Continued previous post...
Here's the 29th hoax which falsely depicts a dinosaur. This also found in Paul Taylor's drivel and many other creationist books which claims the petroglyph, located at the Hava Supai Canyon in Arizona, depicts either a Tyrannosaurus or an Edmontosaurus. What is shown next to the petroglyph is crap. Edmontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus both look nothing like the dinosaur in the image. The image, painted incorrectly, looks like a cross between a potbellied Barney imitation and a knock-off version of Neeve Parker's classic conception of Edmontosaurus found in John Man's classic book The Day of the Dinosaur. All in the effort to create false dinosaur images to match any image depicting a mythical animal far different than all dinosaurs and their contemporaries. To be frank, the petroglyph likely depicts a scorpion with a severed arm. According to Adrienne Mayor's Fossil legends and The First Americans (pg. 337, 403), the rock carving is now likely a first attempt made by early fossil hunters to reconstruct fossil remains of plants and invertebrates found nearby the site, including the scorpion. However, according to Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies (IBSS) February 2008 article, Dr. Stephen Meyer made better sense when he concludes that the petroglyph actually depicts an eagle, a modern dinosaur. Which leads to only one thing— what Hubbard discovered was indeed a dinosaur– a dinosaur we call "a bird."
Next we get to the 30th hoax where we find an image of a band of Australian natives battling what appears to be a plesiosaur that have just swallowed a man. Here, Woetzel claims,
"Both aboriginal peoples around Lake Galilee and tribes farther up to the north tell of a long-necked animal with a large body and flippers. "Elders of the Kuku Yalanji aboriginal tribe of Far North Queensland, Australia, relate stories of Yarru (or Yarrba), a creature which used to inhabit rain forest water holes."
Yarru and Yarrba (actually spelled "Yarrabah") are in reality names of a river in Victoria, Australia and an Aboriginal Community in Queensland, Australia. What is claim on Woetzel's site is a direct fabrication of the Legend of the Rainbow Serpent, which tells about a large, dangerous snake that lives in waterholes and associates with rainbows, water, rain, lakes, and rivers. Although fossil remains of Plesiosaurs are found in Australia, no living plesiosaurs have ever been found anywhere in Australia, including waterholes. And you can bet the image shown on Woetzel's site is entirely fake and all made up by creationists to deceive the gullible.
Hoax #31 depicts 2 types of rocks, dolerite and gneiss, found in Bushmanland in South Africa which contains engravements Woetzel claims to depict a sauropod and a pterosaur. Wrong. Look closely and you'll find that the two engravements actually depict a dinosaur footprint (first image) highlighted to look like a pterosaur and a Sans engravement of an ostrich (second image). Pterosaurs never truly look like what is shown in the first image.
Hoax #32 and #33 is full of laughs. They depict 2 Egyptian seals depicting pterosaurs that isn't. Both hoaxes is each claimed to be an Egyptian seal depicting a "'pterosaur' somewhat hunting a gazelle" located in Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archeology and a "pterosaur" that's "shown hunting a falcon and also appeared to have the dental structure of a Scaphognathus." located in a Museum in Berlin (Does Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung or Egyptian Museum of Berlin ring a bell?). According to Woetzel referring to the first hoax,
"The leaf shaped tail vane of the pterosaur is unmistakable. The long reptilian head has the double crest of a Scaphognathus above it. The two wings even exhibit the unique corrugated features seen in the Solnhofen Rhamphorhynchus fossil and the claws of a pterosaur."
I've got news for him, these so-called pterosaurs are not pterosaurs! Not even Scaphognathuses! Both seals depicts a griffin with a dog-like body, bird-like wings, and pointed ears. The griffin in the first seal is seen hunting the gazelle. The second griffin is shown here. As a matter of fact, the griffin, one of the most ancient of fantastic animals the Egyptians embrace, was seen during the early and middle days of Egypt as a dog-like beast, mostly with fold-up wings while other times shown with its wings spread out, either hunting animals or guarding tombs of their rulers.
