Do Dinosaurs Still Exist?

[Marat]

In 1938 fishermen caught a live coelacanth off the coast of South Africa, even though up until that time it had been believed that these creatures had been extinct since the late Cretacean Period. Given the huge amount of hidden space under the oceans of the world, it seems possible that a sufficiently large breeding population of cryptozoological creatures might continue to exist for eons without our knowing it.

 

But on land the possibility of strange creatures being discovered seems much less likely, since we should already have seen strange creatures by now, given that they would have to be supported by a large breeding population for them to survive. This is particularly true with very large animals, such as dinosaurs.

 

However, from the late 18th century until recently, there have been numerous reports of some kind of dinosaur-like creature, perhaps a brontosaurus or some smaller sauropod, living in the jungles of Cameroon. Many of these reports have come from reputable observers, and these observations have been taken seriously enough for expeditions to have been sent looking for this creature by a cryptozoology team of the University of Chicago. There have been reports of footprints and brief, partial sightings, but nothing more substantial than that from scientifically-trained observers.

 

The native people of the region do claim to have encountered this beast on occasion, however, calling it 'mokele-mbembe.' When various groups of native people were shown illustrations of a variety of animals, ranging from elephants and hippotami to the brontosaurus, they consistently identified the brontosaurus as the creature correspeonding to what they called 'mokele-mbembe.'

 

If there is such a dinosaur still surviving today, it would challenge the theory of mass dinosaur extinction resulting from an asteroid hitting the world, which is already coming under question for other reasons.

[random]

I dunno, I did read an article in readers digest about a person trying to produce dinosaurs from chickens. It seems that for a brief window (less than 24 hours) the embryo has a tail and short arms (like a raptor or t-rex) before losing these appendages and continuing on to become a chicken,

 

Now the relevance is who is to say that on occasion, in the wild with other birds where selective breeding for consistent traits hasn't taken place that the embryo does not lose that genetic sequence and a dinosaur pops out? albeit rarely.

 

So some dinosaurs evolved to be birds, Crocodiles or alligators maybe both are said to be evolved from dinosaurs, The elephant evolved from the wooly mammoth etc. etc. I think as science progresses and more is learned we will find alot of other animals evolved from dinosaurs, It doesn't seem too far fetched considering somehow a cold blooded reptile evolved to become a warm blooded mammal. or that Many species possibly all , evolved from fish etc.

 

So perhaps every once in awhile there is a genetic "throw back" that survives. that would explain why a large breeding population is not needed for 1 to show up every now and again.

[ydoaPs]

Yes, dinosaurs still exist. I can hear them outside my window.

[SMF]

Marat and Random:

Existing dinosaurs are the birds.

One surviving ancient dinosaur species is very unlikely, but in any case would not have any affect on any mass extinction hypothesis.

No ancient dinosaur has popped out of a wild bird, there are just too many genetic differences.

Crocodiles and alligators (also caimens) did not evolve from dinosaurs. Instead crocodilians are parallel to the dinosaurs.

Elephants did not evolve from mammoths.

Mammals did evolve from cold blooded reptiles via the synapsids.

Fish were the precursors to all land vertebrates.

SM

 

Edited to remove apparent disparity between statements 1 and 3. There have been experiments that cause chicken genes for tooth development to be expressed in ovo, but none to demonstrate chicken lips yet.

Edited April 23, 2011 by SMF

[ydoaPs]

Marat and Random:

Existing dinosaurs are the birds.

One surviving ancient dinosaur species is very unlikely, but in any case would not have any affect on any mass extinction hypothesis.

No dinosaur has popped out of a wild bird, there are just too many genetic differences.

Crocodiles and alligators (also caimens) did not evolve from dinosaurs. Instead crocodilians are parallel to the dinosaurs.

Elephants did not evolve from mammoths.

Mammals did evolve from cold blooded reptiles via the synapsids.

Fish were the precursors to all land vertebrates.

SM

Indeed:

http://www.scienceforums.net/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=2407

[Marat]

If this mokele-mbembe is really a brontosaurus, why would it have survived a mass extinction that killed off the stegasaurus, t. rex, allosaurus, triceritops, etc.? A massively oversized vegetarian would not have been more likely to persist to the present day than a smaller one like stegasaurus.

 

Most agree that birds are today an evolutionary descendant of dinosaurs, but it would be quite a different matter if an actual group of brontosaurus were still surviving.

[SMF]

Marat. It would be nearly impossible for a large dino to have survived without discovery. One of the small bird-like ones would be the most likely, but very unlikely in its original form. You don't understand how a massive extinction event might leave a small population of survivors? It did, and they evolved to take over a very profitable ecological niche. SM

[Moontanman]

The most reasonable explanation is that mokele mbembe is a rhinoceros. Tribesmen from deep in the jungle like to bullshit naive white explorers as much as any one else, lol

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokele-mbembe

 

The BBC/Discovery Channel documentary Congo (2001) interviewed a number of tribe members who identified a photograph of a rhinoceros as being a Mokèlé-mbèmbé.[3] Neither species of African rhinoceros is common in the Congo Basin, and the Mokèlé-mbèmbé may be a mixture of mythology and folk memory from a time when rhinoceros were found in the area.

Edited April 23, 2011 by Moontanman

[Marat]

It might be a rhino, but then that doesn't explain why other observers thought it was a dinosaur, such as officers of the German colonial army in 1913. Also, there have been other instances in which tribesmen have picked out an illustration of a brontosaurus from a picture array as the real mokele mbembe. Another consideration worth noting is that mokele mbembe supposedly lives in Cameroon, not the Congo.

