Fire Breathing Dragons

reply to post by zachi


Hey, thanks for answering my question.
Cheers.
Wag

reply to post by zachi


Science is interesting in that science is able to modify as new information is found. Uniformitarianism was developed to explain the geology of the earth. Uniformitarianism supposed that the world was quite old. It also replaced the older view that the world went relatively unchanged between cataclysmic events. Some aspects of uniformitarianism have been dropped and other parts kept. I am not aware that uniformitarianism speaks about the life on the earth not changing. Hutton, who was one of the early proponents of uniformitarianism, was well aware that life had changed over time on the Earth. So I find your claim a bit off the mark.

Now on to the issue of this mosaic.

The first thing I noticed was that the 3 hunters were not facing the KROKODILOPARDALIS.

The second thing I noticed about the KROKODILOPARDALIS depicted in the image was the long front legs. Although it is hard to measure the relative size of things in a perspective drawing, the front legs are longer than the hind legs. Also, the legs seem to come out of the side of the animal like in a lizard.

The third thing I noticed was the other animals in the image from the Wikipedia.

It appears that there is a human face above the hyenas. The animal above the KROKODILOPARDALIS is a poorly proportioned lion. The odd ears and fat tail are certainly unusual. And what is sitting up and right of the possible lion? That's weird. Some things I recognized. I was able to identify sacred ibis over the river and papyrus.

Although the authors claim it as a dinosaur they do not try to associate the creature depicted with any known dinosaur. I'd say that was the case because there are no known dinosaurs that looked like that.

Creationists’ Nile Mosaic “Dinosaur” Exposed

Megaladapis, a relatively recently extinct mammal, is the ideal candidate for the “Crocodile-Leopard”; It was still living around the time of European re-discovery of Madagascar in 1504 AD. around time to have been witnessed by Romans and made a part of the Nile mosaic.

Like the leopard and the extant relative sportive lemur, Lepilemu, the Giant Lemur was nocturnal, furry, arboreal and had nearly a 90 degree angled limbs splayed for tree climbing. The elongated canines can be seen as analogous to those on both leopard and crocodiles. Many lemurs also were quite at home in the water.

Dinosaur? Not possible. There are 60+ million years between dinosaurs and the present. Nowhere have dinosaur bones been found that are more recent. Dinosaur no. Interesting animal? Yes. I would think the best thing to do is to find some place in the literature that discusses this animal. It has been given a name. I was wondering if this person had actually been to the area in question or was simply basing the mosaic on stories told by others.

reply to post by stereologist


I'm sure I can't identify all the animals in the mosaic. It seems both the hunters and the KROKODILOPARDALIS are looking at something on the left.
The Babylonion sirrush are another possibility for historic dinosaur like animals. Some fantastic animals change through time, but the sirrush did not. That might indicate it was a living animal.
www.skygaze.com...
Here is one more think to consider - the astounding coelacanth. Following a supposed extinction of 65 million years, it was discovered alive in 1938.
There weren't even multiple depictions of it, but they it appeared from the abyss of time.
We have not explored all of the world. The dense Congo may yet yeild living dinosaurs and the oceans depths may house them as well. Until then you will doubt. but I think there is a geat deal of evidence in art and history to support them.

Locally we have a Dragon specific to the area, that lived in water.. in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles this was refered to in the lines that you would find wondrous snakes and serpents living in the land of the South Saxons. (if anyone wants the exact date of the entry, shout and I'll dig it out)

Given the ease at how Dr Gideon Mantell found Iguanadon fossils in Tilgate Forest which is only a stone throw away from Dragon lore myths, two alternate views have been put on the table to explain the dragon myths. The first is that the dragon stories relate to the ease at finding Iguanodon bones.. and the other that due to the secluded nature of the area that perhaps a form of Iguanodon survived until the Saxon era.

I like the latter Idea but sadly suspect the first to be true...

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

Sussex Dragons and Serpents

[edit on 3/6/10 by thoughtsfull]

reply to post by zachi


To suggest dinosaurs exist based on the existence of the coelacanth is bad logic. The coelecanth is a deep water fish that lives in the Indian Ocean. It comes to the surface when pulled up by fishermen. Dinosaurs on the other hand are air breathing animals. They have to surface and cannot hide in the depths of the ocean.

The biggest stumbling block to dinosaurs is the fact that no fossils or bones suggest they exist. A breeding population is not 2 or 3. It takes a 100 or more animals to have a sustainable population. So where is this herd? An animal feeds. It leaves footprints and dung and other carcasses. Where are they?

