Another entry in the annals of crackpottery

This is kind of sad, actually. It's a slick website from a guy in Utah who claims to have discovered pre-Cambrian dragons. Browse around his gallery, and it's clear that what he's got are pictures of random rocks, and that he's seeing shapes in them like one sees shapes in the clouds. He reminds me of Ed Conrad.

His name is Mike Hallett, so of course this period of gigantic dragons is called the Hallettstoneion. He has also written a book, which has to be seen to be believed. I swear, I think it's actually written in crayon. Here's a sample, in case you'd really rather not download a 40MB pdf.

Ouch. I hope his family gets the poor man some help.

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No way PZ, no-one can touch Ed Conrad, he was *really* special. Pre-Cambrian dragons can't touch fossilisd human embryos made of coal!

But... there's multiple people digging up rocks in the gallery... looks like a team effort... wow.

Ouch. I hope his family gets the poor man some help.
Or, at the very least, a dictionary.

I feel sorry for him too -- how could someone become an adult without ever having seen a rock before?

Cystolization?

Hallettstoneion sea ZORIAS?

LOL

Wow, that's some anal-retentive handwriting there.

By Stephen Wells (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

All I see is a bunch of rocks...

By Man of Science (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

I was tempted by the thought that it was a joke due to the quality of the website. Someone who'd seriously come up with that stuff shouldn't be able to tie their own shoes.

Dude needs to stop thinking that peyote visions are real. Otherwise, nice collection of rocks, and it's keeping him off the streets.

Mighty fine rocks. Mighty fine, indeed. You keep digging, son. One day you'll find your dragons.

Psssst, get him in the jacket!

I remember digging post holes in for a fence in my Provo yard. Nothing but rubble and boulders, hardly needed a shovel, just kept pulling out rocks. I wish I had recoginized them as sea monster parts, how could have have been so blind, years of training in biology and I couldn't even recognize a simple skull or tooth or scale.

Did he find The Red Cross Shield, too?

Damn! Is that the Jurassic Park music too? And the book... I mean OpenOffice is free!

>Watch the movie. The guy really likes transitions. He has >frames transitioning back to themselves, over and over again.

arg this drove me crazy. If he has any evidence he sure isn't going to let you see it. He went so totally crazy with the transition effects his information is lost in all the visual noise. Video production classes should use this as an example of how not to use transitions in a video!

he sure has a wealth of rocks right there. you can't fault him for lack of... well, rocks.
maybe he should try entering them into some sort of village fete?

This is an impressive, visionary and above all, GROUND BREAKING work of pelentology.

These discoveries will rock the world of evolutionary biology, sweeping aside you old school types. I mean, what about the calcite in the teeth? What a clincher. Dammit, you people are just too close minded!!

Those eyes! Those crazy, crazy eyes!
Seriously, if I saw that guy coming at me across a crowded party, I'd just KNOW the crazy would be turned up. Great find! :) I'll think about this all day as I do REAL science at work.

This seems like a pretty clear cut case of cargo cult science to me. I love how he marks out his archaeological sites!

"Peleontologist" in the opening title to the video?

With the over-the-top transitions and ridiculous repetition of the Jurassic Park music I'm tending towards some kind of parody. Damn, it's a very close call, though.

From looking at his writing and his books, this reminds me of my half-uncle who has schizophrenia. While going through my late grandmother's things with my father last fall, we came across a few boxes of his stuff that he must have left behind. He had documented all sorts of conspiracy theories involving the CIA and various dictators (somehow he was also involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein, too!), plus all the cures for various diseases he was working on. It's too bad; from what I have been told he was an extremely intelligent man with a bright future before the disease started taking over...

PZ beat me to it, but this guy LOVES transitions in his presentations. I was trying to read his data, but it was rippling. I was engrossed by the picture of the skull and jawline, until a ball shattered the glass, only to remain on the same slide, to be shattered again several times.

#21 .... that is a perfect summary of what appears to be going on there. A rushed attempt to replicate a process that doesn't get beyond a superficial approximation of a few externalities. Cargo Cult Science, perfect.

He can't even spell "palaeontologist" properly!

(I didn't bother continuing beyond this point. If someone can't spell their own job title properly, chances are they haven't got much worthwhile to say. Harsh it may be; but we all have to have some kind of "coarse filter" to prevent information overload, and my particular one is misuse of the Queen's English.)

"Peleontologist"--heh, who knew that Pele was already playing in such a distant past?

Well it looked like limestone to me, from the pics. Then I started watching the vid. High concentration of calcite? Amazing, that. LOL

PZ,

With regards to Ed Conrad, did Andrew McRae ever respond to the images that Conrad has that supposedly show the Haversian canals. He has piccies on his website, under the section "EC96-001 Testing - see the proof for yourself", which can be found through the "man as old as coal" part of the site:

http://edconrad.com/

They don't look overly convincing to me, but I'm not really an expert.

i don't know about you but sometimes i am glad that there are these crackpots out there with overactive imaginations, just makes things more interesting.I man this could be great inspiration for some outstanding fiction, right, right?? ok maybe not....but its still funny.

By the free phenotype (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Does anyone know the name of whatever gallery plugins he is using? I do like the multizoom-drag feature.

But how does he explain PYGMIES + DWARFS?

