Falwell’s reaction to this should be entertaining:
For several years scientists have been finding fossilized embryos of dinosaurs from 80 million to 100 million years ago. They have now uncovered several 190-million-year-old dinosaur embryos, the oldest ever found.
The discovery is being reported Friday in the journal Science by a team of paleontologists headed by Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto. The fossils were actually excavated in 1978 in South Africa, but it has taken this long to expose the embryos from the surrounding rock and eggshell and then interpret the tiny remains.
They identified the embryos as belonging to a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called Massospondylus. As adults, these creatures reached lengths of more than 15 feet and were able to walk on two legs. Yet the new research suggested that their hatchlings began life moving about on all fours, the scientists reported.
Dr. Reisz and his colleagues came to this surprising conclusion from a detailed examination of the horizontal neck, heavy head and limb proportions of the embryo skeletons. This appeared to mean that the young were quadrupeds and somehow matured into bipeds, a pattern of development, they said, that was almost unheard of among vertebrates.
“The results have major implications for our understanding of how these animals grew and evolved,” Dr. Reisz said.
Hrmm. How can this be?
Dinosaurs were also explained. According to John Whitcomb, co-author of the seminal creationist book, The Genesis Flood (1961), Noah’s ark carried 1,000 different kinds of dinosaurs as well as all of the other species, and the book has sold more than a quarter of a million copies in English…
“If we don’t understand the young earth and how God created it in six 24-hour days, then our values are skewed, said the Reverend Jerry Falwell, and he is hopeful that “The biblical account is the believable one. The creation debate is being won.”
Maybe Noah missed a few.
Sojourner
God is being a trickster and testing our faith?
Anderson
Obviously, these dinosaur embryos must be preserved at all costs!
ppGaz
Not that’s an idea that is so elegantly twisted that it could only have come from some sort of Intelligent Design.
I agree with Sojourner, Dog is testing our faith.
Or maybe He just enjoys a good laugh now and then, like us mortals do.
Mr Furious
Is “ark” short for “aircraft carrier”, and how many ships in Noah’s fleet?!
Mr Furious
Ahh, never mind. I’m just being a wiseass. We all know God gave Noah plans for one wooden ship — and a shrink ray.
Brian
I always wondered what Noah fed the animals, and what they did with all the crap. Add dinosaurs weighing tons a piece and you’ve got a lot of shoveling to do.
BinkyBoy
Noah and the ark are supposedly around 3000 years old, if I remember my whackjob calendar correctly. In that amount of time the protein chains and long fibers wouldn’t have broken down completely, which would leave massive traces of dinosaur DNA available to geologists and paleotologists. And thats just making the assumption that all 1000 species that Noah was toting around died immediately without any continuation of the species.
Why do people continue to pay any serious attention to guys like Falwell when they spout such obvious nonsense? Are Christian lives so empty that they need this kind of absolute BS to fill it? Is the fear of death and nothingness so absolute that they’ll believe anything?
And when did it fall out of favor to make fun of Scientology on a regular basis?
KC
Check out some of the creationist videos. They all have these really whacked out theories about the ark, how big it was (the Bible gives its dimensions, but it seems like they always make it bigger), how it could hold so many animals, etc. What’s also funny is that when it comes to the flood story, the ark, and creation, the creationists have to drop their literal interpretations of the bible too.
Brian
Oh yeah, plus, I thought the creationists thought either 1) the dinosaurs were destroyed in the Flood or 2) their fossils were put here to test our faith. The idea that they were on the Ark is news to me.
Personally I won’t rest until the children are taught the truth: the earth is flat and rests on the back of a giant turtle.
BinkyBoy
But what is that turtle standing on?
Mark
The magic turtle flies through the universe, of course!
BinkyBoy
Well, the real answer is:
“Well dear, its turtles all the way down”
BinkyBoy
Sorry, I realize thats a really obscure quote now….
Steven King, Gunslinger Volume 6
norbizness
Is http://www.dinosaursnowflake.org taken?
Mr Furious
Do flames shoot out of the turtle’s feet (ala Gammara) as he hurtles through space?
Buford
That turtle-talk is blasphemy… the Flying Spaghetti Monster is dis-pleased, and you shall soon receive the wrath of his noodly appendage. Arrrrggh.
http://www.venganza.org
SeesThroughIt
Furthermore, it is quite clear that the dinosaurs were killed off by goodgawdalmighty because they were not believers in the culture of life! Repent, ye sinners, for the dinosaurs were just the big guy’s warning shot!