[SMF]

This living dinosaur bit reminds me of Bigfoot, area 51, and the Bermuda triangle. Lots of good eyewitness accounts there as well. SM

[ydoaPs]

This living dinosaur bit reminds me of ... area 51

/me points to Google Earth

[Marat]

The purported Cameroon 'dinosaur' is a tad more serious than Area 51, given that the cryptozoology team from the University of Chicago considered it worth investing the money required to conduct an African expedition to investigate it.

[insane_alien]

but area 51 actually does exist.

 

just not in the way conspiracy nuts like to think though.

[SMF]

The purported Cameroon 'dinosaur' is a tad more serious than Area 51, given that the cryptozoology team from the University of Chicago considered it worth investing the money required to conduct an African expedition to investigate it.

 

I can"t find any University of Chicago cryptozoology team. If you are talking about Roy Mackal, he is an old Loch Ness Monster chaser who is retired from the University of Chicago. Could you please clarify this issue. SM

[Marat]

Natural science operates with two contradictory methodological principles, which are always in tension with each other. First, it is committed to studying seriously whatever empirical evidence emerges and registering its implications for our theoretical understanding of the universe no matter how radically challenging these might be. This can be seen in the examples of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton insisting that the empirical data be accepted to its logical implications, even if it contradicted with other parts of the theoretical web of belief.

 

Second, it is committed to weaving new data, as far as possible, back into the accepted paradigms of explanation already established. So if I count out three socks and two socks, but when I combine them I seem to have only four, instead of allowing this to imply that 2 + 3 = 4, I instead feed the pressure of the incongruous result onto less central aspects of the web of belief, such as the possibility that I miscounted, that I dropped a sock, etc. Obviously the first and second methodological principles are in tension with each other.

 

Generally, whether we adopt option one or two depends on how central to our theory system the ideas are that would have to be revised by the new data. In the case of there being living dinosaurs, this surprising new data would not represent an extremely serious challenge to the existing paradigms of explanation, since it would just represent a minor addendum to natural history, and not upset the foundations of physics as though we had found a perpetual motion machine. The theory of the sudden destruction of dinosaurs by a massive collison of the earth with an asteroid, which produced such huge effects that all dinosaurs should have been wiped out by it, would be challenged, but that theory is already under some stress for other reasons.

 

So, I'm not saying that I seriously believe that dinosaurs exist in Cameroon, though some reputable observers claim to have seen evidence of it, there exists photographic footprint evidence of it, and the films of natives identifying images of a brontosaurus as mokele mbembe I have seen look as if the natives are quite sincere in their confirmation. Marcellin Agnagna, a biologist from the University of Brazzaville and an official of the Brazzaville Zoo claims to have seen it, as does the explorer William Gibbons, who is also credited with having discovered and retrieved the body of a new species of monkey, cerocebus galeritus, during the same 1985-1986 expedition on which he says he saw mokele mbembe. The possibility of there being a living dinosaur in Cameroons was also taken seriously enough for the Smithsonian Expedition to send a 32-man expedition looking for it in 1919-1920. Looking at all of this I would say I regard it as unproven speculation, but still as something more substantial than alien landings at Area 51.

[D.Smalley]

I would say to some extent that Marat is correct about the two principles, but I'd say there wasn't too much tension. The idea is that principle one only overrides principle two upon repeated observation of the phenomenon. If under one circumstance you find that '2+3=4' but from thousands of other observations you find 2+3=5, and that this logic applies to many other scenarios e.g. 2+5=7, then, as a skeptic, you logically accept that your observation must be either wrong or not taking into account some other factor.

With the dinosaur thing, I would say it is always wise to remain skeptical when the only data is someones opinion, no matter how many or who it is from. Empirical data is needed. The discovery of a living dinosaur would be a big deal as our current evidence to counter it is: We have never, in the history of modern man, seen a dinosaur. What did these fisherman do with it? Eat it? Where is it now?

Besides, if in the 1900s we can find one dinosaur there must be at least hundreds of them to breed for milennia.

[Moontanman]

It's the idea that animals as successful as dinosaurs would, even if it was only one species, remain confined to as small a region as this dinosaur is reported from that really bothers me. A sauropod dinosaur should pretty much spread out with no other animals being able to prey on it and occupy much of the entire Continent of Africa and it should have speciated as well. A population of sauropod dinosaurs should have spread everywhere and left huge numbers of fossils after the KT bountry...

Edited April 28, 2011 by Moontanman

[pwagen]

This video might be relevant. Most of it is off-topic as far as this topic goes, but the punchline is spot on.

 

[SMF]

Marat. I asked you to verify your statement regarding an expensive investigation by a University of Chicago cryptozoology team, but no such team exists does it? How does this behavior fit into your essay regarding the "contradictory methodological principles" underlying natural science? SM

[rktpro]

Yes, I saw one in the market yesterday.

[Realitycheck]

Maybe by running a program to put all of the bits and pieces of DNA back together again? (strictly hypothetically speaking, or would they be too decayed after so long, even stuck in amber?)

[DevilSolution]

i always presumed alligators and birds were on the same branch as dinosaurs so....?

[Moontanman]

i always presumed alligators and birds were on the same branch as dinosaurs so....?

 

 

No, crocodiles and their relatives are not dinosaurs, not descended from dinosaurs either, birds however, are thought to be and descended from dinosaurs.

Edited May 10, 2011 by Moontanman

[Chalky]

Maybe by running a program to put all of the bits and pieces of DNA back together again? (strictly hypothetically speaking, or would they be too decayed after so long, even stuck in amber?)

 

Soft tissue has (supposedly) been found in a T. Rex skeleton.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus#Soft_tissue

 

I don't remember much about the original papers but the scientists matched it quite closely to birds. Whether or not it was original or later contamination is another matter...

[Laurens]

I have some dinosaurs in my back garden, I often eat their eggs for breakfast