That Pterodactyl Swamp

Occasionally, I run into something I had no intention of finding. This search was prompted when I looked up the name of the paging service my company uses and come across a rant about the messaging company's poor customer service on a creationist website. I thought the domain looked interesting and so I looked further into the site and discovered that evolution cannot possibly be true because there are accounts of pterodatctyls in Zimbabwe.

I thought this sounded a little fantastic, so I looked deeper. The page that made the claim indicated that natives in the "Jiunda Swamp" had reported seeing a creature that they identified as being very like the pterodactyl. The logical skeptic's first step is to see if there are other references to this swamp. There are; in a sense.

This search is a prime example of the amplification effect of the internet. All references to the Jiunda Swamp that could be found in google referenced articles on sites that all had the same word order as the original piece that prompted my search. In other words, the only reference to the swamp is in near identical citations of natives who say that they saw a pterodactyl-like creature in northern Zimbabwe. not exactly convincing stuff. Because people repost the text on different sites throughout the internet, this information is amplified, expanding the foot print of the information without any additive benefit of critique or examination.

Remember, my friends, that not everyone has the interest of the truth at heart and will publish information that confirms their version of reality. If anything you read online sounds like it might not be true -- or too good to be true -- do a quick search, compare facts and see who you can believe.

Search: Jiunda Swamp
07/31/2006

Sitings [ The Great Dinosaur Mystery]
     Note: Anecdotal reports of Kongamoto do not qualify as scientific discovery, unless your area of science is anthropology and you are studying the dissemination of myths.

Fabrications
     Refutations of bad creation science -- references our Jiunda Swamp anecdote.

Bible Answers: Solving the Dinosaur Dilema
     We also need to solve the dilema of a "huge dense area called the Jiunda Swamp" that is forgotten to the world except by people wanting to refute evolution.

Korean evidence about people and dinosaurs
     This is a link to a translated page -- the message is a bit mangled, but you can see that the origin is likely the same source.

Loch Ness Monster, Mokele-Mbembe, Kongamonto...
     Where cryptozoology and creationism meet on the other side.