Bill Birkeland
Member (Idle past 2561 days) Posts: 165 From: Louisiana Joined: 01-30-2003
|
|
Message 104 of 411 (119981)
06-29-2004 12:19 PM
|
Reply to: Message 45 by simple
06-26-2004 2:54 PM
|
|
arkathon's false evdience was "Re: Ned's edict thrown out"
In Message 45, arkathon stated: "Ned's edict thrown out" ...laundry list of long-discredited Young Earth creationist claims deleted. " So, Ned's edict was hot air in large part, it would seem." The alleged evidence presented by Mr. arkathon does nothing to demonstrate that Ned is full of "hot air". This so-called evidence fails to discredit Ned in anyway because they are pseudo-factoids that comprise the typical "Gish Gallop". The typical Gish Gallop consists of an odd assortment of misinformation, misrepresentations, misquotations, and factually-impaired and wrong-headed interpretations presented in text-bite size bits. This is done in such volume that it is impossible for any opponent have any chance to discuss what is wrong with every piece. The text-bites are flung on an opponent, as in a mud fight, with hope that some of it will stick no matter how factually bankrupt the alleged evidence might be. Actually, many of the items, of which my time and message board space allows only a few examples to be discussed in detail, mentioned by Mr. arkathon have been discussed in great detail on the Talk.origins newsgroup and on various web pages. A person often can find discussions, which dispute, even refute in great detail, many of the examples of alleged Out-of-Place fossils by conducting a search of USENET posts using the Google newsgroup search engine at: Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 Also, there are web pages on the Internet that completely refute other examples of Out-of-Place fossils mentioned by Mr. arkathon. Specific examples are: 1. Horses and Dinosaurs For example, in message ID , Keith Littleton, whom I have permission to quote material from, in a single post to the thread " Re: Alert: PBS Evolution Series" commented in detail on many of Mr. arkathon's alleged Out-Of-Place fossils on Mon, 30 Dec 2002 10:39:54 -0600. In reply to the claim about 86 consecutive hoof prints of horses having been found in rocks dating back to the dinosaurs, it was noted that the primary source of this claim was "Y. Kruzhilin and V. Ovcharov, "A Horse from the Dinosaur Epoch?" Moskovskaya Pravda (Moscow Truth), 5 February 1984." Mr. Littleton noted: "This is a rather remarkable case of an Evangelical Christian
citing a Communist (Soviet) newspaper as if it was the "gospel
truth" instead being "Soviet truth". :-)" If a person was to look over what "Moskovskaya Pravda (Moscow Truth) has had to say about the United States, capitalism, Christianity, and topics, he or she would quickly find that this newpapers has serious problems distinguishing between fact and fiction. It is quite certainly an unreliable source of factual information that is useless as a cited as source of scientific information. As further noted in the post: "Even if a person disregards the credibility problems inherent
with public newspapers published in the Soviet Union under the
strict control of the Communist Party, there are significant
problems with using any newspaper as a primary source of
information. Unfortunately, many newspaper editors and reporters
lack the experience to evaluate the validity of scientific claims
that are made in the stories that they write. As a result, they
all too often either angle the facts or accept unquestionably
as fact erroneous conclusions made by the people that they have
interviewed." This alleged research is also problematic because that nobody has been able to find a formal scientific publication, which either discusses or illustrates this spectacular find. A plausible explanation for this absence of any scientific documentation is that after further analysis or during peer-review, as discussed later in this post, the alleged horse prints turned out to be nothing more than either the foot prints of some reptile or sedimentary features called current crescents. Without detailed descriptions and photographs published in a reliable source, there is no proof that these horse prints exist outside the imagination of either the reporter or the person being interviewed. 2. Turkmeniac and tuba City Footprints Next, Mr. arkathon mentioned "Dinosaur and humanlike footprints have been found
