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Showing posts with the label Dinosaurs

Another Strike Against Dinosaur-to-Bird Evolution

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One crisp autumn day, I was riding out Folly Road past Stinking Lake (which is not as bad as it sounds). Riding down from the Darwin Ranch was Al Buehterawl. We reined in and commenced to jawing. Eventually the subject turned to birds supposedly evolving from dinosaurs. He knows full well that I oppose the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds. When I pointed out that birds existed at the time of dinosaurs and museums are deceptive about this fact , Al Buehterawl took a deep breath and moved the goalposts with, "They were primitive  birds." Owl, Pexels / Simon Rizzi Darwinists are often deceptive. That's right, I said it!  Most (but not all) evolutionists believe that dinosaurs evolved from birds, treating it like an established fact despite contrary evidence. Their terminology is changing, referring to some reptiles as "non-avian dinosaurs" as a way of reinforcing their belief. For that matter, calling something "primitive" means less evolved, whic...

Explaining Fossil Dinosaur Eggs, Tracks, and More

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Theories, models, worldviews, and other things need to be internally consistent. Atheism fails in this regard and is unliveable, so  professing atheists (Rom. 1:18-19) have to stand on the biblical worldview. Likewise, believers in particles-to-paleontologist evolution often need to borrow from biblical creation science. A student who claimed to believe the Bible lost faith because of fossil dinosaur footprints. He couldn't imagine  a global Flood allowing for footprints. Problem is, he did not check for that internal consistency in creationist models, so he made assumptions instead of doing his homework. Dinosaur tracks at Jurassic Moenave Formation, US Geological Survey (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) I'll allow that it's still something to consider. A flood is a busy time, especially when it's global in scale. Checking on creation models of the Genesis Flood shows a specific model that does a good job of explaining tracks, eggs, scavenging (they...

More Dinosaur Tissue Fake Science

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The fact that soft tissues in dinosaur bones has been found is a serious problem for evolutionists, and they know it. Papa Darwin depends on deep time, so the secular science industry presents fake science to take the tear out of Darwin's eye. Desperately devoted evolutionists online show dishonesty, ignorance, or something else when they try to wave off soft tissues (It was a fluke or two? Nope.) There are many examples of soft tissues that are public knowledge. The latest attempt by secularists is to make collagen last millions of years. Triceratops at the Dinosaur Journey Museum , US Dept of Transportation /  aschweigert   (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) The disingenuous science here is that researchers did not actually test stuff, but yee haw boy howdy! It sure does look good on paper. Also, review of the work seems to have been a festival of bias confirmation, no contrary views (especially from those yucky creationists) would be considered. That is ind...

Non-Science in Dinosaur-to-Bird Evolution

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In Through the Looking-Glass by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (writing as Lewis Carroll), the White Queen boasted of having been able to believe six impossible things before breakfast. That book was published in 1871, and Charles Darwin had published On the Origin of Species  in 1859. Believing impossible things seems to have been growing in popularity. Although the idea of dinosaurs evolving into birds is treated as a scientific fact by many of Darwin's disciples, actual scientific facts are ignored or denied. Evidence and dating systems of secularists work against them, but they still believe impossible things. Archaeopteryx by Dr. Thompsons Seifenpulver , ca. 1900 An early attempt to bolster Darwinism was Archaeopteryx . This bad boy should have been left alone, as most secular paleontologists admitted that it was just a bird, not a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds. Secular dating methods as showing Archie as being older than dinosaurs. Yet some secular paleontologists ...

A New Ankylosaur and the Genesis Flood

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Off the southern edge of England, in the English Channel, lies the Isle of Wight. It is known for landscapes, chalk, and geological features, so the locals were probably not overly surprised to learn that a new ankylosaur was discovered there. Ankylosaurs were herbivores. These critters looked like turtles gone wrong, what with all that armor and all. One curiosity is that they are usually found fossilized on their backs . Also, like other creatures of that time, evolution is assumed but there is no evidence of it. Edmontonia rugosidens, Wikimedia Commons / Mariana Ruiz (PD) The way they were buried in sediment is a curiosity to secular scientists, and they have some ideas that do not pass the sniff test. So many ankylosaurs were clumsy, fell into rivers and floated out to sea where they were buried? This child lacks belief that such an idea is plausible. Indeed, the more reasonable explanation (although streng verboten  among Darwin's acolytes) is the mechanisms of the global Gen...

