The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Historical insights & thoughts about the world we live in - and the social conditioning exerted upon us by past and current propaganda.
anonjedi2
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Alleged Dinosaur Footprint, 150 million years old. :rolleyes:

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Emu footprint:

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Turkey footprint:

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Dinosaur Fossil?

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Chicken Skeleton

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Dinosaur or Duck?

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simonshack
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by simonshack »

anonjedi2 wrote: Dinosaur or Duck?
Daffysaurus
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"Corythosaurus /ˌkɒrɨθɵˈsɔrəs/ is a genus of hadrosaurid "duck-billed" dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Period, about 77-75.7 million years ago. It lived in what is now North America."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corythosaurus
lux
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by lux »

So, here's a video and article about a recent important dinosaur find in Castle River area of Canada:


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0R2LtI6ojE

Accompanying article.

OK, so this dinosaur fossil-bearing boulder weighing over a ton was found in the Castle River by “some fishermen.” Unfortunately the fisherman are not shown or interviewed. Too bad. I would have liked to see their proud, smiling faces as they told us how they discovered the fossil. I guess we'll just have to take the scientists word for it that that's the way it was discovered.

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The rock, we're told, was “dislodged by 2013 floods.” But, dislodged from where?

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I don't quite get what they mean by that. Dislodged from the riverbed? From the surrounding terrain?

Well, anyway -- the dark gray markings on top of the rock are the actual fossil as we see later in the video.

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If you look at the left end of the rock it looks like someone placed another rock down right on top of the fossil portion of the “specimen” and nobody seems to notice or care that the priceless fossil which is incredibly rare and many millions of years old underneath might get scratched and damaged by that jagged rock rolling around on top of it as they maneuver the boulder around for pickup. But, they're scientists so I guess they must know what they're doing.

Looking at the boulder here it doesn't really look like a river rock to me. River rocks are mostly smooth and this rock is pretty jagged. In fact it looks like it was taken from a different place entirely. It's also funny how it ended up right smack in the middle of the river too. It looks as if it was just plopped down there in the middle of the river right before filming. Like by a [cough] helicopter or something.

But, wait a second – did I say it didn't look like a river rock? Later on when the scientist is showing us the fossil details it does look like a river rock. It's all smooth now and the jaggedness we saw earlier is gone. I wonder how that happened?

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The details of the fossil sure are sharp and clear and it's lucky that they're right at the surface of the boulder so they're easy to see. In fact they're so sharp and clear they look as if they were painted right onto the rock but, of course, we know that couldn't be. :D

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anonjedi2
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Haha! Nice, lux. I agree, it doesn't look like a river rock and the idea that this 2,500 pound rock would get "dislodged" and show up right in the middle of the river is laughable, at best. I also think this "scientist" has a few nervous ticks at the end of the video that give the game away. :)
lux
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by lux »

anonjedi2 wrote: I also think this "scientist" has a few nervous ticks at the end of the video that give the game away. :)
Yes, I agree. His body language is very telling. He doesn't look straight ahead at the camera when he speaks but only gives a sideways glance with furrowed brow as he fiddles nervously with the hand he just used to point out the features of the "fossil." He's lying and he knows it, IMO.

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He also stutters badly when he gives his conclusion:
"… so, I think this…this...this...this...this...this will be a significant ...uh... specimen and we're going to learn a lot from it."
anonjedi2
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Iffyosaurus Dinosaur skeleton exposed as fake

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2000 ... urs.uknews

For 116 years it graced the halls of the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff - the fossilised skeleton of a 200m-year-old predator that once cruised the Jurassic seas.

It survived the scrutiny of scientists who had known Charles Darwin, and Richard Owen, the Victorian scholar who coined the word dinosaur. It survived revolutions in palaeontology, arguments over evolution and scandals in the world of fossils.

Then curators at Cardiff decided the remains of the ocean-going carnivore ichthyosaurus needed a brush up - and realised that they had been taken in.

"When we stripped off five layers of paint we found it was an elaborate forgery," said Caroline Buttler, a conservator. "It was an amalgam of two types of ichthyosaurus plus a clever attempt at fake parts."

