linuxmafia.com 2016/linuxmafia.com.tar/linuxmafia.com/pub/skeptic/files-to-classify/anomaly.txt

Text File | 1996-02-19 | 4KB | 63 lines

[Sysop's note:  This file is in the grand, eclectic tradition of Charles
Fort, the connoiseur of the bizarre who founded the Fortean tradition.
Enjoy, but beware of taking it as factual and accurate:  At a brief
glance, I notice that it takes the Paluxy River alleged man-and-dinosaur
footprint hoax seriously.  These, including the "manprints", were long
ago found to have been artificially chiseled into their present
appearance by a hoaxer.  The Forteans aim to find and publicise
anomalies that conflict with scientific orthodoxy.  If they were more
selective and careful in so doing, they would do the cause of science a
major favour.  As it is, they tend mostly to repeat for generations
allegations that have already been investigated and found disappointing
by more careful researchers.        -- Rick Moen, The Skeptic's Board]




    Basically bizarre archaeological finds--

    Human skulls with horns were found in a burial mound at Sayre, Bradford
County, Pennsylvania, in the 1880's. Except for the horny projections some two
inches above the eyebrows, the men to whom these skeletons belonged were
anatomically normal, though at seven feet tall, well above average height. It
was estimated that they were buried about 1200 AD.
                                                  Pursuit, 6:69-70, July 1973

   Seven skeletons were found in a burial mound near Clearwater, Minnesota, in
1888. They had double rows of teeth in the upper and lower jaws and had been
buried in a sitting position, facing the lake. The foreheads were unusually
low and sloping, with prominent brows.
                          The St.Paul and Minneapolis Pioneer Press, July 1,
1888

  Dinosaur tracks and human tracks exist in the riverbed of the Paluxy River,
near Glen Rose, Texas. There also exists and admission of fraud. The
authenticity if dinosaur tracks at several sites along the Paluxy River has
remained largely unchallenged for more than 50 years. However, the discovery
of manlike prints in the same rock stratum--in one case a human print actually
overlaps that of a three-toed dinosaur--is unacceptable to orthodox
paleontology, since the giant reptiles were supposedly extinct some 60 million
years before man walked the earth. The prints had been found in areas normally
submerged by the Paluxy River, which makes anyone wishing to duplicate the
effect of the prints to carve away a large area of rock around the print to
leave the raised ridge, and would, of course, have to work underwater.
                                    Frederick Beierle--Man, Dinosaur, and
History

  What may be the oldest fossil footprint yet found was discovered in June
1968 by William Meister, an amateur fossil collector. If the print is what it
appears to be--a sandaled foot crushing a trilobite--it would have to have
been made 300 to 600 million years ago and would be sufficient enough to
overturn all conventionally accepted ideas of human and geological evolution
or to prove that a shoe-wearing biped from another world had once visited this
planet. Meister made this potentially disturbing find during a rock and fossil
hunting expedition to Antelope Spring, 43 miles west of Delta, Utah.
Trilobites were small marine invertebrates, the relatives of crabs and
shrimps, that flourished for some 320 million years before becoming extinct
280 million years ago. Humans are currently thought to have emerged between 1
and 2 million years ago and to have been wearing well-shaped footwear for no
more than a few thousand years. The sandal that seems to have crushed a living
trilobite was 10 and a fourth inches long and 3 and a half inches wide; the
heel is slightly indented more than the sole, as a human shoe print would be.