From the very beginning of Egyptian civilization, hunting beyond the Nile proved to be a real scary experience. It is believed that demons, monsters, and evil spirits roam beyond the Nile waiting for the right moment to come by and devastate the country of Egypt. To confront those threats, the Egyptians would have artifacts decorated with fantastic animals helping them subdue the land and drive the monsters away. With griffins and serpopards by their side, the hunters would have the upper hand on what's out there beyond the Nile. According to British Egyptologist, Norman de Garis Davies, to make the hunt more effective and less scary, the hunters would take ordinary dogs and disguised them as griffins and Serpopards to help the Egyptians hunt down animals like gazelles, lions, and falcons that live beyond the Nile. At Beni Hasan and Bersheh, Egypt, there are three tombs decorated with whimsical art depicting domestic animals such as dogs and monkeys. A few of the dogs were disguised as griffins. One of them is seen being lead on a leash which leads Garis to first suggest this idea of Egyptians dressing up dogs as fantastic animals as told in Volume Three, Issue Three, November/December 2002 of Ancient Egypt Magazine.
"The distinguished British Egyptologist, Norman de Garis Davies, who spent some time working in these tombs during the early 1930's, plausibly suggested that it [referring to a griffin on a leash] might, in fact, be a domestic dog, disguised to liken it with this ferocious mythical beast, or that the artist may have intended it to be some sort of a joke. A number of other griffins are also discernable in the decorative program of the Middle Kingdom rock-cut tombchapels at the nearby site of Deir el-Bersha. In one instance, this legendary creation can be seen ambling along in a desert landscape, following a troop of four pet(?) monkeys. If these primates are really tame pets, which seems to be the case, there is also a reasonable possibility that this griffin was also yet another common household dog in full masquerade. One can only then imagine the discomfort these dogs had to endure wearing such elaborate getups, and to what purpose could this serve? Merely a jest or rather in some way a prestigious possession of these nomarchs', which would follow them into the next world?"
The link to the article is dead so I had to salvage to from Microsoft Live cache and put it in my own HTML file so you can click here to read the full article.
Wrongly acknowledging griffins as "pterosaurs" is the best example of how creationists knows zilch about the concept of pterosaurs whatsoever. Every idiot claim Creationist John Goertzen made in his article, The Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur Scaphognathus crassirostris: A (sic) ‘Living Fossil' Until the 17th Century, made for the Revolution Against Evolution creationist site, is extremely laughable! This whole article is about a single Jurassic pterosaur named Scaphognathus crassirostris and how it was being allegedly "seen alive" in ancient times over the years until it became "extinct" in the 1600's where people first begin to discover and identify fossils of prehistoric dinosaurs and pterosaurs (In reality Scaphognathus died out at the end of the Jurassic Period). The whole article along with this article from Woetzel is a direct example of creationists being so deluded and dull minded that they'll do anything to prove their fallacy just by taking any form ancient artifact, art and hoaxes depicting birds, dragons, and other mythical monsters and stupidly call them pterosaurs while engaging in blind ignorance of what pterosaurs really look like based on fossil evidence and studies of their anatomy and bone structure even to the point of purposely and blindly mistaking the lines of the wing and tail feathers of a bird with fibers lining the pterosaur's skin membrane— proof that dinosaur/human coexistence idea is one big stupid joke invented by Hollywood! Exactly what creationists regard the Theory of Evolution as themselves The concept of dinosaurs living with humans must rightfully belong to only Hollywood, Science Fiction, and Fantasy genre! And they wonder why no one, save a gullible few, ever take their claims seriously.
In reality, Scaphognathus is a Late Jurassic Pterosaur of the Rhamphorhynchoidea family that had a bigger brain than any other pterosaur, yet has very poor sense of smell. Its tail and wings are small in comparison with its relatives, about 1 meters in wingspan. Scaphognathus has a rounded crest made up of skin, not bone and is known from five specimens all unearthed from the German state of Bavaria.
Hoax #34 is the infamous Stegosaurus carving that isn't. Here Woetzel asks,
"But how could artisans decorating an 800 year old Buddhist temple know what a dinosaur looked like? Western science only began assembling dinosaurs skeletons in the past two centuries."
Answer: They don't. To really know what the carving is, check out The Stegosaurus Carving That Isn't.
Underneath Hoax #34 a few new hoaxes are shown here featuring dragons and monsters that Woetzel stupidly claims to accurately depict dinosaurs. The first one shows what Woetzel claims to be an altar cloth illustrating St. George slaying a dragon which Woetzel claims,
"..bears an amazing likeness to the Nothosaurus, a semi-aquatic reptile"
Wrong! The dragon in the image do not look like Nothosaurus at all. What is shown in the so-called "Ancient Dinosaur Depictions" is likely a wall engravement shown with 2 images depicting a false comparison between the medieval dragon and a modern artist's interpretation of a Nothosaurus placed right next to it - all set up by creationists to fool the lay audience out of ignorance of the fact that Nothosaurus, a Late Triassic sauropterygian reptile, has a much broad, flat head with long jaws lined with needle-like teeth, 5-toed webbed feet, and a stream-line body with possibly a fin on its short, stiffened tail. The dragon in the engravement, on the other hand, has a much shorter, stocky, robust head with curvy teeth, no webbed feet with 4 large clawed toes, crocodile-like scales on its back and belly, and a very long, coiling tail.
