Now I can show the entire process, step-by-step, for how the Spinosaurus painting came to be, from preliminary sketch to the finished artwork. A scan of the painting is at the end.
Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Okay, now to dive into this topic once more. This will be the last post I do on this topic for a while, and I apologize for its considerable word count. There was a lot of ground to cover. But at last, here is section B. More criticisms answered. I welcome feedback, whether positive or negative.
You can find part one here, part two here, and part three-A here.
“The descriptions are inconsistent, so we can dismiss Mokele-mbembe as a monster of the imagination.”
Skeptics tend to say the Mokele-mbembe is just a legend, with inconsistent descriptions pieced together from sightings (or cultural memories, if the animal no longer lives in the area) of rhinos, elephants, giant snakes, and even giraffes.
However, this blanket statement all but ignores the information reported by those who have actually gone to the trouble of putting boots on the ground and speaking to the natives themselves, like Bill Gibbons and the late Roy Mackal. (You can read their reports for yourself in their books, listed in the bibliography below)
When interviewing people who claim to have actually seen the creature, there is a huge spike in the consistency of their descriptions. They describe a creature at least the size of a hippopotamus, with a bulbous body, long neck and tail, and small head. It attacks hippos but is an herbivore, and has dark, dull coloration, sometimes with dermal spines (the Cameroonian natives confidently stated that the spines are only on the male, but that females are bigger and have longer necks). The larger, more mature specimens are described as having hard armor, akin to the armor of crocodilians and possessed by several species of sauropods.
To keep the inconsistency charge afloat, the skeptic must resort to a comparatively small number of instances, such as a group of pygmies referring to a picture of a rhinoceros as Mokele-mbembe (included in National Geographic’s special Congo issue from several years back), or a witch doctor describing it as a river spirit that can take any shape or size in Rory Nugent’s “Drums Along the Congo.” There are others besides these, but once again the consistent descriptions far outnumber the inconsistent. What goes all but ignored are the descriptions by those who, again, claim to have seen the animal with their own eyes.
The most prominent inconsistencies seem to come from two sources. First, natives from the wrong parts of the Congo Basin who have heard rumors of the animal but don’t claim to have seen it. Second, from skeptics conflating the long-necked creature with another unknown beast, the rhino-like Emela-ntouka. The latter would assume the animals are overlapping versions of the same myth rather than allow the possibility of not one, but two unknown large animals.
The natives themselves (that is, those who claim to have seen Mokele-mbembe) have no trouble making a distinction between a long-necked creature and one that resembles a rhinoceros. As far as I know, they have always treated these two animals as separate, instead of one mystery animal whose appearance morphs in the spreading of rumors.
“The natives treat this creature as supernatural. They think it’s a boogeyman, a god. Why bother pretending it’s real?”
This objection carries very little argumentative power, for two reasons. First, most natives of the Congo hold animistic beliefs, where everything has spiritual significance and often is imbued with supernatural abilities. Including known animals, from hornbills to hippos. Animism grants everything some kind of spiritual dimension, myth and reality alike.
Second, the various tribes of pygmies have differing attitudes toward Mokele-mbembe. Some of them indeed regard the creature as something with spiritual or godlike powers that set it aside from all other creatures. Others, especially the Baka tribe in Cameroon, just consider it a rare animal which they’d rather not encounter, thanks to its tendency to attack canoes and disturb their fishing. Dangerous, to be certain, but no more a boogeyman than a temperamental rhino or an angry bull elephant.
“The Congo Basin may still hide many secrets, but there have simply been too many expeditions to the area looking for Mokele-mbembe. They would have surely found proof by now if the creature was there.”
I must admit, this is the strongest and most thought-provoking objection I’ve heard. Thus it demands to be seriously considered, and treated with a sober mind.
Whether these expeditions would “surely” have discovered this animal rather depends on the quality and duration of the expeditions. There have indeed been many trips, but a sizeable portion have invested their time primarily in gathering eyewitness testimonies instead of searching for the creature itself, and the vast majority of expeditions have been anything but well-equipped. Even in their searches, almost every expedition has been “looking” for a rare, reclusive animal like a fisherman “looking” for fish without bait. To my knowledge, no one has even tried luring it or searching over a wide area.
