Dinosauroid

In 1982, Dale Russell, then curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, conjectured a possible evolutionary path that might have been taken by Troodon had it not perished in the K/T extinction event 65 million years ago, suggesting that it could have evolved into intelligent beings similar in body plan to humans. Over geologic time, Russell noted that there had been a steady increase in the EQ (the relative brain weight when compared to other species with the same body weight) among the dinosaurs. Russell had discovered the first Troodontid skull, and noted that, while its EQ was low compared to humans, it was six times higher than that of other dinosaurs. If the trend in Troodon evolution had continued to the present, its brain case could by now measure 1,100 cm; comparable to that of a human. Troodontids had semi-manipulative fingers, able to grasp and hold objects to a certain degree, and binocular vision.

Russell proposed that this "Dinosauroid", like most dinosaurs of the troodontid family, would have had large eyes and three fingers on each hand, one of which would have been partially opposed. As with most modern reptiles (and birds), he conceived of its genitalia as internal. Russell speculated that it would have required a navel, as a placenta aids the development of a large brain case. However, it would not have possessed mammary glands, and would have fed its young, as birds do, on regurgitated food. He speculated that its language would have sounded somewhat like a bird song. Russell's thought experiment has been met with criticism from other paleontologists since the 1980s, many of whom point out that Russell's Dinosauroid is overly anthropomorphic. Gregory S. Paul and Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., consider it "suspiciously human" and Darren Naish has argued that a large- brained, highly intelligent troodontid would retain a more standard theropod body plan, with a horizontal posture and long tail, and would probably manipulate objects with the snout and feet in the manner of a bird, rather than with human-like "hands".

LINK

Itzpapalotl - "Obsidian Butterfly".

"Obsidian Butterfly". Goddess of healing. Aztec and Mexica goddess of the earth and fertility, often seen as the darker aspect of the earth goddess. She is usually depicted as a dragon-like being with fangs and claws, as she was seen to "grasp the sky". Itzpapalotl may be connected with souls of the dead, as the Mexica believed that departed souls often manifested as butterflies.

 n Aztec mythology, Itzpapalotl ("Clawed Butterfly" or "Obsidian Butterfly") was a fearsome skeletal goddess, who ruled over the paradise world of Tamoanchan. She is particularly associated with the moth Rothschildia orizaba from the family Saturniidae.Itzpapalotl is the patron of the day Cozcuauhtli and Trecena 1 House in the Aztec calendar. The Trecena 1 House is one of the five western trecena dates dedicated to the cihuateteo, or women who had died in childbirth. Not only was Itzpapalotl considered one of the cihuateteo herself, but she was also one of the tzitzimime, star demons that threatened to devour people during solar eclipses,as well as their queen.Itzpapalotl is also known as the clouded Apollo. The Goddess got her name because of the broad butterfly wings sprouting from her shoulders with the blades of sharp obsidian knives all the way around the edges; she also has a knife for a tongue.

As the legend goes, Itzpapalotl fell from heaven along with Tzitzimime and several other shapes such as scorpions and toads. Itzpapalotl wore an invisible cloak so that no one could see her. At some times, she was said to have dressed up like a lady of the Mexican Court, caking her face with white powder and lining her cheeks with strips of rubber. Her fingers tapered into the claws of a jaguar, and her toes into eagle's claws.According to the Manuscript of 1558, section VII, Itzpapalotl was one of two divine 2-headed doe-deers (the other one being Chimalman) who temporarily transformed themselves into women in order to seduce men. Itzpapalotl approached the two "cloud serpents named Xiuhnel and Mimich", who transformed themselves into men (so as to diguise themselves when all the others of the Centzonmimixcoa had been slain in the ambush?). To Xiuhnel, Itzpapalotl said ""Drink, Xiuhnel." Xiuhnel drank the blood (menstrual?) and then immediately lay down with her. Suddenly she ... devoured him, tore open his breast. ... Then Mimich ... ran and ... descended into a thorny barrel cactus, fell into it, and the woman fell down after him."

