Phil Tippett's Prehistoric Beast

This is exciting for anyone who is interested in dinosaurs or for anyone interested in movie making. This short, less than 10 minute, film was created using stop motion by Phil Tippett, who would go on to bigger and better things, in 1985 called Prehistoric Beast made completely using stop motion. I had seen portions of this film on some dinosaur documentaries when I was younger so I was excited to see the whole thing. The dinosaurs in it while not perfect show many things that we would consider making a good dinosaur today, they are active smart and look like living animals and not just slow lazy reptiles. Anyway enjoy, sorry I can't embed it.

Nothing new

So recently a film came out called Darwin: The Voyage That Shook the World and while that may make the video sound like an interesting film but it is apparently by Creation Ministries International and Fathom Media. Yes that's right it's a creationist piece attempting to show how if Darwin knew what we knew now he would not have come up with Evolution. This is nonsense if he knew what we knew now his theory would have been even stronger than it was when he originally wrote it.

eSkeptic Magazine, part of Skeptic magazine, did a feature article on it in this week's issue, if you are not a subscriber to eSkeptic it is free I strongly suggest it (sign up here), discussing the film. They brought in three experts in the field of biology and had them address each of the main claims made in the film. It is a very interesting read and very well done and hopefully should help for in the future when you will probably have many of these claims thrown your way.

What interested me the most about this article was how the claims that the film makes are essentially the same ones that have been made by Creationists for year. Almost all of these have been refuted but they keep using them. It is annoying to address the same claim over and over again but I guess I am not in the demographic that they are targeting.