Parrot geoglyph found on Mars

Hello all,

I hope some here may remember me, though I've not been much in evidence since I became a member here. I want to respond to ZipMonster's post, and particularly regarding my role in discovering the Parrot geoglyph a few years ago. I believe that story will capture the essence of why I place credence in the intelligent and artificial nature of what is to be seen here. Frankly, I am a little surprised there have been no responses to date, but just maybe what I can recount may help to explain and substantiate the extraordinary nature of the claim which has been presented in the original post in this thread.

When I first located and began analysis of the City ruins which I later named Parrotopia, finding a large, explicitly shaped geoform was the last thing on my mind. I was employing the sum of my background education and professional experience to determine what the weight of the evidence was documenting. Those qualifications include, BTW, academic degrees in anthropology and urban planning, and a professional career in the latter field.

After much study I concluded that I was seeing actual urban forms in the context of an archaeological site. It was only when I widened my zone of study to examine immediately adjacent areas that I was suddenly struck by the appearance of some of the features in the parrot formation. This led to much further detailed analysis of that.

In this effort I had a particular advantage. At the time, my computer system was in the same room, just a couple of steps away in fact, from the cage of my own hookbill parrot -- a Congo African Grey named Rocky. I spent many hours comparing the form in the MOC image from Argyre to my own parrot. As I did so, I saw an ever increasing number of points of congruence. I was absolutely stunned!

Eventually, I shifted my analytical approach to look for clear evidence of discongruence. After further hours of study I was forced to acknowlege that there were none I could find! In reaching this conclusion I took into account that I had already satisfied myself this was the site of an ancient urban archaeological site, and thus some of the effects of age (drifting sand, for example), together with the Martian propensity for composing compound images -- nested within one another, must be evident to some degree. At last I concluded this was an intentional geoglyph, a work of ancient intelligence.

This is the relevant portion of the image I produced. To it has been added a scale to give a sense of the geoglyph's size -



These are some of the anatomical congruencies I noted, starting at the head end. The mandibles (beak) are correctly shaped and illustrate typically serrated aspects in the correct locations. Parrots lack teeth of course, and this feature in hookbills is essential for them to tear apart the fruits and nuts upon which they depend for sustenance. The mandibles are appropriately hinged and joined, and when partially open as in this image reveal a typical parrot tongue held in the correct aspect (partially nested in the upper beak).

Further, there is clear evidence of a cere just behind the upper mandible, with evidence of the nostrils which should be there. The eye is correctly positioned and accurately illustrates its typical aspect when a parrot is looking forward as viewed from the side. The remainder of the frontal and side aspects of the head illustrate the light colored eyepatch which is very prominent in some parrots including the African Grey.

Behind the neck (partially obscured by wind-blown deposits) is the main body of the bird. This is anatomically accurately proportioned, comparing the accurate shape of the breast to the exposed back between the wing covers, to the wing cover size itself, the head size and the overall body length. The wing covers are amazing in their anatomical accuracy, in particular the lie of the feathers on the wing covers when the wings are folded.

Incidentally, the aspects I just described with respect to body proportions and the wings are so distorted as to be hardly recogisable in the original source image. That is because it suffers from an extreme aspect ratio distortion of 1.60. My image above is accurately corrected for that. This correction is essentially always applied by professionals using MOC images to permit accurate analysis. For that reason it is imperitive to correct the image for this distortion where it is more than a few percent. In this case the distortion is 60%. The MSSS website has a full description of this aspect of their images, accessible through the link on any image's Ancillary Data table.

Even more amazing is the behavioral evidence of the wing positions, reflecting a typical parrot's (indeed that of many birds) habit of holding them slighly away from the body. This body language is a sign of recognition, and alternately, of requesting attention and/or food. In my study, I concluded that the right wing was quite evident in this image and shares the postural aspect of the near side wing.

(BTW, ZipMan -- er, Monster, George's -- interpretation is different in this respect. He sees the flight feathers of the far side wing as being spread. One of us may be in error, or -- just possibly -- we could both be correct if the sculpture intentionally shows both positions for reasons which aren't clear. I don't believe they could be obvious, since we don't know the purpose which lies behind this geoglyph in the first instance.)

Going on, the visible left leg structures are extraordinary in their anatomical accuracy. Even claws are accurately represented. In this context I should note that the foot structures of parrots (and other birds) vary significantly. In the case of the African grey, as well as this geoglyph, the foot is formed with two claws to the front, two to the rear. Such birds require firm grasping ability on their perch when wrestling with their food sources, as well as the manual dexterity to manipulate it with their claws.

Finally, the tail features are somewhat less distinct, certainly at least in part because some of those feathers are cut off by the edge of the source image.