Genetic Evidence of Geographical Groups among Neanderthals

The Neanderthals are a well-distinguished Middle Pleistocene population which inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East. Since the 1950s paleoanthropological studies have suggested variability in this group. Different sub-groups have been identified in western Europe, in southern Europe and in the Middle East. On the other hand, since 1997, research has been published in paleogenetics, carried out on 15 mtDNA sequences from 12 Neanderthals. In this paper we used a new methodology derived from different bioinformatic models based on data from genetics, demography and paleoanthropology. The adequacy of each model was measured by comparisons between simulated results (obtained by BayesianSSC software) and those estimated from nucleotide sequences (obtained by DNAsp4 software). The conclusions of this study are consistent with existing paleoanthropological research and show that Neanderthals can be divided into at least three groups: one in western Europe, a second in the Southern area and a third in western Asia. Moreover, it seems from our results that the size of the Neanderthal population was not constant and that some migration occurred among the demes.

Blasts from the Past: Mosasaurs, Baryonyx, Zeuglodons, and Ichthyosaurs

Artist’s rendering of a Baryonyx, a prehistoric sea predator. (Troy Therrien)

In 1780 a dinosaur jaw was discovered in a mine near the Maas River in the Netherlands. Napoleon had it carted to France in 1795 where it became the object of much discussion for years, as scientists argued whether it was from a toothed whale, alligator, or lizard. Its resemblance to lizards was finally officially recognized in 1822 when it was given the genus name mosasaurus, which means “Maas River lizard.”

Mosasaurs could reach 40 feet or more in length. They looked very similar to Coleman and Huyghe’s drawing of the classic sea serpent” with a long, alligator-like jaw and strong flippers on a mostly tubular body. One artist’s interpretation of the mososaur known as tylosaurus also shows it with a scalloped dorsal (back) fin, which could provide another explanation of the short humps sometimes seen trailing behind a monstrous head. It lived in a sea that once covered the midsection of North America, and it ate diving birds, fish, and other mosasaurs. Tylosaurus was supposed to have died out 65 million years ago. But did it? The state of Utah has become known for sightings of monsters in Bear, Sevier, Fish, Utah, and Great Salt Lakes. Living things can be tenacious. And Natural History magazine has noted several paleontologists maintain that “snakes and mosasaurs are more closely related to each other than either group is to any other group of lizards.” In that case, calling a mosasaur a “sea serpent” does not seem such a stretch.

Baryonyx was another gator-jawed creature whose fossil skeleton was first discovered in 1983 in a clay pit in the United Kingdom. The lizard-like bones were found about three-quarters complete and would have measured 20 feet long. Evidence shows that Baryonyx was a fish-eater and probably used its oversized, deadly claws to hook its prey. The odds may be less likely that this killing machine has survived until the present without detection, since it would probably wreak noticeable havoc wherever it popped up. Baryonyx would surely be termed a “water monster” if encountered by some unwary fisherman today.

Another ancient species that ranks high on the possible relict popularity scale is not a reptile at all. Zeuglodon was a primitive, toothed whale that lived around 25 million years ago and could reach lengths of 70 feet. Zeuglodon did not look much like modern whales; it was originally named Basilosaurus because it resembled a lizard in some ways. But its later placement in the whale category has also been disputed because it has many characteristics of the seal family, or pinnipeds, as well. Author Dr. Roy P. Mackal has proposed that an unknown creature observed snatching a duck from a watery surface near Vancouver in 1934 matched what we know of Zeuglodons perfectly. “Even a casual comparison,” says Mackal, “. . . reveals the striking agreement with the description of the observed animal.”

The observed animal, according to the duck hunters who saw it, was about 40 feet long and two to three feet wide with a tapering body and a three-foot-long head. The head was described as horse-like, though lacking ears or nostrils, and as dark, grayish brown marked with one horizontal, dark stripe. This is a description that could match many water creature sightings from around the world, making Zeuglodon a prime suspect in the relict category.

Zeuglodon was also tapped to explain one of the most famous sea serpent sightings ever—that of the H.M.S Daedalus in August 1848, off St. Helena, a British island in the South Atlantic Ocean. That monster was described by one witness as “a blunt-nosed animal with a neck carried about four feet above the water, which was so long as to present the appearance of a serpent . . . Two or three years after this, on reading the description of a Zeuglodon cetoides . . . it struck me that the animal seen from the Daedalus may have been a descendent of the order to which Zeuglodon belonged; and I have ever since watched with interest for reports of the ‘great sea-serpent.’ ”

While there are probably innumerable prehistoric creatures that resembled traditional sea serpents, with many still possibly undiscovered, one other is often inserted into the lineup of suspected sea monsters: the ichthyosaur, which means “fish-lizard.” The first ichthyosaur skull was found and recognized off Southern England in 1811. Ichthyosaurs varied in size and appearance from three to over 30 feet long, and from early, eel-shaped species to later versions that looked like dolphins with long, sharp beaks full of teeth. Ichthyosaurs, like mosasaurs, were reptiles, and needed to come to the surface to breathe. But they were more ancient than the mosasaurs, making it even less likely that some of them might have survived until present times.