There are many interesting fish species living in the depths of the oceans. Remember that oceans cover 69% of the Earth's surface. Yet, we had little information on most of the ocean and hence the Earth until around WWII. During the war and after sonar gave us detailed knowledge of the oceans. People are quick to forget how recently we learned about the oceans. We are still learning heaps about the deep ocean. More recent than the coelancanth discovery is the discovery of the cookie cutter shark. It was bite marks on nuclear submarines that alerted the world that something "fishy" was going on. Had ATS been around I can't imagine the wacko notions that might have been floated. Now we know that an interesting new species of shark lives in the ocean.

Where are the bones? Where are the footprints of dinos? Where are the poop piles? Where are the photos? Where is any evidence of dinosaurs? There simply is none.

The only evidence is imaginary images and imaginary interpretations of ancient words.

Albrecht Durer rhinoceros
I happen to love this image by Durer. It shows an animal he probably never saw. Notice the horn he places on its shoulders. It is twisted like a narwhals tusk. The animal is also one horned like an Asian rhino. Is this a dinosaur? No, even though the threshold for believing in dinosaurs is in my opinion too low.

Why does everyone have to throw in that Coelacanth? They always new that they existed because they had preserved ones in museums. Someone please show me a preserved fire-breathing Dragon? They were just fairytail based stories, nothing more.

From personal experience I can tell you- I have been burned by the breath of a reptile. My pet iguana once sneezed and the stuff that came out burned the side of my head. After research I have found that lizards will expell salt throught the nostrils in a sneeze. When Darwin first observed marine iguanas it seemed they were breathing out smoke and fire. it turned out to be this mechanism to rid the body of salt. I can see how this attribute could have been exaggerated. There could have been larger lizards than the monitor living at the same time humans lived.

Thoughtsfull,
Thanks for the links. I enjoyed reading them. It's interesting that so many stories exist. I was just reading another thread about a new area full of previously unknown animals. www.abovetopsecret.com...&flagit=578896
If we didn't have a fossil of a big wooly 'elephant' or a tiger with giant 'fangs' they would be myths too.
I looked up the knuckler hole. It is about 30 feet deep and spring fed.

stereologist
I think if one animal could survive unseen, others could too. There are still large areas that are not accessable. Regions of the central mountains of New Guinea, parts of the Amazon and African jungles, the Greenland ice cap, Antarctica, and northwest Siberia are quite remote and virtually inaccessible to man. I don't expect to find ice dragons in Siberia, but there are places. Dragons probably retreated from humans.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Seems like the main defense of evolution is abscense of evidence, but the area uninvestigated by paleo-anthopologists is much larger than the area unexplored by man.

earthdude
How cool. (to have an iquana, not to be sneezed on by one.) Salt does burn in high concentration. Marine dragons might not need all the fancy chemicals. They could just concentrate salt.

[edit on 6/4/2010 by zachi]

[edit on 6/4/2010 by zachi]

I believe in a lot of things - However, actual factual fire breathing Dragons is something that I have a real hard time wrapping my head around.

reply to post by zachi

Seems like the main defense of evolution is abscense of evidence

The main defense of evolution and the theories of evolution is the overwhelming amount of evidence in support of them.

In the referenced link we see new species of well known animals. Just about anyone should be able to have a good idea of what these species are related to. What we don't see is things like placoderms or dinosaurs or quill fish. These are very different and are not found today. None of these types of animals have been seen in tens or hundreds of millions of years. No placoderm fossils have been found since the end of the Devonian age.

You might be interested to learn that cats with large canines have appeared and gone extinct several times. The cats were not directly related. The large canine feature was independently evolved several times.

reply to post by stereologist


I reviewed the Genesis Park drawing. Some have drooping tails and others do not. I doubt we have found every species of dinosaur. The Havasupai petroglyph it doesn’t seem to be a perspective drawing to me. You could represent that as a number of things.
Next to the picture a of a brontosaurs is a picture of a dinosaur with its tail in the air. As for the smile – I never thought those cave drawing were much more skillful than K-2 grade drawings. It’s a mouth in my opinion. Maybe the artist was trying for and evil sneer…
Well, if a horned lizard grew for a thousand years, how big would be, what would he look like??
The legs look a bit stout for a horned toad.

If you had never seen a praying mantis and I drew one, what you think? Since I am a bad artist, you would really think it was a flight of fantasy. Just because you haven’t seen an animal that someone has drawn doesn’t mean that animal doesn’t exist, has never existed and it total fantasy.
www.scienceviews.com...
Fossils of land animals are scarcer than those of plants. In order to become fossilized, animals must die in a watery environment and become buried in the mud and silt. Because of this requirement most land creatures never get the chance to become fossilized unless they die next to a lake or stream. Indeed there may be whole species of land animals in which no fossil record has been discovered. We may never know how many and diverse these animals were.