HP Lovecraft
“Do flames shoot out of the turtle’s feet (ala Gammara) as he hurtles through space”?
Reminder: Yog Sothoth and Cthulhu can kick your flying Turtle’s ass ANY DAY!
RSA
What a nutjob explanation–dinosaurs on the ark. . .
The true explanation involves fallen angels and dinosaurs together battling with Noah on his ark, and being destroyed by the flood.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/theferrett/519211.html
BARRASSO
Bill Frist has reviewed pictures of the embryos and determined that these embryos were in fact aborted, and therefore God killed the dinosaurs off because they were murderers.
Otto Man
Excellent Gamera reference. That’s all I’ve got.
DougJ
Here is an excellent article supporting the young earth point of view.
http://www.csama.org/199711NL.HTM#NewDino
I’m with Falwell on this one. Whoever gives into the pseudo-scienctific myth of evolution is likely destined to become a relavisit, hedonist librul.
Sojourner
Of course you are.
CaseyL
“Whoever gives into the pseudo-scienctific myth of evolution is likely destined to become a relavisit, hedonist librul.”
Damn straight. Being a relativist hedonist librul is finest-kind.
My personal favorite among the Biblical Dinosaur crackpots was the fundamentalist who told me dinosaurs are so mentioned in the Bible. When I asked where, he rattled off some verse about how “There were giants on the Earth.”
I laughed until I about fell over. That’s it? ‘There were giants on the Earth’?
Holy madre de dios, if somebody in antedeluvian times saw a T. Rex gobble up their herd of goats, or a Brachiosaurus go stomping across their olive grove, or had to gather up their whole family and run from a herd of velociraptors, don’t you think they’d come up with commentary a little less laconic, a little more dramatic, than ‘There were giants on the Earth’?
DougJ
Casey, if you follow the link, I gave you’ll see plent of other evidence of dinosaurs being mentioned in the bible and other ancient texts.
Larry
Hey DougJ,
Either quote the passage in the bible that mentions computers, or get thee the fuck off line.
No ‘interpreting’ the sacred text now….
Fledermaus
Whoever gives into the pseudo-scienctific myth of evolution is likely destined to become a relavisit, hedonist librul.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. The best part is sleeping in on Sunday :)
Joel B.
If you want to read something really interesting try this:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v12/i3/sumerian.asp
The Sumerian King List is a widely accepted historical document, the amazing thing is, that it largely agrees with the biblical account. And what does the secular world tell us? That the Bible must be wrong because science does not back it up, but the fact is, science does back up the Bible. History backs up the Bible.
Prehistoric dating are all key because they are based on assumptions. And when you assume that the Bible is not accurate, your conclusions will prove that. That doesn’t mean that the assumption or conclusions are right.
The key is, people are going to believe what they are going to believe, the fact of the matter is, you, each individual has to choose the set of assumptions you work under, and your conclusions will flow naturally.
Sojourner
It would be truly amazing if it provided a recorded history of the world before there were people.
Joel B.
And that’s part of what makes it amazing. One of the truly “amazing” things is how almost the epic of the flood is so widely discounted despite the widespread cultural traditions of a flood.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0329gilgamesh.asp
What’s really amazing is that despite so much cultural and historical suggestion that much of what happened in the Bible actually did, so many conclude the Bible to be inaccurate. Again, your conlusions will flow from your assumptions, and Joshua perhaps said it best…
“Choose for yourselves, whom you will serve, but for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Sojourner
Humankind is quite familiar with floods. What’s lacking is evidence of an ark large enough to hold two each of all the millions of species.
Except that the Bible does not tell one, consistent story of the events.
Joel B.
Who says the ark needed to hold all of the two million currently existing species. Surely you wouldn’t tell me that none of the current species could be relatives of those taken on the ark?
Christians and creationism doesn’t say that species don’t change or differentiate. They do say though, that they do not change kind. So people came from people, apes from apes, and dogs from dogs. It may not taken nearly close to two million species on the ark to generate the diversity we see today.
Where’s is the inconsistency? Within the Bible? I don’t know about that.
Sojourner
Who says the ark needed to hold all of the two million currently existing species. Surely you wouldn’t tell me that none of the current species could be relatives of those taken on the ark?
Where’s is the inconsistency? Within the Bible? I don’t know about that.
Sojourner
How about birds from dinosaurs? The evidence looks pretty strong on that one.