Comments on: A Dinosaur Expedition Doomed From the Start

By: Jack McCullough

Jack McCullough — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:56:31 +0000

Although I have serious doubts about finding a ‘living sauropod’, I have even more doubts about this ‘unbiased’ article. The simple comment..”are creationists who have a strong bias in favor of modern dinosaurs because of their fundamentalist beliefs.” is about as biased as it can be! I find it very interesting that evolutionists insist that all the evidence support their ‘theories’. Just a short look at the ‘evidence’ shows that new discoveries are constantly causing evolutionists to tweak their theories. That is why they should be called and identified as theories instead of being taught as fact. I also find it offensive that the author implies that if you don’t have an advanced degree then you aren’t smart enough to figure things out for yourself. Go ahead, cling to your ‘truth of theories’ and constantly change what is true in your life. “As for me & my house we will cling to the unchanging truth.” To paraphrase the greatest best-seller of all time!

By: Adelbert

Adelbert — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:42:51 +0000

@ Bill Gibbons- You have definitely found something exceptional. You don’t need to find a dinosaur; your description of the tribes you encountered are fascinating enough to any anthropologist. I’m particularly interested in the tribes that hunt fearlessly hippo’s and elephants with nets. Can you tell a bit more about them: who are they, what languages do they speak (many different ones, you mention),..
I’m also quite sure you have a lot of footage of the dinosaurs themselves. As the tribes know so much about it’s behaviour and considering it kills elephants and hippo’s when disturbed they must have observed the animal often and for extended periods. A very rare sighting of an animal would be hard to reconcile with seeing that animal exactly at the moment of a fight with hippo’s one time, another time with elephants. And to know for sure the animal is vegetarian you need more than a glimpse from afar.

Not that it matters very much. As a child I loved Huxley’s professors and the newspaper guy, I couldn’t get enough of Jules Verne and ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume’ still had a romantic ring to it. And some of that feeling still lingers. So please go on telling the world about monsters in swamps (add some local black amazones perhaps).
As to the money of an expedition, I consider it well spent. Some musea give millions for a painting that is only of interest to a very few admirers, while your stories may excite children and stimulate their fantasy and even their interest in study -as Huxley and Vernes did with me.
A small piece of advice: find yourself a good writer to write a novel loosely based on your travels, it could be a best-seller and with part of the profits you can fund many more glorious adventures. I’m serious

By: carl w.landers

carl w.landers — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:02:51 +0000

From all of the reports their is somthing and I for one hope they get photos and somthing to prove what it is without harming it.

By: John Patterson

John Patterson — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 08:19:43 +0000

I’m with Bill Gibbons on this one. Exploratory inquiry is always better than a dismissal on the basis of “Don’t bother because it’s impossible, okay?”

We might disagree with him about other things, but he has a point when observing that there is a lot more commonality in the Mokele-Mbmembe stories than Brian Switek lets on. It was serious enough to have an exhibit mention Mokele as a possible living dinosaur at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. I don’t know what to make of these stories, myself, but I do think they warrant further investigation by a serious, experienced, thorough, well-funded expedition. Whether such a thing is currently possible is another matter altogether.

By: Bill Gibbons

Bill Gibbons — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:25:36 +0000

@Will Fraser – when you have nothing of any value to add to add to this exchange, just resort to cheap insults, right?

I have taken the time and trouble to actually travel to Africa, explore remote areas, get to know the people and LEARN about them and their cultures. Even if I find nothing, I have been rewarded by many other experiences in life.

By the way. it’s “mentally ill.”

And you suggest that I get an education?

By: Randy Redmer

Randy Redmer — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 05:04:19 +0000

SM, I hope you find one. I hope you catch one. If you bring back evidence, don’t expect Smithsonian to believe you.. it goes against their Dogma. They would not acknowledge the existence of one if it bit them in the ass. I’m glad you’re going. Be careful , Congo is rough (especially where you’re headed). Hope you get a very good guide.

By: Will Fraser

Will Fraser — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:19:51 +0000

Billy Gibbons ! Wow, dude, you stopped playing guitar?
Too bad you didn’t quit the hallucinogenics too.
Your post is hilariously menatlly ill.
Get an education.

By: Bill Gibbons

Bill Gibbons — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:09:32 +0000

There is little doubt that Mokele-mbembe is a living animal. However, what kind of animal, is another question entirely. Having spend some considerable time interviewing eye-witnesses from different cultural & tribal groups (they are quite diverse in their languages, cultures, social make-up and religious beliefs), I am struck by a number of facts:

1. They all describe a semi-aquatic animal that is present in the rivers & swamps.
2. It is rare, and dangerous when approached
3. Its diet is entirely vegetable.
4. The names given for this animal (fifteen different tribal names), differ from one another, but the description remains almost exactly the same.
5. The animal is hostile towards hippos and elephants, which it will drive away or kill if found in its territory.
6. All eye-witnesses describe an animal that is up to 30 feet long, with a long, thin neck, long flexible tail, reddish brown in color, a head resembling a snake or lizard, and remains in the river when feeding on leaves and fruits of overhanging tree branches.
7. Although the animal is rare, almost everyone we have interviewed that have encountered the animal have exhibited considerable fear of it. Theses are people who fearlessly hunt hippos (which kill more people in Africa annually than any other animal), elephants and crocodiles, with little more than spears & nets.

