Taking Up the Runes by Paxson, Diana (BTAKUP)

April 18th, 2010 by pacapao

Taking Up the Runes by Paxson, Diana (BTAKUP) PLM: Taking up the Runes is the ultimate workbook for using runes – the ancient Norse alphabet used for communication, divination, and magical works – on a psychic, spiritual, and magical level. Learn how to make your own rune set and how to use the runes in guided meditations and song. Discover dozens of rituals and spells for all levels – from total beginner to experienced practitioner. Paxton’s years of experience in working with the runes and leading rune workshops show through every page of this book with anecdotes, mythology, poetry, and history of runes firmly entwined with practical exercises, examples, and lessons. paperback 414 pages. Taking Up the Runes by Paxson, Diana (BTAKUP)

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The Serpent’s Tooth

April 16th, 2010 by pacapao

The Serpent’s Tooth Unlike another review for this novel, I found that the fantasy element was lacking. A good re-telling of the King Lear story, it reads more like a proper historical novel than a fantasy novel. This is especially apparent when read in comparison to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Arthurian Novels. : Cridilla, the youngest daughter of Leir Blatonikos, grows to womanhood in a magnificent land, learns the lost secrets of the Goddess from Crow, and must face her own sister’s perfidy. Reprint. The Serpent’s Tooth

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Dinosaur Eggs and Babies

April 8th, 2010 by pacapao

Dinosaur Eggs and Babies This is a collection of papers on finidings related to dinosaur eggs and developing dinosaurs. The papers are of a technical nature, so it’s not for the casual reader, but for those interested in the details it is a great resource. : In the last couple of decades the study of dinosaur eggs and babies has proved to be one of the most exciting and profitable areas of dinosaur research. This is the first book solely devoted to this topic and reviews, in scientific detail, our present state of knowledge about this exciting area of palaeontology. Chapters in the book discuss all aspects of the science including the occurrence of eggs, nests and baby skeletons, descriptive osteology of juvenile skeletons, comparative histology of juvenile bone, analyses of eggs and egg shells, palaeoenvironments of nesting sites, nesting behaviour and developmental growth of baby dinosaurs. The volume will be an invaluable addition to the book collections of vertebrate palaeontologists and their graduate students.
Dinosaur Eggs and Babies

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Paleontology and Paleo-Zoology – What Are They and What Do They Tell Us About the Genesis Flood?

April 3rd, 2010 by pacapao

In the abstract and surrealistic reasoning of the pagan world with respect to historic time, the fall-back position for evolutionists and historic geologists is paleontology and paleo-zoology. The record of the fossils is purported to establish historic time by a uniform system with respect to the burying of fossils in the sedimentary strata. There is supposed to be a uniform column consisting in a stack of different time layers in rocks which shows the progression of life up through the various ages of so-called geologic time.  A simple way of putting this is that paleontologists (those who study prior life forms by their fossil remains) believe that the rocks of this world are stacked in layers like a cake and that each layer belongs to a different geological age. Paleontologists claim that strata can be divided into a series of recognizable and predictable increments that correspond to the geologic-ages column. In other words, they argue that these layers are always the same and that therefore whatever layer of rock a fossil is found in, that is how long ago it lived on this earth. The last strata or layer where it occurs is supposed to be when it became extinct. This utter dependence by historic geology and evolution upon paleo-zoology, which is actually that division of paleontology that gives its whole attention to the study of fossils, is freely and openly admitted by historic geologists. 

Circular Reasoning

Here again we encounter the circular reasoning of evolutionists. The age of the strata of rocks and/or sediment is determined by the fossils; and the age of the fossils is determined by the geologic age of the strata. Evolutionists, both geologists and paleontologists, claim that these correlations always exist. But when looked at fairly, in the light of common sense and reality, this so-called science is neither science nor consistent. Many times such commonness does exist between rocks strata in different areas, but it is pure speculation and fantasy to take the position that this represents an evolutionary development. There is no evidence at all that fossils were caused in the way and over the time that evolutionists claim. The Genesis Flood is a much more logical explanation for these phenomena. Tiny creatures, that have little or no mobility, would naturally be found on the bottom of the sediment layers. Fish and other water creatures that could move and attempt to escape the onrushing, turbid currents would be expected to be higher up in the sedimentary layer. All land creatures would necessarily be higher still in the column. Of course reptiles would be lower than animals that could move more rapidly. Big strong animals would be the highest up in the strata columns since they could take to the high ground and escape their fate the longest.