One Laetoli print looks very modern. Another looks totally non-human. It seems to have only two large toes.
Uniformitarianism just gave evolution time to work. Things progressed relatively slowly and then there would be an “event” that changed the Earth and then there would be long periods of uniformity for the next phase to occur.
The Albrecht Durer rhinoceros is interesting. Despite the artistic license, it does look like a rhino. I would recognize it as such
Absence of evidence is your main defense:
“Where are the bones? Where are the footprints of dinos? Where are the poop piles? Where are the photos? Where is any evidence of dinosaurs? There simply is none.”
Perhaps the evidence is somewhere we haven’t looked yet. Perhaps it’s been seen already and just ignored…
Deep in the bush of east central Africa, lives a beaked, flying creature called the Kongamato Eyewitnesses who are shown an illustration of the pterodactyl unanimously agreed to this identification of the Kongamato.
www.unknown-creatures.com...
Eyewitness testimony of the kongamota
www.cryptozoology.com...

reply to post by zachi


1. The Anasazi drawings with drooped tails cannot be dinosaurs. These petroglyphs are not dinosaurs.
2. The Havasupai perspective claim is shown on the Genesis Park web page. That is not mine.
3. The image on the left is not listed as to location and appears to be on a rock separated from the parent rock. The lack of information makes that image extremely questionable.
4. Horned lizards do not grow for a thousand years. Name a retile that does?

In order to become fossilized, animals must die in a watery environment and become buried in the mud and silt.

Not true. There are other conditions that lead to fossilization.

Uniformitarianism just gave evolution time to work. Things progressed relatively slowly and then there would be an “event” that changed the Earth and then there would be long periods of uniformity for the next phase to occur.

Uniformitarianism is not believed to be the manner in which the earth has existed over time.

Your claims seem to rely on cryptids which you claim do exist. There is little evidence for cryptids. There is lots of evidence for dinosaurs. No dinosaur fossils for the 55 million years between the K-T boundary and the first humans means they did not coexist.

reply to post by stereologist


Evolution has evolved. Prior to the introduction of Uniformitarianism, Catastrophism was the accepted geological doctrine. Catastrophism was the Biblical view. If Uniformitarianism is no longer "in," then evolution has evolved.
I am not committed to evolution. As I keep telling you: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There aren't any 1000 yr of reptiles, but reptiles grow all their life. If life spans were longer because of differing conditions then they may have lived to achieve the larger size we see in prehistoric animals.
Criptids are very interesting. If you think they are all bunk, why hang out on this board? When we do get to all the unexplored parts of the world we may find a living dinosaur.
Maybe someone already has:
"David Noble was out on a holiday hike when he stepped off the beaten path and into the prehistoric age. Venturing into an isolated grove in a rain forest preserve 125 miles from Sydney, the Parks and Wildlife Service officer suddenly found himself in a real-life 'Jurassic Park' standing amid trees thought to have disappeared 150 million years ago. 'The discovery is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on Earth,’ said Carrick Chambers, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. . .

"The biggest tree towers 180 feet with a 10 foot girth, indicating that it is at least 150 years old. The trees are covered in dense, waxy foliage and have a knobby bark that makes them look like they are coated with bubbly chocolate. ... Barbara Briggs, the botanic gardens' scientific director, hailed the find as one of Australia's most outstanding discoveries of the century, comparable to the living fossil finds of the dawn redwood tree in China in 1944 and the coelacanth fish off Madagascar in 1938 . . . The closest relatives of the Wollemi Pines died out in the Jurassic Period, 190 million to 135 million years ago, and the Cretaceous Period, 140 million to 65 million years ago" (Salt Lake City Tribune, Dec. 15, 1994, p. A 10).

Another living fossil is the tuatara, a lizard like animal found only on several islands off the coast of New Zealand. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, this strange creature: "has two pairs of well-developed limbs and a scaly crest down the neck and back. Unlike lizards, it has a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, which closes horizontally, and a pineal eye, an organ of doubtful, function between the two normal eyes. The tuatara also has a bony arch, low on the skull behind the eyes, that is formed by the presence of two large openings … in the region of the temple. It is this bony arch, which is not found in lizards, that has been cited as evidence that tuataras are survivors of the otherwise extinct order Rhynchocephalia and are not lizards. And indeed, tuataras differ little from the closely related form Homeosaurus, which lived 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period" (Internet version, "Tuatara").
The Encyclopaedia Britannica adds that the tuatara is:
"a reptile that has shown little morphological evolution for nearly 200,000,000 years since the early Mesozoic" ("Evolution").