Ichthyosaurs were discovered by fossil collector Mary Anning on the Dorset coast in about 1809. Cardiff's specimen was presented by a local businessman, Samuel Allen, in 1884.

It will now go back on display as an example of a fake. Museum officials have dubbed it "iffyosaurus".
What is interesting about this is that if you go to Mary Anning's Wiki page, there is absolutely no mention of this at all, as if it never happened. The page lists all of her accomplishments and achievements in the field of paleontology, including the following:
Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton correctly identified, which she and her brother Joseph found when she was just twelve years old; the first two plesiosaur skeletons found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and important fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces. She also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. When geologist Henry De la Beche painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, he based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit.

"DURIA ANTIQUIOR" - by Henry De la Beche (1830)
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:o

But if her largest and most famous discovery was exposed as a fake, 100+ years later, shouldn't all of her contributions now be called into question? The woman is obviously a fraud (if she exists), how can we take any of these other discoveries seriously? Why is there no mention of this ichthyosaur fakery on the Wiki page?

Well, I just added it, let's see how long it stays up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning#Ichthyosaurs

And what about the Wiki page for Ichthyosaurs? Will the controlled world of Wikipedia just completely ignore this as if it never happened?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur



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Added "Duria Antiquior" illustration for eye candy - (simon) ;)
Well done with your Wiki update, anonjedi - way to go!
Last edited by anonjedi2 on Wed Nov 19, 2014 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
lux
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by lux »

^ I don't see your wiki edit. Has it been removed already?
anonjedi2
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

It looks like it has already been removed ... fascinating.

I was up late last night ... who is sitting around monitoring that page at that hour?

The comment that goes along with the edit says: "Thanks, but not really relevant to this article."

Oh? How is that not relevant?

I undid his edit and it's back now. I also noted that 113 people are following this page.

Let's see how long it stays up this time.

<_<
hoi.polloi
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Looks like it would just need context to fit within their typical style. Something like a heading to the paragraph like

Faked ichthyosaur bones

Then, at the conclusion of the paragraph, they will expect you to be a faker apologist and say something like, "This discovery lends itself to the history of controversy within the field of paleontology" or maybe "but scientists agree there is no further suspicion about the ichthyosaur's existence."

The format of Wikipedia (or indeed any encyclopedias I've found) just isn't set up for real scientific truths, because it cannot be open-ended or unbiased as science really is or purports to be. It is like the politics of academia, where there must be some conclusion arrived at by peer pressure, which satisfies one or more religiously, politically and/or economically motivated initiatives. It's set up like a passive, journalistic endeavor where corporations and mighty organizations can exercise their sway, and where any and all controversy must be solved by its editors to satisfy those with the most articles written to the same brow-beating "standards" and circular reasoning. Encyclopedias are much more fail than an ongoing, live, diverse selection of forums of discussion, unless you want to know undisputed facts about mostly fictions and artworks. Hell, even dates of birth and death for famous figures hold some level of need to be proved these days. Look at the entry for Harriet Tubman, if you want an example, even if it must be taken into account that slave narratives are by their nature rife with recording issues (enslaved Africans had much of their history taken from them, an awful crime we at CluesForum should definitely try to appreciate, given our awareness of the importance of sovereign narratives). Or look at the birth and death dates of a "famous" vicsim to see how multitudinous are our errors.

But if they made an honest encyclopedia, where everything is as up for discussion and debate as it really is in the real world, people (besides a handful of truly scientifically curious, I guess?) would be very disappointed. We often seem to just crave the authority of having factoids to hit people with and get our way. Wikipedia is fine for keeping track of records and organizing them, but it has no real authority on the veracity of those records; its only authority might be the might of mostly online simulation. If you can fake it and get away with it, you own the topic in question. It basically seems to be a book of canon for the PseudoScience religion. Even their articles written about debates and controversies are embarrassing. Wikipedia is surely a sad representation of our species' usage of the Internet.

Having said all that, though, I hope they allow more edits like yours.
anonjedi2
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Well stated, hoi. I absolutely agree.

What's interesting is that they don't deny the facts/content, they just don't think it's "relevant" ... but I think we can understand the real motive to control the narrative here.

In any case, a wiki talk page has been started between myself and the first individual.

