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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CB930.4:

Pterodactyls, extinct flying reptiles, supposedly existed around one hundred million years ago. According to an article in The Illustrated London News of February 9, 1856, page 166, workmen discovered a living pterodactyl. In the winter of 1856, they were working on a railway tunnel between St. Dizey and the Nancy lines, and they had broken and removed a boulder of Jurassic limestone, when the creature stumbled out of the tunnel toward them. It fluttered its wings, croaked, and collapsed dead at their feet. It had a wingspan of ten feet seven inches, four legs with talons for feet, legs joined by a membrane like a bat, a mouth filled with sharp teeth, and black, leathery, oily skin. An exact mold of the creature's body was found in the limestone from which the creature was released.

Source:

Baugh, Carl E. 1989. Panorama of Creation. Oklahoma City, OK: Hearthstone Publishing, Ltd., pp. 19-21.
Doolan, Robert. 1993. Are dinosaurs alive today? Where Jurassic Park went wrong! Creation 15(4) (Sept.): 12-15. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i4/dinosaurs.asp

Response:

  1. The story is true to the extent that the discovery of a pterodactyl was reported in the 1856 newspaper.

    At the time, there was a great Franco-Prussian rivalry, and the Solnhofen Limestone from Bavaria (from which Archaeopteryx would later be discovered) was producing many fabulous fossils which were loudly trumpeted by German paleontologists. When a tunnel was being built in France through limestone the same age as the Solnhofen Limestone, French "gentlemen geologists" took the opportunity to trumpet a story of their own. In the original report, the pterodactyl crumbled to dust, conveniently leaving no evidence.

    The newspaper account identified the pterodactyl as Pterodactylus anas. Pterodactylus is a genus of robin-sized pterosaurs, none with a wingspan even approaching ten feet. "Anas" is Latin for "duck," which is "canard" in French, which is an English word for a hoax.

  2. The story is ridiculous on its face and really deserves no more response than ridicule. When did creationists decide that gullibility is a virtue?

Links:

Kuban, Glen J., 2005. Living pterodactyls? http://paleo.cc/paluxy/livptero.htm

Nedin, Chris. 1994. Re: Worst YEC book ever. http://dml.cmnh.org/1994May/msg00144.html
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created 2005-9-20