Fatal exceptions tha tput the Lie to the Geolgic Time Columns

But that notwithstanding, there are many exceptions to this system which the paleontologists insist always occurs. These exceptions are proof positive that the system does not represent different ages. If it did, there could be no exceptions. This has not escaped the notice of scientists themselves in related fields. One of them, Robin S. Allen, in an article in the bulletin of the Geological Society of America published as Volume 59, January l948, wrote on page two: ”Because of the sterility of its concepts, historical geology, which includes paleontology and stratigraphy, has become static and unproductive. Current methods of delimiting intervals of time, which are the fundamental units of historical geology, and of establishing chronology are of dubious validity. Worse than that, the criteria of correlation–the attempt to equate in time, or synchronize, the geological history of one area with that of another–are logically vulnerable. The findings of historical geology are suspect because the principles upon which they are based are either inadequate, in which case they should be reformulated, or false, in which case they should be discarded. Most of us refuse to discard or reformulate, and the result is the present deplorable state of our discipline.” Here is a scientist who says that the historic geological ages column, as authorized by the paleontological fossils studies, is sterile, static, and in a deplorable state. It should either be entirely revamped or abandoned altogether. It is illogical, and unscientific in many instances. And yet it is stubbornly clung to by men who worship it as a religion instead of viewing it realistically as a scientific theory with flaws so serious as to make it logically and ethically irreverent in its present form. 

When Liars Have To Lie To Cover Up Lies

 

In some cases it is only individual specimens that are out of order. When this occurs, evolutionists try to explain it away. If it is older than the stratum bed it is found in, then the bed was eroded away and redeposited later. If it is younger than the stratum in which it occurs, then it was either reworked and mixed with an older stratum, or else the specie was older than first thought. At this point the Paleontologist is admitting that his age column means nothingIf he does not know when these species existed then the columns can have no meaning at all. This kind of gobbledygook and mealy-mouthing has been well identified by Allen as sterile, deplorable, and logically inconsistent. Many times entire stratum that are supposed to be in the column are missing completely. And then there are cases where the formations are in reverse order, or out of order. The missing strata are accounted for as having eroded away before the later strata were deposited. In the upside down case it is theorized that one side of the formation tilted and was thrust up and the other side slid across. You can get the picture if you think of shuffling a deck of cards.   Of course it is not so hard with a deck of cards but we are talking about slabs of rock miles thick, having surface areas of thousands of square miles and weighing hundreds of thousands of billions of tons.  

the Bible Has the Answers

The Genesis Flood removes all of these problems. The strata were deposited randomly as currents at the same level had different sediments having come from different parts of the earth, and there was no uniform manner in which animal life or plant life was buried. All of this was done at the same time (except in the case of local floods and volcanoes) about forty-three hundred years ago.

Examples of Inconsistencies

Again, we will not have space to be thorough in terms of numerical examples. But the ones that we will cover will be sufficient to establish very well the point we want to make, which is that fossil evidence does not support paleontological theory, and it is compatible with the Biblical account of the Great Flood. According to Whitcomb-Morris, in the Genesis Flood, at page 156, some evolutionists have taken the position that there are basically six ways for fossils to form. The point is arguable, but we will take that outline for now.  First is the preserving of the entire animal by freezing. Many specimens have been preserved in this way, especially in Siberia. Some Mammoths have been found whole, with flesh still intact, with undigested grass in their stomachs and, at least in one reported case, with grass in their mouths. This certainly does not represent a phasing out over millions of years. It demands a sudden, world wide catastrophe. For this reason, along with the fact that it also means that the ice age was a recent phenomenon in geologic history, scientists constantly underestimate, understate, and ignore this enormously significant paleontological evidence. Estimates, according to Morris -Whitcomb, run as high as 5,000,000 mammoths alone along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska. On page 289 of The Genesis Flood they say, “The richness of the Siberian mammoth deposits in the permafrosts defies description.” The entire skeletal remains of other animals, as bear, horse, camel, saber-toothed tiger, rhinoceros, have been found in other northern regions. In almost all cases they are much larger than modern counterparts of their specie–often gigantic. No wonder scientists ignore as best they can get away with, these fossil beds. Their testimony is most significant. In addition to catastrophe by water, they witness of devolution as a common occurrence. That is to say, animals getting smaller and less sophisticated with the passing of time. And of course they also tell of a recent ice age. Then there is the most usual type of fossil which is the one where only the hard parts remain, as bones, shells, and the like. But these fossils too reveal information which is out of harmony with the evolutionary scheme. For one thing there is no evidence, except in that case of catastrophes such as floods and volcanoes, where fossils are being formed today. This is a very telling blow to historic paleontology and evolution. Without getting technical it tells us that fossils have not been forming as a common occurrence down through the ages, but that they only form in certain, highly definable, and particular situations. By far the most ordinary and recognizable of those phenomena are floods. This argues well for the Biblical story of the Genesis Flood and the mass burial of man and beast under the slimes and soils of the earth-covering, turbid waters, slides, earthquakes, upheavals and volcanoes. Bones of animals usually remain on the surface and disintegrate through oxidation and other processes. But fossils of great magnitude, in just the way they occur now, are what we would naturally expect to find as a result of the Genesis Flood. They must be buried by sediment and sealed off from the air. 

