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justarandomsapphic · 1 year

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My Story of Being in a Cult

(TW for religious trauma and emotional abuse, also I need to preface this by saying that my parents did not encourage the church’s abuse- they did what they could and now my whole family is out of it. My parents are wonderful, loving people and they have supported me through recovery)

When I was little, I was always asking questions. I always wanted to know why things worked certain ways, why this did that, why are some things slimy and others rough, “Why does that bird on the road look so limp and squishy?” I’d wonder as my parents would rush to pull me away from the dead bird before I could poke it. I’m not just saying that as a funny joke to start this essay, that happened many times with many dead animals. There’s a picture of me when I was little, holding a fish head with the most overjoyed face. Besides dead things, I also loved learning about live organisms. I’d watch all sorts of nature documentaries. There was this one about the colossal squid. “Aren’t giant squids and colossal squids the same thing?” My friends would ask, confused. “No!” I’d exclaim, “Colossal squid have hooks on their tentacles, giant squid have razor sharp teeth on theirs. Plus, colossal squid are a lot heavier and bigger.” Then I’d proceed to rant about the wonders of the colossal squid and how fascinating it was to me whilst sitting on the grass on the school field in the sweltering heat. Yeah, I was that kid. Don’t even get me started on my cryptid phase. That was an obsession that holds on to this day, like those wristbands they make you wear at the boardwalk. I also loved dinosaurs and other odd prehistoric creatures, like Titanoboa, the largest snake in existence. I could probably write a whole essay on those guys. It’s clear to see that even when I was very small, researching and discovering new things was a big part of my life and culture. However, my life is a puzzle, and it isn’t a simple 500 piece one. The thousands of other hidden bits are about to come into the picture.

To start, my fascination with all things science was limited. It was only of the things that I was permitted to know. You see, I was kinda in a cult. Now, I’m sure many of your minds went straight to Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate. Don’t worry, we didn’t move to South America or talk about UFOs coming to save us from this mortal realm. I think when people think of cults, they think of the worst of the worst, the most extreme cases. Believe me when I tell you, most of the cults that exist in the world would appear normal to an outsider. Even the worst ones seemed innocent at first to the world. I still hesitate to call my old elementary school/church (it was a school on the weekdays and a church on Sundays) a cult. However, after running it through the B.I.T.E. model, I couldn’t ignore that my past community was at the very least, a bit culty. The B.I.T.E. model is designed to determine whether or not something is a cult. B is for behavior control, I is for information control, T is for thought control, and E is for emotion control. My school passed this test with flying colours. I remember how my curiosity somewhat halted in elementary school. I found many things fascinating and I’d investigate them, but my school had poisoned my mind with negative thoughts about evolution and other aspects of science. “It’s just not Christian,” they’d say. “Why would anyone even think that we came from apes!” Being a young, impressionable child, I agreed. I wouldn’t want to be on the bad side of God, right? If I’d even think for a second that God might not exist, I’d feel incredible shame. My parents always encouraged my curious nature, and would listen to my rants about science. My school wasn’t as welcoming though. I remember our science books had Bible verses on every well worn out page. Curiosity and asking questions was looked down upon. Which, as you’ve no doubt discovered, is something I love to do. I thrive on it. The constant emotional pain that questions would cause me just wasn’t worth it though. So, like a plant with no water or sun, I withered.

I remember hearing at Monday chapel (every Monday we’d gather in the church and have the principal do a sermon) one of my teachers talking about teens who stray from God. They said it would start with just wondering if God was real, but it would slowly turn into full on disbelief. As we rose out of the chairs to go back to our classrooms, my little brain was spiraling out of control. What if I turned into one of those kids? What would happen to me if I did? I would think about all that quite a bit. However, my mind would also wander to my friends outside the community. They were wonderful people. I remembered a teacher telling me that “You can’t be friends with someone who’s not Christian. You just will never be able to get along.” When I protested, and brought up friends of mine who didn’t believe in God, she said, “Well, you could try to convert them. Otherwise they’re gonna go to hell, and you don’t want them to go to hell, right?” I was in third grade and I already had the burden of saving people’s souls weighing me down, pushing me into place so I could be more obedient to the church’s rules. Teachers gaslit me, asking if that really happened, you’re just overreacting, stop being so sensitive. I would be shamed for moving around too much, so I stopped. By 4th grade I was at rock bottom, a manipulated shell doing what the church wanted of me. My parents tried to take me to a different school, but each time I’d cry and beg them not to. This community was all I’d known. In my mind, staying was safer. However, this was a K-5th school, after 5th grade, I’d go to a different school. Most of my friends were going to a very strict private school in my area. My parents did not want to take me there, and decided that public school would be a better choice. I was okay with that. I knew a girl who would be at this middle school, so I wouldn’t be alone. My classmates, on the other hand, were horrified. The sheer thought of going to ‘one of those schools’ seemed abhorrent to them. I remember a girl asking me if I was going so I could spread God’s word. “I’ve heard that they put you in detention for praying!” Another classmate whispered to me. Obviously, my new school was nothing like those rumours. I absolutely loved it there. However, I was not aware that what happened at my elementary school was not normal, and I would discover that the hard way.

I’ll start with the smaller things. I remember sitting at our table underneath a huge tree, asking my friends what their favourite thing on the playground was when they were little. “Oh I usually just read,” one of my friends stated. “Oh nice, at my school we weren’t allowed to read during recess,” I brought up, casually. Immediately heads turned towards me and a chorus of “WHAT” echoed throughout our group. I was confused, why was that weird? These differences got bigger and bigger as time went on. I think the most significant one was when our teacher talked about national coming out day. It was in my Leadership class and my teacher was talking about the discrimination LGBTQ+ people face on a daily basis. I was appalled. At my old school, gay was a bad word and now our teacher was talking about this stuff so openly. One thing he said however, started to erode my homophobia. “If someone could control being gay, why would they? If you could choose, you wouldn’t be something that puts you at such a risk of being discriminated against or even killed.” After that I started to do some self evaluation, and I eventually started to support the LGBTQ+ community. Little did I know that in 8th grade, I would realise that I was gay. As you can see, middle school was full of unlearning behavior that had been drilled into me from a young age. However, this was just the beginning.

7th and 8th grade were when realisations started to kick in. I started to understand how horrible my childhood was. I had repressed it because as a little kid, you don’t know how to process mental abuse, you just take it and push it in the back of your mind. You mature faster, you repress the behaviors your abusers don’t like, and you learn that pleasing people is the only way to get out of conflict. In the end, you do anything but acknowledge the pain. This epiphany had me finally letting myself question religion, and soon, I stopped believing in God. Before then, I had always felt ashamed for doubting Christianity, afraid that I was upsetting God. Every time I’d feel this churning nervousness in my stomach, this pain in my chest, as if my body was doing everything I could to save myself from damnation. So, I’d push the questions in my head away. But after actually looking at what my mind was telling me instead of pushing it to the back of my head like a sweater that you keep on trying to stuff into your drawer, I started to wonder what I was so scared of. Believing in humanity rather than a God was so freeing. After leaving Christianity, I started to get back into science. That year, we had our evolution unit and I loved every moment of it. The little kid who ranted about colossal squids crawled out of the corner of my mind that I had pushed her back into for so long. Even heavy shame could not make my curious mind disappear. I felt like I had finally made it through the worst parts, and I was moving on.

However, there are lingering effects, such as self blame for what happened. So I try to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault, it was the adults who should have known better that were at fault. They took away a huge chunk of my childhood that I can’t really get back. I don’t do carefree things, I don’t do stuff on impulse. I wish I did. I really wish I did. It may sound nice to have a more mature state of mind when it comes to certain things, but I’m supposed to be a normal teenager. I’m supposed to make dumb mistakes. I want that so much. However, it’s not all gone, a part of my younger self still lives in me. She’s the one that flinches if you raise your voice, that immediately will try to please you to calm down, the one that freezes up. But she’s also the one that giggles, the one that asks a million questions at once, the one that hugs you so tight you can barely breathe. She’s still here, holding the good and bad things, so holding harsh feelings towards myself for not doing anything only hurts me more, and honestly, I think I’ve been through enough. So, I’ve worked on eroding the self hate, and shifting my perspective on life. Even though these realisations were painful, things have been so much better now. I think the best way to describe it would be to quote Dawn Smith, a cult survivor when she had said: “But I can tell you that even the hardest day of freedom was better than the best day in a cult.” They made me feel like I could be nothing without them. But now I know that’s not true. I hope there is a day where I do something big, something important, and my old community can see how far I’ve come without them.

#religious trauma #ex christian #lesbian #lgbtq #my writing #trauma

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sirtravisjacksonoftexas · 3 years

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What if Dragons Were Real: Part Two

Recently, I wrote an article titled “What if Dragons Were Real?”. In it, I tried to show not only how dragons (specifically both the limbless and flying, fire breathing varieties) could have arisen naturally, but also how their existence would impact human history. Although I covered many topics and several kinds of dragon, I did not make room to discuss both the Asian dragon, and our own flesh and blood Komodo Dragon, preferring to mention them in a later article.

Now, that article has come.

Let us further indulge in speculation and alternate history, as well as modern zoology, as we continue to answer the question: what if dragons were real?

1. DRAGONS OF THE FAR EAST

Before we can speculate on how Asian dragons could have arisen, we need to better understand what Asian dragons are.

One of the best ways to do so is to contrast them with the more familiar dragons of the West.

Dragons in both Europe and Christian Russia were viewed as formidable critters. They were potent dangers to both livelihoods and lives. Sometimes they were depicted as being pacified with young maidens, the villagers rather having one of their own eaten rather than the entire village being both incinerated and eaten. These dragons were arch rivals of both knights and saints, creatures who turned their slayers into timeless heroes. Indeed, they were sometimes used symbolically to refer to the Devil.

In the Orient, however, dragons were not simply giant, flying monsters. Despite also being formidable when roused, dragons were seen as good, not evil.

Indeed…some were worshipped as gods.

It isn’t hard to see why; Asian dragons were not only very wise, they were capable of impressive magical feats, such as shape shifting and invisibility. They could, depending on the type of dragon, control weather, streams, or serve as protectors of the god’s homes. Daoism taught that dragons were good spirits, though their image was warped a little with influence from Hindu mythology. Chinese dragons, the most famous of Asian dragons, came in a variety of species. However, all Chinese dragons, no matter the species, were thought to undergo the same growth stages:

1. Female dragon lays a richly colored egg.

2. 1000 years later: baby hatches, looks like a snake.

3. 500 years later: head slowly becomes like that of a fish.

4. 1000 years later: Dragon grows long tail, beard, fish scales, four limbs, claws, ears, and a long face.

4. 500 years later: dragon grows horns

5. Yet another 1000 years later: wings.

And you thought puberty was hard.

Its odd for most westerners to think of Chinese dragons as having wings, due to being more familiar with the adolescent, wingless form. Yet Chinese dragons were indeed thought to eventually attain wings, though they could fly without them, thanks to either magic pearls or a swelling on their foreheads, which is sometimes labeled “bladder-like”.

Repeat: bladder-like.

Now, if you had read my previous article, you’ll recall that I mentioned how in the documentary “Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real”, hydrogen bladders were invoked as a possible explanation for how dragons could fly, despite not having wings big enough for their enormous bodies. It is an amazing idea, and yet…the ancient Chinese had come up with a quite similar one ages ago. We only need hydrogen and we’re all set. Course, to be fair, a single hydrogen bladder, unless it was of truly ginormous size (perhaps much larger than the rest of the dragon), would not enable a wingless dragon to even float, let alone fly. Nevertheless, people were coming up with a similar answer to dragon flight long before dragon documentaries were made.

Japanese dragons are quite similar to Chinese dragons, with some also considered divine. However, some could be pure monsters who were nevertheless formidable enough to challenge a god. Yamato-no-Orochi, the 8-headed Dragon of Koshi, was one such dragon, a being so formidable that Susa-no-wo (aka Susano-Wo), the Japanese Storm god, resorted to use trickery instead of brute force in order to kill it.