Frustrating to be sure, but this isn’t always the fault of the people leading these trips. If your expedition intends to investigate something that initially sounds far-fetched, such as a dinosaur-like animal hiding in the rainforest, good luck obtaining some grant money or well-funded investors. Going to the region usually means you need to pay expenses out-of-pocket. When you have to finance it yourself, the proper equipment that accompanies conservationist/observational expeditions can thin your wallet at an alarming rate. And what equipment you can gather might prove inadequate.
Another important fact is that governments of the target countries — People’s Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Cameroon — are infamous for being corrupt and hardly caring about Western explorers stomping around their jungles. Bureaucracy and infuriating, pointless waiting periods are a burdensome fact of life for anyone involved with those governments (even more so than in America, if that can be believed). Even when expeditions actually make it to the country, it can take weeks to get a visa signed. I recommend once again the books in the bibliography below to see for yourself. When a visa is finally signed, normally it’s very limited in the time allowed. This leaves most expeditions a couple of days or weeks to go poking around the jungle and interviewing natives, hoping to find anything of consequence.
Skeptics tend to point at the lack of solid evidence despite numerous expeditions, and say this doesn’t bode well for Mokele-Mbembe as a real animal. Then they will turn right around and note (correctly) that many of the people searching for it had little to no prior field experience in tracking animals. Additionally, on p. 287 of “Abominable Science,” skeptics Loxton and Prothero rightly note that many of these expeditions to the Congo “do little more than arrive and turn around.” The very next paragraph features them gloating that more expeditions have yielded far less evidence of Mokele-mbembe’s existence, despite their acknowledgement that the trips are not long-term and are seldom as thorough as they could have been.
Do I have to spell it out? If most of these visitors to the Congo were not qualified to look for rare animals in inaccessible environments (especially in so hostile an environment as the Congo), and often manage to accomplish little more than arriving and returning home, should we be surprised that physical proof has not been gathered?
By the way, about that last link above: remember the gorillas I mentioned earlier in this series? It’s hard to overestimate the ecological impact 125,000 gorillas will have on an ecosystem. And yet the Congo is to this day so dense and so unexplored, we had no idea these extra primates existed until 2007. It’s not that biologists aren’t doing their jobs. It’s just that the Congo is still, in ecological terms, a largely blank space on the map.
“The natives are just seeing snakes with their heads lifted out of the water, or swimming elephants with their trunks lifted up like snorkels so they can breathe. This can create the illusion of a large long-necked creature, and the witness’ mind just fills in the details afterward.”
It is true that the human mind can be tricked into remembering details that were not present, and misidentify known creatures for unknown ones. But the charge of misidentification is a weak one, for (as Robert Mullin has pointed out) the natives are quite familiar with the animals around them. They are dependent on local nature to a greater extent than we tend to be in the West. Their very lives depend on quick wits and keen observation, and identifying the animals and plants they share the jungle with. The jungle is their grocery store, their home, their pharmacy; and the river is their highway system.
The natives are quick to take offense if you try telling them they misidentified an animal (it’s one of the fastest ways to insult them), and for good reason: these same hunters and fishermen know very well what a swimming snake or elephant looks like, for they have seen it hundreds of times before, and they state emphatically that they caught sight of something very different.
Once again, I’d also love to know how separate tribes can semi-hallucinate imaginary water beasts with the same morphology, over and over and over again.
Addendum: “But it can’t be a dinosaur!”
I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, and there’s multiple arguments I will bring under this umbrella. Keep in mind, I didn’t go to the trouble of writing these blog posts to argue for extant dinosaurs; only for the likelihood of an unknown species.
But once again, I found the skeptic’s case leaves much to be desired in this line of thought, and that’s putting it charitably.
For the heck of it, I’ll pick these arguments apart as well. This last part will focus on the specific objections against a dinosaurian identity for Mokele-mbembe. I’ll leave other possible candidates aside for this section, such as giant turtles, amphibians, or long-necked monitor lizards.
a. No dinosaur fossils occur after the Cretaceous extinction.
