First True Color image of an extinct dinosaur ever--too cool

National Geographic has produced the first image of the true colors of an extinct dinosaur. I know it is a bit off topic of my usual posts but the image and the deductive reasoning that produced it are absolutely amazing. See for yourself:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100204-dinosaurs-color-feathers-science-3-d-picture/


Read more about how paleontologist discovered the hidden information contained in fossilized dinosaur feathers and skin to discover the actual colors of those feathers and skin, at the above site after the 3D picture or in the New York Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/science/05dino.html


It is worth mentioning that I found from personal experience that our ANTI friends do not want this kind of information taught in our FACT based science curriculum in VUSD. One of their goals is to stop the teaching of fact based science.

Our ANTI friends teach their children either that dinosaur fossils are only "fanciful creations of bones by scientists from existing animals" like elephants and hippos or that dinosaurs did exist but a Noah's flood wiped them out.

Hey I am fine with teaching about a world wide flood or any other catastrophe for which there is evidence.

I taught my students about the Chicxulub meteor impact that apparently ended of the age of dinosaurs (except birds) and about the Deccan Traps--unimaginably huge lava outflows whose gases had to have had grave negative impacts on the atmosphere causing mass extinctions. There is factual physical evidence for both of those world wide disasters and many other disasters as well including many massive regional floods.

Science classroom instruction must be based on FACTUAL evidence. There is no evidence whatsoever for a world wide flood. In fact there is extensive evidence that such an event DID NOT happen.

To name just one piece of evidence, the large water soluble gypsum formations on the surface of the Atacama desert in northern Chile that can be dated to be more than twenty million years old. These crystals dissolve with the slightest touch of rain. This desert has not seen rain and certainly not a flood in at least twenty million years. It is the driest place on the planet and has been for twenty million years. What Noah's world wide flood occurred every where but the Atacamba?

How can I as an honest person in good conscience teach about a world wide flood as many of our ANTI friends would like?

When I taught science here in VUSD, I ran into a number of problems trying to teach fact based science to our public school students--disruptive students from ANTI households and complaints from ANTI parents to my site and district administration that certain parts of our fact based science curriculum should be de-emphasized, demeaned, or ignored.

I was able to show site admin specific parts of the California State Science Framework did indeed require the teaching of fact based science. Science teachers did not need to pretend that the universe was young or that natural selection did not occur nor did we need the permission to teach this fact based curriculum from a tiny minority of parents whose world view is threatened by facts.

In my classroom and in the classrooms of brave science teachers all over this district and this country FACT based science is still taught no matter the pressure put on honest science teachers to eliminate facts from their science classrooms. Let's hope the ANTI minority never takes control again and attempts to eliminate inconvenient facts from the science, history and sex education curriculum. Personally I think it is neat to finally know the real colors of one dinosaur. I do not see it as a threat to my way of life and to my children and grandchildren. Few people other than our ANTI friends do.