before you make silly pronouncements about it.]

You sound like one of the scientists I am referring to.

I'm devastated. Oh, wait, no I'm not.

Short on grants? haha

Let me know when you wind down and start actually making a point.

I love how you and your cronies like to assume so much about people and 'tell' them how to think.

Ok, I'll bite -- where did I "assume so much about people and 'tell' them how to think"? You expressed your opinion, I expressed mine. That seems to bother you.

I also find it ironic that you would accuse me of "assuming so much about people" in the same sentence that you presume to know who my "cronies" are (and suggest that I am reliant upon grant money).

Oh - and here are some famous quotes made by some famous scientists regarding evolution, since you obviously assume that evolution is so 'solid':

Now see, this is precisely the sort of thing I was talking about when I suggested that you "Try actually checking out the 'scientific community' before you make silly pronouncements about it".

If you had -- that is, if you had actually bothered to get familiar with the tenets of evolution and scientists, instead of just getting erroneous information spoonfed to you by creationist sources -- you'd have realized the following things before you posted the Leakey quote and made a fool of yourself:

1. It hardly supports your wild claims that "the scientific community knows" that their case is so "filled with holes" that they have to "hope something will turn up" which might someday "solidify their theory". Leakey's 1981 quote was a simple, unremarkable comment on the incompleteness of representative fossils from the hominid family tree at the time. This was no surprise to anyone (unearthing significant fossils is a long-term project), and it was certainly *not* what creationists like to present it as -- a confession that the entire science of evolution had little to no supporting evidence. Other fossil lineages were much more complete even in 1981 and provided stunning confirmation of evolution, not to mention the hundreds of lines of studies other than fossils. If you were familiar enough with science to actually be able to critique it intelligently, you'd know that already.

2. You'd also have known that posting a quote about the incompleteness of fossil hominids from *1981* is about as smart and/or relevant as posting computer information from the 1980's. There have been a vast number of discoveries in this field in the last twenty-one years, making Leakey's 1981 statement completely obsolete -- as even Leakey himself confirms:

I did say that but it was 18 years ago and today there is a mass of new fossil evidence to show the certainty of human evolution. The record is so clear now that most creationists are stumped but as before, they dredge up old and honest quotes but they do not allow their readers to move on. I guess we need some really foolish people to remind us of what foolishness is.
-- Richard Leakey, email to rjtolle@express-news.net, 13 Jul 1999 08:28:29

But you apparently just like to play cut-and-paste with quotes from creationist sources, without having the background to realize that they are hardly the damning "proof" you believe them to be.

3. You'd also have known that far from being the doubter of evolution you falsey try to point him as, Leakey is as strongly convinced that the evidence supports evolution today as he ever was:

We are very lucky that the earth's history is recorded in fossilized remains. And we can see the changes. Unfortunately, there will always be gaps in our knowledge, but there is no doubt that we and everything living today has evolved.
-- Richard Leakey, in an online interview: "TIME 100 Scientist & Thinker: Dr. Richard Leakey, Head of the Kenya Wildlife Service," America Online (April 11, 1999)

4. And finally, you'd have known that he's far more troubling to your side of the fence than the scientific side:

Question: What is your impression of groups, such as exist in the US, that deny evolution in favor of the Biblical theory of creation?
Dr. Richard Leakey: I have been raised to believe in freedom of thought and speech. If a minority wishes to accept that position it's their right. What I fear is that this minority may seem to be larger than it truly is. What is strange is that there are still people who believe the world is not a globe.
-- Ibid.

[Note: Some creationists have tried to deflect this comment by saying, "hey, creationists don't believe the earth is flat, what's he talking about". But Leakey was clearly speaking metaphorically, comparing the preposterous stubbornness of creationists to that of flat-earthers.]

Again, if you were actually *familiar* with the topic you attempt to disprove, you'd have known how badly you were putting your foot into your mouth by trying to use Leakey as an example of an evolutionary "doubting Thomas". It only betrays your own ignorance of the topic.

As for the Lejeune quote, the cite seems awfully shaky. Just how trustworthy is a short quote from a translation (published location of full text unspecified) allegedly from an audiotape (unavailable) of a lecture (location and venue left unstated)? Just how are we supposed to verify the accuracy of the translation and transcription, or even whether the speech ever actually took place?