/had to be done

You are making much adoo about a perfectly respectable website. Studies therehein where sourced from the prolific mind of Calvin the back-to-the-future paleontologist, and his trusty sidekick, Hobbes the postgrad tiger.

Particularly tremulous writing in said book is off course due to the stupendous speed and crampiness within the time-machine used to get back to the present before lunchtime.

Well ... his handwriting is more regular and legibile than mine.

Just dug up thi gem from the "IT Solutions" link at the bottom of the page.

... you can add ore remove content in less than 5 minutes. If you know how to use Microsoft office then you can use our system, it is that easy. Imagine that your clients can register into to your web site and access information only available to subscribers. You can send mass emails to the people who have subscribe. Eventually you will have a great database of your costumers or potential costumers.

This appears to be compelling evidence that "peleontology" isn't the only discipline this guy is doing violence to.

My favorite in this field is still the "work" of Chonosuke Okamura. Microscopic versions of recent vertebrate species ... from the Silurian! An article with some illustrations is here:
http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i6/okamura-6-6.html
Apparently there was some excitement in the 1880s about fossils (crinoids, corals, sponges etc.) found in meteorites by Otto Hahn (not the nuclear physicist). Turned out to be another case of pareidolia.
And then there was Randolph Kirkpatrick's nummulosphere (he thought all rocks consisted entirely of nummulites). Some of you have probably read about it in the essay "Crazy Old Randolph Kirkpatrick" by S. J. Gould, reprinted in his book The Panda's Thumb. Kirkpatrick's book is online at: http://www.archive.org/details/nummulosphere03kirkrich

By Lars Dietz (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

@Stephen Wells, #7
Wow, that's some anal-retentive handwriting there.
Are you sure that you don't mean anal-expulsive?

He certainly seems to be pulling all the content directly out his arse, at least.

I don't think the website was something he cobbled together, it looks like he used these guys to do it for him. Just in case anyone was having some kind of cognitive dissonance over the affair.

Yikes. It's like Yahoo Serious playing Jar Jar Binks in a remake of The Phantom Menace.

I like how he spelled 'biology' wrong.

His favourite phrase: "And here you can see the attachment base growing to a tip..." On and on and on about bloody attachment bases!

Oh Ed Conrad, that takes me back. I used to hang out in sci.archaeology usenet group and encountered Ed. He would post picks of rocks and then tell us all the numbers he saw in them, well one day he posted a link to a standing stone on the West Coast of Scotland and was going on about 'the yellow patch' and I did a double take and thought 'yellow? in Scottish granite?' and realised something. Rocks in this part of the world that have been exposed to the elements for more than a couple of decadeds get covered in, biology. First funghi and algae put a patina over it and then mosses and especially lichens begin to grow. So what Ed was doing was not reading patterns in the rock, but patterns in the lichens, which is the only way you get cream and yellow patches on Scottish granite.

Hell this house was built in 1965 and the concrete block walls out the front are covered in lichens already. Some neighbours water blast them off, but I like biology.

We had a laugh and his posts seemed to tail off after that.

By Peter Ashby (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Someone should call in Craig et al from the deapseanews blog and break the sad news to them: all knowledge in marine biology has now been superseded by an amateur pliontologlogist who caught too much sun in Utah.
Its the rays maan...they make you see things better, maan...LOL

Damn it, Dr Myers! I just had my breakfast!

So let me get this straight, this guy is a construction worker, and that qualifies him to identify fossils? Does he work for the Discovery Institute?

If someone can't spell their own job title properly

I'm entirely in sympathy with your evaluation of this particular case, but as a copyeditor, I'd caution everyone against reading too much into misspellings. For one thing, what appear to be misspellings are often simply typos (i.e., physical mistakes rather than intellectual ones). And even if what you're looking at is a true misspelling, I've see some pretty egregious spelling from some awfully smart people.

I'm jus' sayin'....

By Bill Dauphin (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

True Bob said:

Otherwise, nice collection of rocks, and it's keeping him off the streets.

Does he look (or write) like someone who could safely be allowed unsupervised access to a collection of rocks to you?

Some of those rocks are quite large - the poor guy could hurt himself!

By Lilly de Lure (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Weird. I mentioned Elizabeth Peters' Summer of the Dragon just the other day on another skeptics blog. This guy's fantasy is similar to the plot of EP's book. (Elizabeth Peters is the pen name of Barbara Mertz, an archaeologist who trained at the University of Chicago. She writes tongue-in-cheek mysteries with an archaeology bent.) In Summer of the Dragon, a young archaeologist is hired by a billionaire kook magnet, and one of the kooks is looking for dragon bones. (Other kooks are interested in Augustus Le Plongeon's Atlantis/Mu theories, the Flying Dutchman mine, reincarnation, dowsing, alien abduction and The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel theory. The narrator provides an amusingly snarky riff on the background of these various "theories" and scams, and EP's archaelogical background provides excellent contrast for how science trumps pseudoscience. It's a fluffy mystery, and a little dated--it was written in 1979, but it's fun stuff for the skeptic who likes mysteries and seeing kooks debunked.)

It's possible that this young man is conflating play and life: he's acting out a fantasy in which he imagines he is a great scientist who has made a great discovery. This is much easier and more entertaining than actually trying to become a great scientist or making a great discovery.