Others could even be slain by mortals, yet still had intelligence and formidable capabilities. Indeed, Japanese dragons were a bit more snake-like than those of China, and one, the winged hai riyo, had feathers.

The differences among Asian dragons are at times startling, yet collectively they have many things in common, such as vast god-like powers, wingless flight, for the most part a good temperament, and generally having a very serpentine shape. Taken together, we can see just how different Asian or Oriental dragons are compared to those of Europe. Indeed, some have gone to far as to state that Chinese dragons in particular should not even be called dragons at all.

And yet…Asian dragons have more in common with European dragons than you might think.

1. Serpentine shape? Both most Asian dragons, and some European dragons (especially the worm variety) have serpentine aspects. Indeed, the European Worm dragon is basically a giant snake with bad breath.

2. Treasure? While stories of dragons hoarding buried treasure are well noted in Greek myth, Norse mythology and Beowulf, the ancient Chinese believed in the fu-ts’ ang lung, a type of dragon that kept great treasures in the Earth. Also, male Chinese dragons were known to each keep a pearl.

3. Gods? Remember all those stories about maidens being offered to dragons in western folklore, such as in the story of St. George and the Dragon? Notice the word again; offering. Sounds a lot like people are making human sacrifices…to gods. Indeed, Veles, a Slavic god, was said to be able to appear in the form of a dragon.

Nevertheless, their differences are so great that we need to go down a different route than we did in my previous article on dragons. Its one thing to figure out how wyverns and worms came about.

Its another to figure out how Asian dragons could have arisen.

How would they have evolved?

Could they have evolved?

And what would real Asian dragons look like?

Read on…

2. HERE BE FOSSILS

In a previous article on the Serpent of Eden, I mentioned a prehistoric snake named Najash rionegrina. If you went back in time, say 95 million years ago, and went on a nature hike, chances are you might run into this ancient serpent. At first, you might think that it was a typical run of the mill snake.

That is, until you spotted its legs.

Unlike any snake today, Najash rionegrina had legs and even hips! It was not unique; there were several prehistoric snakes that sported legs as well. Over time, however, these legs and hips vanished, courtesy of evolution. Nevertheless, the question has to be asked; why did they have legs in the first place?

Answer: because snakes evolved from lizards.

Over time, the ancestors of snakes lost their forelimbs, their bodies changing from generation to generation until…the first snake hatched.

But what if the ancestors of snakes took two avenues?

What if some continued to evolve a serpentine shape…yet retained their forelimbs?

Perhaps such a creature could have evolved into an Asian dragon.

We could also invoke another species of group of lizards that evolve serpentine shapes separately from those that evolved into snakes, courtesy of convergent evolution. Perhaps these could have retained their limbs, and thus given rise to Asian dragons.

However…there is a problem.

Hair.

Repeat: HAIR!

Asian dragons have hair!

They MUSTACHES and BEARDS, for crying out loud!

Surely, reptiles could never evolve into Asian dragons, because…once again…HAIR!

And no reptile has hair…right?

Wrong!

Geckos have super tiny toe hairs, which they use to stick to hard surfaces. Without these tiny hairs, they’d have no ability to climb or hang from horizontal surfaces. If Geckos could evolve hairs, why couldn’t dragons?

We could also postulate that dragons evolved from Stem-mammals, aka protomammals, aka mammal-like reptiles, aka paramammals, aka synapsids (didn’t think to add that last one in the previous dragon article when I first posted it on Tumblr. Its on there now), creatures that had both reptilian and mammalian traits.

Such creatures are not only thought by scientists to be the ancestors of mammals, but one of them, Thrinaxodon, seems to have had whiskers. Perhaps we could imagine a protomammal (that name sounds the coolest so I’m going with it) Asian dragon, perhaps even one that survived to the modern era, a living fossil.

However, its one thing to postulate an ancestor, another to postulate that such animals could evolve into bonafide Asian dragons.

But would they have been able to?

In my previous article on dragons, I noted that fire breathing dragons could have achieved flight by having both wings and hydrogen bladders. The former would most likely evolve by means of having their arms or forelimbs turn over many generations into wings, the same process that gave both birds and bats their wings. Its not totally impossible that a mutation could arise that would allow for the existence of a regular 6-limbed dragon, but a 4 limbed wyvern variety would be more biologically sound. Thus, if Asian dragons were real, and had wings…then they would have had to have evolved them from forelimbs or arms ages ago. If they had the growth stages noted in Chinese folklore (more on them later), then we would have to postulate that the arms of any individual dragon would have to turn into wings as they aged (more on this later too), but let’s focus for now on a hypothetical species of, for all intents and purposes, wyvern Asian dragon. Such a creature could only fly if it had both wings and hydrogen bladders. Course, we could also imagine an Asian dragon that glided like a modern “flying dragon” lizard (as depicted in “Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real”), or an Asian dragon that makes its lower body concave and glides like a modern flying snake, or even perhaps one that uses a combination of skin flaps, body alteration and hydrogen bladders. However, for true flight, we would have to surmise a wing and hydrogen bladder combo in order for an Asian dragon to take flight (keep in mind, Chinese dragons attain wings only in their adult form).

However, there is one potential problem.

What would happen if such a dragon tried to fly…with its wings being located at the far front of its body, instead of closer to its middle?

Keep in mind, the length from its wings to the tip of its tail is FAR greater than the length from its wings to the tip of its snout. Indeed, not only is it far greater than the wing to tail length that is usually seen in depictions of European dragons, but their legs are also further back on their bodies than those of European dragons as well. Flying European dragons also have less serpentine, less wiggly midsections.

I’m no expert in aerodynamics, but it seems to be that such excess length and weight behind the wings, along with a less stable, more wiggly midsection, could potentially cause issues with flight. Having hydrogen bladders almost throughout the length of the animal could help like it would with a European dragon, but…it would be far better if the animal simply had two pairs of wings instead of one, with a second pair on its lower body.

But of course, that’s just silly. After all, there has never been a four-winged vertebrate, right?

Wrong!

Microraptor, a tiny dinosaur that lived in the early cretaceous, was highly bird like, sporting both feathers and wings. Indeed, if they had survived to the modern era, you might mistake them at first glance for a bird (I know, I know, scientists now distinguish between avian dinosaurs (i.e. birds) from non-avian dinosaurs (regular dinosaurs), but I’m old fashioned; I’m calling the former birds). Though not a true flier, Microraptor was a natural glider. Compared to most dinosaurs, it was highly unusual.

Even more so when you count its wings.

Um, all four of them.

Its hind legs actually evolved into a second pair of wings. Microraptor could still use its wings to climb trees and the like, but they were also used for gliding.

Oh, and by the way: Microraptor was not alone.

Indeed, there was an entire group of four winged dinosaurs called microraptorines.

True, these dinosaurs didn’t fly, but its not hard to imagine these animals evolving true flight if their kind had lived longer, or of they had not gone extinct.

If this trait evolved once…couldn’t it evolve again?

Couldn’t convergent evolution produce another species, indeed another group of animals, that likewise bore four wings? Couldn’t they have lived longer, perhaps eventually evolving true flight?

Both are very possible.

But what about the unusual growth stages?

To my knowledge, the only kind of Asian dragon that had a series of strange, long growth stages is the Chinese dragon, so we could forgo such growth stages and simply imagine a dragon that didn’t experience having them.

But what if they did?

Could such growth stages be realistic?

Well, some animals do experience unusual growth stages before they develop into adults, indeed far more so than we see in many species (including ours). Most frogs start out as tadpoles, which lose their tails and gain limbs (as well as different skin colorations) with age. Butterflies start out life as caterpillars. Giant Panda newborns look FAR different from that of an adult, being pink and having little hair. Baby crown of thorns starfish look about a similar to an adult crown of thorns starfish as you do to a blue whale. The growth stages of a jellyfish can likewise involve a lot of serious shape shifting. Given this, we can’t conclude that a real Asian dragon wouldn’t likewise undergo the unusual series of growth stages as indicated in Chinese folklore. We…might have to tweak things so that such creatures would hatch with wings (instead of being limbless like a snake) that would eventually grow powerful enough for flight, but then again, tadpoles don’t have limbs, yet as they grow into a frog, they do develop them.

Now, some may counter, saying that in one of its growth stages, a dragon gains both the head and the scales of a fish. Surely, a reptile can’t grow a fish’s head and scales, right?

Well, that’s what I was getting to.

You see, at first, the Chinese dragon (and other Asian dragons that share its physical characteristics) seems, at first glance, to be an impossible hybrid, on par with Pegasus and centaurs. Indeed, it is a combination of 8 animals and 1 supernatural being:

1. “Horns” (actually Deer antlers, but I guess “horns” sounded better).

2. Snake’s neck.

3. Feet: partially tiger’s feet.

4. Head of a camel.

5. Eagle talons instead of true claws.

6. Carp’s scales

7. Cow ears (unlike those of other cows, the ears of a dragon don’t work; it actually needs its horns to hear).

8. Clam belly

9. Demon eyes.

Well, it seems like we should ditch the idea of a real Asian dragon, right? I mean, being a hybrid of 8 animals and a demon? Surely no such creature could exist, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, its time to think 4rth dimensionally.

Although hybrids like that mentioned above do not occur in nature, there are animals in the wild that, at first glance, look like a hybrid monster of world myth. Consider the Duck billed platypus; it has both the feet and bill of a duck (hence the name), a beaver’s tail and an otter’s body. It looks like a hybrid of the three…and yet isn’t. This false hybrid nature is further reinforced by the fact that it lays eggs, but even then, it’s not a mammal-bird hybrid.

The Okapi of Africa looks like a strange antelope whose legs were replaced by a mad scientist with those of a zebra, yet its neither antelope or Zebra. Indeed, its closest relative is the Giraffe.

Given all of this, we could imagine a reptile evolving that could likewise be a false hybrid. Instead of having a camel’s head, it would have a head somewhat similar in shape to that of a camel. Instead of having deer antlers, it could sport horns or horns that bear some semblance to antlers (as I pointed out in my previous article on dragons, horned serpents exist). Instead of having fish scales, its scales could be simply fish like. Instead of having eagle talons, it might instead have claws that somewhat resemble eagle talons. We might forgo some hybrid aspects (tiger-like feet, demon eyes (more on them later), etc.), but a dragon that looks like a hybrid of several animals…and yet is not…is not entirely impossible.

But what about demon eyes?

When it gets dark, some animal’s eyes glow. This is a reflection of light caused by a part of the eye called a tapetum lucidum. This reflective surface is found in many a critter. Humans, sadly, don’t have one, and thus we miss out on all that glowing eye fun. However, the glowing effect is not merely for show; an eye with a tapetum lucidum can see more efficiently in darkness.

Could you imagine a dragon having such eyes? A multi-ton, serpentine dragon having a glowing stare? Sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone.

Couldn’t this lead to people describing a dragon’s eyes as…demonic? Quite possibly.

But what about long life? Surely, no living creature can live for thousands of years, right?

Once again…WRONG!

Large sponges are thought by scientists to have a lifespan stretching up to over 23 centuries.

Over 2300…years.

Likewise, though Red Sea Urchins can generally reach a century, some could potentially reach more than twice that age…without having the nasty effects of old age.

Then there are immortal jellyfish, creatures that have the ability to reverse the aging process, to the point where they become a polyp (just a step above larvae). After this is done, they can start the normal aging process again, eventually returning to adulthood. It’s not impossible that such a creature could potentially live forever.

Given this, we cannot state that nature couldn’t have done the same trick in reptiles.

But what about intelligence?

As stated in my previous article on dragons, its not impossible for reptiles or even dinosaurs to have evolved human level intelligence.

Thus, we seem to have everything covered.

That is…save for magic.

How could an animal make itself invisible, or both shrink to a tiny form and grow so large that they reach the top of the sky? How could they control and manipulate the weather??? Surely, these are capabilities that no animal could ever hope to evolve…right?

