[Note]
I would just like to state for the record that not considering to read an article because of it's source is not only unscientific but ignorant as all hell and tantamount to mental and spiritual book burning mentality. Those who comment on these HOAX articles in the negative attitude, without even reading them, should be ashamed of themselves. Really and truly ashamed of themselves. I would personally take my own life because I could not live with the shame of being so stupid. The evidence presented is so very clear. For example...
The four main and only specimens for Archaeopteryx were all found in the same place only two months apart from each other by the same person even. If that alone does not raise suspicion then there is a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell to you. And cheaply too if you just hurry up and write me the check. Further more if in the past hundred years we had found tens of thousand of Dinosaur Bones yet only four specimen for Achaeopteryx then the majority of humans deserve to wallow in ignorance because that is just simply unheard of. That's like only finding Four T-Rex out of all the hundreds if not thousands of completed skeletons of Dinosaurs and claiming that they must have eaten the rest of the population among themselves because that's all that there is. Come on people, you can't be
that arrogant? Can you?
Viceroy63
-End Note
This article can be read in it's entirety at...
http://tccsa.tc/articles/hoax.htmlThis is only an excerpt from the article itself.
THE ULTIMATE HOAX: ARCHAEOPTERYX LITHOGRAPHICAby Ian Taylor
ABSTRACTThe recent claims that the London specimen of the Archaeopteryx is a hoax have been clarified and there would seem to be grounds for suspicion. The published work on the Berlin specimen shows that it has every indication of being a hoax of the same kind, that is, a modified genuine fossil of the Compsognathus. All four of the more recent "discoveries" are shown to be nothing more than reclassification of genuine fossils of the same small dinosaur..
I
NTRODUCTIONTo many people the very word 'fossil' causes about as much excitement as watching grass grow. However, when we lift the veil which shrouds the world's most famous fossil, we find a labyrinth of intrigue and deception making it all somehow far more palatable. The fossil of the Archaeopteryx is said to be the paleontologist's "Rosetta Stone" providing irrefutable evidence that evolution of the species actually occurred. It has taken pride of place in every biology textbook for over a century and has recently been wreathed in controversy following the claims that one of the principal specimens is a fake. We will first trace out the history of the discovery of the various specimens, then examine the claims that the London specimen is fraudulent. Following this, we will determine if the more famous Berlin specimen can withstand the harsh light of scrutiny. It will be shown that the weight of evidence from both human activity and technical detail for all the known specimens points overwhelmingly to both the London and Berlin specimens of the Archaeopteryx being nothing more than a clever hoax.
It is now almost a century since Professor Hurst published his criticisms based upon personal observations of both the London [39] and Berlin specimens. It may be wondered why this information is not more widely known. The scientific establishment has been virtually dominated by biologists ever since Darwin's day and a kind of censorship of any work critical of evolution has been in effect throughout this time. Hurst had published his work in a scholarly journal offering a balanced airing of contrary opinions; the journal was short-lived (from 1892 to 1899) and is seldom found in library collections today. Similarly, because of the nature of Hoyle and Spetner's findings, these were not found acceptable to the mainline biological journals and they were obliged to report them in The British Journal of Photography.
THE FEATHERS.Impressions of modern feathers only appear on the London and Berlin specimens and only on the tail and in the wing areas. Hurst had remarked on the marvelous state of preservation of the feather impressions saying, "even the barbules of some of the quills are recognizable" [40]. It may be added that there are no other examples of feathers having been preserved in such detail in the fossil record. One very recent case reported in 1988 from Spain [41] is of a single, half-inch long feather but this had been carbonized. That the preservation of such microscopic detail should occur in the two specimens already shrouded in suspicion is simply what one might expect from a forgery where the forgers had little choice but to use modern feathers. It raises an interesting question concerning the kind of detail present in the wing areas of the Berlin Specimen after its apparent modification about a century ago? As far as specimens assigned more recently to the status of Archaeopteryx are concerned, the popular accounts typically say that "feather impressions are distinct" [42] but, in fact, the investigator's statements say, "These features are interpreted as imprints of feather shafts" [43]. Quite a different thing where for example the "feather shaft impressions" may have been produced by quills and not feathers. Moreover, there is not a hint of a feather or feather shaft impression near any of the tails of the Maxberg, Haarlem, or Solnhofen specimens; Wellnhofer [14] claims there are feather impressions in the tail area of the Eichstatt specimen but Ostrom denies this.
CONCLUSIONIn this paper we have not been concerned with the unlikely possibility that the Archaeopteryx was a strange mosaic creature like Australia's duck-billed platypus. The concern has been with fraud: its motive seems to have been monetary gain, the result has been to provide evidence for a theory. When all the published facts regarding the Archaeopteryx are brought forward, any unbiased jury would find it extremely difficult not to conclude that both the London and Berlin specimens were fraudulent. The more recent "discoveries" are seemingly an attempt to restore confidence in an oft-told myth and have been carried out by mere re-classification of the same kind of fossil used for the hoax; the feather evidence, like Percival Lowell's 700 canals on Mars, is more in the eye of faith than it is in fact. Professor Ostrom, who has examined every specimen, confesses that only the London and Berlin specimens contain clear feather impressions while the Eichstatt tail has a "plume" but no evidence of feathers. The London specimen is the only one having a clearly defined feature said to be a furcula and, while Ostrom claims the Maxberg specimen has a furcula, this is not at all convincing. Even if an undoubted furcula were discovered in another specimen, this would only tend to confirm that the furcula in the London specimen was genuine. However, it would not remove the suspicion of fraud because it seems likely that the Compsognathus itself may have had fused clavicles. Finally, it is surely incumbent upon the paleontologist to provide convincing explanations for: a) the change from straight feather impressions to the unlikely bent feather impressions in the Berlin specimen and b) why primary feathers, which are modern in every respect, attach to the ulna instead of the manus as in modern birds? Until such explanations are forthcoming the suspicion of fraud will remain.
This article can be read in it's entirety at...
http://tccsa.tc/articles/hoax.html