I'm not sure if this is sad or sick. I can look at it more as a work of art--a non-stop performance piece. It's outsider art, as most outsider science could be if its proponents didn't take it and themselves so seriously.

By Chris Pierson (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Well, so much for trying to be fair. I made myself watch 10 whole minutes. One would think he'd mention how he differentiates between fossilized parts of his animal and... well, rocks. Not this guy.

There's a typo in the post btw PZ. The video tells me it's "HALLETTESTONEION".

By Dutch Delight (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

" While they might be mistaken for ordinary driveway gravel by the untrained eye of the ignorant layman, I immediately recognized them as jawbone fragments from an entirely new species of carnosaur! This diagram reconstructs the complete Calvin-osaurus as it would have appeared in the late cretaceous. The colouration is somewhat conjectural..."

Honestly, I don't know why you folks are going on so about silly rocks, when the Evil Physicists™ are even now preparing to suck us all into a black hole... or perhaps convert all the matter of our universe into exotic "strangelets."

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx

Let's get our priorities straight, shall we?

By Bill Dauphin (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

I'm looking at the gallery on the website and alternately squinting and letting my eyes go all lazy to no avail. I'm just not getting "skull" anywhere in there. Then again, those stereo art images never worked for me either.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Maybe if I let my brain go all lazy...

I could only stand the over-the-top transitions and the endless repetition of the Jurassic Park theme for five minutes.

Calcite is a "pure form of calcium?"

And these amazing rocks have a left side, a right side, a top and a bottom! Wow, I've never seen anything with a left side, a right side, a top and a bottom. Some things are all top, and some are all bottom, but a top and a bottom both! Wow!

It is refreshing to see crackpottery that is at least not evil. My wife wants me to quit reading stories about Expelled and Florida schools for a while. Maybe this kind of thing would help restore my sanity.

Or not.

I told my bf about this guy. His response:

"Zoria" sounds very Power Rangers.

"I am DYNO-ZOR and I shall DESTROY THE ICE CREAM FACTORY, Power Rangers!"

Sorry, had to share.

How long before someone send this guys info to Ben Stein?

Hey, it will be a hell of a sequel to Expelled the Blockbuster*

* where blockbuster = Church basements

Ed Conrad, sigh. Truly, a crank for the ages...

Man! Older! Than! Coal!

[/William Shatner declaiming]

By David Wilford (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Bill D,

Strangelets? Paaah. Worry about Ice 9.

This seems like somebody who has put rather a lot of effort into an entertaining personal project of his. And to me it looks like a work of utter genius.

I would hope that when I finally go completely loopy and publish my 300+ page findings on ancient Manticore remains inhabiting the sewers of Glasgow, (look this squishy brown stick is the shale left over from their fire generating glands!) you would see it for the masterpiece it truly is.

(please be a bit kinder to him, I have relatives who are actually like this)

By stanley knife (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

At least give him some credit for not insisting that schools teach the controversy: Rocks or Dragons, let the kids decide! And no where could I find a statement that geology is only a theory.

Crackpot? Definitely.

Crazy-ass MoFu? You betcha.

Dangerous? Hardly.

What do you mean?! Of course We should teach the controversy in our high schools! Why are you trying to stifle scientific debate? What are you afraid of? If you're so sure you're right, just present the evidence -- and let the students decide for themselves.

By Physicalist (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

I'm properly chastened for all the fun I've been having at the Floridians' expense this past week. It tends to be embarrassing any time my home state makes it into the news with the rare exception of actual work done in Paleontology, and of course a 2007 Nobel laureate.

Anyone who has lived in Utah for any amount of time is very familiar with these rocks (not his in particular)... the process of building a home, landscaping, or even planting a garden is basically the process of moving tons of this rock out of the way. It takes someone really special, or special pharmaceuticals, to see dragons in the rock, though.

Umm... Manticores are real Stanley.

I should add that there is something touching, sincere, and altogether pathetic, in the efforts put out by someone Hallett.

These are people who really believe, rather than being the cynical manipulators at the DI who essentially do nothing but PR (sure, there might be a little going on at the Biologic Institute, but you can be certain they'll never release negative results--hence there will be no genuine results released, ever). I mean, they're naive, know nothing about what they're getting into, and are sincerely prejudiced in their interpretations, but they're actually trying to get some evidence.

Meanwhile, avoiding evidence, and excusing their inability to find evidence, is virtually all that the IDiots do.

I can have some sort of respect for Hallett, then. I have none for Behe and Dembski, let alone the oily slimeball J Wells.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Seems like he and Pivar could get a real research program going . . .

By Physicalist (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Eventually you will have a great database of your costumers or potential costumers.

Wow, they really do say "costumers" (twice!) Now, I don't know how many costumes you have or how many costumers you need to design and maintain them, but I would much rather have a database of customers LOL

Yet another victim of using a spellchecker instead of proofreading. I'm beginning to think spell checkers should be eliminated, that will force people to think about their spelling and grammar. The thing is, this is supposedly a "professional" website advertising their design services. If they can't put enough care and thought into proofreading their own site, why should any of their potential "costumers" expect them to do any better for their site?