This is based on the shaky reasoning that an animal lineage will inevitably leave a consistent fossil record during its entire existence. Sometimes paleontologists do find a pattern that matches this, but other times they don’t. Remind me again, where are the fossils of coelacanths and wollemi pines that occur in post-dinosaur layers? Correct me if I’m wrong, but last I heard there aren’t any that have been recovered thus far. (They had been presumed to go extinct with the dinosaurs, but were recently discovered alive)
[Update: apparently there are at least 2 possible examples of coelacanth fossils occurring in post-Mesozoic layers of rock, but that is hardly enough to show a nice, consistent presence in the fossil record. Keep in mind, we’re talking about a 65 million year gap. That’s tens of millions of years where the coelacanths go missing, and yet were clearly still alive and breeding.]
A large animal may take longer to decay, which some say makes them more likely to be fossilized, that is still not enough. If it lives in an environment where carcasses decompose rapidly (like, say, a rain forest), why expect any fossil record at all?
And by the way, the fossil record’s seeming dearth of dinosaur fossils post-Cretaceous notwithstanding, dinosaurs were extremely varied. I’m not convinced even a comet impact could take them all out. Exactly how plausible is it to presume that every single sauropod, tyrannosaur, ceratopsian, ankylosaur, hadrosaur, ornithomimosaur, etc. went immediately extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, but creatures far more sensitive to drastic environmental changes (such as amphibians) survived and quickly recovered? Just food for thought.
b. It cannot be a sauropod, because sauropods were not adapted to live in swamps or jungles, or submerge in water. Swamp-dwelling, semi-aquatic sauropods are a completely outdated idea.
It’s true that the sauropod dinosaurs in the known fossil record appear to be ill-adapted for semi-aquatic life, let alone in jungles. Their fossilized trackways and skeletons show their feet would likely sink in such terrain.
But why exactly should we assume that a hypothetical modern descendant of a sauropod is going to be exactly the same in its habits, habitat, and anatomical details as the sauropods from the fossil record? Aren’t there supposed to be 65 million years separating us from them?
I’ll just throw this out there: if it takes “only” eight million years to get from land-dwelling mammals to whales, a sauropod will have no trouble adapting to changing environmental pressures. As long as they are still alive, animals adapt. Why dismiss a modified sauropod when known survivors of the Mesozoic (crocodilians, lizards, snakes, turtles, platypus, etc.) were able to adapt yet retain their overall morphology?
Some more food for thought: if it is an “outdated picture of a sauropod,” it’s quite strange that the natives have been saying for decades that Mokele-mbembe possesses features recently discovered in sauropods, including dermal spines and armor that sounds curiously like osteoderms. (It’s quite telling that Darren Naish’s April Fool’s satire, linked just above, conveniently omits the dermal spines and bony osteoderms, so he can make Mokele-mbembe look more “outdated” than what the natives actually report. Rather disingenuous of him, if you ask me.)
c. Sauropods were too large and needed a tremendous amount of vegetation to nourish themselves.
The most popular sauropods were indeed colossal life forms, some of them approaching a hundred tons in weight and growing over a hundred feet long. Argentinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus, Dreadnoughtus…the mind boggles at the sizes they could reach, and the number of calories required to maintain such a body.
However, the fossil record also includes dwarf sauropods like Europasaurus and Vulcanodon. Some of these dinosaurs reach the reported size of Mokele-mbembe, or even smaller. In fact, insular dwarfism is a well-documented phenomenon in animals when their range and resources are severely limited. Few people know that elephants smaller than cows once inhabited the island of Crete. Normally this happens when big animals are confined to a small island, but I wonder if the same thing can happen if the animal dwells in a dense jungle and has a specialized diet (Mokele-mbembe is reported to feed on several different types of leaves, but primarily eats the foliage and fruit of the Landolphia, or malombo vine).
d. A breeding herd of sauropods would put quite a dent into the vegetation of the Congo Basin. Such creatures needed gigantic amounts of vegetation to feed themselves. Their eating alone would tell us they were there.