Makoshika State Park and the Genesis Flood

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If you mount up and ride out Montana way and look near Glendive, you will come across  Makoshika State Park . It takes up an impressive 11,538 acres and does the usual state park things like camping, hiking, hunting, and so on.  Makoshika also has activities that they call educational because it is a part of a massive playground of paleontologists, the Hell Creek Formation. That means dinosaur bones and fossils. There is a wagon trainload of them for study and for secularists to evosplain the demise of dinosaurs. Rock formation in Makoshika State Park, Wikimedia Commons / Larry D. Moore ( CC BY 4.0 ) Storytellers commence chattering about the Chicxulub impact by a big rock from space and how it was responsible for dinosaur extinction. That story is unraveling . Also, dinosaur blood vessel grooves and other things are still in existence, but should not exist in the conventional deep time narrative. If secularists stripped away evolutionary presuppositions, they could exam...

A Different Look at Good Mother Maiasaura

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Roland Meadows had me ride over to his place for a visit, and his fiancée Stormie Waters was also stopping by. She wanted to go over some of her prospecting charts, then some details of their upcoming nuptials. Conversation wandered, and Stormie said she wanted to have children. She mentioned reading that Maisasaura  was a good mother dinosaur. This idea came from Jack Horner. He had been involved in some searching found several of their fossilized nests. It seemed that the young received care from their parents.. Maiasaura with young, Flickr / Eden, Janine and Jim ( CC BY 2.0 ) While I have no doubt that Stormie and Roland would be caring parents, doubt has been raised about the Horner scenario for  Maiasaura . He holds the majority view that dinosaurs evolved into birds. Jack "saw" traits of birds caring for their hatchlings in the dinosaur fossils. I reckon he generalized a mite too much, as not all birds are good parents (especially brood parasites , the dirty birds). A...

Lone Ranger Dinosaur Makes Tracks

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There are several areas that have fossilized dinosaur tracks, which is quite remarkable if you think on it. Glen Rose, Texas has a significant number of them. They are easy to see at Dinosaur Valley State Park . Sounds like an interesting place to visit. During a time of drought in 2022, even more tracks were exposed. Paleontologists and other folks were excited to see them. One trackway is impressively long, apparently made by  Acrocanthosaurus atokensis . One tell-tale sign is that it has claws on its feet. Acrocanthosaurus atokensis , Wikimedia Commons / Petr Menshikov ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ), modified Hey, Cowboy Bob! How is  A. atokensis on the beach like Christmas? Because of its sandy claws ! Moving on... Secular scientists have some imaginative stories to tell about how they formed, but like so many other attempted explanations by Darwinists, they do not withstand scrutiny. With a proper understanding of sedimentation during the Genesis Flood, forming and fossilization of t...

Evolutionists Imagine Dinosaur Feathers

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Something unlikely to appear in a dinosaurs-go-bezerk-and-eat-people movie is  Psittacosaurus.  The largest species is not all that impressive. There is a prairie schooner-full of specimens, including intact skeletons. Adults were bipedal like the iconic T. rex . This particular specimen from China had an interesting fossilization characteristic. Some of its skin was turned to glass, so to speak. Instead of the usual minerals, silica found its way in. Watch how Darwin's acolytes get bizarre — and illogical — promoting dino-to-bird and also feather evolution. Psittacosaurus specimen, Nature Communications / Maria McNamara   et al . ( CC BY 4.0 ) Once again, evolution is assumed despite lack of evidence. (Stories, inferences from stories, and so on, yes, but not real evidence.) Although they admit that feather evolution is "profound," feathers are loaded with specified complexities because they were created, not evolved. There is no evidence of feather evolution. Researche...

Dinosaurs and Fish Lizards Keep Getting Bigger

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Is it just my imagination, or are paleontologists finding more extremely large dinosaurs and such? There was a time that Brontosaurus  was impressive, even having the name that means thunder lizard . Probably because you could hear it walking. Now it is dwarfed by other sauropods. Indeed, scientists had to come up with impressive names to tack onto their discoveries, such as titanosaurs. Several more of these have been discovered. Curious, the impressive name game does not seem to happen to plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, but a candidate for the largest of the latter has been presented. Ichthyotitan severnensis , Wikimedia Commons / Ansh Saxena 7163 (PD), modified at PhotoFunia Darwin's disciples are having a great time evosplaining the critters through the fiction of convergent evolution , a cheap rescuing device. After all, there is no evidence for dinosaur origins or ancestors — it is like they were created, not evolved. Rapid speciation was also mentioned, but that has nothing t...

