Dating Dinosaurs

 

Almost everyone knows how to date a dinosaur. You need to time travel backwards to 65 million years BC. Unless of course they were seen and documented in those days before the word dinosaur was invented by Richard Owen. The famous Victorian palaeontologist, who founded London’s Natural History Museum in 1881. Until that time such creatures whose fossils were being discovered were called dragons. If there is solid evidence that such creatures were seen by humans then the entire evolutionary framework, which is based on millions of years, goes up in smoke. As this cannot be contemplated, prepare yourself to deny the credibility of all the following.

Witness of Apollonius a famous Greek traveller and philosopher.

The following is quoted from the Life of Apollonius of Tyana: by Philostratus {220 AD}

On the Existence of Dragons.

‘Now as they descended the mountain, they say they came in for a dragon hunt, which I must needs describe. For it is utterly absurd for those who are amateurs of hare-hunting to spin yarns about the hare as to how it is caught or ought to be caught, and yet that we should omit to describe a chase as bold as it is wonderful, and in which the sage (Apollonius) was careful to assist; so I have written the following account of it: The whole of India is girt with dragons of enormous size; for not only the marshes are full of them, but the mountains as well, and there is not a single ridge without one. Now the marsh kind are sluggish in their habits and are thirty cubits long, (45 feet) and they have no crest standing up on their heads, but in this respect resemble the she-dragons. Their backs however are very black, with fewer scales on them than the other kinds; and Homer has described them with deeper insight than have most poets, for he says that the dragon that lived hard by the spring in Aulis had a tawny back; but other poets declare that the congener of this one in the grove of Nemea also had a crest, a feature which we could not verify in regard to the marsh dragons.

And the dragons along the foothills and the mountain crests make their way into the plains after their quarry, and prey upon all the creatures in the marshes; for indeed they reach an extreme length, and move faster than the swiftest rivers, so that nothing escapes them. These actually have a crest, of moderate extent and height when they are young; but as they reach their full size, it grows with them and extends to a considerable height, at which time also they turn red and get serrated backs. This kind also have beards, and lift their necks on high, while their scales glitter like silver; and the pupils of their eyes consist of a fiery stone, and they say that this has an uncanny power for many secret purposes. The plain specimen falls the prize of the hunters whenever it draws upon itself an elephant; for the destruction of both creatures is the result, and those who capture the dragons are rewarded by getting the eyes and skin and teeth. In most respects they resemble the largest swine, but they are slighter in build and flexible, and they have teeth as sharp and indestructible as those of the largest fishes.’

Experts disagree as to whether or not all these writings belong to the named author. This type of criticism is applied in one form or another to most ancient texts. Appollonius is believed to have lived around 2000 years ago. What is certain is that this text was written long before anything was known about dinosaurs. So, these descriptions are either made up out of the writer’s imagination or arose as the result of a drug induced reverie. Beyond that the only logical alternative is that this incredible sage, who had encyclopedic about all things animal and was exceptionally well travelled, actually saw what he described. There is part of one sentence in the above account which rules out the possibility of this account being a myth.

…but other poets declare that the congener of this one in the grove of Nemea also had a crest, a feature which we could not verify in regard to the marsh dragons.

No writer of myths is concerned with verifying anything. Verification of this kind of evidence is the business of academics: historians and scientists. The Loch Ness monster is considered an unverified modern myth, but what about these eye witness accounts of a creature which if seen in Loch Ness would be considered as verification.

Witness from a Royal Navy Captain

To falsify a ship’s log would cause a captain to face court-martial, the loss of his career, reputation and pension, and cause great trouble to the crew members judged complicit in the deceit.

Declassified files recently released from the National Archives indicate that huge sea serpents were a fact of life for mariners. This account is taken from a captain of the Royal Navy. It.is in no sense legendary and comes from the 19th century. This sea-serpent was seen close to the island of St Helena on May 9, 1830 by the crew of the Rob Roy. Its captain, James Stockdale recorded the encounter in his official log.