Note also that the translator (Peter Wilders) has an axe to grind (he's an evengelical anti-evolutionist) who may not have left all of his own views at the door when he undertook to make a translation and choose which quote to excerpt and present without larger context.

Even his skill as a French-English translator is in question when one considers a letter-to-the-editor in response to an article Wilders had written in the Homelitic & Pastoral Review:

Editor: I read the article “The Pope and Evolutionary Theory” by Peter Wilders in the October 1997 issue of HPR and was utterly appalled. Mr. Wilders is a self-appointed anti-evolutionist without portfolio who lacks even the most fundamental knowledge of science and history. It now appears that we must add to his list of deficiencies that he also does not understand the French language. (This latter fact being odd for someone from Monaco.)
Full text here

Wilders had mistranslated a simple four-word French phrase, in a way that completely twisted the meaning of the original statement (from the Pope, nonetheless). One has to wonder what changes he might have wrought on Lejuene's lecture...

This is especially worth considering in light of the fact that the quote, as presented, seems at odds with other more reliably cited statements by Lejeune. For example:

With my colleagues at the Institut de Progénèse of Paris, we are involved in the description of basic facts in human heredity. By a comparative study of many mammalian species, including the great apes, we are studying the chromosomal variations which occurred during Evolution.
-- Jerome Lejeune, Testimony before the the Senate subcommittee on separation of powers on the beginning of human life. University of René Descartes, Paris, France. April 23,1981.

He seems pretty comfortable with the idea of "basic facts of human heredity", including the variations which occurred "during Evolution", to wit our evolutionary relatedness to the great apes and, more distantly, all mammals.

On the other hand, Lejuene was known to be a bit of a crank, I've run across several accounts of him getting into a public shouting match with a student who dared question one of his ideas at a public lecture, after which he stomped out.

In any case, a few dissenters would hardly support your sneering implication that scientists huddle together in fear that their house of cards will be exposed as empty -- it simply isn't true, and in fact is wildly ludicrous. Not to mention quite insulting.

There are a thousand more just like this.

No, actually, there aren't.

Unless you have a secret cache of hundreds of statements "just like this" that you've been hiding from your fellow creationists, no, you don't actually have "a thousand more". I've seen all the favorite "scientists who [allegedly] denounce evolution" quotes that the creationists love to trot out time and again, and there are really only a couple dozen golden oldies.

And like your Leakey quote above, most of them don't even say what the creationists claim they do. Many are, in fact, quite simply misquoted, or quoted widly out of context, or simply made up.

Finally, if you really want to try to continue to maintain that a few quotes somehow proves your contention that scientists as a whole have huge doubts about evolution, I'll see your doubters and raise them 72 Nobel Laureates, 17 State Academies of Science, and 7 other scientific organizations in an Amicus Curiae Brief to the US Supreme Court, in which they put their names to the statement that, "The evolutionary history of organisms has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as any biological concept."

By the way, that was *every* Nobel Prize winner living in the US at the time (1986).

So cut out the nonsense about scientists not being confident of evolution, why don't you?

And you really don't want to get into a link-posting contest do you?

Actually, I had hoped you might actually *read* those links I provided for you so that you could learn something. Silly me.

You had claimed that science can't demonstrate what you call "MACRO-evolution", and I provided links which did that very thing. If you choose not to examine them, that's your choice. But don't continue to pretend that there *is* no such evidence.

What do YOU think?

I think you've made it clear that I'd be wasting my time to further discuss this topic with you.

What is your definition of evolution.

My definition of evolution is the same as the standard scientific one. You *do* know what that is, don't you? Don't make me do more of your homework for you.

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?

Why would I want to "speak to why" scientists have been unable to do something that they have, in fact, done?

Contrary to your loaded question, they have indeed been able to "prove the transition of MORE beneficial genetic information from specie to specie", quite easily. It's so simple even a child could grasp it -- so why do you seem to be totally unaware of it?