The next new hoax featuring paintings and engravements of 4 legged, fire-breathing dragons Woetzel stupidly claims to accurately depict Plateosaurus out of ignorance of the fact that Plateosaurus was in fact a two legged, bipedal sauropodomorph with a short rectangular head containing leaf-shaped teeth in its jaws, a straight tail, and "clapping hands" that can't pronate (turn the palm down) like humans do.
Hoax #35 claims of a "flying serpent" falsely regarded as a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur,
"European reports of flying serpent living in Egypt persist through the 1600's. The Italian naturalist Prosper Alpin wrote a fascinating natural history of Egypt in the 1580's. He describes their crest, a small piece of skin on the head, their tail being "thick as a finger," their length being "as long as a palm branch," and their leaf-shaped tail. (Alpin, P., Histoire Naturelle de l'Egypte, tr. by R. de Fenoyl, 1979, pp. 407-409.) All is precisely like modern fossil reconstructions."
Or is it? While Woetzel and other creationists refers him as Prosper Alpin, his full name is actually Prospero Alpini (1553-1617), an Italian botanist and physician who did a lot of work in studying Egyptian plants. Here's a tidbit about Alpini in Today in Science History,
"Italian physician and botanist who is credited with the introduction to Europe of coffee and bananas. He made an extensive study of Egyptian and Mediterranean flora. He spent three years in Egypt, and from a practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of the Linnaean system. He says that "the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers." He is reputed to have been the first to fertilize date palms."
On another creationist page, Pterosaur! (Evolutionists confounded again?), there is an except taken out of context from one of Alpini's works translated into French by R. de Fenoyl in 1979. The excerpt reads,
"…there is nothing for sure about the basilic, but we have heard talk, nevertheless, that there is a small serpent, as long as a palm branch, and thick like a small finger. It has a small piece of skin, like a crest, on its head and, in the middle of the back, two scales placed on one side and the other which serve as wings in order to advance more quickly. Large numbers of people have said that these serpents live in large quantities close to certain lakes in which the Nile has its source. People don't travel close to those lakes because of the well-known danger these serpents represent … That is what is said by the Egyptians who travel in Ethiopia and in Nubia [3, p. 407 (222)]."
Creationist Frank Sherwin of ICR, who wrote the article where the except came from, claims Alpini never saw them for real but he did heard about them from the locals who live in the vicinity where the monsters are said to inhabit. Out of ignorance of the real anatomy of Rhamphorhynchoidea, Sherwin stupidly concludes the descriptions fits the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs,
"The most remarkable facet of this description is the crest and small piece of skin on the head. Alpin's description of the tail, "thick as a finger," is precisely how paleontologist Malcolm Browne described the tails of rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. The length, "as long as a palm branch," is correct for this pterosaur we are considering according to the fossils that are known."
Oh sure! Never mind they were referring to the Iaculi or "javelin-snakes," legendary dragons that are either directly related to or exactly the same as Amphitheres with no limbs and bat and/or bird wings. According to The Aberdeen Bestiary dated to 1200, they can spring into trees and then jump out and kill anyone that comes their way (which is the reason why the locals avoided the area where the flying serpents lived), never mind the pterosaurs in reality being much smaller than a palm branch, having hair, 4 limbs and very thin, stiffened tails, no scales, no serpentine bodies, and their remains being found only in Europe and North America. The creationist claim above made no reference to the serpent's tail being coiled— a direct example of creationists directly distorting old writings to fit their fanciful beliefs in live pterosaurs sighted in modern times while ignoring the complete lack of pterosaur fossils above the Mesozoic strata.
On the left side of the page features a picture of what Woetzel claims to be a wooden image of a pterosaur bearing the same descriptions on the Egyptian seal,
"A French wooden image, dating from the 16th century, also displays remarkable features of a pterosaur. There are two wings that clearly appear to have ribbed membranes rather than feathers. There appears to be a small head crest above and slightly in front of the eyes, the distinctive tail vane, and a hint of the twin skin flap above and behind the bony crest that is quite like the Egyptian seal."
