Hi Quetzal,
Did you hear anything from Dr Offord, yet?
I was browsing a bit and encountered your comments on the La Brea pit:
Q: 2. The article states that an unexplainable "anomaly" is the ratio of carnivores to herbivores (more of the former than the latter).
PB: Indeed, the La Brea fossils demonstrate a 10 to 1 ratio for herbivores and carnivores, of which 3 out of 10 are smilodon fatalis (sabre tooths).
Q: The article tries to draw a spurious comparison with the ratios in living populations in Africa and Canada, (ratios which are dependent on energy flow and carrying capacity in an ecosystem). In other words, they're trying to compare apples and oranges.
PB: I always thought that comparison of apples and oranges is allowed in evolutionism. Evolutionists do it all the time. They compare chimp to human to fishes to trees to whatever. So, this can hardly be an argument.
Q: The only way this comparison can even be remotely viable is if all entrapment of every animal was completely random and dependent on population density. That isn't the case. One herbivore (say a mammoth) gets trapped. A pack of dire wolves comes in to feed on the unlucky victim and several members are in turn trapped.
How many herbivores were trapped and how many carnivores? Isn't it also possible that trapped carnivores might in turn attract even more carnivores or scavengers?
PB: ...and upon the entrapment of the carnivores more packs of carnivores came, who became entrapped, and that attracted more carnivores, who became entrapped, that attracted more canrivores, etcetera. So, it probably took only a couple of centuries to fill the tar pit with thousands of skeletons. It elegantly explains the 10:1 ratio.
Q: Herbivores are likely to avoid a carcass, not approach it, especially if there are carnivores around.
PB: Probably the presence of carnivores alone would be sufficient.
Best wishes,
Peter