together in Turkmeniac and in Arizona". In case of the Turkmeniac footprints, Mr. Littleton noted: "Again, we have the strange spectacle of an Evangelical Christian,
Anonymous (1985), citing a Communist (Soviet) publication, the 1983
"Moscow News" as if it is believed it to be as infallible as the
Bible." Again, as noted by Mr. Littleton, we have a newspaper of highly suspect reliability being cited as if it was a reliable and authoritative source of scientific observations. Again, we have a source that provides nothing in the way of pictures, data, or observations, which substantiate the claim being made about human prints in Turkmeniac. Without this documentation, it is impossible to determine if the features reported as human footprints are indeed human footprints or nothing more than a whole range of features that have been misidentified and misreported in the popular press as human footprints as discussed in detail by Monroe (1987). In fact, as discussed by Kuban (1989a, 1989b), dinosaur footprints have even been misidentified as human footprints. As a result, a single vague newspaper article proves nothing about the presence or absence of human footprints with dinosaurs. Again, without detailed descriptions and photographs published in a reliable source, there is no proof that the Turkmeniac footprints exist outside the imagination of either the reporter or the person being interviewed. As noted in the talk.origins post, Kuban (1992) examined the Tuba City (Arizona) tracks. This article stated: "When Ron Hastings and I visited Site 1 in 1988 we saw many definite
bipedal dinosaur tracks nearby (as had during a previous trip), but
nothing that strongly resembled a genuine human footprint. The
so-called "humanoid" markings looked no more convincing in person
than they later did in the CRSQ photographs. The CRSQ report did not begin explain how multiple dinosaur track
layers fit their young-earth, Flood geology model. A crucial question
is how these and many other vertebrate track layers (like those in
the Glen Rose Formation) were formed during the midst of a violent
worldwide Flood--if indeed such layers are interpreted as Flood
deposits. Particularly in need of explanation is how the track-makers
survived while thousands of feet of sedimentary material were being
deposited under the track layers or while extensive sediments between
the track layers were being deposited.
.... " References Cited: Anonymous (1985) Russian Paluxy Source. Creation Ex Nihilo. vol. 7,
no. 3, p 4. Kuban, G. J. (1989a) Elongate dinosaur tracks. In D. D. Gillette
and M. G. Lockley, eds., pp. 57-72, Dinosaur Tracks and Traces:
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
http://members.aol.com/paluxy2/elong.htm
http://members.aol.com/paluxy2/paluxy.htm Kuban, G. J. (1989b) Color distinctions and other curious features
of dinosaur tracks near Glen Rose, Texas. In D. D. Gillette and
M. G. Lockley, eds., pp. 428-440, Dinosaur Tracks and Traces:
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
http://members.aol.com/paluxy2/color.htm Kuban, G. J. (1992) Do Human Footprints Occur in the Kayenta of
Arizona? Origins Research. vol. 14, no.2, pp. 7,12,16.
http://members.aol.com/Paluxy2/arizon.htm Monroe, J. S. (1987) Creation, human footprints, and flood geology.
Journal of Geological Education. vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 93-102." 3. More Out of Place Fossils Mr. arkathon further commented: "Sometimes, land animals, flying animals, and marine animals are
fossilized side-by-side in the same rock." According to the primary source of this statement, this claim is documented in Snelling (1985), Armstrong (1985), and Shipman (1987). None of these articles is a scientific article. Instead they are all popular articles written for the lay public, including newspaper articles. About these articles, Mr. Littleton Stated: "First, based only on articles from local newspapers, and a national
newsmagazine, Armstrong (1985) discussed the occurrence of fossil
bones found in either an unnamed shell pit or unnamed shell pits
near Tampa, Florida consisting of a mixture of 80 percent the fossil
bones of land animals mixed with the bones of birds, sea turtles,
salt water fish, fresh water fish, and turtles. The article was only
five paragraphs long. Because of its shortness, the articles failed
to discuss any of the details about the site and was far too vague
for anyone to make any decision about whether this bone bed (or bone
beds ?) was in anyway anomalous in terms of conventional geology.
