Re: large feathered dinosaur?

[NEIL CLARK <NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk>]

> 
> A person attempting to subscribe to the list wrote to me that he 
heard
> a partial radio report of a 48 foot dinosaur skeleton found recently,
> possibly in northern Russia.  Said skeleton was supposed to have 
some
> indication of feathers.
> 
> Does anybody recognize any grains of truth in the above?
> 
> -- 
> Mickey Rowe     (rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu)
> 

Yes.  It was found to be the remains of a decomposing sperm-whale.  
The feathers being the remains of the muscle tissue.  At least that is 
the one I heard of.  There are other instances where 'dinosaurs' have 
been washed-up or seen at sea, and they usually turn out to be some 
decomposing corpse of something else such as a basking shark, a 
whale or some other such thing.  It was not fossilized! Yet again the 
press jumping to impossible conclusions:-)


Neil Clark
Curator of Palaeontology
Hunterian Museum
University of Glasgow
email: NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk

The first law of Geology is the law of supposition.
(Geological Howlers - ed. WDI Rolfe)