Dembski is a crackpot. Ed Conrad is a crackpot. This guy is just a nutcase. Or a comedian. :-D

@ Zero

I KNOW they exist, I have collected tons of evidence! If you'd like, I could package some of that shale I mentioned earlier in a box and send it to you posthaste! XD

By stanley knife (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

A little soapbox of my own. Has anyone seen the Discovery Channel/Animal Planet show about dragons? I found it a fascinating bit of conjecture, but the elementary students I teach have all seen it and, mainly due to the CGI and scenes of finding frozen and mummified dragons, completely believe that dragons existed. No amount of explaining I do will convince them that the Discovery Channel made it all up. One wonders if this guy got his inspiration from this show or that insipid "Dragonology" book.

Paley and the good reverend William Buckland would be proud of this guy. It would be great to see Hallett and Ham debate the significance of the fossil record. Or Hallett and Behe discuss the controversial topic 'What Science is.' @)

Could this be some sort of performance art piece?

It seems too slick to be the product of a deluded mind.

Hopefully someone will get to the bottom of this . . .

By Atomicmutant (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Well, look on the bright side: at least he accepts the existance of fossils over 500 million years old.

Without having watched the entire sequence, I'd have to agree that this guy seems more like a new age crackpot as opposed to the typical creationist types that gets skewered around here.

Nice to see you branching out, PZ. :)

Bilbo Baggins learned a long time ago that it is not wise to awaken sleeping dragons, They are a grumpy and surly lot. At least the fool thought the dates were longer than 6,000 years ago. Hey maybe its proof of Zenu?

By Ken Mareld (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

A cynical person would say some construction worker need a way to make money during the housing slump and concocted a scam while on break during his last job.

Aaagh! My eyes! The goggles they do nothing!

I gave up when he was wandering around his big rock, while the text was scrolling in Star Wars opening scene fashion, and the JP music loop was rising to yet another crescendo.

I don't know which is loopier: his obsessive fanatsies about random boulders, or his apparent belief that endless gimmicky transitions make an effective presentation style. Definitely clinical, but at least it seems to be a harmless obsession. Let's hope he stays harmless.

Where are the jewels? Everyone knows that Smaug the Dragon slept for ages on mounds of precious jewels that resulted in his entire underside being permanently encrusted with jewels. Surely the jewels must be there somewhere under the "bottom" of this dragon. I'm guessing he isn't really interested in dragonology at all, but is only selfishly going after the jewels.

Well. Anyway, what is the etymology behind the term "stoned"?

By Torbjörn Larsson, OM (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Once again you scientists fumble the whole PR/political strategy thing.

An unidentifiable detachment should start pushing this around to the crackpots in the guise of new ammunition against evolution, new ways to wound the science elites. It's perfect; lots of pictures, some sciency words (however misspelled); highly flexible interpretations. Let it fester and virate among the Creationistas for a few weeks. Many are quite stupid enough to embrace the scientific dragonishness of the rocks. I know there's a biological term for this, when you release a bunch of sterile individuals into a target population to (excuse the technical talk) fuck with them.
And, if the particular creationist happens to be too smart to bite on the sea dragons, it's just a good old insult.

ice

How can you doubting doubters doubt? All his dragon skulls come with a right AND a left AND a top AND a bottom!

Still not convinced? THEY HAVE A FRONT AND A BACK, PEOPLE!

Sheesh. And to think, if he were a geologist or even a painter, he might have done something productive with his unhealthy interest in rocks.

That's like a bad joke. His graphics are horrible. Did anyone else cringe at his spelling of palaeontology at the beginning?

He'd have a field-day around here. We have lots of triangular rocks with a top and sides and bottom and everything!

Awwww... I'm disappointed, I was really hoping when I clicked that for a really good hoax website with fabricated dragon fossils. That would be a whole lot more fun than this poor deluded guy. I feel bad for him, he's clearly passionate about what he thinks he's found that it's really sad he's so wrong.

All this time, I thought the native americans had shaped stones into points for their arrow heads. No, they were using the teeth of rock monsters!

What the file check is a zoria?

I dunno, I think it's kind of sweet.

...
So now, when I look at Mike Hallett's stone dragons
I'm more than a little bit jealous;
He's doing what I did at seven years old
(And you have to admit, the man's zealous);
He's digging in dirt, and he's making up stuff
About dragons from long, long ago,
Like a Peter Pan Paleontologist, maybe
He chose, for himself, not to grow.
Yes, maybe the man is a bit out of touch
And reality's not his best friend,
But maybe he had the same fun as a kid
And just doesn't want it to end.

(complete poem at http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/03/hey-mikey-lets-go-dig-up-…)

It just occurred to me after I hit post that this guy reminds me of Calvin, all adult now and sans Hobbes to rein him in.

I see Cuttlefish is of a similar opinion.

Nurse, we need a psychologist and a straightjacket stat!
I love how his website has two photo gallery pages and gallery 2 has 3 sub-pages.
This diagram with all its lines must be proof of something:
http://www.hszoria.com/Portals/4/LiveContent/500/Images/SCAN0160.JPG
Non-parallel lines do cross?
Maybe it's just me but this fellow has issues. Thankfully he may not harm anyone unless he feels threatened then everyone better duck - them's a lot of rocks. Yessiree.

Paley and the good reverend William Buckland would be proud of this guy.

No, Buckland would view the guy as a nutcase. Buckland knew enough about how to tell fossils from random chunks of rock to know Hallett has no clue at all. Remember, Megalosaurus actually was a 'dragon', unlike Hallett's imaginings.