“About five p.m. all at once while I was walking on the poop my attention was drawn to the water on the port bow by a scuffling noise. Likewise all the watch on deck were drawn to it. Judge my amazement when what should stare us all in the face as if not knowing whether to come over the deck or to go around the stern, but the great big sea snake! Now I have heard of the fellow before, and I have killed snakes twenty-four feet long in the straits of Malacca, but they would go in his mouth. I think he must have been asleep for we were going along very softly two knots an hour, and he seemed as much alarmed as we were and all taken aback for about fifteen seconds. But he soon was underway and, when fairly off, his head was square with our topsail and his tail was square with the foremast….My ship is 171 feet long overall and the foremast is 42 feet from the stern which would make the monster about 129 feet long. If I had not seen it I could not have believed it but there was no mistake or doubt of its length, for the brute was so close I could even smell his nasty fishy smell….When underway he carried his head about six feet out of water – with a fin between the shoulders about two feet long. I think he was swimming about five miles an hour – for I watched him from the topsail yard till I lost sight of him in about fifty minutes. I hope never to see him more. It is enough to frighten the strong at heart.”

And another! This second report of a sea-monster sighting has been declassified at an official level by the British Government. It describes an 1857 encounter that also occurred in the vicinity of the island of St. Helena. The following is from Commander George Henry Harrington.

Commander Harrington’s ship Castilian

“While myself and officers were standing on the lee side of the poop looking toward the island, we were startled by the sight of a huge marine animal which reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the ship when it suddenly disappeared for about half a minute and then made a reappearance in the same manner again, showing us its neck and head about ten or twenty feet out of the water….Its head was shaped like a long buoy and I should suppose the diameter to have been seven or eight feet in the largest part with a kind of scroll or ruff encircling it about two feet from the top. The water was discoloured for several hundred feet from the head, so much so that on its first appearance my impression was that the ship was in broken waters, produced, as I supposed, by some volcanic agency, since I passed the island before….But the second appearance completely dispelled those fears and assured us that it was a monster of extraordinary length and appeared to be moving slowly towards the land. The ship was going too fast to enable us to reach the masthead in time to form a correct estimate of this extreme length, but from what we saw from the deck we conclude that he must have been over two hundred feet long. The Boatswain and several of the crew, who observed it from the forecastle, state that it was more than double the length of the ship, in which case it must have been five hundred feet”

Once again it is reasonable to ask whether or not a witness like Commander Harrington is anything less than about the most convincing of any that could be imagined.

Witness of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder.

The Natural History is an encyclopaedia published circa AD 77-79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny. The work became a model for all later encyclopaedias in terms of the breadth of subject matter examined, the need to reference original authors, and a comprehensive index list of the contents. The work is dedicated to the emperor Titus, son of Pliny’s close friend, the emperor Vespasian, in the first year of Titus’s reign. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived and the last that he published, lacking a final revision at his sudden and unexpected death in the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius.

Here is Pliny on dragons and serpents.

‘In Ethyopia there be as great dragons bred, as in India, namely, twentie cubites long (35ft). But I marvel much at this one thing, why king Iuba should thinke that they were crested. They are bred most in a country of Ethyopia, where the Asachæi inhabited. It is reported, that upon their coasts they are enwrapped four or five of them together, one within another, like to a hurdle or lattice work, and thus passe the seas, for to find better pasturage in Arabia, cutting the waves, and bearing up their heads aloft, which serve them in steed of sailes.’

Chapter XIIII.

Of monstrous great serpents, and namely of those called Boae.

‘Megasthenes writeth that there are Serpents in India which grow to such a Size that they are able to swallow Stags or Bulls whole. Metrodorus saith that about the River Rhyndacus, in Pontus, there are Serpents which catch and devour the Fowls of the Air as they fly over them, however high or rapid their Flight may be. It is well known that Regulus, Imperator during the Wars against the Carthaginians, near the River Bograda assailed Serpent with his Military Engines, the Balistae and Tormentum, as he would have done to a Town…

Another story from a different source speaks of presumably this same creature and incident.