Another contradiction between the physical record on the one hand and the theories of paleontology and organic evolution between the species is found in the fossil deposits in Lincoln County, Wyoming.  That deposit contains some of the most perfect specimens of fossilized fish and plants in existence. These, too, were huge. There are Gar-Pike seven feet long and palm leaves 6 to 8 feet in length and 3 to 4 feet wide. This shows that these cold, snowy mountains were once tropical as the Genesis Flood tells us. In addition, there are snipes and plover about the size of chickens (these are quite small birds today), deep sea bass, turtles, mammals and masses of insects. Here we have fossils from species supposedly having become extinct millions upon millions of years ago, buried with creatures which are modern. 

The BoneCave Mystery

Then there is the case of the Cumberland Bone Cave in Maryland. Remains of many species are in the cave together. There are reptiles, bats, rabbits, groundhogs, coyotes, peccaries, antelope, muskrats, beaver, and a mastodon. This is of course a denial of the paleontological time scale and is an affirmation of the catastrophe of the Great Flood.

The La Brae Tar Pits

In the La Brae Pits in the Los Angeles area tens of thousands of fossils have been recovered. There are species that were supposed to have been extinct for millions of years on top of species that are still running around today. Here the historic paleontologist’s time column is certainly all out of whack. Not only that, but can you imagine these multiple thousands of animals all having come along over hundreds of millions of years, one at a time, and having fallen in this same tar pit? 

Carbon Fossils

Another way that fossils form is by preserving only carbon. This is the so-called carbonization process. This is concerned with paleobotany, or the study of plant life from fossils. This has meaning mostly with respect to coal deposits.

Fossilized Evidence

Sometimes the fossil remains of animals amount to nothing more than fossilized tracks left in stone. Many thousands of such tracks have been unearthed all over the world. 

The Case of The Giant Five-Toed Man and the Giant Three-Toed Whatever

 

One such place where these tracks have been discovered is in the Pauluxy River Bed near Glen Rose, Texas. There were indeed three-toed foot prints in the so-called Cretaceous shales of the river bed. These prints were very sharp and perfectly preserved. So much so that it has caused many scientists, not all of them creationists, to doubt that these prints could be more than several thousands of years old. Millions of years would surely have eroded them to the point to where they were not nearly so sharp and distinct.  But that is not the most remarkable feature of the Pauluxy River Bed. The startling thing is that there are large human footprints in the same river bed very near the three-toed print. A geologist who was soon on the scene and studied the prints, Albert C. Ingalls, reported that the prints gave every indication of having been made by human feet at a time when the rocks were soft mud. According to Morris-Whitcomb this is by no means a unique occurrence. Other similar prints, some very huge indeed, have been found in a number of different places. Scientists of the evolutionary persuasion have done everything possible to come up with some other explanation but to no avail. 

The prints have been photographed and casts have been made of them. Yet historic geologists and historic paleontologists continue to deny this evidence to this day, putting out written material which attempts to make it appear that creationists have tried to invent something for their own purpose. But Morris-Whitcomb, in The Genesis Flood, pages 167, 174 and 175, have pictures of the river bed, the three-toed creature’s print side by side with the human print, and castings of the prints. They appear to be on the order of five times as large in terms of overall surface area as a normal modern man. Albert C. Ingall, in an article entitled “The Carboniferous Mystery,” (He apparently thought the prints were real enough to be a mystery), in Volume 162 of the Scientific American, said that if these were indeed human prints then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. At this point we must say that the good doctor may be a bit hasty and arbitrary. It takes a measure of common sense and the ability and honesty to know what you are looking at in order to drive a truck.

These footprints were photographed by Clifford L. Burdick, a practicing mining geologist. Roland T. Bird, a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History, carefully examined the footprints, as well as the rocks they were found in, and gave the following report: ”Yes,” said this historic, evolutionary paleontologist from the Museum of Natural History, “they apparently were real enough. Real as rock could be…the strangest things of their kind I had ever seen. On the surface of each was splayed the near likeness of a human foot, perfect in every detail. But each imprint was 15 inches long.” And so we see that the legitimate record of the fossils shows, in this instance, that the dinosaur (if indeed that is what it was), the cretaceous river bed, and the man were all there at the same time– not 55 million years ago, but forty-three hundred years ago at the time of the Flood. And yet for all of this, there is no historical record in the archives of the teamsters union that it has ever been flooded by geologists and paleontologists looking for work. That is one deluge that we can all be thankful, never took place. 