Armstrong (1985) failed to provide enough to give either Brown (2001)
or Derek any support for their conclusions. Second, Snelling (1985) discusses the catastrophic implications of
fossiliferous sandstone beds that outcrop at Fossil Bluff near Wynyard,
Tasmania in Australia (Vickers-Rich and Rich 1993). Not only is
Snelling (1985) unable to tell the difference between a "breccia" and
gravelly, fossiliferous sandstone, he concludes without any real
evidence that the beds of marine shells that the are the result of a
"watery catastrophe" that "overwhelmed, washed, sorted, and buried
all of these animals and plants together." Snelling (1985) doesn't
seem to understand that there is nothing anomalous about shark's teeth
and whales bones being found in marine sediments. At Fossil Bluff, the only nonmarine vertebrate fossil consists of
only a single partial (upper) eroded skull of the possum-like
marsupial Wynyardia bassiana (Vickers-Rich and Rich 1993). Such
fragmentary and rare remains of nonmarine animals is readily
explained by the fact that nonmarine animals occasionally drown in
rivers and lagoons and are swept out to sea where their bones are
scattered and buried in marine sediments. Similarly, nonmarine plant
material, is frequently swept out to sea and incorporated into
marines sediments as found by Snelling (1985) (at) Fossil Bluff. The shell beds found at Fossil Bluff near Wynyard, Tasmania fail to
be any evidence of any "watery catastrophe as argued by Snelling
(1985). The shelly sandstones observed by Snelling can be created
by a variety of noncatastrophic processes, e.g. bottom winnowing
by storms, as discussed by Kidwell (1986, 1991) and Kidwell et al.
(1986). The fossiliferous sandstones are no different from the
shelly sands accumulating on modern continental shelves, e.g.
Anderson and McBride (1996) and McBride et al. (1996), except for
genera and species of shells found within them. Finally, Brown (1995, 2001) cites a discussion by Shipman (1987) of
the world famous fossil site at Mesel, Germany as an example of a
fossil deposit created by the Noachian Flood. However, there is
simply no evidence of the fossil deposits at Messell being created,
as implied by Brown (1995, 2001) by a global catastrophic Noachian
Flood. The fossil deposits are extremely local in nature in that
they are restricted entirely to a fault bounded depression just over
1000 long and 700 meters wide. Thus, they lack the regional extent that a person would expect from a global catastrophe and their
distribution is perfectly compatible with many modern lakes found
in tectonic depressions. The sediment containing the exceptionally
well preserved fossils are found in a bituminous shale, locally
called "oil shale" / "Olschiefer". This is type of sediment that
accumulates only within stagnant waters, such as found in many
lakes, but not within a global flood claimed moved and deposited
masses of sediments several kilometers thick all over the world.
In addition, the high organic content of the shale is the result
of massive blooms of a green, freshwater alga, Tretraedon, which
grew in large numbers, died off, and accumulated along with mud at
the bottom of a stagnant water body. The lack of ccocoliths,
formanifera, radiolarians, and other marine microfossils, although
perfectly consistent with accumulation in a stagnant lake, is quite
remarkable for sediments deposited during the late stages of a
global flood that mixed all of the oceans of the world/ Finally,
none of the vertebrate fossils, as Brown (1995, 2001) incorrectly
implies, in the Messel fossil deposits are fossils of marine
vertebrates. In fact, the fossils found in the Messel deposits
reflect the animals found in a specific terrestrial ecosystem and
limited period of geologic time. Nobody has found any fossil, that
is obviously out-of-place, e.g. dinosaurs, humans, trilobites, that
would be indicative of the mixing of animal remains which is
implied by Brown (1995, 2001). References Cited: Anderson, L. C., and R. A. McBride (1996) Taphonomic and
paleoenvironmental evidence of Holocene shell-bed genesis and
history in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico shelf. Palaios,
vol. 11, pp. 532-549. Armstrong, C. (1985) Florida fossils puzzle the experts. Creation
Research Society Quarterly. vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 198-199. Brown, W. (2001) In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for
Creation and the Flood. Agards, Catheys Valley California. Kidwell, S. M. (1986) Models for fossil concentrations:
paleobiologic implications. Paleobiology. vol. 12, pp. 6-24. Kidwell, S. M. (1991) The stratigraphy of shell concentrations.
In P. A. Allison and D. E. G. Briggs, eds., pp. 211-290, Taphonomy,
Releasing the Data Locked in the Fossil Record (, eds.). New York:
Plenum Press. Kidwell, S. M., F. T. Fursich, and T. Aigner (1986) Conceptual
framework for the analysis and classification of fossil
concentrations. Palaios. vol. 1, pp. 228-238. McBride, R. A., M. R. Byrnes, L. C. Anderson, and B. K. Sen Gupta
(1996) Holocene and Late Pleistocene sedimentary facies of a
sand-rich continental shelf: A standard section for the
northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Gulf Coast Association of Geological
Societies Transactions. vol. 46, pp. 287-299. Schaal, S. and W. Ziegler, eds. (1992) Messel, An Insight into
the History of Life and of the Earth. Oxford University Press. Shipman, P. (1987) Dumping on Science. Discover. vol. 8, no. 12,
pp. 60-66. Snelling, A. (1985) Tasmania's Fossil Bluff. Creation Ex Nihilo.
vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 6-10. Vickers-Rich, P. and T. H. Rich (1993) Wildlife of Gondwana.