Apparently this is among the "evidence" supporting the idiot claim put out by Sherwin, Goertzen, and Woetzel about alleged live sightings of pterosaurs such as Scaphognathus while encasing in blind ignorance of the fact that the reports are all phony and the image, which appears to depict a wyvern, a dragon with only two limbs, two wings with multiple rods supporting a sheet of skin, and a coiling body with a fish-like tail tip, looking absolutely nothing like any pterosaur, including Scaphognathus, is nothing but a made-up forgery.
Onward to Hoax #35 where Woetzel claims,
"The next drawing is from a 17th century German tract about the dangers of witches and witchcraft. Witches are accused of causing houses to spontaneously combust. The pterosaurs [or are they?] depicted flying in the background, with characteristic headcrests and tails, were apparently associated with witches."
The so-called "pterosaurs" look more like birds than pterosaurs. They're seen in the image with bird wings, feathered vanes, and a crestless head (Doesn't these creationist bozos know anything about pterosaurs? Especially pterosaurs based on fossil evidence and modern studies of pterosaur structure that clearly debunks their "flying serpent" idiocy? Nope. Apparently not.). As a matter of fact, the true animals associated with witches are the frog, owl, snake, pig, raven, stag (a male deer), goat, wolf, dog, horse, bat, mouse, and cat. These modern animals are regarded as familiars that witches used for their witching spells. Creationists who falsely brand pterosaurs as "flying serpents" imagine them as "flying serpents" told in legends to further their idiocy and engage in gross ignorance of the pterosaur's true non-serpent anatomy and the actual sightings of shooting stars, meteor showers, and comets flashing across the sky the ancients mistook as dragons that forewarned them of many troubled days to come which debunks the second part of H35 which claims of pterosaur sightings made over the centuries that forewarned the coming of fierce storms.
The first part features a drawing taken from Trevor-Roper's "The Persecution of Witches" published in 1965— wrong! Trevor-Roper's The European Witch Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries, a Chapter from The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century published in 1967— no! Try again! There was no Persecution of Witches book published in 1965 by Trevor-Roper. The correct source to where the image came from is from *drum roll please* The Compendium Maleficarum! A popular pamphlet book about witches and how to deal with them written in 1608 which Woetzel wrongly attributes to Hugh Trevor-Roper who never did in fact wrote anything about live Pterosaurs associating with witches and neither did Francesco Maria Guazzo, the author of The Compendium Maleficarum or The Compendium of the Witches. This image, also shown in s8int.com, actually depicts two witches setting a town on fire with magic spells while large birds, stupidly mistaken as pterosaurs by creationists, fly overhead. It is found on page 23 of the book.
Hoax #36 is a sketch of a dragon skeleton made up of only various modern animal composites put together by the scholars at Lincean Academy. According to Woetzel, In December of 1691, a dragon, living in the wetlands near Rome, once terrorized the local population living near the cave where the dragon is said to lived. Its remains were removed and mounted up into a skeleton. The sketched image of the skeleton were preserved in a private collection claimed to belonged to an artist named Ingegniero Cornelio Meyer (Dell'ingegniero Cornelius Meijer). The skeleton is a fake. It's made up of modern animal bones composite to form a dragon no different than the dragons illustrated in Ulisse Aldrovandi's Liber Serpentium et Draconum and Athanasius Kircher's Mundus Subterraneus. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop Woetzel and other creationists from stupidly declaring it to be a Scaphognathus,
"The most remarkable thing about the animal is the clear head crest and the dual piece of skin from the crest. Five digits were clearly visible for each foot, of the proper length and with the first shorter and offset from the rest as is proper for the Scaphognathus. There is a hint of a wing claw on the far wing where it curves forward. The membrane wings are in front of the legs, on the vertebrae, matching the fossils. The femur is properly shown as a single bone. The tibia and fibula, the twin lower leg bones, are visible too. Although some have suggested that it could be a fossil or a faked composite, it is much too accurate to be a fabrication. The survival of the skin suggests that it is not a fossil since it includes accurate wing features, a head crest, and the ears."
Only an idiot and a fool can regard a hoax as too accurate. This is the real Scaphognathus! The pterosaur that looks absolutely nothing like all the frauds, the hoaxes, and the distorted images paraded on Sherwin, Goertzen, and Woetzel's idiot sites. Indeed this is one of the greatest examples of creationists showing no shame of distorting and exploiting one small pterosaur to further their dino-idiocy.
Continued next post..