Living Fossils

One of the large, embarrassing, and truly devastating problems, to which Dr. Allen referred earlier, is the situation where living fossils are found. In New Zealand a strange creature know as the tuatara was found quite alive and well. It belongs to an order of reptiles known as the beakheads. The problem here is a very simple one for evolutionists. Paleontologists have relegated this creature to the early Cretaceous Period. It was supposed to have become extinct 135 million years ago.  But here it is, alive and well, and in all that time, while dinosaurs were coming and going and apes were evolving into men, it never evolved on iota! What a remarkable thing!

Yet Another Living Fossil

Another late find that has evolutionists scratching their heads is the coelecanth, a fish that was supposed to have phased out in the evolutionary ladder over 70 million years ago according to historic paleontologists. Says Dr. Charles M. Bogert, in the Scientific Monthly, March l953: “Typical crossopterygians have been extinct since the Paleozoic; the fossil record of the crossopterygians extends to the Cretaceous, some 70 million years ago. In consequence, I (like many another lecturer) used to tell my class, emphatically, that there are no living crossopterygians. And I can well remember my amazement, in the winter of 1939, at seeing in the London Illustrated News a photograph of a living–or recently living–coelecanth.” In other words this scientist, along with many other scientists, had been lying to your children and telling them that there was proof of something having become extinct 70 million years ago when it is still alive today. Nor can this be considered an innocent mistake. It is part and parcel of the evolutionary philosophy that is designed to blaspheme God, the Bible, and Creation. These men, with no proof, license, or authority, had made up a story about fossils found in rocks that was off by more than 70 million years. But now the good doctor does not admit to his students that the whole circular reasoning of the “ages” theory is completely false and that there is no proof of biological evolution or the geological ages. No, he laughs it off by saying, “Imagine my surprise.”

Paleobotany

In paleobotany, the record is no better. The conifer genus Metasequoia was supposed to have become extinct from the earth, according to fossilized leaves found in the so-called Eocene Age and in rocks of the Miocene age. Eocene is 60,000,000 years old, but Miocene is only about 30,000,000 old according to historic paleobotany, with no fossils occurring for more than 20,000,000 years. But Dr. Ralph W. Chaney, a paleobotanist from the University of California, in the American Scientist, Vol. 36, October 1948, in an article called, Metasequoia Discovery, tells about making an excursion to study trees and finding over 100 of these trees still living today; one of them over 100 feet tall. Another example is identified in an article that was found in the Science Digest of September 1959, p. 81, under the heading: Start Search for Living Fossils. It says: ”A specimen of a living fossil, perhaps the most primitive extant member of one of the major classes of animals, has been recently added to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. This is a crustacean that has certain characters of the long-extinct trilobites, the earth’s dominant animals of over a half billion years ago, fossils of which are among the earliest traces of a high order of life on the planet…presumably it is exclusively an inhabitant of the mud bottoms of shallow inshore waters and never comes to the surface or has a free-swimming existence. This may account for the fact that it has remained unknown for so long.” 

To Laugh or to Cry?

My, my, my! Live trilobites that have been extinct for 500 million years; living reptiles that have been extinct for 135 million years; living fish that have been extinct for 70 million years; and growing trees that have been extinct for 20 million years–Startling, is it not? Now this, remember, is the uniform, reliable, fully researched, and virtually infallible system of dating the strata from their fossil contents, that evolutionists use as the basis for their whole theory, and without which there is no theory

Professing Themselves To Be Wise, They Became Fools

These examples from the world of paleontology, paleo-zoology, and paleobotany prove that the geologic ages, as established by the historic paleontologists, mean absolutely nothing at all. The whole theory is an absolute farce and a hoax. Even those of their own, whom we have quoted over the last several generously, have admitted that there is no scientific, logical, rational reason to believe the theory of the geological ages, which is in a deplorable state of affairs insofar as ethics and credibility are concerned. And, from the true geological and the fossil witness, there is every reason to believe the Biblical account of the Genesis Flood.