Check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk: ... ary_Anning
anonjedi2
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

I found this from the Geological Curators Group.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150329112 ... ol7No8.pdf

ICHTHYOSAUR TO IFFYOSAUR: FROM FACT TO FICTION
Geology is often presented in the media in a sensational manner, but how do these stories reach the public domain and how much of them are fabrication? Presented here is an account of how a project, concerning the conservation of a Jurassic ichthyosaur, made the news world-wide but in an effort to make it more dramatic accuracy was increasingly lost.

Introduction
We live in a media age. These days museums actively seek a high profile in order to make the public aware of what they do. But how far can we trust the media to get the message straight? In some quarters any publicity is seen as good publicity, but is this necessarily true? The following is a brief account of how a tale of interesting but straightforward palaeontological conservation in Wales spread world-
wide, and lost touch with reality - and all in less than a week!
Off the bat, it sounds like they're going to "set the record straight", on order to clean up the mess. My guess is that back then, it was possible to "leak" bits of truth and this is the PR campaign that points the finger at "irresponsible journalism."
Background
The story begins in February 2001 with the conservation of a 1.8m long ichthyosaur specimen, which had been in the collections of the National
Museums of Wales for over a century. The specimen and its plaster surround had begun to crack, and pieces were becoming dislodged. What was expected to be a short, straightforward job turned into a major conservation project that lasted 11 months.
Really? If the story "begins" in February 2001, then why did these reports of a fake fossil come out in December of 2000? According to wiki, Manning's brother found only the skull, which was 1.2m long and then she found the rest of the skeleton which was 5.2 meters long. How can the Geological Curator's Group have made such a mistake?
The specimen, seemingly in rock of Jurassic age, had been donated to the former Cardiff Municipal Museum in the 1880s. Unfortunately, like many others in the collection, it was not numbered, so that its status and provenance were unknown. Entries in the minutes of the Cardiff Library and Museum Committee suggested that a local benefactor, Samuel Allen, had donated it in 1886. No indication was given of its provenance but somebody in the last 35 years had suggested that it might be from Street in Somerset
So the Geological Curator's Group makes no mention of Manning whatsoever? Is it not a well-known and established "fact" based on many journals referenced in the Wiki that she was the founder of the fossil? Why no mention of her at all?
The fossil comprises a mandible, most of the vertebral column, one front paddle, ribs and part of the pelvic girdle. Interestingly the mandible was inverted whilst the rest of the skeleton was the right way up. The specimen was set in plaster, which had been painted to resemble the rock matrix and mounted in a wooden frame. Since its original preparation it had been restored at least twice, resulting in further layers of paint and plaster being applied.

Removal of up to five layers of paint showed that parts of the skeleton, including the ends of the ribs had been restored in plaster and painted to resemble bone. It also became clear that some of the genuine bones were not in their original positions. Removal of the paint quickly showed that the skeleton had become disarticulated over the sea floor after death.

The original preparators had apparently relocated the bones in order to restore the skeleton to its original state. The front paddle had been reconstructed, vertebrae had been slotted back into place, while the lower jaw had been obtained from another fossil altogether, and belonged to a different species of ichthyosaur!

To conserve the specimen, the wooden frame and all the surrounding plaster had to be removed and replaced with modern, lightweight alternatives. The project revealed a great deal about the techniques and skills of Victorian preparators, and showed how modern conservation practices can make new discoveries about old specimens.
They go on to conclude that it was the media who blew the entire story out of proportion. Is it as simple as that or is this PR spin? Why did they wait a full year to correct these numerous media reports? Why did the museum curator (who is co-author of this piece) not sue the newspapers for libel and misquoting her?

She is quoted by the BBC in this article: "It was quite a shock to find that the creature was not what it had seemed over all these years but was a botch-up" ... the article also says the creature was 5 feet long (versus 17 feet, quoted by Wikipedia sources).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1059825.stm



Thoughts?

EDIT TO ADD:

Caroline Buttler
Head of Paleontology
Phone: (029) 2057 3359
E-mail: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/email/?e=183
lux
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by lux »

The dinosaur tech consultant on Jurassic Park, arguably the most popular dinosaur movie of all time, was paleontologist Jack Horner.

