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