© Earl Cripe, 2002
Earl Cripe, Phd

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Walking on Eggs: The Astonishing Discovery of Thousands of Dinosaur Eggs in the Badlands of Patagonia

April 2nd, 2010 by pacapao

Walking on Eggs: The Astonishing Discovery of Thousands of Dinosaur Eggs in the Badlands of Patagonia Dinosaurs – Sam Breidenbach – Tucson, AZ
A worthy book and well worth reading if the subject holds interest for you. Generally college level reading.
QUICK REVIEW
This is a fairly good book about the discovery of dinosaur eggs (and a few other fossils) in Argentina and what scientists learned from studying them. An interesting book.

FULL REVIEW
This book is written about a couple of things. Mainly it is the story of what a group of paleontologists discovered at a site in Argentina. They found a number of incredible fossils (some of which had never been seen before) and were able to piece together a picture of what Sauropod dinosaur embryos looked like and what happened to them. They mostly unearthed eggs but they also stumbled across two other skeletons. Overall it was amazing what they found. But the book is also about other things. Within the overall story we are given a history of other dinosaur fossil discoveries as well as lessons on different types of dinosaurs and their classification. We are given a timeline of when dinosaurs lived and some background on how paleontologists collect fossils. All of these things make up the book, so it is not just a simple telling of the story of the discovery. The book isn’t fantastic but it is pretty good and generally keeps the attention of the reader. This is the kind of book where if you think you’ll be interested in it, there’s a good possibility you will but if you aren’t interested in it and don’t think you’ll enjoy it you almost certainly will not. For readers who think they’ll be interested, the authors do a good job of taking you through the story by the excitement of discovery. You follow along with them as they come across one great find after another. Sometimes they get a little too technical for the average reader but at other times they don’t give as much technical information as the reader may want. And the authors rely a little too much on evolution to try to explain things that aren’t full understood. Instead of just saying scientists don’t know how something happened or that they can’t figure out the whole story, they try to squeeze things into the box of general evolution just because they don’t have any other answer at the moment. There are also some slow parts while they go off on a tangent now and then, but it basically flows pretty well and if the readers feel somewhat interested they probably will enjoy this book. :

Walking on Eggs is the riveting inside story behind one of the most significant paleontological discoveries in history. In November 1997, Luis M. Chiappe and Lowell Dingus led an elite team of paleontologists and geologists into the rugged and desolate badlands of Argentina. Unsure of what they would find, Chiappe and Dingus knew that this region had produced many spectacular specimens of dinosaurs and fossil birds over the last century. Nothing could have prepared them, however, for the headline-grabbing discovery they were about to make: a massive dinosaur nesting ground covering more than a square mile and littered with tens of thousands of large, unhatched dinosaur eggs. Containing the first fossils of embryonic dinosaur skin ever found, the eggs gave rise to a host of mysteries. What species laid the eggs, and when? How were they preserved? And most intriguingly, what ancient catastrophe — deeply rooted more than 70 million years in the past — prevented them from hatching?

In clear, comprehensible language, Chiappe and Dingus frame their scientific investigations within the context of a gripping detective story, illustrating how they used paleontological and geological evidence to establish the identity and age of the eggs, as well as how they established the cause of death. Chiappe and Dingus also recount a return trip to the badlands in 1999 in which they set out to learn more about dinosaur social and reproductive behavior. Their investigations once again unearthed a key piece of the historic puzzle: the bones of a twenty-foot predatory, carnivorous dinosaur.

As they decipher the evidence — divining origins, discovering identities, and pinpointing possible causes of extinction — Chiappe and Dingus interweave their field adventures with chapters illuminating the crucial precedents behind their groundbreaking work. Complementing the text are beautiful hand-drawn reproductions of what the dinosaurs and their landscape might have looked like, created by an artist who joined the expedition team in Patagonia. Infused with passion and an infectious sense of awe, Walking on Eggs illustrates the ups and downs of the scientific process and invites dinosaur lovers of all ages to experience the exhilarating sense of discovery. In November 1997, paleontologists Luis Chiappe and Lowell Dingus came across a remarkable find on the cold plains of southern Argentina: a dinosaur nesting ground, where some ancient but unknown species deposited tens of thousands of eggs that never hatched. Their work, as they recount in this memoir of discovery, thus had many components: among other matters, Chiappe and Dingus needed to determine the creatures that had left their offspring in the Patagonian sandstone, how many millions of years ago they had done so, and what had happened to prevent the eggs from hatching in the first place.

Finding the answer to the first occupies much of Chiappe and Dingus’s account, as they compare their evidence against similar finds in Spain and the Gobi. Determining the second affords the authors a chance to discuss newly developed dating techniques, including DNA analysis–which caused overly enthusiastic reporters to announce that the authors were on the brink of cloning sauropods from long-dead embryos. (”We do not know nearly enough about how DNA works,” the authors write, to pull off such a feat.) Finally, their reconstruction of the ancient environment of Patagonia offers clues for how the unlucky eggs had come to be buried in prehistoric mud.

