Michael Horn, the authorized American media Representative of Billy Meier case, has published yet once again another so-called corroboration article - Too Stupid to Survive? - on Jan 11, 2015 regarding the Meier/ETs 'prediction' of the largest plant-eating dinosaur, that allegedly proves Meier's claim of being in contact with ETs.
In that article, Michael made the following conclusion that he derived based on his "analysis":
"Now, unless you are among the walking brain dead, which may also include politicians, religious fundamentalists, scientists, university professors, etc., you’ll easily recognize the ironclad nature of what constitutes a legal standard of proof of prior publication. If you have any trouble with that, please stop now, go to church, a political meeting, your local university, etc., and don’t trouble yourself with actually…thinking.
How did he (Note: Billy Meier) get that information if not exactly as he said he did, from the Plejaren?"
And after this conclusion, he refers and appeals - to those "special" group of people who somehow are able to verify and acknowledge the scientific veractiy behind Michael's corrboration claims - as follows:
"If you haven’t at this point called everyone you know to tell them that you’ve just read (more) ironclad proof of Billy Meier’s prophetic scientific accuracy and that you now know that Meier’s contacts with extraterrestrials are absolutely authentic…then there’s something stone cold wrong with you."
Is there any truth at all to any of the Michael Horn's claims or are they just like other pseduo-scientific claims that were deconstructed recently?
Let us now analyze his scientific evidence and reasoning which he put forths as "ironclad proof of Billy Meier’s prophetic scientific accuracy".
CLAIM:
Michael Horn cites the below information (summarized) from Billy Meier's Contact Report 221 which was allegedly published in 1987 (which we will get into later in Objection #3) in his corroboration article:
- The largest plant-eating, long-neck dinosaurs lived in what is now Patagonia, around 100 million years ago and the largest specimens reached up to 60 meters in length and exhibited a weight of around 135 tons.
His evidence is a May 2014 article - 'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered - published by BBC. The article describes a new species of Titanosaur (a sub-group of sauropod dinosaurs which are herbivorous) that was being unearthed in the Patagonia region of Argentina.
Based on its huge thigh bones, Paleontologists who worked on the specimen calculated that the Titanosaur would be 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall, weighing in at 77 tonnes. Based on the age of the rocks in which its bones were found, it was calculated that it lived in the forests of Patagonia between 95 and 100 million years ago.
Michael apparently reasons that since the May 2014 discovery of the "biggest" dinosaur to date that lived between 95-100 mya in Patagonia closely matches with the Meier's information from "1987" which is 27 years before the May 2014 discovery - then this can be considered as the "ironclad proof of Billy Meier’s prophetic scientific accuracy".
ANALYSIS:
There are many flaws and fallacies in Michael Horn's reasoning, which are very basic in nature and we will explain them in detail below.
Objection #1:
Let us suppose that Meier really published the information on Dinosaurs from CR 221 in 1987. Now the obvious problem is how does the May 2014 article corroborate the CR 221 information ?
There were multiple discoveries of plant-eating, long-neck dinosaurs that have been discovered over the decades and each time, whenever a larger (in length) species was discovered than the previous ones, it was naturally crowned as the 'largest or the biggest dinosaur ever'. These multiple discoveries were made at different locations other than Patagonia and the age of these dinosaurs fossils too varied by several million years.
As an example, Brachiosaurus, a genus of sauropod dinosaur was first described by an American paleontologist Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon (now Colorado River) of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax, declaring it "the largest known dinosaur". Even in 1990, the discovery of Argentinosaurus (in Patagonia) made it the largest known dinosaur at that time. And several others that followed in the subsequent years like this one in Patagonia in the year 2000 and few after.
Is it not possible that scientists in the future would find an even larger species than the one described in the May 2014 BBC article at another location (ex: North America, Asia, Africa, etc.) ?
Logically speaking, it is totally possible and there are no scientific reasons to argue that it is impossible. If it is so, then it is totally illogical to conclude that the biggest plant-eating Sauropods that ever walked on Earth would only be found in the Patagonia region and that the age of the fossils would be around 100 million years.
Perhaps Mr. Horn can offer us some scientific reasons as to why the dinosaur fossils - larger/bigger than the one as mentioned in the BBC article or the ones as mentioned in Meier's CR 221 - cannot be found in the other regions of the world.
Objection #2:
Estimating the length, height and weight of the dinosaur species is a very difficult job given their usually fragmentary state of preservation. Even the BBC article, Michael Horn posted has this information that expressed doubts on the finding for the biggest/largest dinosaur title, which for some reason he neglected:
"Dr Paul Barrett, a dinosaur expert from London's Natural History Museum, agreed the new species is "a genuinely big critter. But there are a number of similarly sized big sauropod thigh bones out there," he cautioned.
"Without knowing more about this current find it's difficult to be sure. One problem with assessing the weight of both Argentinosaurus and this new discovery is that they're both based on very fragmentary specimens - no complete skeleton is known, which means the animal's proportions and overall shape are conjectural.
