Wacky creationist news: photo of "live dinosaur"

For some unknown reason, creationists seem to think that finding a living dinosaur would undo all research into DNA, genetics, fossils, geology, cladistics, and natural selection. Living dinosaurs are less probable than other organisms, such as the dawn redwood in China, the coelecanth in the Indian Ocean, or primitive insects or the recently discovered Wollemi pine in Australia—indeed, a whole garden of living fossil plants in California. But it would merely prove that yes, Virginia, there are still gaps in the fossil record. That’s not surprising given the vast spans of time for plate tectonics and erosion to occur. It would not undo evolution.

If finding a dinosaur would destroy evolution, what would finding a marsupial do? A horseshoe crab with its one-step blood clotting? An invertebrate that has a notochord only in the larval stage? A nautiloid like the ones that sailed the Cambrian seas? Corals like the Devonian reefs fossilized in the peaks of the Rocky Mountans? A primitive metazoan that resembles a slime mold? a bacterium? “Nanobes” so primitive that the jury is still out on whether or not they are alive? We have them all.

Nevertheless, they do try, and one intrepid creationist went to Africa in 2002 looking for a dinosaur. The expedition found something, but the footprint (photographed) looks remarkably like an elephant’s; and the description of a creature seven to nine feet tall at the shoulder with a long, thin “neck,” dimly seen in the dark, also reminds me of an elephant. The expedition ran around in the dark, hysterical with excitement that there were dinosaurs out there! No one, apparently, took a flashlight. The came back with a photograph, but they forgot to use a flash. Here’s their proof:

I’ve brightened it up for you, and darned if – when I squint and tilt my head to the left – it doesn’t look like an elephant’s foot and trunk. Or some palm fronds and grass, I’m not sure which.

I suggest that they invest in an camera triggered by a motion sensor and some infra-red film.

If there are dinosaurs out there terrorizing the hippos, why hasn’t someone come up with a dropping, a clearly dinosaurian footprint, a bone, or a carcase? Until then, this story might replace “How the dinosaurs all breathed themselves to death” as my favourite Creationist fable.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that this is a parody. But I’ve seen lots of worse nonsense that’s dead serious.