By Mike from Ottawa (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Precambrian dragons are the new Flying Spaghetti Monster.

This diagram with all its lines must be proof of something

It is: the connection between dragons and Stonehenge via ley lines, linking them to the Nommo of the Dogon.

This is pretty simple stuff to an expert Bermuda Triangologist.

A little soapbox of my own. Has anyone seen the Discovery Channel/Animal Planet show about dragons? I found it a fascinating bit of conjecture, but the elementary students I teach have all seen it and, mainly due to the CGI and scenes of finding frozen and mummified dragons, completely believe that dragons existed. No amount of explaining I do will convince them that the Discovery Channel made it all up.

If you can get a copy, go right to the end. In the last little bit of voiceover narration (not the actor playing the scientist), they go on about how what was just seen wasn't real.

Finally! We have identified the author of comment №14.

Yeah, I remember Video Toaster, too.

"All his dragon skulls come with a right AND a left AND a top AND a bottom!"

Enough of the scientific jargon. Can you put this in layman's terms?

BWAHAHAH! He looks like Pauly Shore in Encino Man!

My first thought was Trilobites didn't go extinct....

Of course not! They survive on Doritos. Well, kind of.

After watching the first 8 minutes or so (and finding out that I can read most of the text if I just ignore the transitions...) I'm with comments 53, 58, 76 and 80. (And I agree with comment 72 that spellcheckers are teh evul.)

0.55 Tc.

Someone should perhaps tell him that vertebrate hard tissues, except eggshells, consist of calcium phosphate, not calcium carbonate...

...and that he can't dig Cambrian fossils out of earth. That's the only part that is truly sad about the video.

I wonder if constantly repeating a small part of the Jurassic Park theme is legal, though. And when Spaceballs parodized the almost horizontal zoom-by text of Star Wars, it was funny, but this time... argh...

--------------------

Cuttlefish, you forgot to allow anyone without a Google/Blogger account to comment on your blog, so I have to drag it here into public what you wrote about your poem on the dicyemids:

Oh, for those who wonder about these things--this one was one of the verses that might as well have been self-writing. Less than 15 minutes, and it came out in final form. I love it when that happens.

Truly, you are not human.

"I am not human"
-- Mr Spock

By David Marjanović, OM (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Here's what happened. Back in 1996 Dragon Earth time a party of three dragon researchers, using an experimental temporal magic technique and some dodgy temporal mathematics, went off on an expedition to about 700 million years ago. The were hoping to beat the previous record holder for time travel---some 85 millions years ago at the time---and gather samples and information on late Pre-Cambrian conditions. It would appear that while they did wind up in Pre-Cambrian times, it was on the wrong Earth, having gone sideways in time as well as back. Not only that, but the structure of the reality they were now in did not allow for a phenomenon, magic, they had relied on for much of their technology, and indeed certain abilities. In short, their equipment failed. Stuck in an environment hostile to advanced vertebrates they soon expired.

Hy Mike (#98). What I was thinking of was the reproducion of a woodcut apparing on pp. 160-61 in Adrian Desmonds book: -The Hot Blooded Dinsurs, A revolution in paleonology.- The illustration is by Thomas Hawkins. The text referring to the picture from page 159 of Desmond's book is as follows:

"The picture Buckland conjoured up was actually made flesh by another and rather eccentric Doset amateur only four years late. Thomas Hawkins, a collector of fossil marine saurians rendered the contemporary confusion into graphic form and compounded it with theological interpretation that was quite anachronistic even in 1840. The frontispiece to Hawkins' -Book of the Great Sea Dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, Gedolim Taminim of Moses, Extinct Monsters of the Ancient Earth- had been engraved by John Martin. . ."

My memory was of the picture and the association with Buckland.

Looks like a pretty place for a picnic lunch.

When does the museum open?

By CalGeorge (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

If it hasn't been said yet... this has to be parody.

Pictures of random rocks...

HalleSTONEian...

Long haired hippy dude with vacant expression....

Hadwritten "book"...

... and a slick, semi professional website?

I'm going with parody.

These fantastic discoveries have been discussed for a couple of days on the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's VRTPALEO mail list, and the consensus is that he is onto something extraordinary... sorry, I mean ON something extraordinary.
Don DeBlieux of the Utah Geological Survey seems to know most about it, and estimates that Hallett has contacted up to a hundred palaeontologists, EVERY ONE of which would have told him the 'fossils' are just weathered or flaked chunks of quartzite.
Unfortunately, not a parody.

By John Scanlon, FCD (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Pity the poor palaeontologists. I'm thinking he's hard to get rid of while remaining polite.

By JohnnieCanuck, FCD (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

The transition at 4.40 takes the calcite cake.

But he totally fails to answer the one scientific question that really matters - if these are really Hallettestoneion SeaZorias, how come there are still sea monkeys?

Hey, Mike! I think I've located some Zoria gonads! No shovel needed this time, just bring a ladder!

By CalGeorge (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Well. Anyway, what is the etymology behind the term "stoned"?