It is true that a giant species of sauropod would be detected long before now, because of the damage such animals would do to a forest while grazing. But once again, we have to keep in mind the natives are not describing the titans prominently featured in museums and movies, like 70 foot Apatosaurs or 100 foot Argentinosaurs. They describe creatures with sauropod-like morphology that only get to about 30-35 feet in length. That’s half the length of many famous sauropods. And according to the square-cube law, if you shrank an Apatosaurus to half its size, it would weigh one eighth as much as it did originally. That means it will need far less vegetation to feed itself. We shouldn’t expect a small population of elephant-sized sauropods (or other herbivores) to carve a path of bare-earth devastation through their grazing territories. Certainly not in the quickly-regrowing jungles of the Congo Basin.
Afterword
If the animal does indeed exist outside of human imagination, I hope and pray we find and preserve this species before it goes extinct, especially since the Congo is liable to swallow up every trace of its existence if it dies out.
Either way, perhaps I’m writing these abominably long blog posts in vain. I must account for that very real possibility at all times. Despite my suspicions and the case I’ve tried to carefully build in these posts, Mokele-mbembe might one day turn out to be a legend or a case of mistaken identity after all.
The point I’m attempting to make here is that such a conclusion is currently not based on exhaustive exploration, the efforts of well-equipped search parties, or anything close to an airtight case assembled by those who argue against the creature’s existence. Therefore, much of the skepticism against Mokele-mbembe is based on false conclusions, and on false premises as well. My position is that there still much room on our world for creatures such as these. If they are there, God willing, someone will discover them soon. I hope I’m around to enjoy it, if and when that day comes.
Bibliography
If this topic interests you, I highly encourage you to read and evaluate both sides, and reach your own conclusions. Here’s some resources to help you get started.
In Favor:
“A Living Dinosaur?” by Roy Mackal
“Mokele-Mbembe: Mystery Beast of the Congo Basin” by William Gibbons
“Drums Along the Congo” by Rory Nugent
Mokele Mbembe: Africa’s Last Dinosaur?
Against:
“Abominable Science” by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero
A Dinosaur Expedition Doomed from the Start
A Living Dinosaur in the Congo?
“No Mercy: A Journey into the Heart of the Congo” by Redmond O’Hanlon
Introduction
In the previous installments of this series, I have been arguing for the likelihood of an unclassified animal species living in the Congo.
Skeptics are not buying it, often for understandable reasons. The notion of a large land-dwelling animal still being undiscovered sounds rather larger-than-life to many people, especially with Western civilization enjoying the conveniences of satellite photography, Google Earth, smartphones, and Youtube. And given Mokele-mbembe’s well-known resemblance to a sauropod dinosaur, many people see that as plenty of reason to dismiss the animal as a myth or rumor. Great fodder for a sensationalistic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, perhaps, but not worthy of serious consideration in the halls of zoology.
The problem is, the typical skeptical responses regarding Mokele-mbembe are not nearly as compelling as they are for other “monsters” like Sasquatch or the Abominable Snowman. (That was stated at length beforehand, but it bears mentioning again)
Of course, it doesn’t help when someone spouts off the libelous declaration that anyone who takes Mokele-mbembe seriously is some fundamentalist tool, trying to find a live dinosaur just so they can stick it to Darwin. (Darren Naish once assured me that anyone who thinks the animal is real is either a creationist or a wishful thinker, a claim which I know for a fact to be inaccurate) If one brings up Roy Mackal as a credentialed scientist who took Mokele-mbembe seriously (and he was certainly no creationist), he is waved off as an eccentric with tenure, and his credentials “aren’t the right kind” for him to be an authority.
Strange, considering that this guy who’s making a big deal about credentials and qualification (and continues his nasty habit of committing the genetic fallacy) has declared the following:
“[Y]ou don’t need a Ph.D. to do good science, and not all people who have Ph.D.s are good scientists either. As those of us who have gone through the ordeal know, a Ph.D. only proves that you can survive a grueling test of endurance in doing research and writing a dissertation on a very narrow topic. It doesn’t prove that you are smarter than anyone else or more qualified to render an opinion than anyone else.” ~ Donald Prothero, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters, page 16, emphasis added
I guess credentials and qualifications ultimately don’t matter, until you decide to smear anyone you want to label a pseudoscientist or quirky eccentric who doesn’t merit serious attention.
Of course, this business about credentials amounts to little more than an annoying distraction from the stark, black-and-white question “Is Mokele-mbembe a real animal or not?” That is the real heart of the matter.
