William G. Pullin

Greetings. No group of animals can compare with the sizes that the non-avian dinosaurs achieved, at least in terrestrial terms. The largest of these reptilian giants was the sauropod Patagotitan mayorum.  With adults measuring a mind-boggling 40 meters and with weights of approximately 85 tons, this species of sauropod must have been an incredible sight during its existence in the Cretaceous, about 100 million or so years ago. The sole member of the genus Patagotitan, P. mayorum was a robust and powerfully built herbivorous dinosaur, possessing specialized vertebrae which evolved to allow the animal to support its massive body while still being capable of efficient quadrupedal movement in its South American habitat. Discovered in 2010, P. mayorum was native to what is now South America, with fossilized remains of multiple individuals having been uncovered in the country of Argentina. The animals likely fed on the numerous cones, ferns, and leaves that covered the forest floors of i...

Greetings. Mammuthus meridionalis. Occasionally referred to as the southern mammoth, M. meridionalis is an extinct species of mammoth that ranged throughout Asia and Europe during the Early Pleistocene, between 2.5 million years ago and 800,000 years ago. Mammuthus meridionalis was a massive proboscidean, substantially larger than modern-day elephants in overall size and weight. A mature adult male known from a mostly complete skeleton displayed at Forte Spagnolo, L'Aquila, in Italy, is estimated to have stood approximately 4.05 meters tall at the shoulder in the flesh, and is estimated to have weighed 11.4 tons. Like modern-day elephants, females of the species were considerably smaller, with an estimated average adult shoulder height of 3.3 meters, and weights of approximately 7 tons being posited.  The skull was prominently domed, though the height of the dome was lower than subsequent species of mammoth. The head represented the highest point of the animal. The body was broad a...

Greetings UFO believers.  "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  The Sagan standard is one of the most vilified razors in today's UFO subculture. First used by Carl Sagan during the PBS television program "Cosmos" back in 1980, and in his 1979 book "Broca's Brain," the aphorism is seen as being essential to the scientific method and highly descriptive of the demands of scientific skepticism. Historical figures from Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Flournoy, Marcello Truzzi, to Pierre-Simon Laplace made similar statements during their distinguished lifetimes, but Sagan is the individual most often associated with the formulation.  As it pertains to the UFO problem, Sagan's statement is often (always) cast aside as being unreasonable, or too harshly skeptical, but is it? The possibilities of alien visitation, multidimensional visitors, or time travelers coming to the Earth are quite extraordinary to consider, so why is the necessity fo...

Greetings. Theiophytalia was a genus of herbivorous iguanodontian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period. The genus contains a single species, Theiophytalia kerri, known to have existed in what is now the state of Colorado in the United States. In 1878, James H. Kerr, a student of Colorado College in Colorado Springs found a partial ornithopod skull at the Garden of the Gods park in central Colorado. The skull, YPM 1887, was initially assigned as that of Camptosaurus amplus. However, subsequent microscopic comparisons of thin-sections of the Mesozoic formations in the Garden of the Gods showed that the specimen actually came from the Lytle Member of the Purgatoire Formation; therefore, the skull was Early Cretaceous in age, making the find completely independent from previous fossilized finds. Detailed comparisons by paleontologists demonstrated that the skull of Theiophytalia kerri differed in a number of ways from that of Camptosaurus amplus; specifically a longer, heavier, and mo...

Greetings. Witnesses have described a wide range of extraterrestrials, with some physical differences and characteristics that are intriguing and revealing, all at the same time. One unknown that I have always wondered about is the question of environmental functionality. If we work on the premise that potential extraterrestrial life forms evolved in natural environments that exist on other planetary bodies, then we need to inquire as to why they are able to operate in the Earth's environment seemingly without difficulty, or technological assistance. Several points need to be made in the course of tackling the functionality question: 1. Do we know if and how extraterrestrials breath?  2. Do we know the specific differences between the natural environments of Earth and the home worlds of extraterrestrials? 3. Do we know if any of the reported extraterrestrials are in fact artificial constructs; robot, probes, or androids of a sort? 4. Do we know that extraterrestrials have actually ...

Greetings. The long and storied history of life on Earth is a magnificent story to tell, with the ending nowhere in sight. Billions of life forms have evolved, diversified, and gone extinct, with the process of evolution producing some truly unique species. Amongst the most unique are the powered flyers.  Powered flight has evolved only four times in the Earth's history; insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats being the only groups that have attained the capability, each successfully taking to the air, occupying various ecological niches along the way. Insects acquired powered flight approximately 400 million years ago, during the Devonian Period, however the specific cause of the adaptation is not known to paleontologists. A transition from an aquatic insect to an arboreal form has been offered as a potential explanation.  Pterosaurs evolved powered flight approximately 228 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, and were the first creatures of substantial size and weight...

Greetings. The scientific method is applied in the effort to examine a wide range of topics, problems, and unknowns. The collection of physical, tangible, falsifiable proof and evidence is an essential aspect of that endeavor, an absolutely essential aspect. When a topic or problem is examined despite a wanting of such evidence, any and all subsequent investigative efforts must be called into question, at the very least to keep the focus of the aforementioned examinations clear, honest, and transparent. The investigation of the UFO problem is a unique exception, one that is often overlooked by many within the confines of the field, including archivists, researchers, and field investigators. While many people have maintained a credible and focused attack on the problem in question, they have been forced to conduct their undertakings without a substantial amount of non-anecdotal evidence or information. While field investigators like the late Ted Phillips did focus on physical trace case...

Greetings. The Earth has some truly unique and awe-inspiring natural sights. Lake Baikal is one of the most gorgeous of them all.  Located in southern Siberia, Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake on the planet, with a maximum depth of 1,642 meters. Baikal, the planet's seventh-largest lake, is slightly larger in area than the country of Belgium, coming in at 31,722 square kilometers. Incredibly, Lake Baikal contains more fresh water than all of the Great Lakes combined, and possesses approximately 23% of the planet's supply of fresh water.  Lake Baikal was formed about 30 million years ago, during the Oligocene, making it the oldest lake on the planet, at least in geologic terms. Baikal has some truly unique features, especially from a numbers standpoint. It contains 27 islands, including Olkhon, the third-largest lake-bound island on Earth, and is fed by no less than 330 rivers, all contributing to Baikal's massive cache of fresh water. The mean temperatures of the ...

Greetings. The belief in unidentified flying objects is passionate, beyond what the English language can adequately describe.  The situation has progressed to the point that many aspects of ufological belief structures strongly resemble religious belief structures, complete with their own set of prophets (Bob Lazar, George Knapp, Jeremy Corbell, Luis Elizondo,) mythologies (Aztec, Aurora, Trinity, Kingman, Maury Island, etc.,) and even a day of deliverance (disclosure.) "A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Some people who claim to have personally experienced the UFO phenomenon have become close-minded, intolerant of being questioned, often responding with rhetoric that speaks for itself, childish in wording, occasionally hateful, embarrassing to be honest, obviously counterproductive. The unfortunate result of this is that UFO investigators have become handcuffed, unable to...

Greetings. Scientific discoveries. The uncovering of previously unknown occurrences. The eternal search for knowledge about anything and everything. Those are reasons enough, in my opinion, to keep one's mental faculties squarely focused on the acquisition of new information and the opportunities for learning such content offers. We now come to Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13th of 1911 – September 1st of 1988,) an experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics back in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the hydrogen bubble chamber. The American Journal of Physics commented, in 2007, that "Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century." Agreed! Luis Alvarez earned a Ph.D. in 1936 from the University of Chicago, and soon went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. Alvarez devised ...