Message #237040

[In the Mouth of Madness]

Some even complained that the press was suppressing the plesiosaur story (Bartz 1992; Scoggan 1996; Taylor 1996), despite its coverage in dozens of popular books and articles, and the fact that it was often presented in a way more favorable to the plesiosaur interpretation than the evidence warranted.

Recently two creationists have written more accurate but still incomplete summaries of the case. Niermann (1994) noted that the 1978 studies pointed to a shark, and that basking sharks tend to decay into plesiosaur-like shapes. Unfortunately, he tucked these comments into footnotes, while the body of the text encouraged the plesiosaur interpretation. Todd Wood (1997) acknowledged that the evidence strongly supports the basking shark conclusion, but listed several alleged inconsistencies with the shark identification--none of which stand up to close scrutiny.