Re: [dinosaur] Non-avian dinosaurs all extinct

["Yazbeck, Thomas" <yazbeckt@msu.edu>]

Just wanted to jump in and add to the thread a bit. The whole mokele-mbembe myth stems from a misunderstanding and outdated science. The animal is said to be semi-aquatic, like typical early/mid-20th century depictions of sauropods, and totally unlike any sauropod that we know from the fossil record. They're all terrestrial and show no trend towards amphibious adaptations. If a sauropod did live today, we would expect it to be terrestrial like every known real sauropod. 

A lot of the 'expeditions' in search of the animal are by creationists trying to prove dinosaurs are extant. There's evidence that the animal is just a myth/misinterpretation by native peoples, perhaps exacerbated by the credulity of European explorers. It's plausible that the mokele-mbembe is a fuzzy folk memory of locally extinct rhinoceros. Different traits of the animal in different accounts also point towards myth or hoax.

Arguably, most cryptozoology is just creationism or some kind of chauvinism in disguise, more interesting for what it reveals about human society and psychology than anything about animal life.

Thomas Yazbeck

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From: dinosaur-l-request@mymaillists.usc.edu <dinosaur-l-request@mymaillists.usc.edu> on behalf of Mike Taylor <sauropoda@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 9:58 AM
To: Bruce Shillinglaw <shillinglawbruce@gmail.com>
Cc: DML <dinosaur-l@usc.edu>
Subject: Re: [dinosaur] Non-avian dinosaurs all extinct

 

"Absence of evidence doesn't indicate evidence of absence"

Bit of a pet hate here, but absence of evidence absolutely DOES indicate evidence of absence. It doesn't PROVE absence, but it shifts the probability. Suppose I have a bag containing 100 billiard balls and I ask you whether any of them are yellow. Each time you draw out one of the balls and it's not yellow, your confidence that there are no yellow balls increases.

And in the same way, each African expedition that doesn't turn up a Mokele-Mbembe increases confidence that there is no Mokele-Mbembe in Africa.

-- Mike.

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 14:55, Bruce Shillinglaw <shillinglawbruce@gmail.com> wrote:

I suppose that this is the point where, like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, "Absence of evidence doesn't indicate evidence of absence." meets "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

~B.

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:31 AM Thomas Richard Holtz <tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:

The form of the argument is incorrect.

It isn't that there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever that sauropods and ceratopsids COULD be present. In principle there is nothing to prevent them.

But that isn't how we determine if something exists or not. To do that, we have to actually have EVIDENCE that it does. And we are utterly lacking in reasonable evidence for extant ceratopsids and sauropods, or indeed such animals anytime in the last 66 million years.

So the time to accept they do exist is when the proponents of the idea put forth some serious evidence, not before.

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 1:40 AM Poekilopleuron <dinosaurtom2015@seznam.cz> wrote:

Good day!

Recently I saw a discussion about the possibilities of non-avian dinosaurs still living in certain parts of the world (so called cryptids, like mysterious Mokele-mbembe). Of course this is a nonsense, but some people are very adamant in this case. So I would like to ask, what would be your most important arguments for the fact, that there can actually be NO recent sauropods and ceratopsids in Central Africa, etc.? Thank you very much, in advance! Tom

--

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu         Phone: 301-405-4084
Principal Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology

Office: Geology 4106, 8000 Regents Dr., College Park MD 20742

Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
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