The Witness of John of Damascus

John of Damascus, an eastern monk who wrote in the 8th century, gives a sober account of dragons, insisting that they are mere reptiles and did not have magical powers. He quotes of the Roman historian Dio who chronicled the Roman Empire in the second century. It seems Regulus, a Roman consul, fought against Carthage, when a dragon suddenly crept up and settled behind the wall of the Roman army. The Romans killed it, skinned it and sent the hide to the Roman Senate. Dio claimed the hide was measured by order of the senate and found to be one hundred and twenty feet long. It seems unlikely that either Dio or the pious St. John would support an outright fabrication involving a Roman consul and the Senator.

In contrast, below is an account of a very small creature unknown to anyone until this sighting.

Witness of Ulysses Aldrovandus

Ulysses Aldrovandus is considered by many to be the father of modern natural history. He travelled extensively, collected thousands of animals and plants, and created the first ever natural history museum.  His impressive collections are still on display at the Bologna University (the world’s oldest university) where they attest to his scholarship. His credentials give credence to an incident that Aldrovandus personally reported concerning a dragon. The dragon was first seen on May 13, 1572, hissing like a snake. It had been hiding on the small estate of Master Petronius. At 5:00 PM, the dragon was caught on a public roadway by a herdsman named Baptista, near the hedge of a private farm, a mile from the remote city outskirts of Bologna. Baptista was following his ox cart home when he noticed the oxen suddenly come to a stop. He kicked them and shouted at them, but they refused to move and went down on their knees rather than move forward. At this point, the herdsman noticed a hissing sound and was startled to see this strange little dragon ahead of him. Trembling he struck it on the head with his rod and killed it. (Aldrovandus, Ulysses, The Natural History of Serpents and Dragons, 1640, p.402.) Aldrovandus surmised that dragon was a juvenile, judging by the incompletely developed claws and teeth. The corpse had only two feet and moved both by slithering like a snake and by using its feet, he believed. (There are small two-legged lizards that do this today.) Aldrovandus mounted the specimen and displayed it for some time. He also had a watercolour painting of the creature made.

Both Marco Polo and Aldrovandus speak of dragons having just two feet and dragging themselves along, their locomotion being a combination of squirming like a snake aided by added propulsion from their feet. No-one in their right senses would make up such a creature if they cared about being taken seriously.

You can see and read more on this topic by visiting my website: www.dinosaursfordummies.org.uk

It used to be believed that Dna, proteins and red blood cells like any organic matter could only last a few thousand years at most. The discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones described below by Mary Schweitzer shook that idea to its foundations. Which is why we are now taught that soft tissue, blood cells etc, can last and remain intact almost indefinitely, for at least 65 million years. Is that testable by the scientific method? No, it cannot, which makes it ideal if you want to shove another supporting brick beneath a tottering edifice.

 

 

Below a Creationist scientist: Mark Armitage puts forward his case having studied the same kind of evidence found by Schweitzer. He served as the Manager for the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Suite in the Biology Department at California State University Northridge. After nearly four years his job was suddenly terminated by the Biology Department when his discovery of soft tissues in Triceratops horn was published in Acta Histochemica. He was told to keep his religion out of the lab. His actual fault was to point out that the soft tissue he had found, which included intact bone cells ( Osteocytes ) in an 80.000,000 year old triceratops, were inconsistent with the long age evolutionary paradigm. He was sacked. Armitage subsequently took a legal action for wrongful termination and religious discrimination by the University. He won that lawsuit and was awarded a sum of $399,500. Armitage is a full on character. You may not agree with many of his comments but his talk on both his own work and that of Mary Schweitzer is fascinating. How could proteins and cells remain intact and in such good order in conditions hostile to preservation for 80 million years? If you think this is impossible then maybe you should reconsider the biblical explanation for the origins of life.

 

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