In as small a nutshell as possible, that's my analysis. While I believe it is likely that this geoglyph was originally a natural landform, I have simply no doubt it was intelligently modified to illustrate all these and other accurate details of a hookbill parrot. I cannot believe that such accurate anatomical and postural representations could remotely have been produced by the entropic effects of environmental degradation or 'coincidence'.

Amon the reasons I consider this representaion so important is that it speaks to us of a distant epoch on Mars when the environment would have supported such lifeforms. Surely there aren't birds extant in the current Martian skies. But it seems we have evidence that Mars was quite a different place at one time....

Primo Veritas,

Wil

I regret to inform the members of Meta Research that my good friend and discoverer of Parrotopia, Wil Faust has died.

Here is the text from the Patriot News in Harrisburg PA.


Wilmer C. Faust III

Wilmer C. "Bill" Faust III, of Harrisburg and Cove, passed gently from this world just the way he lived. Bill died in his sleep on Tuesday morning July 25th.
Bill was born in Mechanicsburg on June 12, 1942 to Margaret (Unger) and Wilmer C. Faust, Jr., both deceased.
After Mechanicsburg High School, Bill earned a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from Dartmouth College, NH, and a Master's in Urban Planning from Penn State Harrisburg.
A partial list of Bill's record of service and accomplishments includes honorable service in the PA National Guard, a career in city planning beginning in York and transferring to the Harrisburg planning commission. During his thirty-year tenure of service for the City of Harrisburg, Bill was appointed the Executive Director of the Harrisburg Redevelopment Authority and was instrumental in many midtown projects, most notably was the transportation center. Bill and his late wife, Marianne (Devincent) founded the Historic Harrisburg Association. Bill's life was a tribute to what he called "his city."
In Bill's private life, he researched and amassed encyclopedic knowledge of dozens of scientific subjects and hobby interests. Bill was a gourmet cook, a connoisseur of German Beer and wine, gun collector and target enthusiast, fisherman, bird and wildlife activist. His memberships in various scientific organizations include American Institute of City Planners, Harrisburg Astronomical Society, National Geographic Society, SETI, and the Marysville Sportsman's Club, and the Mechanicsburg Club.
Bill had a lifetime interest in and was recently considered to be an expert on the planet Mars. His research colleagues include NASA geologists, astronomers, and various published authors on the continuously unraveling mysteries of Mars. In collaboration with others on advancing theories and photographic evidence of ancient civilizations their combined work may be recognized as revolutionary in our lifetime.
Bill be missed for his kind soul, his gentle loving care of family and friends, his delightful sense of humor, his wonderful joy of learning and sharing his knowledge with scholarly detail.
Bill leaves to cherish these memories, his loving wife and partner, Janet L.; his brother, Mike and his wife, Denise of Boiling Springs; sister, Wendy of Philadelphia; and his newest extended family from Ohio, including sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, who have come to adore Bill in just eight short years.
Good-bye husband, brother, scholar, teacher and good friend.
A celebration of Bill's life will be held Saturday, July 30, 2005 at 7 p.m. in the Myers Funeral Home of Mechanicsburg. There will be a visitation on Saturday from 6 to 7 p.m. Burial will be in Mechanicsburg Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Humane Society of Harrisburg Area, 7790 Grayson Road, Harrisburg, PA 17036.
www.pennlive.com/obits
Published in the Patriot-News on 7/29/2005.

There is a guest book there and when jim Miller and I meet with his wife Janet in a few weeks we will be giving her the print outs of all the kind condolences expressed by the friends of Will on this forum.

"Primo Veritas" old friend!

Zip Monster

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Zip Monster</i>
<br />I regret to inform the members of Meta Research that my good friend and discoverer of Parrotopia, Wil Faust has died.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I am sorry to hear. It's been a bad week for our Members and friends. I received word that Al Kelly (Ireland) and Amy Acheson (WA) also died this past week. -|Tom|-

I don't want to rain on the funeral, so I'll downplay my skepticism about the parrot. I would, however, like to point out Alfred Hitchkock's profile looking at the parrot. You can see it in the Parrotopia Article . Seriously, though, I'm more intrigued by that web-like feature between the parrot and Hitchcock. It sort of looks like girders of a collapsed roof over a depression in the ground. Too bad we don't have a stero image.

Today's MSSS MGS “Image of the Day” (MOC2-1191) is a re-release of Wil's Parrotopia image M1402185, which was originally released over three years ago. The narrow angle image of West Agyre (which was enhanced by Malin) includes Wil's Parrotopia Complex in great detail. Note the parrot formation is still there.

Image of the Day: www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/08/22/

Is this just a coincidence that the very day that this archival image is re-released as the image of the day,” my co-author William Saunders and I are doing Coast to Coast AM, or is Malin and company tipping their hat in our direction?

At last, Wil's Parrotopia takes center stage!

Nice work Wil.

"Primo Veritas" old friend!

Zip Monster