Thorbear, I think it's pretty simple. Sometime during the Jazz Age (when clarinetists still roamed the earth) the slang expression "stone drunk" came into use. We can only speculate on the origin; I suppose it had something to do with the stupor induced by intoxication. We know that verbs follow from nouns, so how does one get "stone drunk"? By getting "stoned" of course. The old blues song, "Let's Go Get Stoned", was a drinking song.

Sometime in the second half of the 20th century, the term "stoned" became increasingly associated with narcotics, especially (perhaps even exclusively) marijuana (a.k.a. weed, grass, pot, Mary Jane, reefer) and correspondingly less so with alcohol. A "stoner", now, is typically a pothead.

Ironically, the phrase "stone-cold sober" is still in use. Go figure. "Bad" = Good. :-)

No way this is a parody. Too "well" done.
This is 100% 1-hammer-short-of-a-bag-of-hammers,
autodidact crackpot science.

And he's got at least 1 disciple: "Ron", his
faithful cameraman.

It's one level of sad to see this guy; but how sad
is it that he's got people who score even lower on the
crackpot scale to follow and assist his groundbreaking
research.

Most Annoying Feature:
the transitions, of course...

But, Most Annoying Feature of the Most Annoying Feature:
he'll do a transition from one slide to THE VERY SAME SLIDE.
Over and over. Different transition, of course.

Maybe that's the way his mind works: constantly changing
and mostly erroneous perspectives, such that it makes it
difficult to impossible to have any sort of success at
critical reasoning. Like a mild and functioning
schizophrenia.

Just let him get on with it, do you think the evidence in the geologic record is so fragile that people will get confused by the scribblings of one nut?

I remember reading about one guy that spent his days excavating prehistoric Barbie dolls from his backyard and regularly updated the local universities paleontology department with the most meticulous records. Sounds like great fun to me.

Sadly, just by observation, he exhibits many of the signs of moderate to severe hyperthyroidism. The most telltale signs are that the person is very thin (couldn't tell by the video, but usually hyper-T's also have a ravenous appetite), and that "stare" caused by eyelid retraction or lid-lag. Both ocular issues cause the whites of the eyes to be seen above the iris, which is usually seen when someone is scared or stressed negatively. In this case, it is norepinephrine secretion causing the eyes to open up. In non-thyroid patients it is an instinctual reaction for the eyes to open wide when the body is presented with a fight-or-flight situation, performed automatically by the sympathetic nervous system. In hyper-T patients the norepinephrine is secreted without much regulation. Because too much thyroid hormone in the blood causes all the body's processes to speed up, psychological disorders like mania, OCD, etc, are not uncommon to manifest at the same time.

That being said...he's still a nutcase with not enough education to do what he's trying to do. However, don't most of us endeavor to find a way to make ourselves feel important and contribute something worthwhile most of the time? His is perhaps just more...errrr...creative...than some of the rest of us. I hope I put my sarcasm delicately enough.

Damn. Just downloaded and browsed the "book". This guy is unquestionably suffering some kind of schizophrenia. He seems happy and active though ... seems a pity to hassle him, can people like this become dangerous? If one were to attack his research, really tear into it for example. Anyone about with the relevant expertise to comment?

This is not funny. The book is heartbreaking. This guy has given up well paying jobs and appears to be in debt because of his "sea zoria" research.

Part of the "book" appears to be communications with a "Paul", explaining why he is behind on certain payments. He also seems to have made vain efforts to convince Mike Getty at the U of U of his momentous discovery.

This poor bastard needs immediate help:-(

Kseniya, thanks, I didn't know that - but I can see how it applies to alcohol as well.

Your Knowledge of drugs and their relation to music is awesome. And here I went around thinking the Rolling Stones were the emblematic start of the Paleolithic Age in music and drug business. (As in "Rock and stone won't break my boner".)

By Torbjörn Larsson, OM (not verified) on 28 Mar 2008 #permalink

I hope the administrators allow everyone to see my Bob Vido post from last night; it probably got delayed because of all the links. Each of the links points to a sample of work that I find to be very similar to this man's output.

TheFridgenometer

By TheFridgenometer (not verified) on 28 Mar 2008 #permalink

I don't mean to imply that marijuana wasn't prevalent during the Jazz Age or during the many years that passed between Prohibition and Woodstock. Those jazz and swing players were certainly known to smoke it, so "stoned" slang may have always reefered referred to both alcohol and marijuana intoxication.

Kseniya, your Jazz Age comment cracked me up. Mostly because I know that clarinetists still roam the Earth! In fact there are so many of them, I can only conclude that their numbers are evidence of a vast conspiracy to keep us truly superior Bass Clarinetists from claiming the musical power that is rightfully ours.

Also I learned something. Thanks. :)

By sublunary (not verified) on 28 Mar 2008 #permalink

OT: I have a 1.1mm pencil (1.18?) and it probably puts out similar character widths. It doesn't require crayon to get the lettering. (Unsharpened pencils render wider lines as well). It might be appropriate, but not necessary.

You've got to admit that watching this guy is more fun than watching Ben Stein. Perhaps they should have chosen him to narrate that other movie, you know...?

By Christophe Thill (not verified) on 28 Mar 2008 #permalink

Mike Hallett describes several independent rock creatures, each with a body plan and anatomic consistencies.
For one creature, he predicted and then dug up rocks that form a plausible mouth reconstruction,
with suitably situated and sized rocks that suggest working tooth surfaces and scaling patterns.