A spirited book about how paleontologists make and test hypotheses and go about their fieldwork, this makes a fine addition to any dinosaur buff’s collection. –Gregory McNamee
Walking on Eggs: The Astonishing Discovery of Thousands of Dinosaur Eggs in the Badlands of Patagonia

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The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt: The Astonishing and Unlikely True Story of One of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Paleontological Discoveries

March 22nd, 2010 by pacapao

The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt: The Astonishing and Unlikely True Story of One of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Paleontological Discoveries The search for dinosaur fossils amid sandstorms and desert heat is anything but dry in this lively story of the excavation in January, 2000, of a site in the western Egyptian desert, partially excavated by Ernst Stromer in 1911, but untouched since then. Nothdurft, a professional writer, working in concert with Josh Smith, the young paleontologist who was the team leader of the January, 2000, dig, tells the stories of both the 1911 and the 2000 excavations, along with the fossil discoveries made by each group.

Stromer, a German aristocrat and meticulous paleontologist, found the fossils of four unique, 95-million-year-old dinosaurs in Bahariya in 1911, spent twenty years analyzing them, and then supervised the fossils’ installation at the Bavarian State College of Paleontology and Historical Geology in Munich. In April, 1944, everything was lost in the allied bombing of Munich. The story of Stromer’s efforts, now almost forgotten, alternates with that of Smith and his group of young Ph.D’s from the University of Pennsylvania, who hope to find additional fossils in the same area in January, 2000.

Financed by a Los Angeles film company making a documentary, the crew ultimately unearths a 80 – 100 ton new dinosaur species, discovering in the process that at least two other equally gigantic dinosaur species shared space with this titan. How this desert area could support three such huge species becomes the question for the geologists on the trip, a mystery which Nothdurft imbues with immediacy and great excitement as they examine the confusing strata for clues.

Nothdurft excels in characterizing the paleontologists and geologists so that the reader can easily imagine participating in the dig along with them. His narrative is fast-paced and full of memorable detail–depictions of Bahariya, with its 130-degree heat and its scorpions, the excitement of the young researchers as they uncover new fossils, and their puzzlement at the paradoxes which unfold. With likeable researchers, and photos and drawings which make their discoveries come alive, this is a wonderful introduction to the challenges of on-site research, the scientific methods of the crew, and the respect with which they regard the past. Ultimately, even the almost-forgotten Ernst Stromer shares in their discoveries. Mary Whipple
: In 1911, Dr. Ernst Stromer led an expedition to Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis in the Sahara and discovered four new species of dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus rex–size predator Spinosaurus. But tragically, all his work was incinerated in 1944 during the Allied bombing of Munich.

In 1999, Josh Smith, then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, took his brilliant, precocious team to Egypt under the direction of world-renowned paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson and blundered onto an archaeological site that yielded awe-inspiring results: all of Dr. Stromer’s early findings, and also an entirely new genus of dinosaur, Paralititan stromeri, one of the largest creatures ever to inhabit the planet.
The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt: The Astonishing and Unlikely True Story of One of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Paleontological Discoveries

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Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep

March 15th, 2010 by pacapao

Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep One of the critics of TV is that it distracts people from reading. This might be true in some cases, but for the genre of prehistoric life (outside of dinosaurs), the CGI documentaries on cable and satellite TV have driven the sale of related books. This big, coffe-table book is one such example. Not quite as lavish as the books by Tim Haines, or the Walking with Dinosaurs series, this is still an impressive work by National Geographic, and features 3-D 2-page spreads with a pair of 3-D glasses. There is an accompanying movie of course, but the book is quite good by itself. It provides a mix of fossil-hunting documentary, to color illustrations of ancient sea monsters, along with descriptions of possible lifestyles and such. All told, a great book. : Sharks and dinosaurs, dinosaurs and sharks, we find them both alien and awe-inspiring, at once utterly inhuman and somehow irresistibly compelling. But forget Jaws and Jurassic Park—nothing can prepare you for Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep, an amazing plunge into the Cretaceous oceans of 80 million years ago, a merciless realm ruled by the most ferocious animals ever to stalk the seas of planet Earth. More terrifying than anything known to humankind, it scarcely seems possible that these swift, massive underwater predators actually existed, but they did—and this is their frightening, fascinating, unforgettable story.

