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Mokele-mbembe
In several Bantu mythologies, mokele-mbembe (also written as "mokèlé-mbèmbé") is a mythical water-dwelling entity that is believed to exist in the Congo River Basin. It is variously described as a reptilian creature, a spirit, or a member of the extinct lineage of sauropods. In the early to mid 20th century, the entity would become a point of focus among adherents of cryptozoology and young Earth creationism, resulting in numerous expeditions led by cryptozoologists and/or funded by young Earth creationists and other groups with the objective to find evidence that invalidates or contradicts the scientific consensus regarding evolution. Paleontologist Donald Prothero remarks that "the quest for Mokele-Mbembe ... is part of the effort by creationists to overthrow the theory of evolution and teaching of science by any means possible". Additionally, Prothero noted that "the only people looking for mokele-mbembe are creationist ministers, not wildlife biologists." Most mainstr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mokele-mbembe Ill Artlibre Jnl
In several Bantu religion, Bantu mythologies, mokele-mbembe (also written as "mokèlé-mbèmbé") is a mythical water-dwelling entity that is believed to exist in the Congo Basin, Congo River Basin. It is variously described as a reptilian creature, a spirit, or a member of the extinct lineage of Sauropoda, sauropods. In the early to mid 20th century, the entity would become a point of focus among adherents of cryptozoology and young Earth creationism, resulting in numerous expeditions led by cryptozoologists and/or funded by young Earth creationists and other groups with the objective to find evidence that invalidates or contradicts the scientific consensus regarding evolution. Paleontologist Donald Prothero remarks that "the quest for Mokele-Mbembe ... is part of the effort by creationists to overthrow the theory of evolution and teaching of science by any means possible". Additionally, Prothero noted that "the only people looking for mokele-mbembe are creationist ministers, n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Mackal
Roy P. Mackal (August 1, 1925 – September 13, 2013) was a University of Chicago biologist best known to the general public for his interest in cryptozoology. Academic background Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1925, Mackal served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II before attending the University of Chicago, where he received his B.S. in 1949 in biology and his Ph.D. in zoology under the direction of Lloyd Kozloff. in 1953. He spent the rest of his academic career with Chicago as an educator and researcher. Much of his early research with the university was in biochemistry and virology, and during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, he contributed to the university's influential "virus project", studying bacteriophages and the lysogenic cycle. He later served as a professor of zoology. Mackal was a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Cryptozoology Mackal is widely considered to be one of the seminal figures in the subculture of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rory Nugent
Rory Nugent (born 1952) is an American explorer and writer. He was based out of New Bedford, Massachusetts from 1988 to 2004. Biography Nugent was born in New York. After he graduated from Williams College in 1975, he went to sea aboard freighters and canvas-fliers. He sailed solo across the Atlantic Ocean four times. His fifth crossing ended prematurely when the catamaran he was sailing capsized; he was rescued five days later. In 1992, Nugent became a foreign correspondent, first for ''Men's Journal'' and then as a staff member of ''Spin''. He left journalism in 2002 to work on his third book. Cryptozoology In the mid-1980s, Nugent mounted solo expeditions in search of the pink-headed duck on the Brahmaputra River and Mokele-mbembe In several Bantu mythologies, mokele-mbembe (also written as "mokèlé-mbèmbé") is a mythical water-dwelling entity that is believed to exist in the Congo River Basin. It is variously described as a reptilian creature, a spirit, or a membe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptozoology
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, or the Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as '' cryptids'', a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by mainstream science: it is neither a branch of zoology nor of folklore studies. It was originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. Scholars have noted that the subculture rejected mainstream approaches from an early date, and that adherents often express hostility to mainstream science. Scholars studying cryptozoologists and their influence (including cryptozoology's association with Young Earth creationism) noted parallels in crypto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willy Ley
Willy Otto Oskar Ley (October 2, 1906 – June 24, 1969) was a German and American science writer and proponent of space exploration and cryptozoology. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor. Early life and Berlin years Willy Otto Oskar Ley was the son of Julius Otto Ley, a traveling merchant, and Frida May, the daughter of a Lutheran sexton. Ley grew up in his native Berlin during the First World War under the supervision of two aunts. When war erupted, his father was in Great Britain and consequently spent the remainder of the war at a detention camp on the Isle of Man. Meanwhile, his mother worked as a milliner in a distant city in Germany. As Ley later recalled he "grew up, so to speak, in the shadow of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin".Willy Ley, Exotic Zoology, vii When his school teacher asked him to compose an essay on the subject "What Do I Want to Be When I Am Grown and Why?", Ley responded: "I want to be an explorer." At the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Bangweulu
