Chonosuke Okamura
Chonosuke Okamura (岡村 長之助 Okamura Chōnosuke) was a twentieth-century Japanese palaeontologist noted for his pseudoscientific claim, which he made when he was in his late 70s, to have discovered fossils from the Silurian period of miniature animals, ranging from dinosaurs to humans, and more than one thousand other extinct "mini-species", each less than 0.25 mm in length. He claimed that "There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period... except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm."[1]
In the 1970s he visited Japan's paleontology conference several times and applied to present his findings. It was rumored that in 1978 an elderly paleontologist who walked into Okamura's lecture became so angry that he suffered from high blood pressure and died prematurely.[2] Eventually the paleontology conference changed its rules to ban amateurs and Okamura petitioned overseas colleges, finally publishing his research himself in 1983. He was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for his work in 1996.[3]
References
- ↑ Spamer, Earle E. "Chonosuke Okamura, Visionary". Annals of Improbable Research 6 (6).
- ↑ 金 [Ryuichi], 子隆 [Kaneko] (1993), 新恐竜伝説 [New dinosaur legend] (in Japanese), 早川書房、[Hayakawa], p. 62.
- ↑ Abrahams, Marc (2004-03-16). "Tiny tall tales: Marc Abrahams uncovers the minute, but astonishing, evidence of our fossilised past". London: The Guardian.
- Berenbaum, May (2009). The earwig's tail: a modern bestiary of multi-legged legends. Harvard University Press. pp. 72–73. ISBN 0-674-03540-2.
- Conner, Susan; Kitchen, Linda (2002). Science's most wanted: the top 10 book of outrageous innovators, deadly disasters, and shocking discoveries. Most Wanted. Brassey's. p. 93. ISBN 1-57488-481-6.