Here it is in a nutshell: Beneficial mutations, no matter how infrequent they may be compared to harmful mutations, will tend to be preserved and passed on and will thus spread throughout the population over succeeding generations. Harmful mutations, on the other hand, quickly get weeded out because the unfortunate individual which receives it either dies in the womb (if it interferes with embryonic development), dies or fails to prosper after birth, fails to mate, or otherwise has a poor likelihood of being able to pass on the mutation to succeeding generations.

Thus beneficial mutations tend to accumulate over time, and harmful ones do not, *regardless* of how much more often the harmful ones may crop up. It's that simple. It's not rocket science.

It's not a new idea, either -- Darwin wrote about it in 1859... Maybe news is just slow getting to your neighborhood...

I'd suggest hitting the library or doing a few websearches, that way you could discover answers to your own questions instead of having us do it for you.

Oh - and I said I wouldn't put a link on here, but I lied. I like this one: http://www.rae.org/

It's more sensible than many creationist websites (which unfortunately isn't saying too much). The smartest thing it does is try to bolster creationism and for the most part not directly try to attack evolution. But it's still chock-full of nonsense, straw men, and fallacious arguments that have been discredited for decades, and the authors show a poor grasp of rigorous reasoning.

For just one quick example:

Starving Dinosaurs
A further point of interest is that in some layers, supposedly representing millions of years, very few different species can be found. Often only a handful of different ones are present in a given layer representing thousands or even millions of years. Sometimes a large species of dinosaur will be found in a particular layer with almost nothing else in the same layer with this large meat-eating dinosaur. 1 What on earth did the dinosaur live on for millions of years?

This is incredibly moronic. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of paleontology knows that in order for the body of a large creature to be successfully fossilized (most carcasses never do), it has to be quickly buried in one manner or another (mudslide, sandstorm, flash flood, fall into quicksand or tar pit, etc.)

A layer containing a dinosaur skeleton doesn't cover "millions of years", it covers a few hours or days. So it's no surprise that the dinosaur skeleton is seldom entombed with a box lunch...

Nor, contrary to the author's claim, does anyone *claim* that such layers, by themselves, represent a million years worth of deposition. The author is either grossly misrepresenting the actual geologic claims, or he is idiotically misunderstanding them. And neither option inspires confidence, does it?

The author then goes on to argue that since the particular layer which contains the dinosaur must not extend over millions of years of time, then neither must *any* of the geologic column, nor even the *entire* geologic column -- I guess the layers making up the complete height of the Grand Canyon just formed overnight, then... This "reasoning", if it can even be called that, is so obviously fallacious that I'm surprised the author can post it with a straight face.

There are many who believe that the Egyptian timeline goes back far more than the one you have presented. But I want to make sure you realize how much of your document is speculation... There are no geneologies, to my knowledge, found in ancient egyptian documents which are as simple and definative as the one you have presented.

Of course.

Not that I am saying that I can disprove it, or even that it is not accurate, but you present it as if it is fact, and conceal the vast amount of speculation.

Oh? Where exactly do you believe I have presented it as "fact"?

Certainly, some of the items on the timeline are going to be debatable. That's obviously true of any timeline (including the Hebrew timeline), which is why I didn't feel there had to be a big disclaimer on it.

But those who subscribe to a "global flood 4000 years ago" view are going to have to reconcile that with the many, many other sources which cause grave problems for such a belief. The Egyptian historical and archeological record is just one of them. Even if the Egyptian timeline needs to be adjusted somewhat as new discoveries are made, it seems wildly unlikely that the effects of an alleged worldwide flood which wiped out all but a boatload of mankind would not have left such enormous aftereffects for hundreds of years that it would have been impossible to miss in, say, Egyptian history. If nothing else, where are the records of how a new king came into Egypt ~4000 years ago and founded a new kingdom upon the empty, washed-out remains of an older lost civilization -- and that the king was the descendant of a sailor named Noah? That would be a pretty big thing to "forget" to write up, especially in a society that made a point of filing away detailed tax records and the wages of slaves.

Instead, Egyptian history seems to have cruised along pretty steadily throughout the entire era in which the Flood is alleged to have occurred.

Flood fans are going to have to deal with that, and with the hundreds of other similar indications of major problems in their scenario.