Featuring incredibly realistic computer-generated images and 3-D film clips—with 3-D glasses—field photography by National Geographic cameramen, and much more, the book interweaves dramatic scenes of the far, far distant past; up-to-the-minute scientific profiles of nearly two dozen sea monsters; and a group portrait of the eccentric Sternberg family, Kansas-bred pioneers of marine paleontology. From giant sharks and fierce reptiles to the fossil-hunters who proved that today’s land-locked Great Plains were once submerged, to the cutting-edge Large Format Film technology that made Sea Monsters possible, this book and the movie behind it will forever change how we think about marine predators—and make us look at the oceans of our world with new eyes and a shivery mix of wonderment and ancient, instinctive fear.
Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep

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M-Systems’ Smart DiskOnKey platform now offers CD-R functionality with new autorun and read-only features.: An article from: Software Industry Report

March 12th, 2010 by pacapao

M-Systems’ Smart DiskOnKey platform now offers CD-R functionality with new autorun and read-only features.: An article from: Software Industry Report : This digital document is an article from Software Industry Report, published by Millin Publishing, Inc. on September 22, 2003. The length of the article is 730 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: M-Systems’ Smart DiskOnKey platform now offers CD-R functionality with new autorun and read-only features.
Publication:Software Industry Report (Newsletter)
Date: September 22, 2003
Publisher: Millin Publishing, Inc.
Volume: 35 Issue: 18 Page: 8

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Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth’s History

March 8th, 2010 by pacapao

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth’s History So-so – Cosmoetica – New York, USA
Science books are pretty much susceptible to their times, and the early 2006 discovery of a huge crater in Antarctic Wilkes Land, which may have been four to five times the size of the K-T Impactor, seems to have given great credence to the belief that it was the primary, if not sole, cause of the P-T extinction event. Furthermore, unlike the K-T Impactor, there is growing evidence that the P-T Impactor may have actually broken the continent of Australia off from Antarctica, and led to the breakup of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland. Given this turn of events, it might seem that Ward’s book should be simply tossed on the heap of outdated science books, for he is not a great essayist in the manner of a Stephen Jay Gould, whose often wrong posits on evolution did not kybosh his ability to effectively communicate ideas, nor is Ward anywhere in a class with the magisterial Loren Eiseley, whose `hidden personal essay’ format preceded Gould’s, and whose work is one of the great English language prose corpuses of the last century, even if his decades old ideas on evolution are several generations removed from relevance.

Yet, here is where idiot luck comes in. While Ward is no prose stylist, and one almost feels he is a primitivist or idiot savant banging away at keyboards, he made one very smart decision in writing this book, or, at least, a fortuitous one, which was to make this book less about `hard science’, and more about the soft stuff in between. Gorgon focuses far more on the personalities of scientists, the desires for relevance, the politics of the South African lands where the Karoo Desert digs that constitute this book’s Ground Zero take place, and his own personal family ups and downs. Thus, what was a squooshy weakness before the Antarctic discovery, becomes the book’s saving grace after it….Last year, I read a much more well written book called Snowball Earth, by Gabrielle Walker, which was everything this book wanted to be. It provided a provocative theory of an almost wholly glaciated earth a half billion years before this ancient impact, and it did so in a lively, engaging style that presented both its theory and personalities in an engaging, well-written style. This book, unfortunately, barely touches upon its own titular subject, which is really the reason most layfolk would buy it. We get too little of the gorgonopsians and too much of filler. This book won’t be of much use in a decade or two, and Ward does not have a great future in science writing the way Walker does, but this book did give more than a few moments of pleasure in its slow meandering, which again recapitulated its ideas about drying Permian rivers, and will leave at least a few dried beds within that will occasionally urge me to rethink its lost waters. If this goes against my usual criteria for recommending a book, so be it. If a man can’t be willfully dissonant, on rare occasions, does his usual consistency have any virtue? As for Mr. Ward, he can thank me at a later date.
By now, almost everyone must be familiar with the discovery of the iridium concentrations at the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary, and the Chicxulub impact crater, first reported in 1981, that appears to exactly the right age and the right size to have terminated most of the life on Earth, sixty-five million years ago. The author of “Gorgon” began his career with field work on the proof of the quick and terrible extinction at the K-T boundary–the death knell of the dinosaurs.

However, Dr. Ward found himself more and more intrigued by an even great extinction event that occurred 250 million years ago at the boundary of the Permian and the Triassic (P/T). Was it caused by another comet or meteor strike? Did the elimination of 95 % of Earth’s marine life and 70% of all land species proceed as quickly as at the K-T termination, or did it take place in pulses over a much longer period of time?

According to the author (and others), there is no credible, unambiguous evidence for an impact as is the case for the K-T extinction. What is more likely is that massive greenhouse gas emissions reduced oxygen availability, ultimately resulting in the collapse of marine ecosystems, and most of the land-based systems as well. This was possibly caused by volcanic eruptions on the supercontinent of Pangea, in what is now Siberia (the Siberian Traps).