Actually…yes, this is true.

However, this doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t develop these abilities by other means…

3. THE DRAGON IN THE HAT TRICK

In my previous article titled “What if Fairies Were Real”, I did my best to keep it as scientific as possible in determining how such creatures could have both arisen and gained their paranormal powers. Trying to do so without invoking magic was an amazing intellectual exercise, and it led to a very interesting conclusion when it comes to fairy magic.

You see, if fairies were real, and we didn’t invoke the supernatural to explain their miraculous powers, then the only way they could have such powers without calling upon the supernatural…was if their “magic” was actually super science.

Let’s imagine, for sake of argument, that I told a tribe in the Amazon, one not familiar with modern science, about J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

Let’s say that I told them that he created a weapon that could not only engulf miles and miles of jungle in flame in a split second, that not only could it cause an ungodly windstorm, that not only would it make a giant mushroom-shaped cloud…but that it would also poison air, soil and water. Imagine if I told them that this weapon could vaporize people, leaving behind a permanent imprint of their shadows. Let’s say that I told them that his weapon brought down a mighty tribe in the far East, and that he went on to say “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

What would this tribe think J Robert Oppenheimer was?

They might think he was a god, some other kind of supernatural being, or a freakishly powerful sorcerer.

Indeed, if such a tribe had somehow bore witness to Oppenheimer testing this bomb (with safety goggles of course, so that they wouldn’t go blind), saw it go off…they might start worshipping him.

That’s the power of technology. If its advanced enough, it can appear to a more technologically primitive people like magic. Indeed, there are people in Africa that think that cameras can take a person’s soul (a belief based on the images that appear on photos). Some Tibetans likewise don’t like the idea of being photographed, preferring to keep their souls in their own bodies. Cameras are nothing more than tools used to take photographs, no sorcery involved, yet to some cultures in the world that are not familiar with the science…they are magic.

Thus, if fairies existed, and had the unusual abilities attributed to them in folklore…then the only (non-supernatural) way they could pull off said abilities is through advanced technology.

Could it not be the same for the Asian dragon?

At first, it seems impossible: after all, they’d just have four sets of wings, right? No hands, let alone opposable thumbs, and thus no way to make technology, right?

Um…not so fast.

Remember, we went through several scenarios for how Asian dragons could evolve, not all of which involve them being true fliers. They could have either had skin flaps like a flying dragon, or made their lower bodies concave in order to glide like a flying snake. Indeed, they could have done both, perhaps also with hydrogen bladders. This would free their upper limbs from becoming full fledged wings. Combined with an opposable thumb and advanced intelligence (augmented by a several millennia lifespan), Asian dragons would have the ability to make technology, even highly advanced technology. In another scenario, where dragons went through growth stages similar to those mentioned in Chinese mythology, but with the arms and legs eventually becoming wings, they would have arms for several thousand years. If they had opposable thumbs during that time, then they would be able to both make and use tools for many centuries before their arms turned into wings.

Thus, dragons could potentially make advanced technology.

But would their technology surpass our own?

As I mentioned in my fairy article, technological advancement wasn’t at the same level for every species of ancient human. For example, Homo sapiens had a faster rate of technological advancement than both homo erectus and homo egaster. Indeed, when one considers the speed of human technological development, one can see that it has significantly increased in pace. Just think: The last known surviving veteran of the American civil war (Albert Henry Woolson, 1850-1956), saw the arrival of telephones, radio, television and nuclear weapons. This is a guy who fought during a time when most warships were still made of wood and people were using telegraphs. He had lived during the same time period as the Old West, the age of Jesse James and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

And what happened 13 years after Woolson died?

We landed on the moon.

Given all of this, we could therefore imagine a species of Asian dragon that had an even higher rate of technological advancement than even humans have had. This could have partially occurred either due to having a more advanced brain, or perhaps due to experiencing an ever-increasing rate of technological progress earlier than humans did (Imagine what would have happened if Neanderthals had undergone a similar growing rate of technological advancement long before we did? Imagine how history would have been if Neanderthals tested the first airplane…while we were starting to build pyramids?). We could also imagine Asian dragons, as a species, predating our species, perhaps considerably so, and thus having more time to technologically advance. A head start in the technological race could have given Asian dragons the means to develop super science long before humans invented the wheel.

However, there is something else that could potentially fuel this technological advancement.

Long life.

As I mentioned previously, Chinese dragons are said to take 3000 years just to grow from a newly hatched snake into a full-fledged adult dragon. Let’s imagine that all Asian dragons had took this long to grow into adulthood. Let’s imagine that they could live even longer than this (remember, it takes them 3000 years to reach adulthood. It’s not their entire lifespan).

How would this affect both science and technology?

Consider some of the brightest minds in human history: Isaac Newton, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Socrates, Copernicus, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, etc. There are many titans of learning that have lived throughout human history, altering our world in a variety of ways with their inventions and discoveries.

But what do they all have in common?

Among other things, they didn’t live for thousands of years.

Instead, they only lived for decades. Not millennia, not centuries.

Decades.

But what if such great geniuses could live for thousands of years? What if they aged slowly, keeping the Grim Reaper away for countless ages?

What could they have discovered?

What could they have invented?

Imagine if Isaac Newton was still alive, conversing with modern physicists. What else could he have discovered besides the Law of Gravity? What amazing experience he could bring to scientific experiments! What if Nikola Tesla was still alive today? If he was, would we have warp drive, transporter technology and androids indistinguishable from Katy Perry (come on scientists, make it happen!) by now?

Now imagine what they could do, what they could discover…if they lived for thousands and thousands of years?

This, along with perhaps a more advanced brain (or beginning to speed up their technological advancement long before humans did the same), could lead to Asian dragons developing a far superior technology than humans, so much so that they could pull off feats that humans would mistake as magical. Perhaps they could even develop highly advanced technology while we were still in the cave. Perhaps they could use holographic technology to fool people into thinking that they were shrinking or growing, or have tech that could bend light, making them invisible, or even technology that would be capable of controlling weather. Perhaps they could develop technology that could enable them to truly fly without wings (which might lead some humans to embellish tales about them, to the point where they were said to have wings). Perhaps they could have technology so impressive that they could alter their genetic codes, enabling them to grow wings, without having to lose their arms and paws (and thus their opposable thumbs) in the process. If they had this level of technological sophistication at any point in human history…most people would consider them magical. Only recently would some propose a more science-based answer to their impressive paranormal feats.

And how would people in the ancient or prehistoric world think when encountering these “magical” dragons? How would they view such colossal creatures that seemed to have unearthly, occult powers?

Most would probably view them as gods.

And how were some Asian dragons viewed?

As gods…

Indeed, this would be even MORE likely than it would be with the existence of real fire breathing dragons, and the chances of people worshipping the latter as gods would have been HIGH. Also, a dragon cult involving Asian dragons would be FAR more long lasting than one for fire breathing dragons would be; as mentioned in the previous article, fire breathing dragons would most likely have wings instead of arms, and thus would not have technology. Humans would eventually overtake their physical prowess by means of technological advancement. However, as noted above, Asian dragons wouldn’t have this problem. Human technological advancement wouldn’t be able to overcome far superior dragon technology (we’re talking potentially space age, Star Trek level technology), let alone superior tech whose progress was growing faster and faster. You may have had some humans question these dragon “gods” and perhaps have some that tried to rebel against them, but without divine intervention (no pun intended), Asian dragons would always squash them like bugs, using superior size, strength…and technology.

We could, however, also imagine dragons foregoing wanting people to worship them and simply just invade human held lands, which they would be able to win with ease. Human empires in real history didn’t want those they conquered to worship them as gods; they wanted tribute. Even empires that venerated their emperors or kings as gods didn’t want their entire population to be viewed as divine. They did, however, assert their authority, often brutally. We could perhaps see humanity doomed to a near endless perpetual yoke, serving their dragon emperors, void of hope. Such hope might be rekindled, however, if dragon nations and culture began to change, to the point where dragons began giving some human lands back (just as has occurred in our history, with the decline of European empires in the 20th century). Indeed, dragons might even want humans assimilated into their culture, just as Americans tried to assimilate Native American tribes into their culture.

We could, however, also consider the possibility of dragons exterminating humans. No doubt countless people groups would be wiped out during dragon imperial campaigns, but an actual genocide of all humanity would also be possible.

Either way…dragons would be the dominant life form on the planet.

Its interesting to try and figure out what life would be like if dragons were real, but one needs to remember that, in a sense, we actually DO live in a world where “dragons” exist. Indeed, you can see such dragons now and again on documentaries, and possibly even at your nearest Zoo…

3. THE KING OF KOMODO

Komodo dragons are…frightening. I mean, I-just-messed-in-my-pants level of frightening. Its easy to understand why, considering that they are lizards…that average 155 pounds and 6 and a half to over 9 feet long. Indeed, they can reach up to 300 pounds and ten feet in length. Combined with both being able to hit 11 mph and having a venomous bite (yes, you read that correctly; Komodo dragons actually have venom glands in their mouths!), these creatures can be the stuff of nightmares.

At one time, they were also the stuff of myth and legend.

Tales of titanic lizards stalking the forests of Komodo piqued the interest of some in the industrialized world. Most would have thought that such tales were…just that, tales. Indeed, they might have considered these lizards as fictional as ogres, unicorns and centaurs.

And yet…in 1912…the skeptics had to eat crow.

The monster was revealed to be real.

But why is it called a dragon?

Because the original tales told of a monster that somewhat resembled a dragon.

Its easy to see why; like the European dragons of lore, Komodo dragons are huge, reptilian and have forked tongues. True, they don’t have wings or fiery breath, but then again, in world myth and legend, dragons come in many forms, some of which are lizard like. Indeed, some depictions of St George fighting his dragon in art make the dragon look like an oversized lizard. Also, most dragons in myth and legend are not depicted as breathing fire. Indeed, some have lethal bad breath instead. Now, Komodo dragons don’t have lethal breath, but being a carnivore and having no desire to buy toothpaste and a toothbrush at their local pharmacy…I’m guessing that their breathe is pretty ripe. However, considering that they have a poisonous bite, one could see how this, combined with their bad breath, could eventually lead to the creation of a mythic dragon with lethal bad breath. Over time, embellishment could potentially lead to even fire breathing. One could imagine even a flying firebreather, or perhaps even a winged reptilian god, being developed due to spreading rumors of Komodo dragons combined with embellishment.

But were Komodo Dragons the originators of both European and Asian dragons?

Um…not likely, considering the distance between Komodo Island and places like Asia and Europe.

However, it is, for all intents and purposes, a true dragon, the only one we have.

However, there was once another, a creature that made a Komodo Dragon…look like a Komodo Gecko.

4. THE GIANT RIPPER

In ice age Australia, there once lived a dragon. A giant monitor with attitude, this dragon ruled the Outback with an iron claw. The first Australian Aborigines lived in fear of this terror, a creature that proved hard to kill, a monster impervious to boomerangs and shaman curses.

I’m talking, of course, about Megalania. This animal was quite similar to a Komodo Dragon…but at 26-30 feet long and weighing over 2 tons, it was much larger, capable of taking down rhino-sized prey. If it still lived in Australia today, it would be a terror to both humans and livestock. Indeed, if it had survived to the modern era, explorers might very well have labeled it the “Australian Dragon”.

And what dragon would be complete…without legend?

Curiously enough, though Megalania is long extinct, the creature lived on in Australian Aboriginal folklore, where it is called “Mugoon-galli”. It was said that the Mugoon-galli used its tail to bring about sandstorms.

Does this latter power make you think of Asian dragons? Specifically Chinese dragons?

It should, considering that Chinese dragons likewise could bring rain by flicking their tails.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Megalania was the source of the Chinese dragon. It does, however, reveal an even more dragonesque aspect of Megalania, a power that bridges prehistory with legend.

For all intents and purposes, Australia was once home to “dragons”. The Land Down Under is now their graveyard, a land whose dragons have faded into dust and fossils.