Reed, Chatswood, NSW, Australia." 4. Of Dinosaurs, Whales, Elephants, Horses, and Humans (South Carolina) Mr. arkathon further noted: "Dinosaur, whale, elephant, horse, and many other fossils, plus
crude human tools, have reportedly been found in phosphate beds
in South Carolina." Mr. Littleton commented: "In case of the South Carolina claims, they are based on papers
that date to the early 1800s and a person of unknown expertise.
The older citations can be questionable because in the 1800s,
paleontologists were often quite lax about noting exactly where
the fossils found and ascertaining the exact stratigraphic unit
from which it came. What then was called "the phosphate beds"
designated a thickness of strata now known to consist of separate,
well-defined stratigraphic units ranging from Miocene to
Pleistocene age. Given the lack of any accurate mapping and
knowledge of the geology of the area and rather lax collecting
policies of the 1800's, fossils of widely different locations and
strata were mixed together as simply coming from the "the phosphate
beds". The mix of fossils are an artifact of how these fossils were
collected instead of actually being contemporaneous in time or
coming from the same unit. In addition, the material was collected from phosphate mines,
including spoil piles, in which fossil bones from all sorts of
strata would be mixed together along with artifacts left behind on
the ground surface in prehistoric times. Thus, the material
collected from these mines would be a mixture of fossils from a
wide range of time and include even human artifacts. Finally, none of the published citations provide by Brown (1995)
fail to provide any convincing evidence that any dinosaur fossils
have been found in these deposits. There is simply not any
documented evidence that fossil dinosaurs have been found in
these deposits." References Cited Brown, W. (1995) In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation
and the Flood. Agards, Catheys Valley California. 5. Coal Balls and Out-Of-Place Angiosperms Mr. arkathon mindlessly repeated: "Coal beds contain round, black lumps called coal balls, some of
which contain flowering plants that allegedly evolved 100 million
years after the coal bed was formed." Mr. Littleton commented: "An angiosperm, described and named "Angiospermophyton americanum"
from a single coal ball from the O'Gara Mine No. 9, Coal Seam No. 5
near Harrisburg, Illinois by Hoskins (1923) and noted by Noe (1923).
Brown (1995) cites Noe (1923) as a source of the claim for coal
balls "which contain flowering plants which allegedly evolved 100
million years after the coal bed was formed." There exists an
exaggeration of the facts as only one coal ball containing one
specimen of "Angiospermophyton americanum" was reported. The
impression that numerous coal balls containing specimens of
"Angiospermophyton americanum" exist is certainly false. Also,
Brown (1995) overlooks an article, Seward (1923), in which it is
argued that the single fossil described by Hoskins (1923) is not
an angiosperm and is just an example of "Myeloxylon," a non-
angiosperm, Medullosan pteridosperms (seed fern). It appears that
"Angiospermophyton americanum" was just one of many plants fossils
ranging in age Carboniferous to Jurassic in age that were argued
to be either an angiosperm or displayed angiospermid characters.
In this case, both Dr. Brown has overlooked the fact that later
research has refuted the identification of this alleged out-of-place
fossil as the "flowering plant", which it was claimed it to be. References Cited: Brown, Walt (1995) In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for
Creation and the Flood. 6th ed, Center for Scientific Creation,
Phoenix, Arizona. Noe, A. C. (1923) A Paleozoic Angiosperm. Journal of Geology.
vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 344-347. (May-June 1923) Seward, A. C. (1923) A supposed Paleozoic angiosperm [from the
coal measures of Illinois]. Botanical Gazette vol. 76, no. 2,
p. 215." 6. Out-Of Place Pollen: Mr. arkathon aimlessly repeated, once again: "In the Grand Canyon, in Venezuela, in Kashmir, and in Guyana,
spores of ferns and pollen from flowering plants are found in
Cambrian rocks-rocks supposedly deposited before flowering plants
evolved. Pollen has also been found in Precambrian rocks-rocks
deposited before life supposedly evolved." In this case, Mr. arkathon has badly garbled the facts. The **metamorphic rocks**, from which pollen has been reported in the Grand Canyon and Venezuela and Guyana, are Pre-Cambrian rocks, not Cambrian rocks. Thus, they are part of the various claims of pollen found in Precambrian rocks noted in the last sentence. Only the pollen from Kashmir has been alleged to occur in Cambrian strata. The case of the pollen found in Precambrian strata of the Grand Canyon has been discussed in great detail by: 1. Precambrian pollen by Morton, Glenn (1997)
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0101.html 2.Out-of-Place Pollen
CC341: Out-of-place pollen and 3. "Modern Pollen in the Proterozoic Hakatai Shale: Disproof of
Plant Evolution?" in " Strata of the Grand Canyon - Grand
Staircase" at: http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/grand.htm Finally, an old earth creationist Arthur V Chadwick disputed the claims of out-of-place pollen in Grand Canyon rocks in: Chadwick, Arthur V. (1981) Precambrian Pollen in the Grand Canyon -
A Reexamination. Origins vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 7-12.
Geoscience Research Institute | I think we need more research on that... For the Venezuela, and British Guiana pollen, Mr. Littleton noted: "The report of pollen being found the Precambrian Roraima Formation
of Venezuela, and British Guiana come from Stainforth (1966). The
rock from which Stainforth (1966) claims to have extracted well-
preserved pollen are what is described by him as "highly
metamorphosed" quartz and muscovite and quartz, muscovite, and
biotite hornfels that were severely "cooked" by thick dolerite sills. Stainforth (1966) stated that one of the geologists, who processed
the pollen sample, noted it to be characterized by "an uncompressed
preservation highly unusual except in young sediments." At the
time of publication, the pollen assemblage had (not) been matched
against many known suite although ages from Cretaceous, Miocene, and
younger have been proposed by various palynologists. In the thread "Re: Pollen," Message-ID:
<4tcia9$pl0@ds2.acs.ucalgary.ca>, Dr. Andrew Macrea,
about the Roraima pollen, wrote: "Another classic example is pollen, including angiosperms,
from the Precambrian Roraima Formation (spelling?) from
the Tablelands of Venezuela. Like the Grand Canyon example,
they are also likely to be introduced, in particular because
the rocks are moderate metamorphic grade, and yet the pollen
grains were nearly unaltered and colorless. They should have
been baked crispy brown or black if they were in place in a
rock of that grade." The preservation of pollen is completely inconsistent with the degree
that the rock from which they were allegedly has been altered by
metamorphism. It is impossible for highly metamorphosed strata to
contain the three-dimensional, well-preserved pollen that Stainforth
(1966) allegedly recovered from the Roraima Formation as discusses
by Dr. Macrea noted above. References Cited: Stainforth, R. M. (1966) Occurrence of Pollen and Spores
in the Roraima Formation of Venezuela and British Guinea.
Nature, Vol. 210, no. 16, pp. 292-294. (April 1966)" Finally, if a person goes back to the primary literature, a person would find that there are major problems with reports of pollen having been found in Cambrian age strata of the Salt Range of Kashmir. The main problem is that the strata, from which the samples were collected, have been badly mangled by folding and thrust faulting. Younger and older strata have been tectonically interfaulted within the exposures from which the samples were collected. When the samples were collected for analysis, the presence of younger strata faulted within the Cambrian strata was not recognized. As a result, the samples of presumed Cambrian rocks analyzed easily could have included samples of much younger sedimentary rocks. As a result, the pollen bearing samples could have come from sedimentary rocks much younger than Cambrian in age. Unfortunately, information concerning the specific layers from the samples came from wasn't published and possibly not even initially noted. Thus, it is impossible using the information has been published in the literature to unequivocally demonstrate the specific age of the rock from which the pollen were collected given the complex geology of the outcrops. 7. Pseudo-Hoofprints in the grand Canyon Mr. arkathon also claimed: "A leading authority on the Grand Canyon even published photographs
of horselike hoofprints visible in rocks that, according to the
theory of evolution, predate hoofed animals by more than a hundred
million years." Mr. Littleton explained: "McKee (1982) did call these features "hoof-like". This is only
descriptive terminology that only described their semi-oval form.
