Continued from The Pseudo Dragons of Genesis Park Part 6
Next, the sixth, seventh, and eight hoaxes is claimed to depict alleged dinosaur figurines from China shown in comparison with Oviraptor and Saurolophus, two Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived in what is now Asia, and a "Late Eastern Zhou Sauropod ornamental box" that's alleged to depict a sauropod with a tridactyl foot, a long neck, and a head resembling a Brachiosaur. In Woetzel's eyes, "this depiction is compelling." No, it isn't, Woetzel.
First off, the first artifact is not a dinosaur figurine, but a wingless male griffin (also known as 'alce' or 'keythong') figurine Woetzel is presenting and wrongfully comparing to Oviraptor which is a bipedal dinosaur with possible feathers, a bird-like body, and one solid crest on its head.
In the second artifact, the word "Fang Jian" is not the name of the alleged dinosaur. "Fang Jian" actually means "room" in Chinese and the so-called ornamental box is actually a ritual water (Jian) vessel, similar to this one here, used to hold water used to perform purification rituals. There is supposed to be a lid on that thing, but the lid is missing in the photo. This vessel along with other Eastern Zhou artifacts are often decorated with engraved inscriptions that commemorate important events. The animals on each side of the vessel are not sauropods, but are in fact semi-crouching, mythical dragon-like, cat creatures possibly representing a tiger, which is known to love swimming in water, partially couching down as if they are ready to pounce on any demon that tried to poison the water inside the vessel. Look how these mythical dragon-like felines on all sides of the vessel are very similar to this feline, this feline, and this feline all dating to the same period the vessel is dated to. All of them depict mythical cat-like beasts, some shown in a semi-crouching position. In reality, Sauropods don't have ribbon-type, feline bodies and can't crouch the way a cat does. Also, sauropods don't have tridactyl feet. They have 5 toes on each elephantine hind foot with 3-2 claws on each of them and toeless, one-clawed fore feet are arranged in a backwards "C" pattern. And finally, the head look nothing like any sauropod known, not even a brachiosaur. A cat maybe, but definitely not a brachiosaur.
The third artifact is claimed to have "relief lines in a scale-like pattern, a broad beak, a dermal frill, and a headcrest that is strikingly like the dinosaur Saurolophus." No, the statue is not of Saurolophus, but of a mythical lion-like animal (possibly a chimera) with only 2 limbs, each with four toes, a shorter tail, pointed tooth showing on each side of its jaws, and a lion-like head with pointed ears. Its scale pattern is totally different than the scale patterns of Saurolophus who has 4 limbs, 3 toes on each tridactyl hind feet, mitten-like 4-fingered hands, bony crest, no mammalian ears, duck-like beak, narrow horse-like head, rows and rows of teeth for chewing plants, longer, stiffened tail for balance, and no one knows whether Saurolophus had a dermal frill on its back or not. Saurolophus has a body structure far different than that of the stature and can walk on mostly 4 legs while other times walk on two. What is shown is another example of creationists making false comparisons with a dinosaur image made by an artist who never saw a live dinosaur other than a bird. In the warped reasoning, if an artifact or text carries a shape or a description that's similar to an artist conception of a any dinosaur no matter how outdated and erroneous it is, then its a match…or is it? Leave it to the creationists to distort mythology and relics and create forgeries and hoaxes to make it be what they want while throwing out parts of mythology that debunks their idiocy.
Next comes the ninth and tenth hoaxes that are not exactly hoaxes but vases that depict a scene from Greek Mythology depicting Hercules slaying a sea monster named Ketos to save Hesione from being devoured.
The first vase, known as the Hesione vase, depicts Heracles rescuing and helping Hesione kill off Ketos. This vase is on the front cover of Adrienne Mayor's The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. What is very unique about this vase is that the vase depicts Ketos as a skull of an animal sticking out from a rock wall. The skull is claimed by Woetzel to be a head of a dinosaur that "forced [Science News] to concede the amazingly realistic dinosaurian depiction.." to "..conclude that the paintings on this unusual vase simply prove that ancient people dug fossils, too." Sorry, Woetzel, the head looks nothing like a " realistic dinosaurian depiction" but instead a realistic mammalian depiction that may resemble a prehistoric deer or giraffe from the Miocene Epoch.
In a creationists' eyes, if animals like a seal or an elephant is real, then the mythical animal, shown in the same image alongside such animals, must be real, never mind the complete lack of physical evidence for the existence of such creatures. The second vase is claimed to be a Carian urn that Woetzel claims to depict a Mosasaur being seen alongside seal, an octopus, and a dolphin. The sea creature is described to have thick jaws, big teeth, large eyes, and positioning of the flippers which Woetzel claims to match a Mosasaurus skeleton very well. Sorry, Woetzel, it don't. The monster on the "urn," which is another Greek vase actually, is just Ketos again, seen in the exact same situation also depicted on the famous Hesione vase with the difference of having a skull sticking out of the rock wall while the other vase shows Ketos, possibly based on a shark, in full "flesh and blood" view. Ketos in the second vase has only 2 limbs, a snaky body, gill slits, a long, rigged, dermal fin, a crest on its head, dorsal fins, and a fish-like tail. Mosasaurs have in fact none of those things.
