Posted on 10/27/2006 8:27:42 PM PDT by aculeus
An artist's rendering of a new species of phorusrhacid, or terror bird, shows the massive creature's sharp, curving beak. The fossil skull of the new specimen—seen in the bottom photo alongside a modern California condor skull—is 2.3 feet (almost a meter) long and represents the largest bird skull ever found.
Hmm. That would be a reasonably scary critter to encounter. Wow.
Who eats who for Thanksgiving?
Is it just me, or is it a good thing this things just a pile of mineralized bone; not that that means anything if believe in golems.
That has got to have been one stinkin' big bird.
Does anybody know what empirical evidence went into the artists rendition concerning its plumage color? Or is that merely poetic license (sort of like all the lizards are portrayed as green, when they could be paisley colored)?
Then our conversation drifted to an account I had read of some poachers in Bangladesh, I think, who were traveling down a very narrow stream though a wildlife preserve. They had the lights off (Because they didn't want to be seen) and apparently, it was pitch black. Suddenly, they hear a soft, muffled "splash". They point the light towards the noise and turn it on. In the light is a huge tiger, dragging the limp body of one of their boatmates along the shore, his head in the Tiger's mouth. Apparently the tiger had leaped from a high bank to the opposite side directly over the boat. In transit, it had chomped on the man's head, and pulled him straight up and out of the boat.
They never even had felt the boat rock.
After we saw the linked video, and thought of a tiger just pulling a guy out of the boat like that , I observed how scary it would be to have creatures on earth such as Tigers with Wings, preying on men.
We pondered that for a second or two, and we both suddenly looked up at each other and simultaneously went "Naaahhh." We both agreed they would be extinct in short order.
The coloration is likely an artists rendition. Kind of funny...when I was a kid, Tyrannasours were always green (50's -60's)
Now they say they might have been any number of funky color schemes, all patterned in blotches and such.
Bump for a big bad bird!
Who is to say that these guys weren't the downsized descendants of dinosaurs.
Yesterday we had the oldest bee... today we have the largest bird..
are them eggheads ever gonna run out of superlatives?
Good thing it's extinct, though. Otherwise some fool would try to cook him in peanut oil next month and burn down half a state...
ROTFLMFAO!!!!!! You made me spit on my keyboard there...
I'm waitin for the peanut oil pyromaniacs to show up and say... "I do it every year..."!!!!
I got way better things to do than stand outside with a fire extinguisher IN THE MIDDLE OF FREAKIN WINTER!!!
10-27-2502006 - Bones recently unearthed in East Texas prove conclusively that pigs at one time actually flew. These winged pigs, whose genetic makeup is similar to both pigs and chickens, were apparently destroyed by some type of intense fire two and a half million years ago. lol
Right. Similiar to the cheetah, leopard, tiger, and peacock, in conjunction to the brightly colored fish (in specific patterns between species) that live too deeply for such patterns to mean anything to the various species with resepct to evolutionary theory.
Roger that.
I understand that all those animals don't live in your location, but that belies the point I'm making (I hope you get it).
My point is: how much of evolution is dependent upon "artists rendition"? I had a discussion concerning that on a thread a while back with VadeRetro before he was so rudely forced out of the Freeper community.
I'll tell you this: the science works out that the Moon is 4.5 billion years old. All the science in the world combined in a nutshell says so. All the science in the world combined said for thousands of years that everything orbited the Earth. The predictive abilities of those models was marvelous.
Keep the science and religion apart, avoid ad hominem, and be nice to each other; you might actually learn something (if that's something you're actually interested in).
Remember one thing: faith is based on things unseen, for if they are seen then what would one need faith for? On the other hand, that which is seen (and understood through empirical experimentation) can not be argued against. The faith and science will never truly conflict, but science may conflict with faith. Is there anything in the Bible for or against penicillian (or its distilation)? Which trumps whom?
Yikes!
good vid
Don't mind me as I make these mercury loads in my basement.
I'm just curious, just supposing this thing was a "living" fossile, what kind of load would you use? Keep in mind this thing has GOT to be a golem type thing, eh?
I'm pretty certain that ephalent slugs should do the trick. I'd like to see these things squirm after a herd of 'em had some napalm dropped on 'em...
O.k., that was nasty, well, we could airspray large herds with paraquate, that'd be o.k., eh?
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