If there is one thing that I see as a consistent "Non-scientific" aspect of evolutionary apologetics, it is the acceptance of "theories", and the presentation of those "accepted theories" as if they are "established facts", and the buiding of more "theories" upon those "accepted theories" and then accepting/presenting them as "established facts".

It's easy to make derogatory generalizations -- do you have a specific example you'd like to offer?

This what I believe the scripture refers to as "Science Falsely so-called".

That sounds more like "scientific creationism" to me. It claims to be scientific, but is mostly just a gathering of data that can be argued support the biblical version, and an outright rejection of all data that doesn't. That's not science, that's begging the question.

But your presentation of this "constructed" timeline as valid refutation of the scripture is clear evidence of your willingness to accept as fact what is only speculative,

Excuse me? You're reading an awful lot into my post, aren't you?

Where did I "accept as fact" all the particulars of the timeline? Where did I present it as "valid refutation" of scripture?

From the ironic tone of my post, I thought it was pretty clear that I was raisign it as a "yeah, but..." point to ponder; food for thought, and a bit of a kick in the pants for people who read only one source (e.g. Genesis) and then simply presume that it's true and that there isn't any significant information from other sources that raise a lot of questions.

How is this "clear evidence" of my supposed "willingness to accept as fact what is only speculative"?

On the contrary, I was aiming my post at the very sort of people who *do* have the sort of attitude you accuse me of, specifically because I *don't* find that kind of thinking to be a good idea.

hense the Creationsists charge of evolution being a religion or "faith" and NOT SCIENCE like so many enjoy sanctimoniously to proclaim.

Generally, because the creationists misconstrue scientists as badly as you have misconstrued my post.

Too often evolutionary theroy's conclusions predate the proclaimed "proof", that it is plain to me that "SCIENCE" is an inappropriate term for it.

Yet again, you seem pretty free with your generalities, but fail to present any specific examples. Perhaps you should do so now, with regard to your belief that "evolutionary theory's conclusions predate the proclaimed 'proof'".

While you do that, you might want to consider that by speaking of "proof", you have revealed a great misunderstanding of what science actually does and does not claim to do. There are no "proofs" in science. If you think a scientist has claimed to "prove" something scientifically, then you're misunderstanding him.

Your presentation is one more example of exactly that.

So you falsely claim, but that doesn't make it so.

In science, and other related fields, one of the most common methods of testing the strength of a hypothesis is to bring up evidence that seems to clash with it, and ask the proponent(s) of the hypothesis how they reconcile their hypothesis with the apparently contradictory information.

This was the nature of my "hmm, what about the Egyptian timeline which seems to be incompatible with the Flood chronology" post. This is hardly the "proof" of my arrogance that you make it out to be. On the contrary, your offended reaction and resulting personal attack seems like a good example of what truly separates a "religion or faith", as you put it, from actual science.

Science, properly done, welcomes the chance to address possible objections to its theories, so that it can either overcome the hurdle (which strengthens the theory), or so that an incomplete -- or incorrect -- theory can be recognized and booted before too many conclusions are tentatively built upon it. (That's not to say that science and scientists enjoy having to field the same stupid, faulty objections day in and day out, which is why evolutionists on these forums can get a bit testy.)

Religion/faith, on the other hand, not only doesn't appreciate challenges to its positions, it can get pretty defensive and dogmatic about it. Blasphemers (oh, excuse me, "questioners") ultimately are treated as if they are working for the devil in an attempt to destroy the One True Faith -- or at the very least are accused of overweening arrogance for daring to question God's Revealed Truth.

The question of whether the believer is himself being amazingly arrogant for claiming to know and recognize and properly understand the One True Revelation never seems to come to their minds.

Oh? Where exactly do you believe I have presented it as "fact"?

Where did I "accept as fact" all the particulars of the timeline? (Part in bold is called back peddling/side stepping - see comment towards end *) Where did I present it as "valid refutation" of scripture?

MY QUOTE: "Point of Correction... The Bible based creation model to which you refer holds creation at 6000-odd years ago... 4000-odd years ago was the flood. Creation would have been 2000-odd years prior."

YOUR QUOTE: "That's going to come as a big surprise to the ancient Egyptians, who had a continuous history and civilization for a thousand years before, during, and after this alleged worldwide flood 4000 years ago. You'd think they would have noticed something like that... " (followed by your timeline)

Your statement of fact is in bold... You are welcome to try to BS why your inclusion of the timeline was meant to be anything other than valid justification for your statement.