Tyrannosaurus rex — not so bright after all

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Portrayals of Tyrannosaurus rex  and other carnivorous dinosaurs originally made them out to be nearly machines, attack and eat. Over time, their image evolved, showing them as rather intelligent creatures. Studies show — yeah, my study can beat up your study. One study claims that they were alarmingly intelligent, comparable to primates. Since most secular scientists assume the story that dinosaurs evolved into birds is true, the study used modern bird brains for references. Another study kicks up their intelligence a notch. However... T. rex college professor made at Bing AI * Another study pulls on the reins and hollers, "Whoa!" There are no fossilized dinosaur brains available to study. Also, the size of the cranium and the size of the brain inside — as compared to modern crocodiles — are two different things. (This child wonders why researchers didn't learn from the debunked "Brain size shows intelligence in humans" myth .) Did they notice that they study i...

An Actual Chinese Dragon

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For some reason, I was invited out to the Darwin Ranch to meet the new hand. It was a mite late and the shadows cast by the setting sun at Deception Pass made the going a bit slow. Once I arrived, foreman Rusty Swingset and his assistant Cliff Swallows had me meet Crappie Crankbait. It seems that Crappie is a specialist in aquatic dinosaur-age creatures. He found it interesting that this is the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac, and recent research on a Chinese dinosaur fossil seems to fit right in. Dinocephalosaurus orientalis , Wikimedia Commons / Nobumichi Tamura ( CC BY-SA 3.0 ) (modified) Scientists actually used the word  dragon  regarding this critter because the long neck is somewhat similar to the long necks in portrayals of Chinese dragons. This is not exactly a new animal, but a few more fossils have been found. Sure does look like a plesiosaur, but paleontologists insist that D. orientalis  is not related and lazily invoke " convergent evolut...

Multiple Evolutionary Miracles and Bird Flight

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Watching or reading material on dinosaurs from secular sources, the story that they evolved into birds frequently comes up. Many things are ignored, including how birds and dinosaurs existed at the same time but museums disingenuously omit this in their displays . Dino-to-bird evolution is also presented as a subject of scientific unity. False. Not only creationists, but some secular scientists reject it. They are not allowed to eat dinner with the big people, and have to scarf it down from paper plates while standing in the alley outside the main hall. Imagined dinosaur bird, Pixabay / Tirriko Evolutionists get mighty sneaky. If they can't prove something, change the facts — or in this case, definitions of dinosaurs  and birds . Presupposing dinosaurs evolved into birds, now we have "non-avian dinosaurs" in the definition. They require trust, but deceive people. Delving into creation science material on dino-to-bird evolution reveals numerous difficulties that changing l...

Deep Time Used to Evosplain Dinosaur Difficulties

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One of the most ridiculous ways of justifying universal common descent is to throw huge amounts of time into a problem, such as saying, "Given enough time, anything can happen." That may seem plausible for a fairy tale and Darwin's magic wand , but not for people who want real answers. It seems to be a common occurrence that dinosaurs are found where denizens of the secular science industry say they should not be. However, scientists do not question their evolutionary paradigm because they presume it is the only possible explanation for what is observed, thus eliminating better material. Minqaria, Wikimedia Commons / UnexpectedDinoLesson ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ) (modified) Lambeosaurs (a kind of duckbill) strayed from their expected home ranges and were found in Morocco. Using naturalistic paradigms, a scientist evosplained this by invoking millions of years and saying that mayhaps the ungainly beasties swam there. This jasper also tried to escape the obvious implications of the...

Hugeness in Ancient Aquatic Reptiles

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Request of Christians: It has been six months today since my wife died. Things are tough, and I ask for your prayers. Although one may think of huge critters when the word dinosaur  is mentioned, there was an extreme range of sizes. Some were about the size of turkeys. The large ones were very large indeed, and it seems that scientists naming them are running out of ways to say, "Even bigger yet." Aquatic lizards like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs also had differing sizes. When they went huge, they did it in a big way. Big animals swimming coerces the question, "Did their size cause drag in the water and make locomotion difficult?" Modified ichthyosaur postage stamp of Yemen, 1990 Through tendentious dating methods, believers in universal common descent evolution and deep time assert that the largest of these appeared (code word for "evolved" even though there is no evidence for their evolution ) first, then came the smaller ones. Using flow simulations, st...