Or have they?

Its curious to know that, for over a hundred years, even into modern times, a colossal lizard has been sighted in Australia…

Perhaps, there is still a dragon lurking on the Earth today, abiding in a deep cave, waiting for humans to foolishly wander into its lair…

Sources:

“Dragons: A Natural History” by Dr. Karl Shuker, 86-93

“Dragonslayers: From Beowulf to St. George” by Joseph A. McCullough, 6-72, 77-78

“Quest for the Unknown: Man and Beast”, by Reader’s Digest, 108-10, 112-13

“Chambers: Myths and Mysteries” by Kate Sleight (Editor), 46-48

“The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology” by Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, 456, 468-69, 474-75

“Dragons” By Kris Hirschmann, 36-40

“Mysteries of the Unknown: Mysterious Creatures” by Time-Life books, 20-21

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dragons/Kg3D0LtNnN8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Chi%27ih+muh+dragon&pg=PA38&printsec=frontcover

“Forest of the Vampire” by Charles Philips and Michael Kerrigan (consultant Dr. Elizabeth Warner), 124-25, 130

“Supernatural Beings from Slovenian Myth and Folktales” By Monika Kropej, 34

https://sirtravisjacksonoftexas.tumblr.com/post/648294161269866496/what-if-dragons-were-real

https://sirtravisjacksonoftexas.tumblr.com/post/644038696642985984/was-satan-the-serpent-in-the-garden-um-yes-and

https://sirtravisjacksonoftexas.tumblr.com/post/645391302162268160/a-journey-into-the-strange-world-of-useless

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02788-3

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85126/15-examples-most-dramatic-metamorphoses-youth-adult

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/four-winged-dinosaur.html

https://www.livescience.com/47307-how-geckos-stick-and-unstick-feet.html#:~:text=Geckos%20can%20stick%20to%20surfaces,tiny%20microscopic%20hairs%20called%20setae.&text=Scientists%20already%20knew%20that%20the,der%20Waals%20force%20kicks%20in.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28295571

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24218-dinosaur-in-a-wind-tunnel-tests-feathered-flight/

“The World Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures” by Dougal Dixon, 244

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avian%20dinosaur#:~:text=%3A%20a%20bird%20when%20considered%20as,flit%20around%20our%20backyards%20today.%E2%80%94

https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/okapi

https://www.livescience.com/27572-platypus.html

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96414364

https://www.britannica.com/science/tapetum-lucidum

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2090150-this-deep-sea-creature-could-be-the-worlds-oldest-living-animal/

https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2003/nov/red-sea-urchins-discovered-be-one-earths-oldest-animals

https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/on-exhibit-posts/the-immortal-jellyfish

https://teara.govt.nz/en/diagram/5355/jellyfish-life-cycle

“The Cultural Dimension of International Business” by Gary P. Ferraro, 2002.

“Tibet Travel Adventure Guide”, by Michael Buckley, 1999, 24

https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2019/09/minnesotan-albert-henry-woolson-was-the-last-surviving-civil-war-veteran/

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/shootout-at-the-ok-corral

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/james-jesse/

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/series/the-rise-and-fall-of-european-empires-from-the-16th-to-the-20th-century/

https://www.history.com/news/how-boarding-schools-tried-to-kill-the-indian-through-assimilation

https://www.livescience.com/51086-komodo-dragon-bite-facts.html

https://www.livescience.com/27402-komodo-dragons.html#:~:text=Komodo%20dragons%20are%20the%20largest,the%20Indonesian%20island%20of%20Komodo.

http://www1.lasalle.edu/~zelenenkic1/dragonscale_species.html#:~:text=Western%20Dragons%20have%20bat%20like,the%20tip%20of%20their%20wings.

“The Beasts That Hide From Man: The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals” by Karl P. Shuker, 204-07

“Smithsonian Institution: Animal” by David Burnie and Don E. Wilson (Editors-In-Chief), 420-21

“Prehistoric Life” by DK Publishing, 332, 431

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Adventures_in_Cryptozoology_Volume_1/cJYREAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=cryptozoology+megalania&pg=PT26&printsec=frontcover

https://folklorethursday.com/myths/harbingers-of-heaven-dragons-of-earth-and-sea/

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

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Cowboys And Cavemen

This one’s gonna meander, but it’s about cavemen and cowboys and dinosaurs, so some of you may wanna stick around…

. . .

Recently watched the colorized version of One Million B.C. with Victor mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney Jr.

I remember frequently watching the original black & white version of this as a kid; it popped up on local Early Shows a lot primarily because it could be chopped down to fit an hour’s running time without losing too much of the story (Early Shows were afternoon movies with a local host that typically ran only 90 minutes from 4:30-6pm; with commercials and host segments there wasn’t much room for uncut films and as a result they featured a lot of B-movies with 65 minute running times, or else cut out sequences from longer films not germane to the plot).

The colorized version surprised me in a couple of ways.

First, I’d forgotten just how well done One Million B.C. is in basic film making terms: Once past the opening scene, in which an archeologist explains some cave drawings to a group of mountaineers who then imagine themselves in prehistoric times, there’s no recognizable dialog; the film is told in purely visual terms.

Second, the colorization was incredibly sloppy: There’s a lot of weird blue artifacting going on that lays a strange mist-like quality over several scenes, and in several places the colorists inexplicably either colored the actors’ bare legs blue or else overlooked the mistake in the final color correction.

Third, the sloppy colorization doesn’t matter: If anything, it adds to the weird dream-like quality of the film. As an attempt to realistically recreate the prehistoric past, it’s gawdawful; taken as the imaginings of an average contemporary 1940s person with no real knowledge of prehistoric times (viz the prolog), and it’s pretty entertaining.

Technically the movie is a mixed bag. The special effects are pretty seamless (yeah, you can tell when something is a rear screen shot, but then again rear screen shots in every film of that era were obvious)). A travelling matte shot of a hapless cavewoman buried under a flood of lava is particularly well done and as amazing today as it was then (though the colorists dropped the ball and didn’t tint it a vivid red or orange in the colorized version).

There’s a lot of monsters, but they range from well done to just plaine…well…

The best are a woolly mammoth (i.e., an elephant in shaggy fur costume) and a baby triceratops (a large pig in costume) that really seem to capture the essence pf those creatures.

The worst is a guy in an allosaurus suit who kinda just shuffles along like a grandparent going to the bathroom, and in the middle are various lizards dressed up with fins and horns.

The lizards bother me more and more over the years. At first it was because they were disappointing -- they don’t look like dinosaurs, dammit, but like lizards with fins and horns glued on -- but now it’s because I realize they were goaded by their handlers into fights and reactions shots.

That’s plain ol’ animal cruelty, even if they are reptiles and not mammals.

There’s an armadillo and a koala-like animal that appear thousands of times their normal size. The koala-like critter (sorry, but I don’t know what it actually is) is passable as a giant cave bear or sloth, but the armadillo is just an armadillo (there was something about armadillos that 1930s audience found creepy; they’re waddling all over the Count’s hiding place in the original Dracula).

One Million B.C. was produced by Hal Roach and Hal Roach Jr. The senior Roach goes all the way back to the silent era, so this was not a huge stretch for him.

Originally D.W. Griffith was to direct the film, but while he did a lot of pre-production work including screen and wardrobe tests, he either dropped out or was replaced on the eve of production. (Reportedly he wanted the cave tribes to speak recognizable English and left when Roach refused.)

The special effects wound up in a ton of movies and TV shows over the ensuing decades; modern audiences are more familiar with the film through 1950s sci-fi than its original version.

All else aside, the picture is carried by stars Victor Mature and Carole Landis. Ms Landis in particular is a spunky, charming cave gal with a blonde-fro and while Mature would never be an Oscar contender, he at least has the physicality and screen presence to get his character across.

The scene where he thinks Landis has died in a volcanic eruption may be corny, but you can feel his character’s grief.

. . .

A quarter of a century later it was remade as One Million Years B.C. with John Richardson in the Victor mature role and Raquel Welch in the Landis role.

No disrespect to Welch, who by all accounts is a nice person, but she never showed one iota the acting chops of Carole Landis. Welch is beautiful, and as a generic pin-up model cast as a film’s “sexy lamp” (look it up), she presented appealing eye-candy. She appeared in one good sci-fi film (Fantastic Voyage), one campy monster movie (i.e., One Million Years B.C.), two incredibly campy WTF-were-they-thinking movies (The Magic Christian and Myra Breckenridge), and a host of instantly forgettable spy films and Westerns. The best movies she appeared in were Fuzz, based on the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (a.k.a. Evan Hunter nee Salvatore Lombino), where she did an acceptable supporting turn as a police detective, and Kansas City Bomber, a roller derby movie that many consider her best role.

Landis never enjoyed the same level of fame (or notoriety, depending on your POV) that Welch did, but holy cow, could the gal act. It’s a pity Hollywood is crowded with talented, beautiful people because she certainly deserved a bigger career capstone than One Million B.C..

Welch’s personal life certainly proved less traumatic than Landis’, however. When actor Rex Harrison broken off his affair with her rather than divorce his wife, Landis committed suicide.

The scandal exiled Harrison temporarily back to England. A few years later One Million B.C. and Landis’ other films started playing on television.

Who knows what opportunities may have opened for her in that medium?

. . .

The original One Million B.C. is vastly superior in all areas but one (well, two -- mustn’t leave out the catfight between Welch and Martine Beswick): Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion dinosaurs

Mind you, most of the dino scenes in One Million Years B.C. are underwhelming. To stretch the budget the producers used close ups of spiders and an iguana to simulate giant monsters, a brontosaurus does a walk through in one scene and never appears again, and the first big dino moment has cave gals poking sharp sticks at a big sea turtle.

On the other hand, the remaining trio of dino scenes are the aces and vastly superior to their corresponding scenes in One Million B.C.. The latter film’s allosaur attack is one of the best dino scenes ever animated, and the ceratosaurus vs triceratops battle followed by the pteranodon grabbing Welch are almost as good.

Both versions of the film had an interesting influence on films that followed. One Million Years B.C. was followed by a host of prehistoric films, most of which existed only to cast voluptuous actresses in fur bikinis although When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, a direct follow-up, offered more monsters and a better story.

While One Million B.C. wasn’t the first film to sub real life lizards for dinos, it certainly told budget conscious producers that such substitutions were okay.

The 1959 version of Journey To The Center Of The Earth cast iguanas with glued on fins as dimetrodons, and for once the impersonation proved successful as the two species do bear certain similarities.

Producer Irwin Allen (he of Lost In Space and Towering Inferno fame) hired Willis O;Brien (the animator behind the original King Kong) and his then assistant Ray Harryhausen to do accurate-for-the-era stop motion dinosaurs for The Animal World documentary but apparently frustrated by the time it took to get results opted for lizards in his version of The Lost World (which, ironically, O’Brien worked on in a non-animation capacity despite having done the original silent version of the film with stop motion dinosaurs).

I saw Allen’s Lost World as a little boy and felt grossly disappointed by the obvious lizards, especially since the script identified them as belong to specific dinosaur species when they quite clearly didn’t (had the script said they evolved from such creatures, the way the most recent version of King Kong did, it would have been less egregious).

Allen’s lizards popped up in several TV shows he did, most notably the TV version of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. That show’s co-star David Hedison played a supporting role in The Lost World so once a season they found some excuse to get him out of his Navy uniform and into a safari jacket in order to match footage with stock shots from the movie.

The Animal World wasn’t the first time O’Brien and Harryhausen worked together, and Harryhausen followed up One Million Years B.C. with The Valley Of Gwangi, an O’Brien project that the older effects artist never got off the ground.

. . .

Let’s back up a bit to discuss “O’Bie” (as his fans refer to him).

O’Brien was a former cowboy-turned-cartoonist around the early 20th century who became interested in animation.

Movies were in their infancy then, and O’Bie shot a short test reel of two clay boxers duking it out.

