Creationist Paleontologists Discover Dinosaur Saddle

A team of creationist paleontologists from the Discovery Institute's main field research arm announced today that they had discovered the remains of a large manmade object confirmed to be an ancient dinosaur saddle. The Discovery Institute's discovery was discovered in the remote Dusty Rivers area of southwestern Arizona. A spokesman for the paleontological team said that the dinosaur saddle provides irrefutable proof that man and dinosaurs lived simultaneously, as predicted by most creationist or "intelligent design" doctrines.

"I can't tell you how thrilled we all were to stumble upon this groundbreaking historical find," said Dr. K. Firth Booble, leader of the expedition. "We knew there had to be some evidence for man-dinosaur concurrence buried somewhere around here, but didn't think we'd discover it so quickly."

Dr. Booble, who received his doctorate in paleontology from the respected Holy Patriot!™ Bible University and Correspondence College of Claptrappe, Oklahoma, had embarked on the search, funded by a $2 million Discovery Institute grant, expecting to remain in the field for at least two years. The dinosaur saddle was unearthed a mere two weeks after the expedition's launch.

"...we just started digging, and boom, there it was."

The stunning find, a large saddle Dr. Booble believes would have been used by early man in riding "a Velociraptor, or a small Stegosaurus" is in relatively good condition considering its age, which Dr. Booble estimates to be "between 6,000 and 6,500 years".

"We haven't yet found any human remains in the area, but that's merely a question of time," said Dr. Booble.

According to Dr. Booble and the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Seattle with affiliates operating at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., dinosaurs were expelled from the Garden of Eden for excessive flatulence and "unruly behavior" at about the same time that Adam and Eve were forced to leave as a penalty for a serpent-related "apple conspiracy". Those descendants of Adam who were not captured and eaten by some of the larger carnivores are assumed to have domesticated the less spiky and more manageable species for livestock, along with cows, chickens, goats and pigs.

Read all here.

P.S. I think this is an Onion-like joke article, but I don't know anything more. The names indicate to me it's a big joke, but I'm sure some people would love to believe it.

As Adam Savage said:

What I do see as a huge issue is a very anti-science vibe. Like I said, the newspapers talking about evolution versus creationism is very much an attack on science as a type of religion—believing that the scientific method is some type of religious belief. And it's not! That kind of attack absolutely is damaging science exploration across the whole country. I do think that's a significant problem. And until we can get our head out of the sand and realize that science isn't about truth—it's why this debate about the "theory of evolution" bugs the hell out of me. What scientists mean by theory is very different than what people think.

Amazingly Preserved Dinosaur Found

Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of what appears to be the world's most intact dinosaur mummy: a 67-million-year-old plant-eater that contains fossilized bones and skin tissue, and possibly muscle and organs.

Preserved by a natural fluke of time and chemistry, the four-ton mummified hadrosaur, a duck-billed herbivore common to North America, could reshape the understanding of dinosaurs and their habitat, its finders say.
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"The skin has been mineralized," said Manning. "It is an actual three-dimensional structure, backfilled with sediment."

The fidelity of the envelope, he said, raises the possibility that Dakota could contain other soft-tissue remnants, including muscles and organs.
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In North Dakota, the researchers used Light Detection and Ranging equipment (LiDAR) to develop a three-dimensional topographical map of the area where Dakota died. Manning speculated that the dinosaur collapsed in a riverbed during the late Cretaceous Period and was rapidly buried in mineral-rich wet sand, preventing bacteria from devouring all of its tissue. "There was active-enough chemistry in the sediments that the decay process didn't occur as quickly as the mineralization process," he said. "It was a perfect chemical soup."
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The first significant findings from the dinosaur, currently under review at a major scientific journal, will describe the unique chemical balance that preserved the fossil. The body, meanwhile, remains on the Boeing scanner, as Manning and his colleagues sift through terabytes of data. So far, they have determined that the hadrosaur's hindquarters are 25 percent larger than previously thought for the species, meaning that it could run up to 28 mph -- faster than previously estimated. They have also discovered that the specimen's vertebrae, which museums commonly stack together, are actually spaced 10 millimeters apart. The result, Manning said, implies that scientists may have been underestimating the size of hadrosaurs and other dinosaurs.

More.