So without further ado, let’s address some of the bigger, more understandable objections.
1. “There would have to be a breeding population of these animals to survive, and there would have to be too many for their species to escape notice in the 21st century.”
No one’s proposing Mokele-mbembe is a single animal. So when asking how a big animal species can be reproducing and yet exist in small enough numbers to escape detection, we should probably ask a question: do we have large animals that are critically endangered, that are running out of that oft-mentioned breeding population? The answer seems quite evident when one considers the Giant Panda, Black Rhinoceros, Blue Whale, Mountain Gorilla, Sumatran Tiger, Leatherback Sea Turtle, Orinoco Crocodile, Sumatran Elephant, and numerous others. They have wild populations in serious danger of being wiped out.
Given the (limited) evidence available and its seeming to match the pattern of a rare but real creature, I for one am unwilling to take the chance that Mokele-mbembe is merely a legend after all. The Congo Basin carries many dangers to rare animals in general. These include disease, deforestation, poaching, hunting, the mere fact of human encroachment, and so forth. If this animal does exist I’d rather we discover it before we no longer have a chance to conserve and protect it, thank you. By then we would have lost a unique creature, and much of the blame would lie with Western academics who saw fit to dismiss it as a myth until it was too late.
2. “The natives should be able to provide the remains of this animal, like the animal hides they use for shields or the bird feathers they use in ceremonial dresses. They haven’t shown us anything, so that’s a serious red flag.”
This criticism would be a devastating blow against the idea that Mokele-mbembe is a living animal species, but for one obvious fact: the natives need to successfully hunt a creature before such tangible traces become potentially available. Initially, the sole reason why the scientific community could study physical remains of the okapi was because the natives hunted and killed the animal, from time to time.
The natives in Central Africa that allegedly run into Mokele-mbembe describe its size and ferocity as comparable to (or greater than) those of a hippopotamus, which possesses an infamous temper. If it exists, this rare animal carries too much risk and hassle for even the more adventurous hunters to treat it as quarry. In addition to its short temper, they claim the animal is a large pest that disturbs their fishing activities when it grazes on foliage, and it can capsize canoes when surfacing from the river. Depending on where you go, the natives either think it’s a dangerous god-monster that must not be trifled with, or simply a large and problematic animal they’d rather live without.
[Note: In actuality, there have been a few anecdotes of giant reptilian creatures killed in the Congo, with horns or hides or bones being harvested and kept “somewhere,” but without the physical remains themselves to back these rumors up, I will not use these stories to argue my case.]
3. “Satellites should have photographed Mokele-mbembe long ago. They can photograph elephants on the African savannah, so there’s nowhere this animal could hide.”
Even the supportive skeptics in the comments here realize this argument is hardly airtight. Everyone’s aware that rain forests have a thick canopy, right? Savannahs don’t. Observing animals from above is considerably easier when there’s nothing in the way. Just like in any rain forest, the Congo Basin has plenty in the way.
(to be continued in “Answering Criticisms, section B”)
“You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he came to be so silly….you can only find out the rights and wrongs by reasoning – never by being rude about your opponent’s psychology.” C.S. Lewis, “Bulverism,” God in the Dock (emphasis in original)
In my last post I explained I’m generally no longer inclined to stand up and argue for the existence of Bigfoot, Chupacabra, or the Mongolian Death Worm. But if someone uses faulty argumentation against their existence, it’s still enough to make me cringe. Especially if they have a PhD and wrote an entire book that seems dedicated to this faulty reasoning, and published it under an academic press.
A very exhaustively cited book on cryptozoology, Abominable Science is coauthored by Daniel Loxton (who seems like a very nice, fair-minded guy, and a very talented artist as well) and Donald Prothero, PhD (a paleontologist and professor at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, CA).
It’s not so much the book I am commenting on here (though that may happen after I’ve read the whole thing…honestly, I’m a slow reader, so I don’t know when that’s going to happen). But given the Amazon description, its subtitle (Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids), and what I had read of Prothero beforehand, I got suspicious that he’d already decided his conclusion before gathering research. Hence the quote about bulverism above.