According to Woetzel,
"Some mosasaurus species also had a narrow cranial crest behind the eye that may have had a fin attached the way it is depicted on the Carian urn."
Wrong, Woetzel! Mosasaurs do not in fact have such fins and crests. Although they are closely related to snakes and monitor lizards, none of the Mosasaurs have just 2 limbs, wavy serpentine bodies, additional fins, fish-like tail, gills, or crests on the back of their heads like Ketos had. This is one of the best examples of Woetzel never getting his knowledge on dinosaurs and other prehistoric life right no matter what.
Woetzel then invented a story about a former lawyer named Mario Tolone Azzariti, who is an archaeologist sent to Carlia (a country in Italy) to investigate reports of discoveries made of hundreds of ancient artifacts which includes alleged "dinosaurian representations" coming from the pre-Greek civilization of Calabria dated to be 3,000 years old. Hoax Artifacts even claims,
"Tolone Azzariti, had developed a wide knowledge of classical cultures from years of study in the historical libraries and in the National archaeological Museum of Naples, but it had never seen objects of this character, not from the age of the Greeks, nor Phonecians or Roman…."
Here, Dian Ardiyansah, possible webmaster behind Hoax Artifacts, are making it as if Azzariti discovered remnants of an advanced civilization with styles, culture, and technology way beyond time, similar to what is seen in pulp fiction novels. But no, that's not what Azzariti really saw. The claim about such discoveries made in Italy is all the way false. According to this article (in both Italian and English), what Azzariti did found in reality was ancient tombs that were vandalized long ago by locals. While the rich put the ashes of their loved ones in the urns and buried them in the tombs, the poor people in turn broke into the tombs, stole the urns, and empty them of their ashes so they can cook their meals in them before putting ashes back into the urns and then back into the tomb. The artifacts found in the tomb are axes and stone weapons and zoomorphing artifacts that represent sheep and goats that the pre-hellenistic people have highly prized for their skins, meat, milk, sacrifice, and work. These artifacts are dated to the time when the early tribes of Calabria transformed themselves from a nomadic group to agricultural farmers that formed civilizations that dotted the region about 3,500 BC/BCE.
Both Genesis Park and Hoax Artifacts show the very best example of how creationists don't have a single clue to what a dinosaur or its contemporary really look like and how they are really structurally built based on modern studies on their bone structure. Admittedly, in the past, I would get upset and cry over the artwork and artifacts that allegedly depict dinosaurs as if they are there to destroy my long held belief that dinosaurs lived and died long before humans came along. Yet, I knew all along that looks can be highly deceiving. Creationists deceptively show images and artifacts depicting monster-like mythical creatures they claimed to be real, authentic dinosaurs because of their dinosaur-like shape and compare them to various conceptions of dinosaur all made by artisans who never for once saw a live dinosaur in hopes of matching the monster with an artist's conception of the dinosaur. The problem with this flawed logic is that no two conceptions are alike. Each conception of a dinosaur completely differs from the other. How do they know if that's what the monster really looks like? Answer: They don't. Other than birds, no one, prehistoric, ancient, and modern, has ever saw a living dinosaur. What they made is all just conceptions of what the dinosaur might have looked like when they were alive based on what scientists have unearthed, studied, and learned about. These conceptions may, in all cases, be completely inaccurate and outdated even by a few years as more fossil discoveries are made that cause scientists to rethink what they believed dinosaurs may have looked like in the past. Therefore, what creationists do to prove their fallacy, by comparing alleged ancient artifacts with modern conceptions of dinosaurs all made by 20th century artists, is completely unreliable and totally worthless. Especially since these alleged artifacts they show do not resemble any dinosaur and Mesozoic contemporary whatsoever.
Now the eleventh and twelfth hoaxes shows a terracotta figurine and a piece of broken pottery depicting what Woetzel claims to be a "clear" representation of a Stegosaurus because to Woetzel, the small 18cm long figurine is
"…shaped remarkably like a dinosaur with plates on its back. The plates are triangular, and continue along the back until reaching the tail. In the view from above [in the right photo] the object reveals a strange curving of the plates, as if the animal had been represented in motion on the land. The legs are large and awkward, as if carrying great weight, not at all like those of a lizard."
The figurine and the pottery piece represents not a dang thing of what Woetzel claims. In fact, the figurine and the pottery piece, which doesn't look broken, looks a lot like a modern toy one can make at home or in shop class in school, with real stumpy legs, a neck and upper back that's bare of plates and a row of pointed spikes stretching from just its middle back and tail. Stegosaurus is full-erect quadruped dinosaur with a double row of triangular shaped plates that are arrange in a zig-zag pattern and stretches all the way from neck to tail and are attached to the skin, not to the bone. While the figurine completely lack spikes at the tail tip, Stegosaurus bears 4 spikes that can be used as a formidable weapon against its enemies. It has a bony pouch underneath its throat to protect it from being bitten by the likes of Ceratosaurus and a very narrow pointed skull with a brain as big as a walnut and a beak in front of its mouth. Apparently the toy and the plaque has none of those features. Obviously, the 2 hoaxes are all done up out of complete ignorance of the fact that the remains of Stegosaurus have only been found in North America and nowhere else.
Continued Next Post…