Another example is a marine mollusk that goes by the scientific name Monoplacophoran.
"In 1952 several live monoplacophorans were dredged from a depth of 3,570 m (about 11,700 feet) off the coast of Costa Rica. Until then it was thought that they had become extinct 400,000,000 years ago" (Britannica, "Monoplacophoran").

Probably no fire breathing dragons, but maybe the kongamota will be next.

reply to post by zachi


Evolution has not evolved. Theories about evolution have changed. There is a difference between the fact of evolution and the theories to explain that fact.

You give examples of finds of new species. The wollemi pine is the largest new plant species to be found in a long time. It's a great find. It's easy to see how these tree remained out of sight since there are only 100 adult trees. The dawn redwoods also came from a small stand.

Database of Native Metasequoia glyptostroboides Trees in China

A total of 5396 native Metasequoia trees exist either as scattered (isolated) individual trees or in populations from two regions of this area.

Although not numerous in the wild, the tree's natural extent is well known now.

Tuatara

However, taxonomic work[20] on Sphenodontia has shown that this group has undergone a variety of changes throughout the Mesozoic, and a recent molecular study showed that their rate of molecular evolution is faster than of any other animal so far examined.

There is a big difference in finding that some species are so-called living fossils and finding a dinosaur. The trees are relatively rare. Maybe not as rare as Franciscan manzanita, but they are rare. The tuatara has been known to science for quite some time. Dinosaurs, like other animals, require a large enough population to maintain genetic robustness. It's not one animal out there, it's a breeding population. Large animals leave their mark on the environment. I can easily find the marks left by animals where I live. I can find tracks. I can find where deer have browsed. I can find where bears have dug up underground insect nests. I can find scat from animals. You don't have to see the animal to determine that it is in the area. A breeding population of dinosaurs is hard to hide. Rare plants can escape notice even if they are large. Small animals can escape notice. Large animals are hard to hide. They leave evidence through tracks, their feeding, and droppings.

Some have said this links with the idea of ancient astronauts and that dragons were UFO's as they may appear to breathe fire kind of like a rocket would seem too

I think that dragons are unlikely to be rocket ships. I think that these are either people imaginations, or speculations such as zachi point in another direction. It may not be a full blown giant creature with wings and breathing fire. Maybe its a rare animal that has spawned these notions?

Your probably right

I was just trying to offer something alternative best to cover all areas and angles i guess

reply to post by TheNewKid


I appreciate your candor in this discussion. It's always good to be thinking. It never hurts to toss out an idea. It may not go far, but surprise, surprise it may lead to new ideas in ways the original post did not consider.

reply to post by stereologist


If I am correct and the "airhead" dinosaurs were fire breathing dragons, then this is just a species that has not been seen recently.
Bull elephants are the largest land animal we know. Their range covers from 6 to 6672 square miles The Amazon River and its many tributaries covers 2,722,000 square miles. It is about 4,195 miles long. The Amazon Rainforest is thought to be the oldest tropical forest area in the world, perhaps as much as 100 million years old. Much of the Amazon is unexplored, many of its indigenous plants and animals are unknown. That's enough to house a very large breeding populataion.
nationalzoo.si.edu...

The rain forests of the Congo cover 132047 square miles. Most of it has not been explored either. The Congo natives have stories about animals that live there. Some of them are large and could be dinosaurs.
rainforests.mongabay.com/congo/

I wouldn't limit yourself to what popular theory dictates. Looking at all possiblities is worthwhile.

Even though the Amazon is the world's large rainforest and covers an immense area does not mean that the area is remote. The forest is covered by human habitation and has a network of roads. I checked several online map places and they all showed a spider web of roads to the south of the river proper. There are few roads where the river runs.

The rainforest has been populated in the past.
People in the Amazon Rainforest

In the first century of European presence, the Amerindian population was reduced by 90 percent. Most of the remaining peoples lived in the interior of the forest: either pushed there by the Europeans or traditionally living there in smaller groups.

The far-flung Yanomani Indian tribe inhabits a France-sized area of forest in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. The Yanomani lived in virtual isolation after they were first documented by anthropologists in the 1920s until the 1970s when large numbers of gold miners invaded their territory. The miners introduced diseases, like measles, tuberculosis, the flu, and malaria to the resistant-deficient Yanomani, resulting in a significant decline in their population.

Although appearing to be remote much of the land is inhabited and has been inhabited over time. A large animal such as an elephant sized animal would be detected and reported. It would make the establishment of more preserves a must don't you think?

These indigenous reserves—set forth under Brazil's 1988 constitution—have helped the country's Indian population to rebound after centuries of decline.

If anyone saw a large creature or detected the presence of a large creature it could be used to establish a large preserve.

The Congo is different.