For Pete's sake... Dracorex and dragons

[Mallon]

This time last year, a new dinosaur was described: Dracorex hogwartsia. The original description can be read here. This new species is quite obviously related to other pachycephalosaurs, or dome-headed dinosaurs, such as Pachycephalosaurus, Stygimoloch, or Stegoceras. The name is one of Robert Bakker's fanciful creations and means "Dragon king from Hogwarts." Other Bakkerisms include "Brontoraptor", "Drinker nisti", and "Edmarka rex" (most of which are nomen nuda).
Perhaps not surprisingly, the folks over at CMI have pounced on the etymology of the name and have touted that Dracorex is "what most people imagine dragons looking like":

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4840

Gimme a break!
We've had this discussion before, but any similarities between dragons and dinosaurs are superficial. The classic "western dragons" that CMI refers to have big, sharp, carnivorous teeth. Dracorex had the small, leaf-shaped teeth of an herbivore (read the paper). Western dragons have an extra set of winged appendages stemming from their backs (see above). Dracorex clearly did not. I won't even comment on the long, sharp claws and tail-spike illustrated above.

Does anyone else here see CMI's take on all this as wishful thinking? Even downright misleading, maybe?

To whom did this skeleton belong?

This guy?

Or this guy?

 

[shernren]

Oh, my. An article like that makes me wonder what on earth is happening over at CMI. It's blatantly obvious that Dracorex, or any of the dinosaurs before it, certainly could not have been hexapodal as CMI tries to imply. Not only that, the author's connecting dinosaurs with contemporary dragons is plain laziness. Dragons as imagined today have largely been made up by Western authors who are aware, at least in the background, of scientific reconstructions of what dinosaurs looked like. Is it any surprise that they resemble those reconstructions?

I used to think that CMI separated from AiG because it wanted to have its content adhere to higher standards. Perhaps not ...

 

[Mallon]

After some reflection, I think I just might write CMI and call their bluff on this one. The article was written by an electronics technician. I think I've got more than enough comparative anatomy under my belt to take him on.
Higher standards, indeed.

 

[Brennan]

That's one seriously dishonest site. Dating of the Epic of Gilgamesh to 650BC caught my eye. That's about 2000 years earlier than you'll see anywhere else!

 

[shernren]

That's one seriously dishonest site. Dating of the Epic of Gilgamesh to 650BC caught my eye. That's about 2000 years earlier than you'll see anywhere else!

(you mean later?)

 

[Brennan]

Doh!