Oh Dear God, They Found a Real Crocoduck February 28, 2009

Oh Dear God, They Found a Real Crocoduck

By Guest Contributor
February 28, 2009

Ray Comfort doesn’t need to ask for a debate with Richard Dawkins anymore.

The debate is already over. Comfort and banana-pal Kirk Cameron have lost.

The Creationism proponents used to say that if evolution were true, we should expect to see a crocoduck (a crocodile/duck transitional form) in the fossil records:

crocoduck

They said we haven’t seen that hybrid, thus evolution is untrue.

…

Now comes news of a new fossil that was found…

The unusually intact fossilized skull of a giant, bony-toothed seabird that lived up to 10 million years ago was found on Peru’s arid southern coast, researchers said Friday.

…

The museum said in a statement that the birds had wingspans of up to 20 feet (6 meters) and may have used the toothlike projections on their beaks to prey on slippery fish and squid. But studying members of the Pelagornithidae family has been difficult because their extremely thin bones — while helpful for keeping the avian giants aloft — tended not to survive as fossils.

…

With fossils discovered in North America, North Africa and even Antarctica, Kepska said, the birds were ubiquitous only a few million years before humans evolved and scientists puzzle over why they died out. Some believe they are related to gannets and pelicans, while other say they are related to ducks.

It’s not exactly what Comfort had in mind, but close enough, dammit. It had toothlike projections, it flew… what else do you need.

It also means the scientific name for a crocoduck is pelagornithid.

fossil

(Photo for AP by Martin Mejia)

That thing is freaky.

But if it pwns Comfort and Cameron, I’ll deal with it.

(Thanks to everyone who sent in the link!)

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  • Steve

    If that crocoduck can fly, I’m outa here.

  • Andrew Price

    Cool! The teeth sizes have a very fractal look to them.

    I agree with @Steve, it looks like you could get a nasty nip from that.

  • Awesome. Add him to the peligornithid family tree.

    I’ve know about these birds for quite some time. Just never eally thought of them as the real life “crocoduck”

  • Crocoducks eat creationists for breakfast! Woohoo!

  • JB

    You know what they’re going to say, right? That it’s not at all some sort of transitional form, but a whole separate ‘kind’, lovingly created by God, just like all the other ‘kinds’.

  • James

    Would’nt it still need to make the leap from bird to reptile? Feathers to skin? Toothy beaks prove nothing.

  • Tony

    Another individual kind lovingly created by god and then lovingly destroyed en mass in a global flood…

  • Would’nt it still need to make the leap from bird to reptile? Feathers to skin? Toothy beaks prove nothing.

    Clearly this is not a transitional form between reptiles and birds, look to your theropod dinosaurs for that. This is a bird that evolved a large toothed beak that allowed it to grasp slippery sea life. The resemblance to a crocodile is at most an example of convergence and at least a coincidence.

  • Ray Comfort is such a tool

  • Crux Australis

    Flying crocodiles?! Now we’re screwed.

  • «bønez_brigade»

    Yeah, but where’s your missing link between the crocoduck and the crocodile, hmm?

    Show me a crockoduckodile, or you have nothing, Mr. Atheist!

    /sarcasm

  • Show me a crockoduckodile, or you have nothing, Mr. Atheist!

    Very funny!!! 🙂

  • Jay Ballou

    Would’nt it still need to make the leap from bird to reptile? Feathers to skin?

    Uh, wrong way around.

    Toothy beaks prove nothing.

    When it comes to unfalsifiable creation, that’s a tautology.

  • David Marjanovi?

    Toothy beaks prove nothing.

    And they’re not meant to. Have you read the quoted article? The “bony-toothed” part is a clumsy way to express that these are not teeth. They are outgrowths of the jawbone, covered by outgrowths of the beak. Nobody ever claimed this entirely modern bird is transitional between modern birds and toothed birds.

    Birds with real teeth existed earlier. Try Aberratiodontus or Yanornis or Sinornis or good old Ichthyornis, Hesperornis, and Archaeopteryx (possibly depending, for the latter, on your definition of “bird”).

  • David Marjanović

    Looks like this blog isn’t Unicode-compliant. Here’s what my name is supposed to look like.

  • Mark Terry

    That picture of the ‘crocoduck’ is actually from http://www.worth1000.com , which is an image manipulation website with artificial creations. But I assume you are just trying to be humorous.

  • That picture of the ‘crocoduck’ is actually from http://www.worth1000.com , which is an image manipulation website with artificial creations. But I assume you are just trying to be humorous.

    Well aware. The pic is a joke, but the rest of the article is serious.

  • Sophist

    Well, great. This will join the Haast Eagle in haunting my nightmares. I hope you’re happy.

  • “Now comes news of a new fossil that was found…”

    Broken link.

  • TheRealWallyrus

    The most interesting, underreported and creationism shattering detail is that they were able to use The Theory of Evolution as a model to predict WHAT they were looking for and WHERE they would find it before they had dug anything up.

  • Sharingan

    My cock is nice and sweet

  • Harrypotter

    My come is wet ‘n stick

  • Xxx
  • Epica

    Epica is the best metal simphonic band in the universe!

  • Bangable

    My sweet dream is to bang every gurl in the fcking universe!

    I will try my best to make it trve              “””””””””””””'”””””””””””””'””’WET ‘N STICK”””””””””'””””””‘

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