This got him financing to do a series of short films ala The Flintstones with titles like Rural Delivery, One Million B.C. (the titles were often longer than the films).

These shorts featured cartoony puppets, no actual actors. O’Bie followed it up with The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain which was the first time dinosaurs were animated in an attempt to make them look real, and that was followed by The Lost World in which O’Bie combined live action with special effects, climaxing the film with a brontosaurus running amok in London.

O’Bie wanted to follow it up with a film called Creation but that got deep sixed. However, producer Merian C. Cooper saw O’Bie’s test footage for Creation and hired him to do the effects for the legendary King Kong.

While O’Bie followed that success with the quickie Son Of Kong he never got to work on a dinosaur film of such scope again.

War Eagles (a lost-civilization-with-dinos story) was supposed to have been a big follow up epic, but the Depression and the growing threat of WWII caused it to be cancelled in pre-production.

During the 1940s O’Bie pitched a number of stories to studios involving dinosaurs or other monsters encountering cowboys, one of which was Gwangi (he also pitched King Kong vs Frankenstein which eventually got made as King Kong vs Godzilla using two guys in rubber suits, not his beloved stop motion effects).

Gwangi had cowboys discovering a lost canyon inhabited by dinosaurs, chief of which being Gwangi, an allosaurus. O’Bie never got Gwangi off the ground but decades later Harryhausen did with Valley Of Gwangi.

. . .

I never cared for Valley Of Gwangi and much preferred One Million Years B.C. over it (and, no, not because of Ms Welch).

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I enjoyed cowboys as much as dinosaurs.

I’ve posted elsewhere how my interest in dinosaurs led me to dinosaur movies which led to monster movies which led to science fiction movies which led to literary science fiction which led to science fiction fandom which led to my writing career, but my genre of choice before age 10 was Westerns.

As others point out, most Westerns are actually crime stories, what with bandits robbing stagecoaches and banks, rustlers making off with cattle, etc. The climax usually involves a lawman (or a vigilante who carries the weight of the law) confronting the evil doers and bringing them to justice.

Sometimes these vigilantes wore masks (Zorro and the Lone Ranger). Sometimes those they pursued wore masks, and sometimes those masked villains pretended to be ghosts or phantoms.

They weren’t, and were invariably exposed as frauds.

Westerns based themselves in a rational world.

Other times a criminal in a Western would be after some invention that could bring either a great boon (say an energy source) or great harm (a death ray) to the world, and wanted it for their own selfish ends.

The story would invariably use the invention as a mcguffin device, maybe letting it figure into the villain’s eventual comeuppance, but never really influencing the outcome of the plot.

Westerns and fantasy genres (including science fiction) don’t mix well, The Wild Wild West not withstanding (and The Wild Wild West was not a Western per se but rather what we would now call a steampunk commentary on James Bond filtered through the lens of traditional American Westerns).

(And don’t bring up Gene Autry And The Phantom Empire, just…don’t…)

Dinosaurs and cowboys don’t really go together.

That didn’t stop O’Bie from trying.

In addition to Gwangi, O’Bie had two other projects that he did get off the ground: The Brave One and The Beast From Hollow Mountain.

The Beast From Hollow Mountain is a standard Western about mysterious cattle disappearances and quarrels over who might be responsible, only to discover in the end it’s really -- surprise! surprise! -- a solitary tyrannosaurus that somehow survived since prehistoric times.

The movie is constructed in such a way that had the dinosaur element not panned out, they could have removed it and substituted a more conventional ending.

While O’Bie didn’t work directly on the film after he sold the story, it did feature a variant of stop motion animation known as replacement animation. Instead of building a realistic looking puppet with rubber skin and posable limbs, the dino in Beast was more solid and featured interchangeable limbs that could stretch and squash in a more realistic manner (rather, the movement looked more realistic, the dino sculpture no so much…).

The Brave One started life as a story about a young Mexican boy who raises a prize bull for the ring, only to have the bull face an allosaurus in the ring instead of a matador.

The producers who bought that idea hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to turn it into something filmable, and Trumbo sensibly jettisoned the dino to focus the story on the boy and his bull, much to the film’s advantage (it won an Oscar for best story when released, but Trumbo’s heirs had to wait decades before the award could be recognized as due their father).

The Valley Of Gwangi was yet another variant on the same basic idea, more expansive than the other two in terms of dinosaurs, and with at least a nod in the direction of trying to explain them (a “lost canyon” giving them shelter instead of a mountain plateau or remote island).

It never connected with me, despite having more extensive dino sequences than One Million Years B.C..

O’Bie animated stop motion cowboys fighting a giant ape in the original version of Mighty Joe Young but the context proved different. The cowboys’ presence in Africa is acknowledge in the film itself as a publicity gimmick, and therefore not a true blend of the American West with a fantastic element.

Mr. Joseph Young of Africa himself, a 12-foot tall gorilla, was also presented as an exceptionally large but otherwise natural gorilla, not a throwback to a prehistoric era.

. . .

Before there were action figures, but long after there were tin soldiers, we had plastic play sets.

They came in all eras and varieties, but among the most popular were Wild West sets, Civil War, World War Two, and dinosaurs.

My father took a business trip to Chicago when I was four, and when he came back I remember eagerly crowding around the suitcase with my mother, grandmother, and aunt as he opened it and brought out souvenirs for us.

I forget what they got, but I remember feeling disappointed and forgotten since their stuff was on top.

But, underneath everything else, sat a large cardboard box, and in that box was a Marx Prehistoric Times playset.

It’s hard to adequately describe the joy that filled my heart when I opened it; it was one of the best presents I’ve ever received.

And while I later acquired a Civil War set and a World War Two set and a bag of what we then called cowboy and Indian figures, the dinosaurs remained my most favorite.

I bring this up because I think the Marx playsets explain the origins of two comics books, Turok, Son Of Stone (an on-again / off-again series from 1954 to 1982 from Dell / Gold Key) and The War That Time Forgot (1960-68 from DC).

In both cases, I’m sure somebody from each company saw some kid combing their Wild West or their World War Two playsets with their dinos and realized there was story gold to be found there.

The War That Time Forgot felt much more my speed, a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs and visited by American and Japanese forces during World War Two.

World War Two effectively ended any hope of their being a lost island with prehistoric monsters; pretty much the entire planet was scouted either on foot or by air.

Turok, Son Of Stone didn’t connect with me. For one thing, it was too much like a Western in concept; for another, Turok and his brother Andar, being pre-Columbian Native Americans, were already from a neolithic culture, and the various cavemen and Neanderthals they encountered in their lost valley seemed more drab and colorless than their tribal background.

The dinosaurs they encountered always came across as large, dangerous, but wholly natural animals, different only from bears and wolves and bison by size and appearance.

Despite my indifference to Turok, I can absolutely understand why others love it and disdain The War That Time Forgot.

Different strokes for different folks.

. . .

We can’t close this without taking a look at The Flintstones, and we can’t consider The Flintstones without first examining Tex Avery’s The First Bad Man in order to bring this post full circle.

There’s a long history (har!) of contemporary satire using a prehistoric lens. The Flintstones started life as a knockoff of Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners told in a prehistoric setting; the series made no attempt to present itself as realistic in any shape, fashion, or form.

Among the many cartoons and short subjects that preceded it (including Chuck Jones’ Daffy Duck And The Dinosaur) is The First Bad Man by Tex Avery, an MGM theatrical cartoon.

Tex told the story of Dinosaur Dan, the world’s first outlaw, using Western tropes told through a prehistoric lens.

It works, because it’s a parody of the Western form, not a sincere effort to blend it with the caveman genre. It works because it’s a jarring clash of genres, not despite it.

The caveman genre itself has fallen on fallow times. Despite films like The Quest For Fire and Clan Of The Cave Bear attempting to do realistic takes on the topic, most people seem to prefer more fanciful approaches, best exemplified by the movie Caveman which sent up the entire genre while not skimping on the stop motion dinos.

With sword & sorcery / Tolkienesque fantasies finally acceptable to mass audiences and thus providing a venue for humans to directly fight giant monsters, there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for a return to the glories of One Million B.C.

#Compare And Contrast #One Million BC #One Million Years BC #Ray Harryhausen #Willis OBrien #Victor Mature #Carole Landis #Raquel Welch #Hal Roach #DW Griffith #cavemen #cowboys #dinosaurs #sci-fi

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dragonthunders01 · 6 years

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Imaginary titans

For some time I had an idea to make a series of draw comparison related to the idea of doing a “before and after” of certain prehistoric animal reconstructions, something similar to what users here on deviantart has done with draws or silhouettes, however, instead of being just one animal comparison, these would be properly chart showing the changes of such animals over the years, based on a specific topic or a specific documentary.

Here, I chose a particular topic to begin with, the case of the oversized animals, creatures that once were considered to be beings of massive length or mass by the paleontological community or in most of the cases, in the popular media, and have been changed over the years with new discoveries or re-interpretations, some of the estimations are quite light in changes which some can still be considered as giant creatures even with the slight reduction, others are really marked such measures changes to the point it seems like a joke that once was considered to be giants at the first place, and some are in the brink to change with a new discovery in any moment.

I must say that I have tried to collect only estimations made in the scientific field both popular (e.g., documentary) and professional, so there will not be estimations made in common entertainment media such as movies (Jurassic Park), fictional books (Kronos Rising) or video games (Ark)

If anyone has any complain or critic about the information, size, species or anything else, and even some suggestions for others oversized prehistoric animals, you’re welcome to tell, especially if I’m wrong, all for the sake of accuracy.

1) Pachycephalosaurus It seems from many years since its discovery, this large Pachycephalosaur was considered to be 8 meters long, at least the original upright kangaroo posture interpretations which was common in many book illustrations, toys and old media that I guess was based on original ornithopod proportions looking that the head was smaller in comparison with the body. (If anybody knows a better reason you’re welcome to correct me)

Current estimates In recent years there was a reinterpretation of the proportions of Pachycephalosaurus this based on several more complete specimens of others species, giving it a change of look and also of size, now being a 5 meters long herbivore, still being the largest of its group.

2) Ornithocheirus (Tropeognathus) This very fragmentary genus of pterosaur first discovered in UK, was featured in the documentary walking with dinosaurs as a flying giant of around 12 meters in wingspan and weighting 100 kg, being one of the largest pterosaurs ever.

Current estimates To explain a little why I added two pterosaurs, the actual Ornithocheirus (a) which had a very problematic taxonomic history with many fragmentary remains classified to this genus, with around 28 species in total named, but at the end many of these were considered to belong to separate genus, some from the same family and some others from different affinity, with only now one type species, O. simus, being this one around 5 meters of wingspan, and never being 12 meters.

The actual pterosaur which the WWD refer as “Ornithocheirus mesembrinus” was actually Tropeognathus mesembrinus (b) from Santana formation, but this wasn’t estimated to be 12 meters in any point either, the largest specimens so far know in that time were about 6 meters, and the specimens which the documentary were suppose to be base on (MN 6594-1 specimen), is calculated to be about 8 meters of wingspan, being not a giant, but still a pretty large pterosaur, one of the biggest non-azhdarchid pterosaurs known.

3) Amphicoelias fragillimus This species was described in 1878 by Edward Drinker Cope, Being the holotype specimen a vertebra of 1.5 meters in length (AMNH 5777) and a femur, this get lost in some point to never to appear again for unknown reasons (probably due to poor care that destroyed the holotype) and only leaving as a record the existence of these notes and sketches. Throughout the years, based on what has been left, attempts were made to make possible estimates of the size of this specimen, the majority being inferred that this species has the same proportions of more complete specimens of Diplodocids, giving a size estimation of 58 meters in length, with a weight of 120 tons, making it one of the largest dinosaurs that ever existed.

Current estimates There have been debates about the possible length of the specimen AMNH 5777 over the years, this mostly because the only thing left of the original are only notes which It has been suggested that could contain typographical errors in the measurements or even be completely wrong, and taking proportions of smaller species not always turn out to be accurate or even plausible, so make an length estimation of this species based on the original vertebra turns out to be a complicate challenge. Of course as the chart is about originally oversized animals and then were downsized, I had to see if someone had tried to make an Amphicoelias smaller version with a plausible interpretation to be part of this chart, good thing there is one.