If nothing else, where are the records of how a new king came into Egypt ~4000 years ago and founded a new kingdom upon the empty, washed-out remains of an older lost civilization -- and that the king was the descendant of a sailor named Noah? That would be a pretty big thing to "forget" to write up, especially in a society that made a point of filing away detailed tax records and the wages of slaves. Instead, Egyptian history seems to have cruised along pretty steadily throughout the entire era in which the Flood is alleged to have occurred.

You again state such speculation as if it is reliable fact, even suggesting a picture of their society as being so anal in record keeping, that the record with which they have provided us is such an exhaustive, detailed written historical record, that the absence of a story in that record is presented by you as reasonable evidence that it never happened. THAT IS OUTRIGHT FRAUDULENT DECEPTION!!! Most records as those you refer to are found written on the backsides of grocery lists and the like, are fragmented, and of uncertain purpose and origin. Yet you, consistent with many other evolutionists, feel free to present such things in such a manner, in order to create the illusion of scientific support for your beliefs.

It's easy to make derogatory generalizations -- do you have a specific example you'd like to offer?

It is an observable fact that the light from some stars is of a frequency which is more into the red part of the spectrum than light from other stars. There is a theory to explain this, called THE RED SHIFT THEORY. It theorises, reasonably, I think, that the redder light comes from stars who are moving away from us at such a great speed as to cause a sort of Doppler's Effect in the light. This is a theory. I think a valid theory, although there are others theories which could explain the observation as well. However, based on the ASSUMPTION that RED SHIFT is caused by stars moving away from us at great speeds, there is a theory that explains why the stars are moving apart. This theory speculates that the the universe as a whole is expanding from a central point, and assuming that to be true, that it was at one point infinitessimaly small, and that it must have exploded into the universe we know now. This is called the BIG BANG THEORY, and is based primarily on the RED SHIFT THEORY. The BIG BANG theory is then extrapolated eventually into various origins of earth theory, the premordial soup theory, and ultimately into evolution theory.

Which came first, the supposed dates of the different eras, or the dating methods which supposedly prove them?

WHAT??? You are playing word games like so many who try to muddle the meaning of the scientific method so that their unscientific methods don't get exposed. You can certainly DISPROVE a theorum, and if you can DISPROVE a theorum, you can PROVE a modified inverse of that threorum. For example, I can disprove the the follwoing theory: "If I throw a rock up, it will never come down." I can therefore prove the theory "If I throw a rock up, it is possible for it to come back down." This mumbo jumbo about the scientific method not really "Proving" anything didn't exist prior to it being used to challenge evolutionists' calling themselves "scientific", yet accepting conclusions based on theories rather than tested hypothesis.

Generally, because the creationists misconstrue scientists as badly as you have misconstrued my post.

I don't think I misconstrued anything.

This was the nature of my "hmm, what about the Egyptian timeline which seems to be incompatible with the Flood chronology" post. This is hardly the "proof" of my arrogance that you make it out to be.

Here you seem to be applying, as you did above *, the same "If it's proven wrong, don't admit it is wrong, go back and modify it so the discrediting evidence doesn't apply" concept that the evolutionsists have adopted as their new "scientific method".

The sum of my contention is that your assertions are presented as fact, but are NOT based in scientificly tested data, but rather in speculation, and you are fraudulently deceptive in their presentation and in their defense. Ergo, NOT SCIENCE, though CALLED SCIENCE. (I would go farther to state that I see this as the norm for evolution apologeticists.) You say I misunderstand you. I'm confident that I don't.

You did not directly apply this to me, but your inclusion might make a reader assume you meant to. Whether you intended to or not, I would like you to point out where I was out of line, if you think that my response to you was in a factless, offended, "how dare you question scripture" sort of way, or if it was, in fact, based on a question of your response's integrity. And, as you characterized my response as a personal attack... I believe it was at least as much an attack on the integrity of your evidence as it was a personal attack, and in fact, any ad hominem was soley based on your willingness to employ such evidence (and possibly associating you with others who do the same).

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