In this “making of” documentary about the film (starting at about 11:00) we learn about the influence Horner had on the making of this movie.



“Horner's research has been instrumental in changing our view of dinosaurs. He contends that birds, not reptiles, represent their closest living link,” says narrator James Earl Jones. “For Jurassic's design team, maintaining scientific accuracy would mean breaking the reptilian stereotypes associated with dinosaurs.

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Horner adds, “The whole idea is to get people to look at dinosaurs more like birds than as reptiles.

Gee, I thought it was just a movie, not a public mind-set changing device.

Anyway, Horner continues …

“In one of the scenes some of the model makers had made a tongue come out like a lizard or a snake.”

Then one of the model makers himself says that Horner “came down on it like a ton of bricks.”

Horner's comment on this is:

“Had that [flicking tongue] been left in the scene all the work on making these things birdlike would have been gone.”

Did he say MAKING these things birdlike? An odd choice of words. I thought the idea of science was to simply uncover the truth, not to MAKE ideas.

Anyway, my point is that the Jurassic Park movie was clearly made with the intention of influencing the public's concept of dinosaurs and those involved have no qualms about admitting it.

I can't say WHY they seem bent on establishing this bird connection to dinosaurs in the public mindset but the effort to do so is clearly evident here and elsewhere.

*******************************************************************************************

By the way -

- in 2012 Jack Horner, age 68, married one of his 19-year-old students, Vanessa Williams, in Las Vegas. Congratulations, Jack!

- In 2013 Horner won “the Romer-Simpson Prize*; the highest honor a paleontologist can receive from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.”
source


*The Romer Simson Prize is not to be confused with the Homer Simpson Prize, a pink frosted candy sprinkled donut, obviously a far more honorable reward.

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Sophia Perennis
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by Sophia Perennis »

The trailer to the latest in promoting the dinosaur hoax:

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4

Three key ideologies were promoted in the trailer alone:

1. The authenticity of Dinosaurs and their remains.
2. The possibility of reviving extinct species.
3. The inevitability of genetically hybridizing species.

Bravo Steven Spielberg, the deception continues.
ShaneG
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by ShaneG »

Yes I watched a bit of that trailer and left a comment reminding people that dinosaurs never existed. There was a couple of replies calling me a hater and so on but it's to be expected. People love their dinosaurs, and this entry in the Jurassic entertainment/propaganda series will no doubt more than please the masses of raving dinosaur fans.
lux
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Re: The (non-religious) dinosaur hoax question

Unread post by lux »

The usual caveats apply, of course, but I found an interesting site by a person named Robbin Koefoed Jakobsen who I believe is Danish. His site has the stated purpose …
Good Versus Evil News (GVE News) is an independent news service. GVE News wants to wake people up to the false reality created by the mainstreammedia, so called alternative media and governments around the world.
Caveat: Sounds good to me but I have only read one article so far.

OK, moving on ...

What brought me to his site was an article by Robbin titled “The dinosaurs never existed” and can be found here. The article carries a date of September 2013 which is 5 months after the start of this thread (whatever that means).

I found the article to be a good read and covers a number of points already covered in this thread as well as some others that I don't think we've touched on.

One such point is that the “dinosaur bones” put on display in museums are not real bones, the real ones being “too rare to display” and are kept locked away in vaults accessible only by a select few ...
The real bones are incarcerated in thick vaults to which only a select few highly placed researchers hold a key, which means that NO independent researcher has ever handled a tyrannosaurus rex bone. When people unaffiliated with the paleontological establishment attempt to gain access in order to study these dinosaur bones, they are met with refusal upon refusal.
Robbin's article also mentions a factory in China which supplies a large percentage of the “dinosaur skeletons” displayed in museums which are made of fiberglass, crushed and molded animal bones and other materials. The factory is called Zigong City Ocean art Co. and is located, Robbin says, near the location where many of these “feathered dinosaur fossils” were supposedly found.

I found this web site which gives info on this company's products. Of particular interest is this page which shows their range of fake skeletons such as this hot selling number that can be in your museum for a mere 8 grand:

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Anyway, Robbin's stated purpose seems to mesh with this forum's and I wonder if he is aware of CF or of Simon? Or does anyone here know anything about Robbin Koefoed Jakobsen?
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