What If...Dinosauroid

A theoretical reptilian humanoid has also been the focus of a widely discussed thought experiment in speculative evolution. In particular, in 1982 paleontologist Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, conjectured a possible evolutionary path that might have been taken by the dinosaur Troodon (then called Stenonychosaurus) had they not all perished in the K/T extinction event 65 million years ago. The essence of this thought experiment was that bipedal predators (theropods) which existed at that time, such as Troodon, could have evolved into intelligent beings similar in body plan to humans. Over geologic time, Russell noted that there had been a steady increase in the encephalization quotient or EQ (the relative brain weight when compared to other species with the same body weight) among the dinosaurs. Russell had discovered the first Troodontid skull, and noted that, while its EQ was low compared to humans, it was six times higher than that of other dinosaurs. If the trend in Troodon evolution had continued to the present, its brain case could by now measure 1,100 cm3; comparable to that of a human. Troodontids had semi-manipulative fingers, able to grasp and hold objects to a certain degree, and binocular vision.

Description

Russel proposed that this Dinosauroid, like most dinosaurs of the troodontid family, would have had large eyes and three fingers on each hand, one of which would have been partially opposed. As with most modern reptiles (and birds), he conceived of its genitalia as internal. Russell speculated that it would have required a navel, as a placenta aids the development of a large brain case. However, it would not have possessed mammary glands, and would have fed its young, as birds do, on regurgitated food. He speculated that its language would have sounded somewhat like bird song.

Criticism

Russell's thought experiment has been met with criticism from other paleontologists since the 1980s, many of whom point out that Russell's Dinosauroid is overly anthropomorphic. Gregory S. Paul (1988) and Thomas R. Holtz Jr., consider it "suspiciously human" (Paul, 1988) and argue that a large-brained, highly intelligent troodontid would retain a more standard theropod body plan, with a horizontal posture and long tail, and would probably manipulate objects with the snout and feet in the manner of a bird, rather than with human-like "hands".

 

Pre-Glacial Dragons/Dinosaurs

Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? HPB.


157. When We dispatch a messenger We wish him success in encountering the dragon. Indeed, this is no harmless, betailed, pre-glacial dragon, but the cruel human egoism. NEC. AY.

126. In place of the Diplodocus, kangaroos leap; in place of the Pterodactyl, bats fly; in place of the dragon, lizards. What is the meaning of this? Can it be degeneration? Actually, it is only adaptation. FWI. HR.

The animals of the first ray are no longer in existence on earth. EPI. AAB.

Equally powerful are saliva and the other secretions of the glands. But one must observe the causes of increase and decrease of the reaction of the energy of these products. The saliva of wrath is poisonous, and the saliva of benevolence is beneficial.. One must be able to oppose the fiery element by Atma, which is incombustible. Hier. HR.

Now we find in the Zohar a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamael (the supposed Satan), to seduce Eve, was a kind of flying camel [[kamelomorphon]].

A "flying camel" is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description:* for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the Avesta is represented as having lost after the Fall "its nature and its name," and is described as a huge serpent with a camel's neck.

"There are no winged serpents, nor veritable dragons," asserts Salverte, " . . . grasshoppers are called by the Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence of winged serpents."

There are none now; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to "flying camels." Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great naturalist has written, that, "if anything can justify the Hydra and other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated by mediaeval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus."

We are unaware if Cuvier had added anything in the way of a further mae culpa. But we may well imagine his confusion, for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a flying saurian, "the Pterodactyl" (found in Germany), "78 feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body." That fossil is described as a reptile, the little fingers of whose hands are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the "flying camel" of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability to build a "flying camel," or a long-necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebrae, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.

And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed palaeontography and paleontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in the Imperial library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognised perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons.Moreover, the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery serpents, and Job mentions the Leviathan. Now the following questions are put very directly:--

I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either seen those monsters themselves or possessed descriptions of them in their traditions, which descriptions necessitate living and intelligent eye-witnesses?