This is a case where the Young Earth creationists have mistaken
taken a metaphor for reality. These alleged hoof-prints, are not
even animals tracks, but rather inorganic structures called "current
crescents ". If a person is to assume, for sake of argument, that these features
are even animal tracks of some kind, the penknife in Figure E23 of
Mckee (1982) shows they are far too small to have made by a hoofed
horse. In the figure, they are strikingly oriented all in the same
direction and quite clearly inorganic current crescents. Discussing
these pseudo-tracks, Lockley and Hunt (1995) stated: "... But careful studies show that most are
invertebrate traces or features produced by currents.
A review of all known reports of this type suggests
that a surprising number of invertebrate traces have
been misinterpreted as vertebrate tracks. We conclude
that, in most cases, the vertebrate track
interpretations are dubious at best and that each
example should be examined carefully and judged on its
own merits. In the case of the Supai Formation, of
course, we agree with Gilmore that the markings are not
vertebrate tracks-and they were definitely not made by
horses!" Later, talking about similar alleged horse tracks, Lockley and Hunt
(1995) stated: "Another example of controversy over tracks was
introduced in chapter 2 in our discussion of
horseshoe-like markings, of uncertain origin, found in
Paleozoic rocks of the Grand Canyon region. Similar
horseshoe-shaped markings have been observed in the
Mesozoic Moenkopi Formation (figure 3.7). These
particular tracks were studied by Frank Peabody, who
identified them as "current crescents" caused by the
scour of currents around a small pebble or other
obstruction on the sediment surface. Peabody was aware
of claims that such features, also found in Triassic
rocks in Germany and in Jurassic rocks in the
northeastern United States, were of vertebrate origin,
and he was anxious to make a correct interpretation for
the Moenkopi occurrences. We ourselves have seen such
features in Moenkopi sediments and agree with Peabody
that they are current crescents, not tracks. There are,
however, other horseshoe-shaped markings found in other
sedimentary rocks elsewhere that are not current
crescents." References Cited: Lockley, M., and A. P. Hunt (1995) Dinosaur Tracks: and Other Fossil
Footprints of the Western United States. Columbia University Press,
New York, New York. McKee, Edwin D. (1982) The Supai Group of Grand Canyon. United
States Geological Survey Professional Paper no. 1173, United
States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia." 8. More Pseudo-Hoofprints Mr. arkathon also claimed: "Other hoofprints are alongside 1,000 dinosaur footprints in Virginia." Mr. Littleton noted: According to Brown (1995), these other alleged "hoof prints" were
reported by Monastersky (1989) to have been found by Dr. Weems in
Triassic strata exposed by quarrying near Culpepper, Virginia.
Although described as "hoof-shaped," Brown (1995) overlooked
observations by Monastersky (1989) that stated: "With left and right legs spread about 4 feet apart in
an extremely wide stance, this lumbering quadraped left
hoof-shaped prints in mud." Such stance precludes this animal from being a horse. Dr. Robert E.
Weems, who studied these fossil prints infers that they actually
belong to a large reptile that looked like a flattened crocodile
with horns. Again, hoof-like prints are automatically regarded as
belonging to a horse regardless of contrary facts. Also, for further
discussion and pictures that refutes the "hoof-prints" claim by
Brown (1995), a person can go read Weems (1987). References Cited: Brown, Walt (1995) In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for
Creation and the Flood. 6th ed, Center for Scientific Creation,
Phoenix, Arizona. Monastersky, R. (1989) A Walk along the Lakeshore, Dinosaur-Style.
Science News. vol. 136, no. 8, pp. 21. (July 1989) Weems, R. E. (1987) A Late Triassic footprint fauna from the
Culpeper Basin, Northern Virginia (U.S.A.). Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, vol. 77, no. 1, pp. 1-79." It is revealing in that the case for the Virginia footprints having been made by a horse was largely created by the omission of observations that readily disprove this claim. 9. To Bee Or Not To Bee Mr. arkathon also claimed: "Petrified trees in Arizona's petrified forest contain fossilized
nests of bees and cocoons of wasps. The petrified forests are
supposedly 220 million years old, while bees (and flowering plants
which bees require) supposedly evolved almost a hundred million
years later." In this case, Mr. Littleton argued: "These are real scientific discoveries although the source citation
used by Young Earth creationists is a popular newspaper article,
Hasiotis (1995), instead of any of his original published research.
