The Wakayama Soryu was about the size of a great white shark and lived more than 72 million years ago during the age of Tyrannosaurus rex and other late-Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Illustration/Takumi
Today's scientific refutation of the childish creationists superstition that even some otherwise normal adults still believe in, comes from a paper published in Journal of Systematic Palaeontology by Associate Professor Takuya Konishi of Cincinnati University and an international team of co-authors.
It describes a giant mosasaur the size of a great white shark that hunted in the Pacific seas, 72 million years before creationist dogma says Earth was created. And this is no ordinary mosasaur but displays a number of features that show how a similar environment and lifestyle can lead to parallel evolution, just as the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection predicts.
These mosasaurs have a dorsal fin, just like the only very distantly-related bony fish, sharks (cartilaginous fish), and whales and dolphins. This gives them greater control and mobility in water.
This species of mosasaur was named after the place where it was found (Wakayama Prefecture, Japan) and a mythical creature from Japanese folklore, Soryu (blue dragon).
According to the press release from Cincinnati University:
The specimen was discovered along the Aridagawa River in Wakayama by co-author Akihiro Misaki in 2006. Misaki was looking for fossils of invertebrates called ammonites when he found an intriguing dark fossil in the sandstone, Konishi said.So, there we have yet another refutation of creationism by science and so something of which creationists will need to remain willfully ignorant for fear of wondering if their childish superstition might just be wrong.
Misaki continued looking for ammonites before curiosity got the better of him and he returned to the dark bone. Closer examination revealed it was a vertebra, part of a nearly complete mosasaur captured in the hard sandstone.
The specimen is the most complete skeleton of a mosasaur ever found in Japan or the northwestern Pacific, Konishi said.
“In this case, it was nearly the entire specimen, which was astounding,” Konishi said.
He has dedicated his career to studying these ancient marine reptiles. But the Japanese specimen has unique features that defies simple classification, he said. Its rear flippers are longer than its front ones. These enormous flippers are even longer than its crocodile-like head, which is unique among mosasaurs.
“I thought I knew them quite well by now,” Konishi said. “Immediately it was something I had never seen before.”
Mosasaurs were apex predators in prehistoric oceans from about 100 million years ago to 66 million years ago. They were contemporaries of Tyrannosaurus rex and other late Cretaceous dinosaurs that ruled the Earth. Mosasaurs were victims of the same mass extinction that killed off nearly all dinosaurs when an asteroid struck what is now the Gulf of Mexico.
The Wakayama Soryu has some features similar to mosasaurs found in New Zealand and other features comparable to mosasaurs found in California, he said.
It had nearly binocular vision that would have made it a lethal hunter, he said.
Researchers placed the specimen in the subfamily Mosasaurinae and named it Megapterygius wakayamaensis to recognize where it was found. Megapterygius means “large winged” in keeping with the mosasaur’s enormous flippers.It’s a question just how all five of these hydrodynamic surfaces were used. Which were for steering? Which for propulsion? It opens a whole can of worms that challenges our understanding of how mosasaurs swim.
We lack any modern analog that has this kind of body morphology — from fish to penguins to sea turtles. None has four large flippers they use in conjunction with a tail fin.
Associate Professor Takuya Konishi, Lead author
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A.;
Konishi said those big paddle-shaped flippers might have been used for locomotion. But that type of swimming would be extraordinary not only among mosasaurs but among virtually all other animals.
Another prehistoric marine reptile called the plesiosaur used its paddle fins for propulsion, but it didn’t have a long rudderlike tail, he said.
Researchers speculated that the large front fins might have helped with rapid maneuvering while its large rear fins might have provided pitch to dive or surface. And presumably like other mosasaurs, its tail would have generated powerful and fast acceleration as it hunted fish.Unique to mosasaurs, the Wakayama Soryu apparently had a dorsal fin, based on the orientation of the neural spines along its vertebrae. The orientation of these spines is remarkably similar to that of a harbor porpoise, which also has a prominent dorsal fin, the study found.
A mosasaur discovered in Japan was the most complete skeleton ever found in Japan or the northwestern Pacific.Graphic/Takuya Konishi
But as with everything else that lived in that vast expanse of time before 'Creation Week', the evidence of this mosasaur will probably be waved aside with traditional evidence-free dogma such as, the scientists are lying; the scientists got the dating wrong, the evidence is forged, etc., etc. Anything, no matter how ridiculous, to avoid coping with the evidence that their superstition is wrong and the authors of their favourite 'science textbook' didn't know what they were talking and never in a million years expected their mythology to be treated as inerrant truth written by a creator god.
What kind of being would create fearsome dangerous monsters such as Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, Liopleurodon, Megalodon, Sharks, giant octopus, giant squid, box jellyfish, Barracuda and the list goes on and on. Whoever or whatever created this world is fond of violence, killing, death, pain, torture. It's a cruel, bloodthirsty, violent being. And what kind of beings created repulsive things such as excrement, mold, mildew, grime, scum, screw worm flies, tapeworms, guinea worms, elephantiasis, harlequin ichthyosis? It's a vile, gross, disgusting sick minded demented idiot who created these things and not a God of love and mercy.
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