Lake Bangweulu ('where the water sky meets the sky') is a Fresh water, freshwater lake in northern Zambia. Bangweulu is one of the world's great Wetland, wetland systems, comprising Lake Bangweulu, the Bangweulu Wetlands and the Bangweulu flats or floodplain.Camerapix: ''Spectrum Guide to Zambia.'' Camerapix International Publishing, Nairobi, 1996. Situated in the upper Congo River basin in Zambia, the Bangweulu system covers an almost completely flat area roughly the size of Connecticut or East Anglia, at an elevation of 1,140 m straddling Zambia's Luapula Province and Northern Province, Zambia, Northern Province. It is crucial to the economy and biodiversity of northern Zambia, and to the birdlife of a much larger region, and faces environmental stress and Habitat conservation, conservation issues.Halls, A.J. (ed.), 1997. "Wetlands, Biodiversity and the Ramsar Convention: The Role of the Convention on Wetlands in the Conservation and Wise Use of Biodiversity". Ramsar Conventi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Congo (BBC TV Series)
''Congo'' is a 2001 BBC nature documentary series for television on the natural history of the Congo River of Central Africa. In three episodes, the series explores the variety of animals and habitats that are to be found along the river's 4,700 km (2,922 mi) reach. ''Congo'' was produced for the BBC Natural History Unit and the Discovery Channel by Scorer Associates. The series writer/producer was Brian Leith and the executive producer was Neil Nightingale. Series consultants were Michael Fay, Kate Abernethy, Jonathan Kingdon and Lee White. Little filming was possible in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which encompasses the vast majority of the river's watershed. (The one exception to this is the brief sequence of Livingstone Falls.) The reason for this is that the Second Congo War (1998–2003) was underway during filming (1999–2000). The series forms part of the Natural History Unit's ''Continents'' strand and was preceded by '' Andes to Amazon'' in 2000 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Young Earth Creationism
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between about 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, contradicting established scientific data for the age of Earth putting it at around 4.54 billion years. In its most widespread version, YEC is based on a religious belief in the inerrancy of certain literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis. Its primary adherents are Christians and Jews who believe that God created the Earth in six literal days, according to Genesis 1. This is in contrast with old Earth creationism (OEC), which holds that literal interpretations of Genesis are compatible with the scientifically determined ages of the Earth and universe, and theistic evolution, which posits that the scientific principles of evolution, the Big Bang, abiogenesis, solar nebular theory, age of the universe, and age of Earth are compatible with a metaphorical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Prothero
Donald Ross Prothero (February 21, 1954) is an American geologist, paleontologist, and author who specializes in mammalian paleontology and magnetostratigraphy, a technique to date rock layers of the Cenozoic era and its use to date the climate changes which occurred 30–40 million years ago. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books and over 300 scientific papers, including at least 5 geology textbooks. Stephen Jay Gould cited Prothero's research on the lack of response to climate change in mammals from the Eocene, Oligocene and Pleistocene epochs to support the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. He called Prothero "the best punctuated equilibrium researcher on the West Coast". Biography Prothero grew up in the Glendale, California area, the son of Clifford R. Prothero (1920–2004), a technical illustrator for Lockheed, and Shirley M. (McDonald) Prothero (1924–2016), an artist and homemaker. He attended the University of California, Riverside where he studie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Dunning (author)
Brian Andrew Dunning (born 1965) is an American writer and producer who focuses on science and skepticism. He has hosted a weekly podcast, ''Skeptoid'', since 2006, and he is an author of a series of books on the subject of scientific skepticism, some of which are based on the podcast. ''Skeptoid'' has been the recipient of several podcast awards such as the Parsec Award. Dunning has also created the ''Skeptoid.org'' spin-off video series, ''inFact'', and ''The Feeding Tube'' both available on YouTube. Dunning has produced two educational films on the subject of critical thinking: ''Here Be Dragons'' in 2008, and ''Principles of Curiosity'' in 2017. Dunning co-founded Buylink, a business-to-business service provider, in 1996, and served at the company until 2002. He later became eBay's second-biggest affiliate marketer; he has since been convicted of wire fraud through a cookie stuffing scheme, for his company fraudulently obtaining between $200,000 and $400,000 from eBay. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Congo Basin
The Congo Basin () is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River. The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes known simply as the Congo. It contains some of the largest tropical rainforests in the world and is an important source of water used in agriculture and energy generation. The rainforest in the Congo Basin is the largest rainforest in Africa and second only to the Amazon rainforest in size, with 300 million hectares compared to the 800 million hectares in the Amazon. Because of its size and diversity the basin's forest is important for mitigating climate change in its role as a carbon sink. However, deforestation and degradation of the ecology by the impacts of climate change may increase stress on the forest ecosystem, in turn making the hydrology of the basin more variable. A 2012 study found that the variability in precipitation caused by climate change will negatively affect economic a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sauropoda
Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from ''wikt:sauro-, sauro-'' + ''wikt:-pod, -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their body), and four thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land. Well-known genus, genera include ''Apatosaurus'', ''Argentinosaurus'', ''Alamosaurus'', ''Brachiosaurus'', ''Camarasaurus'', ''Diplodocus,'' and ''Mamenchisaurus''. The oldest known unequivocal sauropod dinosaurs are known from the Early Jurassic. ''Isanosaurus'' and ''Antetonitrus'' were originally described as Triassic sauropods, but their age, and in the case of ''Antetonitrus'' also its sauropod status, were subsequently questioned. Sauropod-like sauropodomorph tracks from the Fleming Fjord Formation (Greenland) might, however, indicate the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