"Moreover, several different methods exist for calculating dinosaur weight (some based on overall volume, some on various limb bone measurements) and these don't always agree with each other, with large measures of uncertainty.
"So it's interesting to hear another really huge sauropod has been discovered, but ideally we'd need much more material of these supersized animals to determine just how big they really got.""
As you can see the same BBC article clearly stated that there are "a number of similarly sized big sauropod thigh bones out there" essentially making them also as the contenders for the biggest/largest dinosaur title. For some reason this was not taken into account by Michael Horn.
Also another article - Biggest Dinosaur Ever? Maybe. Maybe Not. - published just a day after the BBC article by National Geographic explains it better on why we have to read these 'biggest or largest dinosaur' claims (as the one with the BBC article) with caution. Another similar article - The Largest Dinosaur Ever Unearthed May Not Actually Be the Largest - was published 3 days after the BBC article by Vice.
These two article talks about other similar & even far better contenders to the one being mentioned in the BBC article, for the largest or the biggest dinosaur title. For example, the mysterious dinosaur, the Amphicoelias fragillimus - at 58 metres (190 ft) in length, and may have had a mass of up to 122.4 tonnes (135 short tons) - making it the largest/biggest dinosaur that ever lived. It size was calculated based on the surviving descriptions of a single fossil bone that was discovered in the Morrison Formation (site was dated to be 150 million years ago), western US. The only fossil remains were lost at some point after being studied and described in the 1870s, evidence survives only in drawings and field notes. But due to the lack of any material evidence, the title of the largest/biggest dinosaur is still pending for this species and also to other giant Sauropod species which has very little fragmentary evidence to work with.
May be in the future paleontologists will find a full skeleton of this mysterious dinosaur Amphicoelias fragillimus in the Morrison Formation, US or at places other than Patagonia, thus making it the largest/biggest dinosaur ever to walk on the Earth. But again, who knows may be there is yet another fossil waiting to be discovered that surpasses all previous estimates, even the Amphicoelias fragillimus. There are no reasons at all to suggest that it is impossible.
On September 4 2014, an NBC article - Dreadnoughtus: A New Giant Joins the 'Biggest Dinosaur' Parade - was published. Though its size - estimated to be about 85 feet (26 meters) long, 30 feet (9 meters) tall, and weighed about 65 tons (59 metric tons) - is smaller compared to the May 2014 Titanosaur fossil, it was reported by the article to be the 'biggest dinosaur' based on the completeness of the skeleton. Drexel University paleontologist and the lead author of the paper on the discovery, Kenneth Lacovara stated that Titanosaurus which was reported in May 2014 as the biggest dinosaur was based on a mere smattering of bones, or on analyses that haven't yet been subjected to peer review. In contrast, he says that the estimate of Dreadnoughtus' size and weight was based on measurements of more than 100 separate elements, including most of the tail vertebrae, a yard-long (meter-long) neck vertebra, numerous ribs and nearly all the bones from the forelimbs and hindlimbs. Researchers unearthed about 45 percent of the skeleton's full complement of bones, representing 70 percent of the bone types found below the skull (for example, a left rib without the mirror-image right rib). Lacovara said that no other dinosaur measured in this crucial way has been judged to be as big.
Once again an article - Dreadnoughtus Was Probably Not the Biggest Dinosaur Ever - was published by Vice one day after NBC article clearing the misconception on the biggest/largest title.
Objection #3:
So far, we have deconstructed Michael Horn's pseudo-scientific arguments,without the need to bring up the publication date of the Contact Report 221 information. Even though we don't need it here, let us look into that argument as well.
Michael says the following regarding the publication date of the CR 221 in his article:
"Let’s just walk through a couple of indisputable facts; indisputable if you aren’t a brain dead skeptic.
Meier’s information below was first published in 1987.
In 1987, Billy Meier was given and first published information saying that, “The largest plant-eating dinosaurs lived in what is now Patagonia.”"
When was CR 221 published for the first time and available to public?
Michael Horn doesn't present any evidence at all to support his own claims, instead he repeats it again and again as if it is an indisputable fact, which unfortunately is taken as truth by his followers.
The truth is that CR 221 was never ever published in 1987. It was for the first time verifiably published in Plejadisch-Plejarische Kontaktberichte Block 5 in 2004. Even this fact was conveyed to him by Simon in the comment section on his blog post.
"January 11, 2015 at 9:48 am
For the record: contact report 221 was first published in 2004 in Plejadisch-plejarische Kontaktberichte block 5."
After this comment, Michael Horn has newly added a note to his article saying this:
"*NOTE: Contact Report 221 was also published in German in 2004 in Plejadisch-plejarische Kontaktberichte block 5."
As you can see the difference between the two statements in red color. It seems Michael Horn still believes that the CR 221 information on dinosaurs was first published in 1987, though he doesn't have any evidence to back it up.
Where is the evidence for the 1987 publication Mr. Horn ?
Perhaps I should change the title of this post to 'Too stupid to think?' or 'Too stupid to google?'.
You should update these as current paleontology research indeed corroborated Meiers claim about the largest dinosaurs ever to exist coming from Patagonia.
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