In the final chapter of his book, “Resolution,” the author puts forth two interesting observation-based theories: (1) the abundance of oxidized, reddish rock in the Triassic beds above the P/T boundary (about 50 million years worth) implies “…the oxygen in our atmosphere plunged to very low levels as it became tied up in the rocks…so low, in fact, that any poor human…would very quickly suffer from altitude sickness, even at sea level.”; (2) on land at least, the near extinction of animals that didn’t use oxygen efficiently, including most but not all of the mammal-like reptiles that dominated the Permian. “Heat [greenhouse effect] and asphyxiation [were] the two agents of the long mysterious mass extinction.”

Except for the last chapter, “Gorgon” is light on theory and heavy on field work and proof-of-concept. Here is how geologists, paleontologists, and other scientists interact in the field, braving the heat of South Africa’s Karoo Desert, the omnipresent ticks, flies, and puff adders, and the digestive challenges of bad water and mystery-meat pizza. Dr. Ward takes his readers not only on a trip through the lost world of the Permian, but also through an African culture that seems to be on the brink of chaos. He is a sensitive and at times acerbic observer of both present and deep past. “Gorgon” is a compelling, thoroughly readable story.
: The gorgons ruled the world of animals long before there was any age of dinosaurs. They were the T. Rex of their day until an environmental cataclysm 250 million years ago annihilated them—along with 90 percent of all plant and animal species on the planet—in an event so terrible even the extinction of the dinosaurs pales in comparison. For more than a decade, Peter Ward and his colleagues have been searching in South Africa’s Karoo Desert for clues to this world: What were these animals like? How did they live and, more important, how did they die?

In Gorgon, Ward examines the strange fate of this little known prehistoric animal and its contemporaries, the ancestors of the turtle, the crocodile, the lizard, and eventually dinosaurs. He offers provocative theories on these mass extinctions and confronts the startling implications they hold for us. Are we vulnerable to a similar catastrophe? Are we nearing the end of human domination in the earth’s cycle of destruction and rebirth? Gorgon is also a thrilling travelogue of Ward’s long, remarkable journey of discovery and a real-life adventure deep into Earth’s history. In Gorgon, geologist Peter Ward turns his attention reluctantly away from the asteroid collision that killed all the dinosaurs and instead focuses on a much older extinction event. As it turns out, the Permian extinction of 250 million years ago dwarfs the dino’s 65-million-year-old Cretaceous-Tertiary armageddon. Ward’s book is not a dry accounting of the fossil discoveries leading to this conclusion, but rather an intimate, first-person account of some of his triumphs and disappointments as a scientist. He draws a nice parallel between the Permian extinction and his own rather abrupt in research focus, revealing the agonizing steps he had to take to educate himself about a set of prehistoric creatures about which he knew almost nothing. These were the Gorgons, carnivorous reptiles whose ecological dominance preceded that of the more pop-culture-ready dinosaurs.

They would have had huge heads with very large, saberlike teeth, large lizard eyes, no visible ears, and perhaps a mixture of reptilian scales and tufts of mammalian hair…. The Gorgons ruled a world of animals that were but one short evolutionary step away from being mammals.

With characteristic enthusiasm, Ward transports readers with him to South Africa’s Karoo desert, where he participated in field expeditions seeking fossils of these fearsome creatures. He suffers routine tick patrols, puff-adder avoidance lessons, stultifying thirst, and the everyday humiliations of being the new guy on a field team. Besides telling a fascinating paleological story, Gorgon lets readers feel a bone-hunter’s passion and pain. –Therese Littleton
Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth’s History

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The Conodonta: Morphology, Taxonomy, Paleoecology, and Evolutionary History of a Long-Extinct Animal Phylum (Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophy)

March 1st, 2010 by pacapao

The Conodonta: Morphology, Taxonomy, Paleoecology, and Evolutionary History of a Long-Extinct Animal Phylum (Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophy) : This succinct treatise presents an up-to-date assessment on the nature and evolutionary development of a phylum of extinct marine invertebrates. Conodonts are represented by a diverse array of tiny tooth-like fossils, and are widely used in stratigraphical correlation. They are also vital in the search for petroleum because the colors of fossils brought up in drill cores indicate potential oil reservoirs. Dr. Sweet, a leading researcher in the field, presents a novel view of the evolutionary history of the Conodonta besides examining their morphology, taxonomy, and paleoecology.
The Conodonta: Morphology, Taxonomy, Paleoecology, and Evolutionary History of a Long-Extinct Animal Phylum (Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophy)

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