Long story short: I expressed my suspicions on Twitter a while back, and it seems Prothero was informed. And judging by a comment on one of his blog posts, he wasn’t very happy about the suspicion. Normally I wouldn’t respond to something like this, certainly not at length. But each sentence was either false or so poorly argued, I elected to craft a response anyway.
Even if a skeptic is right on a particular subject, broken logic will never give him or her a solid basis on which to stand. In this case, it’s about time someone called him out for it. As a scientist, Prothero has a responsibility to use solid argumentation and make his case like a professional.
Okay, so here’s the comment. In its entirety.
“Clearly, this person hasn’t read the book, nor does he understand what we said. The genetic fallacy is only a fallacy if the origins story in question has no relevance to the truth or falsity of the argument being made. But the long story lines that Daniel teased out about the history of each of these cryptids–especially how their descriptions are inconsistent, how they are strongly influenced by cultural factors such as current movies, how they are full of hoaxes and bad data that the cryptozoologists NEVER expunge, and how they compile “lists of sightings” which are houses of cards, with nearly every one of them useless or questionable–is VERY relevant to the credibility of each cryptid.
“Even if we had not compiled the historical record of each cryptid, the rest of the book demolishes the possibility of their existence by a whole range of biological, geological and paleontological constraints that this critic clearly never read about. As usual, he’s doing the usual creationist tactic to avoid the confrontation of hard data against his beliefs: dismiss it with an irrelevant or false argument and then ignore it.”
Oh dear, where to begin?
First of all, I already admitted to not reading the book at the time. Check Twitter to see for yourself. I expressed concern that it was going to be a book with weak argumentation. I have a copy from the library at the moment. While some of its arguments are stronger than I worried, elsewhere those fears are being realized in spades.
Things don’t get any better when he gives the definition of “genetic fallacy” as the necessary condition under which it happens. That’s what the genetic fallacy teaches us: an idea’s origin doesn’t have any bearing on that idea’s truth or falsehood. Prothero is basically saying “a frog is only a frog if it’s a tailless amphibian of the order Anura.”
Duh. That’s what it means.
The next sentence makes a fair point, but Prothero doesn’t justify his position. He’s right that the case for most mystery animals appears lacking. I’ve stated at length that I don’t expect Bigfoot or Nessie or Yeti to be real, even if I want them to be real. (Mokele-mbembe, on the other hand…might be a different story)
Given the absence of a foundation of hard evidence, I’m inclined to agree with his overall conclusion. However, he then overestimates what the evidence gathered thus far actually tells us; then he dives to the bottom of the barrel, trying to make the proposal of unknown large animal species look like ridiculous, even dangerous pseudoscience. To do this, he scoops out cryptozoology’s familiar and well-established legacy of hoaxes, some genuinely preposterous ideas (Bigfoot being able to move to other dimensions, for instance), and the fact that humans can be made vulnerable to deception. To which Prothero himself, of course, is blessedly immune. The starting assumption in the book and his worldview appears to be that these sightings are most emphatically not caused by unclassified species of animals (even though that sounds like a perfectly modest and reasonable possibility, at least for some cryptids), therefore the explanation must lie in psychology and old-fashioned gullibility, and this is sufficient to explain pretty much the entirety of cryptozoology.
In other words: “It’s never credible and none of these animals exist, because look at all the weirdos and liars who go looking for monsters. Ta-da! No unclassified animal species needed. All you need are hoaxers, the credulous, and fundamentalists on a crusade to destroy science, and there you have it.”
Welcome back to the genetic fallacy, Professor. You have provided a textbook example of it, in more ways than one.
Oh, but you see, it’s totally okay that he does this, because SCIENCE! tells us that these creatures can’t possibly exist anyway. “The rest of the book demolishes the possibility of their existence…”
Oh? Says who? Is it scientifically impossible that there is an ape of unknown classification in the Himalayas? Is it impossible that a large something-or-other is lurking in the cloudy waters of Loch Ness?
Of course not! It’s unlikely, but no possibility is demolished. Why take the position that it’s impossible?
Then he throws out a red herring that implies anyone who says he commits the genetic fallacy is on the wrong side of the origins fence. As if no one who accepts evolution could possibly see anything wrong with his logic, or as if this has anything to do with the veracity of his claims.