In this case I used thus Amphicoelias reconstruction, being 48 meters long.

4) Leedsichthys problematicus The great Jurassic filter feeder ray-finned fish pachycormid discovered in the Oxford Clay Formation, was subject to many size changes, over the years it was difficult to give an accurate or plausible size estimation because of the poor remains found, at first estimated to have a measure of about 9 meters in proportion to the Hypsocormus genus , but around the 80 the discovery of a new pachycormid, this called Asthenocormus, led to new interpretations of the possible length from 13 meters to 27 meters, based on an extrapolation of the gill basket size, in some cases in popular scientific media mentioned to even be around the 30 to 35 meters long.

Current estimates Some years after the discovery of many new specimens, like “Ariston” (PETMG F174), Dr. Jeff Liston in his studies estimated that Leedsichthys wassmaller than what was thought, being about 9 to 10 meters in first estimations, and in later specimen comparison it give lengths between 7 and 12 meters, also pointing out that linear extrapolation of the gill basket would be flawed because gills grow disproportionally in size for the oxygen demand of a huge body. The most plausible estimations now are around the 16 meters.

5) Kaprosuchus The unusual “boar croc” was discovered and described in 2009 by Paul Sereno and Hans Larsson in the monograph "Cretaceous Crocodyliforms from the Sahara" together with other specimens of Saharan Crocodyliformes. Being the holotype a well preserved skull (MNN IGU12) of about 50 cm, Sereno give an estimated length of around 6 meters.

Current estimates As far I can found, there aren’t any background affirmation for the original Sereno estimations, even more there are been some counterarguments for such size estimations based on comparisons of actual crocodilians with a same head size, as well with more complete relatives like Mahajangasuchus, the most plausible estimations for the actual holotype put the length of Kaprosuchus in 3.3 meters.

6) Quetzalcoatlus After the first fossils were discovery in the Javelina formation at Big Bend National park, Texas, it was estimated 3 probable wingspan size extrapolated from the proportions of others pterosaurs, being 11, 15 and 21 meters, being the middle one choose, but very light in weight being estimated to be less than 100 kg.

Current estimates After subsequent discoveries of small specimens of Azhdarchid and a better known of the morphology of these ones, there were quite a few changes in their proportions, resulting in a more compact animal than previously believed; now it is estimated to have an 11 meters wingspan.

7) Allosaurus maximus (or Saurophaganax maximus depending on how valid still it is) This Allosaurid named by Daniel Chure in the middle 90s, has gone through an interesting history of genus validation based on several specimens since the early 30s for what belongs to it, and even now the legitimacy of this genus is in dispute and with consideration of most of the specimens belong to Allosaurus (As well Epanterias). Something remarkable about this theropod has been the estimates of its length, which would make this Jurassic theropod the largest of all from that period, being at the same level as the Cretaceous theropods in size, with a length of 14 meters in length.

Current estimates It seems that there is no evidence supporting such lengths as the original estimates is considered to being incorrect, the specimen which belongs is probably an 11 meters long animal. Based on Allosaurus reconstruction

8) Spinosaurus The enigmatic African spiny theropod, for many years this Spinosaurid had been one of several contenders to the title of the largest theropods in history thanks to several estimates made over the years, being first at least 15 meters long and with a weight of 6 tons, but by the end of the 20th century and in the beginning of the 21st century this creature get its highest estimations, being the largest based on Suchomimus body proportions in relation on their skull lengths, making it a great theropod of about 18 meters long and a weight of 7 to 9 tons, although some posterior mass estimations give it a body mass of about 11.7 to 16.7 tons. Spinosaurus in this form became a very iconic image for many years in popular culture.

Current estimates Over the years there were quite a few counterarguments about the methodology used to make a reasonable approximation of the length of Spinosaurus, even some making new size estimations giving to this theropod a body length between 12 to 14 meters and a body mass of 12 to 20 tons, although these were criticized too for the theropod choices.

In 2014 things took an unexpected turn with the announcement of a new specimen, the FSAC_KK 11888, a partial subadult skeleton from Kem Kem beds, North Africa, which presented quite different proportions from what was estimated or speculated, showing Spinosaurus as short legged theropod of semi-aquatic habits, However, in the following years the veracity and validation of the specimen as Spinosaurus has been doubted, althouth being asserted in several cases, but not described properly and in full format, even to complicate more the subject, with the confirmation a second spinosaur genus in the region, Sigilmassasaurus, is difficult to assign the neotype specimen to a specific genus.

From these actual proportions if are trully confirmed to belong to Spinosaurus, it is believed that some of the largest specimens could have reached 15 meters in length as was estimated early, and not being the tall creature as the Suchomimus original proportions suggested.

9) Rhamphosuchus This great Miocene Tomistominae (False Gharial) from India, only know by fragmentary tip jaw remains, was once considered to be one of the largest crocodiles ever, with a size estimation of about 15 to 18 meters for many decades.

Current estimates After a re-study in 2001, it was downsized to a length of about 8 to 11 meters.

10) Bruhathkayosaurus This supposed sauropod titanosaur was discovered in the region of Tamil Nadu, in the district of Tiruchirappalli, around 1989, being the remains a part of the pelvis and the tibia, these were referred to as belonging to a theropod by the shape of the Ilium, however, a later opinions determined it as a sauropod, probably a titanosaur around 1999. The measurements given at that time put it as a gigantic animal of around 35 to 40 meters in length, with an estimated weight of 175 to 220 tons, turning it into the heaviest terrestrial animal ever to have existed, aside of Amphicoelias.

Current estimates Did you ever hear the tragedy of Bruhathkayosaurus the giant? Seriously speaking, the history of the discovery of this "sauropod" could be said to be a tragedy since the only known remains discovered by Yadagiri and Ayyasami (those who were behind the discovery and identification of the supposed "stegosaurus" Dravidosaurus which is recognized now as a plesiosaur) were not properly recorded or conserved, these were described poorly, they took terrible pictures of such specimens, they made quite terrible sketches and to make it worse after the discovery they did not bother to collect those remains and the most terrible thing, they left them at the mercy of the Indian monsoons and erosion for the next 15 years after the discovery.

So there are 2 ways to see this in a speculative way given the situation: Option a, in the case that this genus has been what was suggested, a sauropod, the size of this would not have been the one that had been suggested years after its discovery, if an estimate can be made based on the measurements given of the remains, the length that could be obtained would be much less than the proposed 39 meters, being something approximately an animal of 28 meters in length or less, and probably with a much lower weight than previously estimated, probably being with a mass close or less than for example, Giraffatitan.

Or Option b, is just a 2 meter long tree trunk remain and a bunch of rocks with the shape of an eroded Ilium.

So pick one.

11) Kelmayisaurus This theropod carcharodontosaurid from the early cretaceous was discovered in the early 70s in the city of Karamay, Xinjiang, western china, is known from a very fragmentary holotype formed by a complete left dentary and a partial maxilla. The main peculiarity of this theropod came from another specimen mentioned in the book “The Dinosaur Project: The Story of the Greatest Dinosaur Expedition Ever Mounted”, being the species called “K. giganteus”, being referred from a fragmentary giant vertebra column, it was estimated to had a length of about 22 meters, making it one of the largest theropods known.

Current estimates The mentioned “K. giganteus” is considered to be a nomen nudum and the actual vertebrae column remains probably belongs to a sauropod. The original holotype specimen was estimated to be 9 to 11 meters of length making it a medium size carcharodontosaurid.

12) Mosasaurus hoffmanii At first I wanted to introduce estimations made to the Tylososaurus made by "WWD: Sea Monsters" because was emphasized that these reached a length of 18 meters in length, being quite exaggerated with the current estimates that said that they reached 14 meters at maximum, however, I saw that it was more appropriate to introduce a much more recent size estimation mentioned in a scientific article, in this case of the specimen CCMGE 10/2469 discovered in Penza, Russia, being estimated to have a size of about 17 meters long based in a head-body radio of 1:10 by Russell (1967), making it the largest Mosasaur ever.

Current estimates Giving the point that for such proportions make people draw Mosasaurus with Tylosaur bodies, one person (mention below) took the time to do their research, and as a result, his detailed research revealed that Mosasaurus was quite robust and bulkier in comparison to its relative, giving it a different body ratio and making the 1:10 body-head radio inaccurate. The current estimates make the Penza specimen around 12 to 13 meters in length. Based on M. hoffmanii reconstruction

13) Megalosaurus It would seem strange to put a very outdated reconstruction in this place, however, at the time it had been considered as real by early paleontology. So, Megalosaurus could earn the title of not only being one of the first dinosaurs identified, but also for being the first oversized dinosaur ever, in their first reconstructions created by William Buckland considering him as a massive quadruped lizard with an upright posture of amphibious habits, based in estimations given by Cuvier, this was calculated to be a 12 meters long creature with a weight of an 7 ft tall elephant.

Current estimates After the lizard model was abandoned, the original size estimations were considered to be quite exaggerated with new reconstructions, so most of the later estimations calculated Megalosaurus to be about 9 meters in the beginning and being in recently decades calculated to be 6, 7 or 8 meters long, with a weight less than a ton. Based on Megalosaurus skeletal reconstruction

14) Iguanodon Like with Megalosaurus, at first Iguanodon was estimated to be a massive lizard like animal being extrapolated the proportions at first from an iguana because the resembles of the Iguanodon teeth with these ones, giving a size estimations of about 18 meters long.

Current estimates Again, like Megalosaurus, the lizard model disappeared and over the time this animals has gone through several alterations in their body shape interpretations, varying in designs over the years until they reach their final form (?) being a semi-quadruped herbivore with disproportionately huge hands, with a length around 10 meters and a weight of 3.4 tons, with inferred specimens that can reach 13 meters long. Based on Iguanodon skeletal reconstruction

15) Megalodon Formally Carcharocles megalodon, It has been a shark with problematic size estimations thanks to its many fragmentary fossils being thousands of teeth and some vertebrae, which has given several measures, from the original 30 meters long Bashford Dean estimation in 1909 based on a jaw reconstruction, being downsized to 13 meters to a time later being estimated with a size of 24 to 25 meters long as maximum length.

Current estimates Actual estimations give a length of about 16 meters to a maximum of 18 meters.

16) Liopleurodon The biggest size estimation given to a pliosaur ever, the genus Liopleurodon had been described as a giant 25 meters long and weighing around 150 tons in the WWD series being based to fragmentary fossil teeth remain, it becomes one of the documentary's most iconic animal as well one of the most iconic pliosaurs next to with Pliosaurus or Kronosaurus.

Current estimates The history of the Liopleurodon oversize case is already one the most known around the paleontological community both amateur and professional, that has caused wars of discussions and lots of defenders as well as opposites, and at the end letting a legacy and the perpetual idea of super pliosaurs, but as far is know, there hasn’t been any super pliosaurs and less super Liopleurodon discovered so far, although there has been wild estimations of 15 meters long specimens of others species, which at the end these became very dubious for how fragmentary the evidence has been.

The estimations made by the documentary were not in some points supported by some scientific article or any authority in the matter like with "Ornithocheirus", just made to get the attention of the public, as well, such measure was doubted even for being a maximum size, and most of the estimations made after based on the original remains in comparisons with others Pliosaur suggested that the actual Liopleurodon was 10 meters long, at least at first, and from here Liopleurodon gets smaller and smaller. Studies of other specimens such as Kronosaurus and the discovery of a complete specimen of L. ferox which shown that the skull was 1/5 of the body size gave an approximate length of 6.9 meters, based on the largest specimen found.

