The next claim is one of the direct examples of creationists misusing winged, limbless serpents called amphipteres to falsely describe pterosaurs that are in fact everything "fiery flying serpents" are not. The claim is said to be "no old story invented to frighten children, but a real fact," that isn't. This claim involves sightings of "flying dragons" Woetzel claims to be [sic] pterosaur-like creatures that once inhabited the wooded area around Penllin (Penllyn misspelled) Castle in Glamorgan (or Glamorganshire) in Wales, known for its prestegious university. They are described by an old man to be very beautiful creatures who "coiled when in repose, and 'looked as if they were covered with jewels of all sorts. Some of them had crests sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow.' When disturbed they glided swiftly, 'sparkling all over,' to their hiding places. When angry, they 'flew over people's heads, with outspread wings, bright, and sometimes with eyes too, like the feathers in a peacock's tail.'"
Only amphipteres (sometimes spelled as amphitheres) have such features the man described in the story and pterosaurs completely lack such as the sparkling rainbow crests and scales, coiling bodies, wings some feathered, others leathery, including ones having "eyes" like what is found on the feathers of a peacock. Pterosaurs have in fact bodies that resemble either gorillas or giraffes and skinned wings supported by only one elongated finger. Although some of them do have crests on their heads, no one really knows what colored the pterosaurs were and none of the crests along with their bodies sparkle like jewels and have "eyes" on them like amphipteres does. Pterosaurs completely lack scales, have hair on their bodies, and walk on four legs. Their bodies cannot coil unlike the amphitheres which can coil like a normal snake and are described to have no limbs while pterosaurs have only four.
A few years ago, I created an essay debunking the preposterous claims made by another creationist named Bill Cooper who created a book called After the Flood which idiotically claims Grendel and his mother, the 2 monsters Beowulf kills in the epic poem, is a Tyrannosaurus Rex (!). Now how idiotically stupid creationist claims can get! It's no wonder why so many people laugh and mocked them every time they make stupid claims such as this. Grendel was not a tyrannosaurian dinosaur. Grendel was actually an ogre, a giant who was a direct descendant of Cain, the first murderer in Genesis 4 of the Bible. Grendel was the ogre Beowulf have killed by tearing off his arm and leaving him to stagger back into his cave and bleed to death, prompting his mother to kill a person she believes to be the one responsible for her son's death. When Beowulf learns of this, he went out and confronted the mother and killed her by taking the magic sword which was the giant's family heirloom and use it to chop off her head.
Why am I bringing this up? It's because of what is shown in the next claim also found in Cooper's idiot book that involves a pamphlet that tells of a dragon sighting made in Sussex, England that is described to have a mammalian head with pointed ears, teats or women-type breasts on its back, large scales, curly tail, and a poisonous breath that can kill anyone that whiffs this potent smell. The dragon in the pamphlet kills its victims but never eats them, preferring to rely on rabbits as its only prey instead. The dragon shown on the pamphlet is in no way a dinosaur. In fact none of the dragons presented in all of ancient literature describe dinosaurs. Creationists fabricate them to make it look as if they are what creationists claim while throwing out all sorts of parts that clearly debunks their blatant idiocy including the descriptions of them bearing teats and/or women's breasts like the Vibria for instance. The Vibria (or La Vibria) is a female dragon of Catalan mythology said to have breasts of a woman, a pair of wings, two clawed limbs, and an eagle-like beak. She was a very clever dragon who was put inside of a cave as a young dragon by the Moors to take revenge on the Christians for driving them out of their lands. When Vibria grew, she became a vicious dragon that spent much of her nightly rounds devouring livestock and people and burning towns and villages until she was finally slain by Count Jofre el Pilós who then built a monastery at the peak of the mountain to prevent any more dragons from invading his land and the mountain where Vibria once lived.
When we look into ancient myths and find tales told in full context of dragons that carry descriptions that doesn't describe any dinosaur whatsoever, then we will know how foolish and stupid it is to rely on mythology to explain dinosaurs, just like knowing how stupid and foolish to rely on the Bible to explain things it tells nothing about, including dinosaurs.
Next, Woetzel mentions a story told of a dragon sighting made front of Mt. Pilatus by a man named Christopher Schorerum who claims in 1619 to have seen "a shining dragon of great size in front of Mt. Pilatus, coming from the opposite side of the lake [or 'hollow'], a cave that is named Flue [Hogarth-near Lucerne] moving rapidly in an agitated way, seen flying across; It was of a large size, with a long tail, a long neck, a reptile's head, and ferocious gaping jaws. As it flew it was like iron struck in a forge when pressed together that scatters sparks. At first I thought it was a meteor from what I saw. But after I diligently observed it alone, I understood it was indeed a dragon from the motion of the limbs of the entire body." The man who wrote about Schorerum's sighting is claimed to be true, but it's not.