At the very least, Hallett's project is a golden opportunity to show how the backward reasoning of ID
can mislead you step-by-step into wrong conclusions, as it did the authors of Genesis 5000 years ago.

I suspect you're being taken in by a artist's project/parody. The name Mike Hallet is strangely familiar from my art school days at the University of Utah.

I didn't read all the posts, but the location in the photos is near Hill Air Force base. The land may be USFS property - I doubt he had a permit to haul out rocks. And with his unauthorized use of John William's music for Jurassic Park, he may need to do some quick revisions to the site - parody or not.

Please let us know if he finds any prehistoric rocks. That would be novel. With all those dragons and such, maybe there weren't any rocks in those days? Maybe rocks didn't get created until the New Stone Age?

Replying to the last message, I personally do not think this is an artist's parody! Too much repetitiveness (I did quickly scan all 286 pages) all centered ad nauseum on the same (flawed) observations and conclusions! I think some type of "obsessive/compulsive" behavior is at play, although this is my unprofessional opinion. You got to admit - the man really likes to DIG! As for his paper, which is totally devoid of any real science, I still think it could earn him a PhD at Liberty University! He just has to change his time-frame from 540 million years to about 5400 years ago! Undoubtedly Noah saw these "Sea Dragons" frolicking in the Great Ocean during the Biblical Flood. ("And don't you forget them 'silly Unicorns!'")

Sad, indeed!

By Jonathan Cahill (not verified) on 28 Mar 2008 #permalink

I did a double-take while watching ABC's Nightline last evening when they did the very same 'folding paper' transition between two scenes. Now we know Mike Hallett other vocation.

Seriously though, I see the same type of fixation on the irrational in creationists and people with delusory parasitosis.

I'm tempted to mail the link to Ed Conrad and/or Lin Lingtai.

By Andreas Johansson (not verified) on 29 Mar 2008 #permalink

So why can't they be real? Did anyone notice that the weeds around the skull were red? If they could find fossils in a rock , why can the rock not be the result of something? You people are so narrow minded!

Markie, you're being sarcastic, right?

right?

I think someone should encourage him to do a whole excavation, and see what happens from there!

No, I wasn't being sarcastic! I was raised to believe that anything is possible. could it be possible...? And Why not? Is it not true that the body of water is much larger than the actual land on this planet? and if there is soooo many different kinds of people on so little land compared to the waters, is it really beyond our imagination to consider that there was many many more creatures of the seas? I mean really, think about it!!

Well. Anyway, what is the etymology behind the term "stoned"?

By Torbjörn Larsson, OM (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

After watching the first 8 minutes or so (and finding out that I can read most of the text if I just ignore the transitions...) I'm with comments 53, 58, 76 and 80. (And I agree with comment 72 that spellcheckers are teh evul.)

0.55 Tc.

Someone should perhaps tell him that vertebrate hard tissues, except eggshells, consist of calcium phosphate, not calcium carbonate...

...and that he can't dig Cambrian fossils out of earth. That's the only part that is truly sad about the video.

I wonder if constantly repeating a small part of the Jurassic Park theme is legal, though. And when Spaceballs parodized the almost horizontal zoom-by text of Star Wars, it was funny, but this time... argh...

--------------------

Cuttlefish, you forgot to allow anyone without a Google/Blogger account to comment on your blog, so I have to drag it here into public what you wrote about your poem on the dicyemids:

Oh, for those who wonder about these things--this one was one of the verses that might as well have been self-writing. Less than 15 minutes, and it came out in final form. I love it when that happens.

Truly, you are not human.

"I am not human"
-- Mr Spock

By David Marjanović, OM (not verified) on 27 Mar 2008 #permalink

Kseniya, thanks, I didn't know that - but I can see how it applies to alcohol as well.

Your Knowledge of drugs and their relation to music is awesome. And here I went around thinking the Rolling Stones were the emblematic start of the Paleolithic Age in music and drug business. (As in "Rock and stone won't break my boner".)

By Torbjörn Larsson, OM (not verified) on 28 Mar 2008 #permalink

So all you super smarter than everyone people. I have seen these things. Look closley at the pictures mike has taken the so called teeth are similar to shark teeth and there are truly repeat teeth. The repeat teeth are smaller than the main set but they do in fact look the same as the much bigger bottom ones. I personally dout that there are any rocks that are or look the same up there on the water lines where he in fact is working very hard. I have, repeat (have) seen these teeth and the repeats of them. Mike means well and I do not think he crazy or spending much time looking for rocks that look the same,(they are the same). Do any of you have the balls to go see this or mabey stop bashing and help him. Mike has tried to get experts to look but they are all so cool and brilliant like you people that they are to good to look. Must be the hair on mikes head that (we do at the salon) where i work that scares them away. Mike is a very nice person and does not deserve your bashing.

Well, if this is just a parody, he is taking it to the next level. He called our university library late Friday and left a message asking if we have anyone interested in coming out to Utah to study the mathematical repetition of the bones. The quality of the recorded phone call was about on a par with the quality of the video.

Perhaps he is trying to get his hit numbers up. Right now on Google if you search for marine reptiles Utah, he is at the bottom of the first page of hits.

