Let me tell you something….

Warren Nunn 2017

Let me tell you a little story ….. no let the so-called scientific press tell you a whopper of a tale with a twist in the tail that’s just too silly for words.

This is how one website served up some spin on the so-called oldest titanosaur.

It started out:

About 160 million years ago, a gigantic, long-necked dinosaur—the earliest known titanosaur on record—swooped its lengthy neck to and fro as it foraged for a leafy meal in Jurassic-era France, a new study finds.

My comment:

It’s true the researchers were studying a gigantic, long-necked dinosaur and it’s reasonable to assume it swooped its neck as described. All creatures, particularly of this size, can eat both plants and meat. The alleged 160 million years cannot be substantiated because the whole idea of long ages is questionable because there are far too many variables to be able to definitively say how old any fossil is. Not that that stops scientists from presenting as ‘fact’ that they died out 65 million years ago.

Good observations, but questionable conclusions

It continued:

The newly identified dinosaur was immense: It weighed about 33,000 lbs. (15,000 kilograms), about equivalent to the weight of a garbage truck, and measured more than 50 feet (15 meters) long, or longer than a standard yellow school bus, the researchers said.

Comment:

No problem with any of that; simply makes good scientific observations about the creature being studied.

Further:

They named the newfound beast Vouivria damparisensis after the Old French word “vouivre,” which is based on the Latin word for viper. The name is also tied to folk history: “La vouivre” is a legendary winged reptile in the region of French-Comte, where the fossils were found. The species name honors the village Damparis, where researchers found the specimen in the 1930s. 

Comment:

No problems with this. (Article continues below image)

It went on:
“Vouivria would have been a herbivore, eating all kinds of vegetation, such as ferns and conifers,” the study’s lead researcher, Philip Mannion, a faculty member in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “This creature lived in the late Jurassic, around 160 million years ago, at a time when Europe was a series of islands.”

Herbivores have been known to eat meat too

Comment:

Agree that Vouivria would have been a herbivore but don’t discount the possibility that he was also a meat-eater when the opportunity presented itself. The late Jurassic is an imagined era as is the time-frame. How anyone can know that Europe was a series of islands is a mystery. The reality is we simply can’t know what the world looked like the further back in time we go; we get hints from geology of catastrophic events but the “series of islands” claim is total speculation.

And on:

An anatomical analysis revealed that V. damparisensis is the oldest known brachiosaurid, a type of titanosauriform dinosaur. Titanosaurs were a diverse group of sauropods (enormous four-legged, long-necked and long-tailed dinosaurs) that lived from the late Jurassic to end-Cretaceous periods. For instance, Brachiosaurus, a dinosaur with a giraffe-like neck, was a titanosauriform that lived during the Jurassic period.

Comment:

Why oldest-known? Again, this human construct of placing creatures into groups based on ages assigned from imagined periods of time is pure speculation. The so-called late Jurassic to end-Cretaceous periods have been agreed upon in scientific circles but they are totally arbitrary and useful only for those who are convinced that such long periods of time actually occurred.

And on:

V. damparisensis likely died in a coastal lagoon, when sea levels were briefly lower than usual, the researchers said. The dinosaur’s remains were probably buried when sea levels rose again, which would explain why the animal was found buried in rocks that were from a coastal environment, the researchers said.

Can anyone know for certain where a creature died?

Comment:

How can anyone know where this creature died? If it did die in a coastal lagoon, there would be nothing left of its remains to be fossilised. Decay and scavengers would have reduced the carcass to a disarticulated mess of bones in days or weeks. This fairytale notion of creatures waiting around to be fossilised and found in such great condition allegedly millions of years later beggars belief. How can anyone propose such a thing and expect to not be laughed at? And to suggest that the scenario painted explains why it was found buried in rocks is not scientific as I’ve shown. There is also the reality that more and more dinosaur fossils are being found with soft tissue which certaintly points to them having lived perhaps only hundreds of years ago.

And on:

“We don’t know what this creature died from, but millions of years later, it is providing important evidence to help us understand in more detail the evolution of brachiosaurid sauropods and a much bigger group of dinosaurs that they belonged to, called titanosauriforms,” Mannion said.

No evidence of millions of years and evolution

Comment:

This comment could only come from someone convinced that this is actually how fossils form and are available to study “millions of years” later. The person’s convinced; I’m not!

And on:

When researchers discovered V. damparisensis in 1934, it barely received any scientific attention, the researchers said. Instead, paleontologists stored the specimen at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and it was only briefly mentioned throughout the years as “the Damparis dinosaur.”

Comment:

No problem with this observation.

And on:

Now that the specimen has been examined, V. damparisensis will help scientists understand the spread of early brachiosaurids and other titanosauriform dinosaurs across the world, the researchers said. Paleontologists have found other brachiosaurid remains in the United States, Western Europe and Africa, the researchers said.

Comment:

All true, the study will continue; the work is valuable and needs to be done but we don’t need these ridiculous fairytales of millions of years, dying in coastal lagoons after waiting around to be fossilised when to arrive at such a conclusion you have to make so many unprovable assumptions.

Original article at: http://www.livescience.com/58937-earliest-titanosaur-dinosaur-unearthed.html