The main problem with this argument is that there is nothing that
would preclude bees from having collected pollen, resin, and sap
from plants and coniferous trees prior to the development of
flowering plants. As noted by Hasiotis in Anonymous (1995): "Many
gymnosperms, a plant group that includes conifers and ferns, also
produce pollen. The ancient bees could have found sugars and
nutrients - which they find today in the nectar of flowers - in
coniferous plants or even in animal carcasses." Given that fossils of the actual bees (hymenopteran insects) who
made the fossil nests found and described by Hasiotis et al. (1995)
(haven't been found), Young Earth creationists completely lack any
sort of evidence or proof that the "bees" which made the fossil
nests within the Triassic strata of Petrified Forest National
Park were same exact type of bees that are found associated with
flowering plants. The type of "bees", which made the Triassic nests,
quite likely were a different and earlier type of bee adapted to
either gathering spores from gymnosperms, such as conifers and ferns
or sugars and nutrients from either coniferous plants or other sources. About these fossil nests, Hasiotis et al. (1995) stated: "Late Triassic ichnofossil insect nests record very
early, yet advanced behavioral and morphological
characteristics of the Hymenoptera. These trace
fossils shed new light on hypotheses regarding the
timing of insect diversification and its co-evolution
with plants in terrestrial ecosystems. Insect
ichnofossils better constrain the age of origination of
numerous groups because they have a greater
preservation potential than do body fossils, which are
typically much rarer. Triassic ichnofossils of derived
hymenopteran insects extend the ages of these insects
by more than 100 million years (Hasiotis et al., 1995,
1996). Hymenopteran ichnofossils reveal more
information about behavior than do body fossils, which
can be used to interpret behavior solely through
functional morphology. The highly organized nest
configurations of Triassic hymenopteran ichnofossils
imply that complex behavior reflecting primitive
socialization and pollenization, was established long
before the advent of angiosperms; these organisms were
acting as pollinators in the Triassic terrestrial
ecosystems. The pre-established plant foraging and
feeding strategies of early Mesozoic hymenopterans
constitute a pre-adaptation for a later origin of
pollination mechanisms in early angiosperms, thus
favoring rapid angiosperm radiation and
diversification. Through time, these and other insects
probably switched plant resources (from gymnosperm-
cycadeiod to angiosperm) as they co-evolved with the
rapidly diversifying angiosperms to form the intricate
ecological relationships exhibited by insects and
angiosperms today." One major headache that these fossils provide Young Earth
creationists concerning their ideas about the Noachian Flood is
that the bee cocoons and wasp nests, along with innumerable fossil
soils, called "paleosols", and the lack of any marine fossils
clearly show that the strata exposed within the Arizona Petrified
Forest accumulated on dry land and was not deposited underwater
during Noah's Flood. References: Anonymous (1996) Busy Bee. Campus Press. vol. ?,
pp. ??-??, (January 25, 1996) at: BCN: Page Not Found Hasiotis, Stephen T. (1995) Fossilized Combs Have
Scientists Abuzz. The Arizona Republic, 26 May 1995,
p. B7. Hasiotis, S. T. R. F. Dubielz, P. T. Kay, T. M. Demko,
K. Kowalskal , and D. McDaniel (1995) Research Update on
Hymenopteran Nests and Cocoons, Upper Triassic Chinle
Formation, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.
NPS Paleontological Research vol. 3, pp. 116-121." Some interesting web pages: http://www2.nature.nps.gov/...ontology//pub/grd3_3/pefo2.htm A Secret History of Life on Land
Carl Zimmer/(c)1998. Reprinted with permission of Discover Magazine.
USGS.gov | Science for a changing world A person can go on forever seemingly in an analysis of the text bites of alleged evidence of Out-Of-Place Fossils presented by Mr. arkathon. However, a search of USENET posts using the Googles search will find similar detailed rebuttals demonstrating the scientifically bankrupt nature of many of items presented by him as taken from Young Earth creationist web pages. Yours, Bill Birkeland
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 45 by simple, posted 06-26-2004 2:54 PM | | simple has not replied |
|
™ Version 4.2