Darwinoptera, Skye, and Lying for Evolution

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Obstreperous atheists and fundamentalist evolutionists patrol teh interwebz, targeting Darwin doubters for destruction. They have many weapons drawn and ready, but one of these is dominant: Arbitrary assertions. When those are frequently used to put down Christians and creationists, the people using them are being illogical and indicating that their worldview is incoherent. It is indeed unfortunate when scientists also build arguments on arbitrary and false statements instead of actual evidence. But then, it has also been shown that storytelling brings in the grant money. Darwinoptera pterosaurs, Flickr / Francisco Gil ( CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 ) Just off the western coast of Scotland is a group of islands called the Inner Hebrides. A representative of a pterosaur clade called Darwinoptera had apparently been found on the largest, the Isle of Skye. (A nice place to fly, certainly.) Evolutionists were surprised, especially since certain pterosaurs were only known in China, not Scotland. To cov...

Tyrannosaurini from out of Time

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Not too long ago, I finished loading supplies into my buckboard and was ready to head on out of town. Of a sudden, I saw Stevia Dolce, the lead baker at the Darwin Ranch. With her was Lotta Lyez who was promoted as an assistant to the cook. Feeling a mite playful, I asked Lotta if she was going to pick up some Tyrannosaurini, it was between the fettuccine and linguine. She stared a moment, then gave a bit of an "Oh, you!" hand flip as Stevia smiled. The wordplay may not have happened if I had not been reading about the sudden appearance of T. Rex  and family. Tyrannosaurus rex , RGBStock / Kevin Tuck Some fossil parts were examined again and the critter was renamed because of subtle differences that were found. (I wonder if that's a bit drastic since people, animals, and so on have variations without having to be branded as a different species.) In the report, homage was given to the puny god of evolution, but with a difference. It is known that dinosaurs have no evoluti...

Evosplaining Dinosaur Extinction with Volcanic Activity

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Believers in descent with modifications evolution often  evosplain dinosaur extinction with the Chicxulub big rock impact, insisting on consensus among evolutionists. There is  some consensus, but a majority does not make truth. There are serious  problems with that impact story . One of the most obvious is that if the asteroid (or comet, or meteorite) killed off the dinosaurs, it should have taken a passel of more fragile creatures as well. It has been suggested that volcanic activity was important to destroying the dinosaurs. Artist's conception of Chicxulub impact,  NASA Goddard A fragment of agreement exists between secular and creation scientists: There was a great deal of volcanic activity in Earth's past. Of course, the two camps have no agreement on the hows and whys of the volcanism. If secularists didn't have a "Katie, bar the door!" attitude toward creation science models of the Genesis Flood and Ice Age, they might see that they are getting closer to...

Mysterious Mummified Dinosaur Skin

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While mummification  may refer to the deliberate act of preserving a dead body, the word is also used to describe a critter that has died, then shriveled and dried up. People find mummified rodents and such in sheds and attics. If those had died in nature, scavengers and bacteria would have made short work of the remains. In yet another instance of something being remarkably well-preserved, some mummified  Edmontosaurus  skin falls into that category — and it is quite mysterious. Modified postage stamp of an Edmontosaurus  head from the author's collection Secular scientists are attempting to explain the process of how it could be mummified and then preserved, and they are on the right track when they refer to burial by a flood. Of course, they reject the global Genesis Flood even though fossil layers extend across continents. People may easily think that the Genesis Flood was lots of rain and that the fountains of the deep were opened up (Gen. 7:11), not knowing tha...

Evolution Narrative Drives Bird Tracks in Dinosaur Strata Story

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The story is that the geologic column shows fossils in an orderly progression from simple to complex, and the fossil record is complete, without gaps. Russell Watchtower and his Ministry of Truth at the Darwin Ranch up near Deception Pass have been successfully convincing folks that the preceding is a true story. In reality, there are fossils out of order. If people had healthy skepticism and dared to question evolution, they would know about fossil placement problems. A new report on fossilized bird footprints sparked a rescuing device. It did not go well. One of the birdlike footprints from Maphutseng, Lesotho (left), and a false colour depth map of the print (right) PLOS ONE 2023 / Abrahams et al. 2023 (CC-BY 4.0) via New Scientist There must be quite a few stupid people buying the malarkey that evolutionists put out. The predominant narrative dictates that dinosaurs evolved into birds despite no actual evidence. Instead of questioning the story, some other critters came around and...