Well as I said Mike is not a schooled scientist. However neither am I, (Just interested}. What Mike has found is strange and I have seen these things what if his dum ass is right and noone pays attention. There are like I said there are to many repeat so called teeth. From the way they look to me the bigger ones have the same marks or fabric as the small ones this is fastenating (like a set of sharks teeth). This is what makes me think his rocks are not just rocks. So dont just discount him because he may not be as literate as all the smarter than thou poeple of the world. Mike has worked very hard with virtually no help. and especially from anyone who is smarter than thou. And I did not get the name of your University. Would you care to share?

Dicovery Pre historic sea drago remians found in Utah USA. Photos of the Hallettetoneion SeaZoria dragon discovery can be viewed at wwwhszoria.com. The discovery of the SeaZoria dragons is the single most significant paleo scienific discovery in history thus far reprenting an entirely new of advanced evolutionairy maine biology. Pre dating the land dinosouar era by 320 million years In addtion to being the dicovery of the true sea dragons. The seazorias are the worlds oldest, largest, and more imortantly the most advanced form of life ever dicovered. The Hallettestoneion SeaZoris dragons were frozen alive 540 million years ago. The Seazoria remains have been reduced to dirt and stone. The Hallettestoneion Research project speciaizes skull matrix ecavations. Skulls, teeth, and spikes. The Seazoria skulls come with full and comlete set of teeth. Teeth - rights, lefts, tops, and bottoms. All full size pimary mature teeth have identical progressive replacement teeth. All Teeth are in biological structures rights and lefts only, no exceptions. Devolping a woking knowlage of the repeating zoria biological structures is the absolute key to un locking the SeaZorias and to obtain a comphrehensive scientific understanding of this new era of advanced pre cambrian marine biology. The repating zoria bologial structures (teeth, spikes) have 117 common inherent structural charitorisics, rights and lefts only. Look into the Seazoria website at wwwhszoria.com and click on the photos in the galleres to enlarge. their are identicle repeats, proggresive repeats, and repeats in right and lefts. The discvery of the Hallettestonion SeaZoria is Mathimaticly impossable to refute. Our research is based on more than 7500 hours of field work.

Wow, he's already halfway to disemvoweled! Convenient! (Of course he's also halfway disemconsonanted, so...)

By God and a Half (not verified) on 24 Apr 2008 #permalink

Dicovery Pre historic sea drago remians found in Utah USA...

Dee-dee-dee-dee. Dee-dee-dee-dee.

{/Rod Serling}

The Hallettestoneion SeaZoris dragons were frozen alive 540 million years ago

I guess he's also frozen, because he kept missing the letters in the keyboard as if shivering from the cold...

By Brian Tani (not verified) on 24 Apr 2008 #permalink

Kim is right mike is a very nice person, very sincere, he believes in what he is talking about. He has put alot of work into it because he believes it and personaLLY I also see somethin different in these rocks, they are with the same exact marks in his repeats. Why doesn't someone let him excavate one so we can know for sure! And if he's right he desreves it to be known. And if he is wrong at the very least we can see how good he could be to create something from nothin, so quit laughing and prove him wrong.... start helping him dig and lets find out once and for all.

I have been inspired by this to announce my own discovery:

DISCOVERY OF GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS

Long missing from the fossil records, and now newly discovered in the fossil beds of an ancient sea that once covered New Hampshire, the world was stunned today to learn of the discovery of a unknown species of tremendous size - a GIANT SEA GOING PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS.

Speaking on conditions of strict anonymity, the discovery of this amazingly great wonderful, surprising, and all important creature said "The discovery of GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS, a creature that ruled the seas from the Permian right up until the Iron Age, is of huge scientific importance, and will cause us to have to re-evaluate all we thought we knew about life on this planet."

Speaking from inside a scale model of the GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS, our anonymous source continued "This scale model is only 1/58 natural size, meaning that the real GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS would have been over 9 miles in length! And since the GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS was omnivorous, all the theories related to the extinction of dinosaurs and other species will have to be put aside as it is perfectly obvious that the GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS ate them all, in addition to sea dragons and mermaids!"

Leaving the model by the back door, the discoverer directed reporters to a huge pile of rocks that resembled platypus bills. "Now some will tell you that these are rocks that resemble platypus bills" he said, "but our test have proven beyond doubt that they are platypus bills that, due to fossilization, resemble rocks!"

Pointing to a nearby case he continued "Some say that this is only the skull of fairly large platypus of today. Now watch what happens when you view it from behind this two story magnifying glass. It becomes what is is, the skull of a GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS! "

How the discovery of GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS will affect life science biological and change our understanding with regards to the origins and evolution of life on earth is anyone's guess. Will we unlock some of the very keys to life itself though the GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS discovery? The key to the scientific understanding of the GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS is to concentrate all scientific resources on the excavation and reconstruction of a GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS skull matrix. The construction of a GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS with a full and complete bill will make the existence of GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS pretty hard to deny.

At this time with less than one GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS examples remaining it is absolutely imperative that a GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS bill matrix be completely excavated and reconstructed. This GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS bill matrix excavation and reconstruction should be of the highest national scientific priority, second only to the possible capture of a living species of GIANTANTIC, SEA GOING PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS - OHANNONORNITHORHYNCHUS GIANATINUS, survivors of which are rumored to live somewhere in the New Jersey swamp, and also in Cloud Creek, Arkansas.