Basically, he got caught committing the genetic fallacy. But rather than owning up to it or beefing up his arguments or retracting them, he opted to flaunt his dubious line of reasoning in everyone’s face, and yell that he’s totally justified in doing so. This is such an insult to logic that Mister Spock would do a “Live Long and Prosper” facepalm.
Skeptics, you’ll do yourselves and others a huge favor if you can please get your act together.
UPDATE, APRIL 29, 2015: Regarding Prothero’s stance that the fossil record doesn’t hold animals that can be properly called “cryptids,” I’d like to point out yet another unexpected discovery reported today: a pigeon-sized dinosaur in China, with elongated arms and fingers, and membranes underneath that strongly resemble the wings of a bat.
That’s right. If this fossil is genuine, they basically discovered a small dragon. You’re welcome.
I’ve made the decision to begin a new series on my blog. My fantasy series-in-progress, The Wolfglen Legacy, is going to take place in a detailed world I have been building for the last several years. And I think this would be an excellent place to start introducing my readers to bits and pieces of that world (if you’re interested, of course), even though it’s going to be a while before the books themselves are ready.
What I like about this idea is its versatility. This is a chance to give you anything from cuisine to animals to weapons to a nation’s history, revealing it in detail. Magic systems, politics, natural history, whatever. My plan is to try and give one entry per week.
And with that, I will start with an entry I posted on deviantart.com.
The Tyrant Dragon
The largest known species of dragon that is capable of flight. Like roughly half of all dragons, it is able to breathe fire by using hydrogen gas from its flight lungs.* Easily recognizable by a green body with stripes of black or dark brown, and the presence of four wings rather than two, that extra pair endowed to them by the Founders when this dragon species was created. The wings are colored red with splashes of green on the fringes. Females have a darker red on the membranes, almost like wine or dried blood.
This dragon is rare, but almost universally respected, hated, or feared, depending on whom you ask. Tyrants tend to be much more violent than other dragon species, territorial in the extreme. The mating season occurs in the springtime once every three years. During this period, three or four males congregate in an open space like a prairie or grassland, and collect a small heap of prey animals to display for a local female. The male with the most notable quarry (and the most impressive display of his spread-out wings) wins, and the losers will have to find other females over which to compete. After eating the male’s victims, the female will stay with him for protection and the extra food he can provide. When a month has gone by, the female lays three to five blue eggs in a warm and secluded spot, each one about the size of a human head. The eggs are then abandoned by the parents until they hatch in late summer, and the young creatures will begin hunting mere hours after hatching.
Aside from its great size and extra set of wings, the species is also renowned for what is known as Tyrant’s Madness, a period of heightened aggression when the creature’s wings have been severely injured. Through some unknown mechanism or instinct, the tyrant knows if and when any of its wings have been so extensively injured that they will never heal enough to let the reptile fly again. Once this boundary has been crossed, the animal lands (if it was already airborne) and reaches around with its lengthy neck to bite its own wings off, one at a time. It then becomes a multi-ton berserker, breathing flame and attacking anything within reach until it is almost exhausted. The animal then spends the remainder of its life roaming on the ground, subsisting on whatever it is fast enough to catch.
Few militaries have been sufficiently stupid, crazy, or desperate to use a tyrant dragon in their campaigns (assuming they can capture and tame a juvenile), but the ones who succeed force the enemy’s tactics to change. When flying dragons are part of a battle, usually the opposing force will try to bring the animals down or destroy their wings any way they can: fire bombs, broad-head arrows and crossbow bolts, nets launched from catapults, etc. But thanks to the threat of Tyrant’s Madness, any military force going against this dragon will most likely try instead to kill the animal or exhaust it, rather than risk injury to the wings and having the creature become a far deadlier force on the ground, where more of their own soldiers would be targets for the tyrant’s rage.
* Flight lungs are actually a set of bladders carrying bacteria which produce hydrogen and other lighter-than-air gases to help make the dragon’s body lighter and easier to carry in flight. However, in the fire-breathing species, the gas mixture can be quickly exhausted for producing flame, and the now-heavier animal will find it more difficult, even impossible to fly a distance, until the gas has been replenished.
John K. Patterson 