#paleoart #paleontology #liopleurodon #sauropod #theropod #megalodon #pachycephalosaurus #walking with dinosaurs #pterosaurs

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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FEATURE: Why Paleontology Is So Important To Pokémon

In the last few decades of the twentieth century, there was an invigorated interest in paleontology. It was likely the most intense era of fascination with the prehistoric since perhaps the Great Dinosaur Bone Rush of the late 1800s, with scientists not only focusing heavily on the extinction event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs but also on their beginnings and how they evolved in intricate and surprising ways to become the dominant creatures on the planet. It was the age in which novelist Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, a science fiction novel that would eventually become the highest-grossing movie of 1993. And a few years later, it was the age that gave us Pokémon.

Now, Pokémon has many ties to paleontology. First and foremost, there are the "Fossil Pokémon" in the games, monsters that can be revived from their long-dead bones and turned into warrior pals for you to add to your team. Many of these Pokémon are based off of real-life prehistoric animals. Tyrantrum is a souped-up Tyrannosaurus Rex. Anorith is based off of the Anomalocaris, a kind of big, ancient shrimp. The Cranidos is very obviously derived from the Pachycephalosaurus. And the Aerodactyl is, well, a pterodactyl. And that's not even mentioning how many real-world animals have been named after Pokémon.

Image via Pokemon

The existence of these creatures, like the existence of dinosaurs did when they were revealed centuries ago, opens up numerous questions about the Pokémon world. Did they exist with modern Pokémon? How did they die out? What was their ecosystem like? In some cases, they're shown to be still around and living — like in the anime episode "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon" where a dynamite mishap reveals a cave full of dozens of them. But for the most part, they provoke our curiosity. What other ages are there in the grand scheme of Pokémon history (and pre-history)? What other species roamed the planet in the age of the Aerodactyl and the Omanyte? How different would a Pokedex look millions of years ago?

This widespread passion for paleontology and dinosaurs gave kids a perfect foundation for their eventual acquaintance with Pokémon. Coinciding with the scientific research was a pop culture revival as well, one that sought to transform dinosaurs from the bloodthirsty titans of the Creature Feature-filled 1950s and '60s to a more benign and ultimately complex classification of animals. Stuff like the 1985 documentary Dinosaur!, featuring narration by the late Christopher Reeve, and the critically acclaimed Microsoft Dinosaurs interactive computer game gave us an image of dinosaurs as wonderful reptilians rather than terrifying, clumsy brutes. Popular films like Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time showed a more multi-faceted depiction of these creatures than had ever been seen before — they were scary, intelligent, caring, and even beautiful at times.

Image via Pokemon TV

So when Pokémon came out, a franchise that took what looked like RPG enemy monsters and filtered them through a lens of companionship and growth, kids were primed to receive them as such. The images we'd seen of dinosaurs roaming across the screen, whether they were solo or in herds, was not too different from what we'd see in the Pokémon anime. Being a fan of Pokémon did not directly imply that you were once a fan of dinosaurs or vice versa, but the connection in their presence and in their representation is clear.

Finally, both foster a need for exploration. The case of the dinosaurs is one that is ceaselessly intriguing. They reflect how the earth changes, how species evolve to survive, and how the way we study something can change drastically over the years. To become fascinated with dinosaurs is to become fascinated with natural history in total. Similarly, it's hard to be a fan of Pokémon without becoming interested in the bigger picture — how it relates to other RPG series, how its many, many monsters have become simultaneous characters and branding iconography, how the series evolves in some aspects and doesn't in others. Both are stepping stones into wider areas of interest in ways that are borderline profound.

Image via Pokemon TV

I write this because starting in July 2021, various museums in Japan will be hosting a touring exhibit called Pokémon Kaseki Hakubutsukan. There, visitors can learn about how various dinosaurs and other examples of prehistoric life relate to the Pokémon franchise. I desperately wish it was coming to the United States, so if you're in Japan this year — or next year, depending on the museum — check it out if you're able to safely.

I grew up loving dinosaurs and then I grew up loving Pokémon, and to see them be so intertwined over the years makes me ridiculously happy. The former lived in a real world that almost seems fantastical, the latter exists in a fantasy world that, thanks to many, many Nintendo handhelds, I've been able to visit over and over again.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Daniel Dockery

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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man-creates-dinosaurs · 7 years

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For Halloween I decided I wanted to try and write about something spooky that nevertheless still fit in with the overall theme of this blog. To this end I’ve decided to write about the fascinating field of cryptozoology and my own interest in the subject from the time I was in middle school till now and about how my views on the subject have changed and evolved. Enjoy! CRYPTOZOOLOGY AND ME: A MEMOIR

When I was in middle school I went through a big cryptozoology phase. I chalk this up to a number of cultural influences. At the time my three favorite shows on TV were The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Invader Zim – all heavily steeped in the paranormal. For those who don’t know, cryptozoology refers to “the study of hidden animals” and its coinage is typically attributed to either Bernard Heuvelmans or Ivan T. Sanderson – who I’ll talk about more later on. For all practical purposes however, today the term generally denotes the vocation of “monster hunter” with the prize quarries being such legendary creatures as Bigfoot and the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster and other lake monsters including Champ the Lake Champlain monster and Ogopogo of Lake Okanagan, sea serpents, living dinosaurs such as the Mokèlé-mbèmbé – an alleged sauropod living in the African Congo – or the Ropen – a bioluminescent pterosaur inhabiting Papua New Guinea – , as well as such decidedly weirder and less biologically plausible creatures as the Jersey Devil, Mothman and the Chupacabra.

As a kid I read all the major cryptozoological authors: Bernard Heuvelmans (On the Track of Unknown Animals, 1955), Ivan T. Sanderson (Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, 1961), Loren Coleman (Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide, 1999), Jerome Clark (Unexplained! 2nd Ed., 1998), Coleman and Clark (Cryptozoology A To Z, 1999), Karl P.N. Shuker (From Flying Toads to Snakes with Wings, 1997), John A. Keel (The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings, 1994), Janet and Colin Bord (Alien Animals, 1981) and Brad Stiger (Out Of The Dark: The Complete Guide to Beings from Beyond, 2001). I also had a well-read copy of W. Haden Blackman’s The Field Guide to North American Monsters (1998) and readily consumed every cryptozoological related documentary or program that came on TV from Animal Planet’s Animal-X to Discovery’s X-Creatures – you can see the influence the X-Files had on pop-culture here! – to The History Channel’s History’s Mysteries.

Looking back on all this I’m not sure how much I really believed that cryptids – the nickname cryptozoologists use for the monsters they track – actually existed. But like many proponents of the paranormal I think it’s fair to say that, at the time, I had a very open mind about all of this.

It may also come as a surprise to many readers to learn that among the various cryptids my favorite wasn’t any of the alleged living dinosaurs or other supposed prehistoric survivors but rather Mothman. I don’t know what it was about the story of the Mothman that so fully captivated me. I think it must have been how utterly alien the creature seemed. By the time I was in middle school dinosaurs, pterosaurs, prehistoric marine reptiles, dragons and even giant bipedal apes were a pretty common part of my imaginary menagerie thanks to lifetime of consuming books and movies about dinosaurs. However until I read Keel’s 1994 book I had never heard of anything even remotely resembling a Mothman.

Today Mothman seems fairly well integrated into contemporary pop-culture – there was even a 2002 film starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, though it did admittedly bomb upon its release – but for those who are unfamiliar here’s the basic gist as it has come down in the paranormal literature and is still being recounted to this day: Beginning roughly in November of 1966, citizens of the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia – located along the Ohio River – began reporting sightings of a creature which was described as a humanoid being with black/grey skin, red glowing eyes and a pair of giant bat-like wings which came out of its back. This gargoyle-like creature – which the local media would eventually dub “The Mothman” – was seen by dozens of eyewitnesses, usually in passing, though in one dramatic early encounter was said to have chased four young adults who were driving in excess of 100 mph down a deserted road. The sightings eventually came to an end nearly one year later in December of 1967 coinciding with the collapse of the area Silver Gate Bridge which killed 46 people. Many paranormalists, and even some cryptozoologists, have attempted to link the creature with the bridge collapse claiming that Mothman acts as a kind of harbinger of impending catastrophes.

By the summer of 2002 I was so obsessed with the story of the Mothman that I convinced my parents to stop by the town of Point Pleasant during our summer vacation to Niagara Falls. I wanted to see the town where Mothman had appeared. This would turn out to be a poignant trip for me because while on it I acquired the book Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend (2002) by Donnie Sergent Jr. and Jeff Wamsley. Sergent Jr. and Wamsley were Point Pleasant locals who had undertaken the arduous task of combing through local and state newspaper archives and locating the original Mothman newspaper reports which they then reprinted – alongside original eyewitness statements, police reports, and letters exchanged between Keel and locals – in their book. Sergent Jr. and Wamsley don’t attempt to make any argument about what the Mothman was or wasn’t, their book is simply a collection of primary source documents about the phenomena which unfolded in Point Pleasant between ’66 and ’67. Being able to go back to the original reports and read them for myself had a profound impact on me because it demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Mothman… was a bird. In the original newspaper reports and statements delivered by eyewitnesses the creature which came to be known as Mothman is repeatedly described as a bird. It does not have the body of a man but rather is described as being as tall as one. It does not have red glowing eyes but is rather described as having red markings around its eyes. It does not have leathery bat-like wings but rather feathers and wings like a bird. In some accounts it is even described as having long skinny legs and a beak! In a few cases eyewitnesses describe seeing multiple creatures together in a flock standing in a field or a clutch of trees before flying away. Many witnesses - including those aforementioned scared twenty-somethings who claimed Mothman chased them down a road - reported that the creature produced a high-pitch squeaking sound. What these people are describing is likely a flock of sandhill cranes which stand six-feet-tall, have grey feathers, bright red patches around their eyes and as for the sound they make: just listen. Sandhill cranes are not native to West Virginia but do migrate down the Mississippi River making it conceivable that a flock could have gotten blown off course and ended up in Point Pleasant where they proceeded to scare the daylights out of locals unfamiliar with such large, odd-looking birds. Another possibility is that some sightings of Mothman were of a snowy owl, which is also uncommon in West Virginia. However as documented in Sergent Jr. and Wamsley’s book in December of ’66 several news outlets reported that a local farmer had killed just such an owl. It is worth noting that after this, sightings of the Mothman largely fell off and were replaced by reports of UFOs (which in all likelihood were, pardon the cliché but I’m being dead serious here, weather balloons). A few sightings that occurred in the area during the summer of ’67 appear to have been the result of common turkey vultures. What this means is that contrary to what the paranormalists like to claim the Mothman ‘flap’ did not occur over a 12-month period but only for about three months at the end of ’66/start of ’67 and was certainly the result of people seeing unusually large birds in the area.

However what Sergent Jr. and Wamsley’s book also demonstrated via their reprinting of sci-fi TV screenwriter turned paranormal investigator John Keel’s private letters with local residents was that Keel was actively manipulating information and witnesses in order to have their accounts match the scenario he had envisioned in which the small town of Point Pleasant played host to a virtual invasion of flying saucers and alien monsters portending the disaster which was the Silver Bridge collapse. Keel initially presented these ideas in a streamlined manner in a chapter for his 1970 book Strange Creatures From Time and Space which he would revise in 1994 as his cryptozoological/UFOlogical “encyclopedia” The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings. Between that time Keel wrote a more extensive version of the Mothman incident as he saw it in the form of a sundry mish-mash of paranormal potpourri that was his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. Today more people know Keel’s version of the events then they do the actual eyewitnesses’ and while Keel’s books captivated me as a middle schooler nowadays I find them more than a little cringe worthy. Keel was vehemently anti-science, anti-academia, never cited his sources and often embellished and exaggerated events to make them read better.

The same year I became convinced that Mothman was just a misidentified bird I also encountered the magazine Skeptical Inquirer at a local Barnes & Noble. The cover story was “Evaluating 50 Years of Bigfoot Evidence” by researcher Benjamin Radford. I got the magazine and in six short pages Radford had disabused me of any notion that Bigfoot might exist. A final encounter with marine biologist Richard Ellis’ book Monsters of the Sea (1994) on a trip to the library convinced me that sea serpents and lake monsters were also likewise nothing more than figments of mankind’s imagination. My fascination with cryptozoology now thoroughly deflated I redirected by interests back towards world mythology and folklore; a path which eventually led to me obtaining two degrees in Religious Studies and teaching in the field.