Whatever Mokele-mbembe is, we cannot with any certainty claim that it is a dinosaur. However, the discovery of a totally new species and genus would be just as exciting.

In the meantime, I hope to return to a specific location in Cameroon this November to continue our research.

Best Wishes,

Bill Gibbons
africanmysteries@yahoo.ca

By: John Gorsuch

John Gorsuch — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:36:38 +0000

Jonathan Henry, scientists do not have a bias against the idea of living dinosaurs because of their evolutionary “beliefs”. Living, non-avian dinosaurs would not falsify our understanding of evolution. As the author pointed out, “Young earth creationists … wrongly believe that finding a living, non-avian dinosaur will discredit evolutionary theory. (The existence of a living sauropod wouldn’t be any worse for evolutionary theory than the discovery of modern coelacanths. These archaic fish were thought to be extinct, but once living fish were discovered, they fell perfectly well within what scientists have understood about evolutionary patterns since Darwin’s day.)”

Scientists doubt the existence of a large sauropod in the Congo because of a lack of any hard evidence to support such claims, not because they run contrary to evolutionary processes. The author correctly describes sauropods as “immense creatures that would leave plenty of evidence in the landscape if they existed”. It is the lack of evidence to support the existence of Mokele Membe, not a “bias” in favor of evolution, that leaves scientists skeptical. Qualifying a claim as unlikely given the lack of evidence to support it is a completely different proposition from making subjective, grandiose interpretations of cave paintings which conveniently fit into one’s religious beliefs.

By: Jonathan Henry

Jonathan Henry — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 11:38:16 +0000

‘Speigel omits the fact that the two “researchers” who make the grand claims about the ancient art—Vance Nelson and Harry Nibourg—are creationists who have a strong bias in favor of modern dinosaurs because of their fundamentalist beliefs.’ … Uh, like the Smithsonian does not have an equally strong bias in ‘disfavor’ of modern dinosaurs because of their evolutionary beliefs?

By: Will Fraser

Will Fraser — Wed, 30 May 2012 00:36:54 +0000

Steve McCullah,
Dude, congratulations on getting money from your creationist friends for your media expedition. You know your audience ! And like all scientists, I certainly look forward to any support you can come up with for a designer. and how your finds will refute the central theorme in the biological and life sciences! Very exciting stuff. The scientific community will be,,,uh, amazed! Furthermore, it would be awesome if you actually did find a dinosaur. It would fit in so well with scripture! Not the scripture I learned as a young Lutheran of course, but whatever scripture it is that you guys read.
Ponce de Leon and Steve McCullah ! Have fun.!!Its the Stone Ages all over again.Menatlly that is. but with modern equipment. How cool is that!

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 28 May 2012 14:01:51 +0000

I think he is more likely to find Dina Shore than Dinosaur…JMO

By: Amber

Amber — Sat, 26 May 2012 20:33:47 +0000

“If there’s an upside to this kind of shallow media entertainment it’s the possibility that younger viewers might find their sense of wonder being ignited.”

But we already have this, much of the BBC caters to this without needing to add the shallow nonsense.

“There’s nothing wrong with kids imagining a world were dinosaurs still exist!”

We also already have this, and it is properly labeled fiction.

By: Kandinsky

Kandinsky — Sat, 26 May 2012 08:19:43 +0000

I agree, it’s a stupid idea (cretinous?) to entertain the idea that Cretaceous critters are lingering amidst the foliage of deepest Africa. It’s also like knocking at the door of Mr. Critical Thinking and finding nobody home.

If there’s an upside to this kind of shallow media entertainment it’s the possibility that younger viewers might find their sense of wonder being ignited. There’s nothing wrong with kids imagining a world were dinosaurs still exist! Unfortunately, we live in a world were a lot of adults would rather believe in massive, elaborate cover-ups than the reality that dinosaurs are extinct.

By: Boesse

Boesse — Sat, 26 May 2012 07:23:13 +0000

I’ll go out on a limb and say while yes – there is some spirit of adventure with this expedition – it’s the same sort of excitement behind shows like “finding bigfoot” and “ghost hunters”. I find it hilarious that a gullible public just eats this stuff up and watches shows that have not shown even a second of footage of the subject of the show, over the course of how many seasons. The simple reason is that they just don’t exist, and neither do Holocene dinosaurs in Africa.

“Local populations” in Africa also think that killing and eating albino humans will bring them good luck.