STL Science Center

STL Science Center

18 March 2013

Fish-Lizard in Motion

It is always quite fun to see an amateur model of locomotion of extinct species. This Ichthyosaur is, in my opinion, pretty accurate for single direction movement along a line of travel. There is a video that supposedly refutes evolutionary theory by using Ichthyosaur fossils. I did not watch the whole thing and I am certainly not posting it here because I do not like the arguments that this sort of video tends to incite.

National Geographic has posted a talk by Jorn Hurum in which he discusses National Geographic teams' adventures on "Sea Monster Island" and the history of expedition on the island. Somewhere in there there is a little bit of discussion about Ichthyosaurs and other skeletons discovered by Americans and others that have traversed the island and excavated skeletons.

Another, last video, for the day, is a compilation of historical illustrations. In case anyone is new to reading this, I have a weakness for older illustration because, while not scientifically accurate, older illustrations are highly fanciful and they embody the whimsy of the science of paleontology. They also show what imagination would have the prehistoric world look like, that, while whimsical and fanciful, is like every fairy tale we ever heard growing up, and that, honestly, is a very interesting world to envision.

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