I didn’t think much more about cryptozoology during my time in college with a few exceptions. In grad school I took a class on the paranormal in American culture and had to read the book Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture (2011) by Christopher Bader, Frederick Carson Mencken, and Joseph O. Baker. I ended up having a lot of issues with the trio of scholar’s methodology – for example the fact that they seemed willing to accept certain claims made by cryptozoologists at face value such as the idea that Native American lore is full of descriptions of Bigfoot-like creatures: it isn’t – but one point they do make and make well is that the kind of spin-doctor treatment employed by Keel when writing about the Mothman is rampant within the field of cryptozoology and goes all the way back to its very founders.

As mentioned at the top, the coining of the term cryptozoology is generally ascribed to either Bernard Heuvelmans or Ivan T. Sanderson. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1911, Sanderson attended Cambridge University where he obtained a BA in zoology and later an MA in both botany and ethnology. For a while Sanderson worked as a science popularizer penning articles and appearing on TV with live animals. However, beginning in the 1940s Sanderson developed an interest in the paranormal in general and cryptids in particular – especially Bigfoot and the Yeti – and began writing about such topics fulltime; mostly for pulp-style men’s adventure magazines. As detailed by Joshua Blu Buhs in his book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (2009), while Sanderson certainly seemed to believe that Bigfoot and the Yeti existed he nevertheless didn’t hold most Bigfoot eyewitnesses in high regard, which is to say nothing of his low opinion of his fellow Bigfoot researches. Despite such misgivings however Sanderson knew what his reader’s did and didn’t want to hear and as a result spun stories in which less than reputable eyewitnesses became upstanding citizens, crazy sounding sightings were reworked into more feasible narratives, and credulous cryptid hunters became competent men of action.

In 1948 one of Sanderson’s articles on the possibility of living dinosaurs caught the attention of Heuvelmans; a Belgian-French zoologist who had earned his PhD from the Free University of Brussels studying mammal dentition. Like Sanderson, Heuvelmans became enraptured by the idea of cryptids and spent the rest of his life writing articles and books on the subject. Two of these books, On the Track of Unknown Animals (1955) and In the Wake of Sea Serpents (1965), were especially influential and worked to establish what would become the overarching methodology of all cryptozoologists. The first of these, employed in On the Track, is what paleontologist Darren Naish has dubbed the “prehistoric survivor paradigm.” Simply put this approach advocates that when attempting to identify an alleged mystery animal the first route one should take is finding a prehistoric animal which superficially matches the description of said mystery animal and proclaiming it the creature you’re looking for. Application of the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” is widespread in cryptozoology with Bigfoot and the Yeti being identified as Gigantopithecus – an extinct species of giant ape similar to an orangutan from Southeast Asia –, sea serpents and lake monsters being dubbed extant plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, mosasaurs, Pleistocene era whales like basilosaurus and in the case of cryptozoologist Dennis Hall a long necked Triassic era reptile known as tanystropheus, supposed giant Thunderbirds being claimed as either pterosaurs or surviving members of a clade of large North American vultures known as Teratorns, and legendary African dragons being seen as evidence of living dinosaurs. In one remarkable case Heuvelmans even proposed that the Australian cryptid feline known as the Queensland Tiger might be an extinct species of marsupial known as the thylacoleo. Thylacoleo means “pouch lion” but the lion part of the name is metaphorical not literal since in life the thylacoleo would have looked more like a giant wombat then a tiger.

The problem with the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” should be self-evident. Namely that the animals in question are extinct, in most cases by many millions of years. Proposing that a supposed mystery animal is a relic from some bygone era is a bit like a detective assuming that a mugger who a witness describes as being a tall Caucasian male with dark eyes and a beard must be Abraham Lincoln simply because he matches certain aspects of the witness’s description. Cryptozoologists of course love to point to the case of the coelacanth; a Cretaceous era fish believed extinct until living ones were discovered in 1938 in the West Indian Ocean. However this prehistoric fish is something of a red herring. It is one thing to lose track of a fish in the fossil record. It is another entirely to claim that large marine and terrestrial animals such as dinosaurs could somehow survive for millions of years without leaving any evidence.

In the advent that the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” should fail, Heuvelmans’ second approach was to simply makeup an animal. This is what he does with wild abandon in his In the Wake of Sea Serpents. Have an eyewitness who claims to have seen an animal swimming in the water with brown fur, a long neck and tail, webbed feet and a horse-like head? No problem! This is clearly a description of an unknown species of giant long-necked, long-faced otter! Heuvelmans does this throughout Sea Serpents going as far as to invent nine whole new species of undiscovered sea monster. As Buhs notes in his Bigfoot book, Heuvelmans appears to have operated under the peculiar belief that as long as one could describe an animal so that it sounded scientifically plausible then that was enough to assume that it likely existed! Modern cryptozoologists still operate under this rubric. Loren Coleman, the most prominent cryptozoologist alive today and curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum located in Portland, Maine, follows Heuvelmans’ example perfectly in his 1999 Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide co-authored by Patrick Huyghe and illustrated by Harry Trumbore. In this book, Coleman proposes the existence of a dozen different species of unknown hominid ranging from extant Gigantopithecus and Neanderthals, huge “devil-monkeys,” swamp dwelling Skunk Apes, fairy-tale style “True Giants” and even a type of semi-aquatic species of primate with webbed claws and spines which he believes may be responsible for reports of the chupacabra – who we will come back to shortly.

Despite the fact that Heuvelmans and Sanderson’s methods were scientifically unsound, scores of self-professed cryptozoologists continue to use them to this day. And as Benjamin Radford notes in his book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction and Folklore (2011) whenever the claim that cryptids are merely cultural constructions is raised cryptozoologists immediately point back to the alleged eyewitness testimony: the bread and butter of cryptozoology. People don’t have eyewitnesses encounters with cultural constructs they say. Except for the fact that they do. Human perception and recollection is extremely unreliable. People get confused, forget, misremember, make mistakes and unknowingly fabricate details even about some of the most commonplace and important events in their lives. With regards to seeing something that isn’t really there, a classic example is the case of the escaped red panda of the Netherlands’ Rotterdam Zoo in 1978. After news got out that one of the zoo’s red pandas had escaped its enclosure hundreds of eyewitness sightings from across the country poured in. Suddenly people were seeing red pandas everywhere and anywhere. Eventually zookeepers found the animal and determined that it had not traveled outside the zoo’s immediate vicinity. How then does one account for the multiple eyewitness sightings of the animal? Merely that people upon hearing about the escaped red panda became primed and expected to see it and so did. This same phenomena happens when people travel to places like the woods of the Pacific Northwest or Loch Ness. Because they’ve heard the legend of Bigfoot and Nessie they now expect – even if only subconsciously – to encounter the monster and as a result any unusual sight or sound becomes the beast. This is what celebrated folklorist Bill Ellis refers to as “Legend Tripping.”

Of course in some instances people actually do see some animal they can’t identify, but then we’re back to the sandhill crane in Point Pleasant. A former colleague of mine, Alan Rauch who specializes in the area of animals and their representations in literature and popular-culture, often speaks about the issue of “animal illiteracy” among the general public. The simple fact of the matter is that most people are not particularly familiar with the numerous creatures that inhabit this planet alongside us outside of those few domesticated animals we keep as pets or on farms and those celebrity animals found in zoos and aquariums like lions, elephants, gorillas, giraffes, dolphins, whales, etc... And many are also unfamiliar with the full capabilities of many animals. For example, few people seem to know that bears can move about on their hind legs, that moose and deer are excellent swimmers or that alligators are adept at climbing. The issue of animal illiteracy is undoubtedly responsible for a great many alleged cryptid sightings as was demonstrated in 2010 when a video posted online of a great frigatebird was mistaken by many Americans as footage of a pterosaur!

Once instances of legend tripping and animal illiteracy have been removed the small numbers of supposed cryptid sightings that remain often tend to be so outlandish as to raise serious doubts about their legitimacy. A good example of this is the case of the original chupacabra eyewitness Madelyne Tolentino; a Puerto Rican woman with an interest in UFOs and conspiracy theories who claimed that she encountered a creature identical to the monster from the movie SPIECIES (1995, Dir. Roger Donaldson) which she had just recently watched. Not only does Tolentino claim that she encountered this creature but that she was able to observe minute details about its anatomy – such as a lack of genitals – even though she was a considerable distance from it and that it levitated and communicated with her telepathically. She also claims that this was only the first of two chupacabra encounters that she had with the second occurring while she was taking a taxi across town! Despite the fact that Tolentino claims to have had two other eyewitnesses with her at the time of her first encounter no one has been able to corroborate her story, though her husband did at one point claim he was in possession of “chupacabra slime” similar in appearance to the ectoplasm seen in the movie GHOSTBUSTERS (1984, Dir. Ivan Reitman) though he could never produce the actual substance for anyone to see. Radford, in his aforementioned book Tracking the Chupacabra, concludes that if Tolentino is not perpetuating a hoax then she is likely a victim of confabulation; a psychiatric disorder in which a person loses the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction as evidenced by Tolentino’s conviction that the monster and events from the movie SPIECIES are real. Of course, even the most dyed in the wool cryptozoologists realize how ridiculous a story like Tolentino’s sounds, and so in the tradition of Sanderson and Keel will judiciously edit the tale when relating it in books and articles on the chupacabra removing inconvenient details and instead making it sound as if Tolentino merely had an eyewitness encounter with a strange animal.

In wrapping up, I want to talk about what renewed my interest in cryptozoology. As stated before, after the boom and bust cycle of my middle school years I didn’t think much about cryptids. I don’t regret the time I spent looking into the subject however because I love monsters and because I believe that learning about cryptozoology and then learning to recognize the flaws inherent in cryptozoological methodology as outlined above helped me to develop critical thinking and research skills that served me well as I began to peruse a degree in Religious Studies – an academic field where researchers are often confronted with many issues similar to those found in cryptozoology (i.e. the importance of primary source documents, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, the deliberate and accidental blurring of fact and fiction, etc…)

Then in 2010/2011 I discovered the podcast Monster Talk (tagline: “The Science Show About Monsters”) hosted by Blake Smith with co-hosts Karen Stollznow and, for the first few years, Benjamin Radford. As Blake has explained many times over the years the idea behind Monster Talk was to do a show on cryptozoology and the paranormal that amounted to more than just wide-eyed mystery mongering. To this end Monster Talk is firmly rooted in science and academic scholarship. Each episode focuses on a particular topic with special guests called in to speak on specific matters. These guests are not only fascinating to listen to but have also provided me with a wealth of new reading material including such books and papers as Robert E. Bartholomew’s The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster (2012), Robert Lebling’s Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (2011), Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda’s Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide (2012), Christopher Josiffe’s article on Gef the Talking Mongoose, Joe Laycock and Natalia Mikels’ work on the connection between Nessie and Buddhism, and Brian Regal’s fascinating research on the history of the Jersey Devil. And now is a great time to be interested in critical approaches to cryptozoology too with multiple excellent books available. Two that come highly recommended are Darren Naish’s Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths (2017) and Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2012) by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero.

To be clear, the aim of Monster Talk is not to ridicule cryptozoologists or those who believe or even just have an interest in such creatures but rather to try and separate history from legend and to do so with nary an ounce of cynicism about the subject matter. The hosts of Monster Talk are not doing this show because they think monsters are dumb. They clearly love monsters. It’s just that they believe (as I do) that it’s important to remain aware of where fact ends and fiction begins, and that often time truth is indeed far stranger than fiction.

Image: Acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy painter Frank Frazetta’s art which adorned the first cover for John A. Keel’s Strange Creatures from Time and Space (1970).

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