II. And if such eye-witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palaeolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of science will not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the Cenozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.

It does not stand to reason, because the Occultists believe in and defend ancient wisdom and science, even though winged saurians are called "flying camels" in the translations of the Zohar, that we believe as readily in all the stories which the middle ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer's and Father Kircher's cock-and-bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs. Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a poetical license that other story told of Petrarch, who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart. We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea-serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it exists and lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.

We read in the "Memoire a l'Academie" of the "naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, when M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses (aquatic animals found only in Australia), etc., extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . . till his own day."

The fossils reconstructed by science, which we know ought to be sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan, let alone Isaiah's flying serpents, or saraph mehophep, which words are translated in all the Hebrew dictionaries as "saraph," enflamed or fiery venom, and "mehophep," flying. But, although Christian theology has always connected both (Leviathan and saraph mehophep) with the devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to do with the "evil one." But the word Dracon has become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now signifies "devil," whence, as we are told by Cambry ("Monuments Celtiques," p. 299), the devil's tomb in England, Draghedanum sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o'-the-wisps are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie (or wraith), the castle of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the devil's castle.

The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian stories given by Father Kircher (Edipus AEgyptiacus, "De Genere Draconum,") quite seriously. According to that Jesuit, he himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as the director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the beast's likeness, which Father Kircher did and had it published in one of his in-folios. After this he received a letter from Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland, in which that official certifies to his having seen himself with his own eyes, one fine summer night in 1619, a living dragon. Having remained on his balcony "to contemplate the perfect purity of the firmament," he writes, "I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from one of the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct itself rapidly towards Fluelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was still longer and his neck very extended. His head and jaws were those of a serpent. In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks (? !) . . . . I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the conformation of his body that I saw a veritable dragon. I am happy to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the very real existence of those animals"; in dreams, the writer ought to have added, of long past ages.

As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic refers the reader to the picture of that incident painted by Simon de Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre Dame du Don at Avignon; notwithstanding the prohibition of the Sovereign Pontiff, who "would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned in the holy place"; and adds: "Time has injured and rubbed out the work of art, but has not weakened its tradition." De Mirville's "Dragon-Devils" of our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been. Thus the dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat, either in Naples or Bologna, "was there still in 1700, but is there no more." (Vol. 2, p. 427, "Pneumatologie.")

Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records and universal legends, we need hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more learned writers, among those who belong to the modern scientific school, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do: e.g., in "Dragons," not only symbolically, but also in their actual existence at one time.

"It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, believed to be time-honoured fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a less hazardous proceeding . . . . . "

Thus opens the introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles Gould, called "Mythical Monsters." He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. He submits that:-- "Many of the so-called mythical animals, which, throughout long ages and in all nations, have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable, come

Vol.II, Page 218 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact natural history; and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time.

. . . Traditions of creatures once co-existing with man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible. For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination of an Aryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew. .

. . . To me the specific existence of the Unicorn seems not incredible, and in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth . . . For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from 'the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.' It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognisable, than that uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions are transformations than to believe them to be inventions."

It is shown by the same geologist that man, "successively traced to periods variously estimated from thirty thousand to one million years . . . . ., co-existed with animals which have long since become extinct (p. 20)." These animals, "weird and terrible," were, to give a few instances -- (1) "Of the genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebrae show them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet . . . .

. . " The remains of such monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length; (3) the Dinosaurians (in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains), of still more gigantic proportions; (4) the Atlanto-Saurus immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in length! But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length (p. 37). Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himalayas, the four-horned stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium: of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with

THE FLYING DRAGONS.

crocodile jaws on a duck's head, etc., etc. All these were co-existent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked them; and we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not have been "contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back as far as the Secondary Period."

"It appears," writes the very conservative Professor Jukes, "that the flying dragons of romance had something like a real existence in former ages of the world."** "Does the written history of man," the author goes on to ask, "comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldea and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization;".

The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants, themselves smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons, and Hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely with every day. Even they have already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men did. For the remains of a pigmy elephant were found (E. Falconeri) in the cave deposits of Malta; and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy Hippopotami, the former being "only two feet six inches high; or the still-existing Hippopotamus (Choeropsis) Liberiensis, which M. Milne-Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height."

Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy-tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that "the things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that are unknown" and thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.

Vol.II SD HPB.