No pterosaur ever glow, sparkle, and illuminate in the night sky. In fact there's no evidence of pterosaurs being capable of doing such things like the alleged dragon in the tale that may have been nothing more than a comet, a falling star, or a UFO Schorerum must have misidentified as a dragon when he saw the object flying across the night sky above Mt. Pilatus years ago. This tale, coming from Mundus Subterraneus, a book chock full of geological inaccuracies, also came from a 1979 fictional historical book entitled Dragons by Peter Hogarth, a biologist who is deeply fascinated with dragons and other mythical beasts and how people are greatly fascinated by them. Not only does Dragons describe dragons but other mythical creatures as well such as devils and imps that were once thought to be real along with the dragon, but not according to Hogarth. He knows very well that there's no physical evidence for the existence of dragons and dragons aren't real. He does believe that dragons may have been inspired by sightings of bones and fossils of dinosaurs and other forms prehistoric life. Especially fossils found on Mt. Pilatus that may have inspired dragon legends such as the famous tale of a man who fell into the cave inhabited by 2 dragons who did nothing to harm him, but instead provided him with companionship and survival by teaching him to lick moisture from the rocks. Then spring came and the dragons left their winter cave with the man hitching a ride on one of their tails to escape confinement and head back home where he died a short time later trying to adjust back to his old diet after spending six months eating nothing but water.
The next claim tells about 2 cowboys who claimed to have seen and shot down "a creature - described as a 'winged dragon' - which resembled a pterodactyl, only MUCH larger. The cowboys said its wingspan was 160 feet, and that its body was more than four feet wide and 92 feet long." Woetzel claims,
"The cowboys supposedly cut off the end of the wing to prove the existence of the creature. The paper’s description of the animal fits the Quetzelcoatlus, whose fossils were found in Texas. Could this be thunderbird or Wakinyan, the jagged-winged, fierce-toothed flying creature of Sioux American Indian legend?"
No, it's not. For starters Quetzalcoatlus is a crested pterosaur with no teeth and has a wingspan of 40ft and is about the size of a small airplane. The first story, presented by Woetzel, is a direct fabrication of a sighting of a large bird that escaped from a zoo and were spotted by the 2 cowboys who tried to shoot it but were unsuccessful. So they went back to town and invented the exaggerated tale about them encountering a large bird like monster with a wingspan of 160 feet, 4 feet wide, and 92 feet long which they shot, kill, and drag into town where they claimed to have the creature photographed for all to see, but the photograph is non-existent. Yet, some people claimed to have copies of the photograph, but none were found to confirm their claim. The alleged photograph taken had 6 men holding a large bird with a fully splayed feathered tail either right side up or upside down depending upon the sketch of people who claim to know the photo. Judging by the appearances by the photo, there is no doubt that this bird-like creature was neither a pterosaur nor the legendary Thunderbird. Unlike the Thunderbird and the bird in the image, Pterosaurs completely lack feathers, let alone a feathery tail. Pterosaurs have hair on their bodies and wings made up of translucent to opaque skin that stretched from the 4th finger all the way to the either the hip, knee, or ankle. The bird in the picture looked more of a stork with condor-like wings than a pterosaur or the Thunderbird. So, it is most likely that the story of the 2 cowboys encountering a pterosaur is really a direct fabrication of another direct fabrication of the story about the 2 cowboys and their encounter with a large bird that's perhaps either a condor, eagle, heron, or a stork.
References:
http://www.rense.com/general3/thun.htm
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa100801b.htm
Secondly the claim about the Thunderbird living at the peak of The Olympic Mountains and feeding on seafood is a direct fabrication of the Thunderbird's epic battle against killer whales for food in which some battles are so fierce that they torn up trees by the roots and shake up mountains as the two fought with each other for survival. The Thunderbird legend may have been inspired by sightings of large size Teratornithidae birds with grasping talons capable of carrying up their prey unlike pterosaurs that can only carry their prey with their beaks, not their feet. Not only are the feet of pterosaurs are too weak to clutch prey, holding prey with their feet would throw off their centers of balance, and render themselves incapable of flight.
And finally the claim about two Native American braves encountering the Thunderbird leaves out the fact that the 2 warriors only saw what they believe to be a bird falling from the heavens in form of a bolt of lightening. After traveling for many days, they came across fossilized remains of a Pteranodon they believed to be the Thunderbird that plunged from the heavens and hit the ground so hard that it embedded itself in the earth. They also notice fossil sea shells surrounding it which the two braves believes them to be "thunderstones" which were created when lightening hit the ground. No live pterosaur sightings here.
Finally, Woetzel concludes this page by claiming,
"The atheistic astronomer Carl Sagan once remarked: “The pervasiveness of dragon myths in the folk legends of many cultures is probably no accident” (Sagan, Carl, The Dragons of Eden, New York: Random House, 1977, p. 149). Indeed he felt compelled to address the similarity to the great reptiles of the Jurassic era and 'explain them away.'"
There are no similarities between dragons and dinosaurs as I prove to you here. It's obvious Woetzel took that quote out of context and made it as if Sagan is admitting that the dragons in the tales does resemble dinosaurs while the truth of the matter is that dragon legends are mostly inspired by sightings of fossil remains of prehistoric animals that became a subject of countless myths, legends, and fairy tales until finally being identified as plants and animals that have been preserved over millions of years before the Dawn of Man. This, what Woetzel presents on Dragons in History page and the next page entitled Ancient [sic] Dinosaur Depictions I'll debunk in the next post, is the direct result of creationists fabricating dragon legends to deceivingly make them as if they are live dinosaur sightings while throwing out parts of it that clearly says they are in fact not.
