Basic and Remedial Fossil Identification

Fine, I may be expecting too much computer-wise, hard for me to judge. Doesn't have to be done all at once, though, it seems to me, but could maybe be done piece by piece with small collections, to be later consolidated into one biggie. The amount of information on the net right now is staggering.But even if I am expecting too much in that regard it seems to me that if scientists can present article after article on how the ToE explains this or that fact about the fossils, that the facts about the fossils themselves could just as well have been presented in a lot more detail, but my impression is that they'd rather present the interpretations than the facts the interpretations are based on. Even without computers, old fashioned research using published reports and articles doesn't seem to have come to the aid of us would-be sleuths either.Truly it does leave the casual curious reader hoping to understand the basis of evolution, without the necessary information, and promotes an aura of mystification in which we either get a ten-year education in the field, or at least become an avid reader of in-house journals as crashfrog suggests, or take the party line straight as revealed wisdom not to be questioned. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

yes, i think you are. but i think what i gave you will suffice for the next century or so as they work on it. it is, but most of it's ripped off of something else. not a lot of people contributing to the world of mp3 piracy and viral videos are working paleontologists... the ratio of paleontologists to non-paleontologists on the web is probably about the same as everywhere else. the facts are presented in the articles. i mean, the real articles, the ones in the technical journals. like i said before, you want something that by definition is a contradiction. maybe it's the "would-be" that's the problem. devote a lifetime to actually studying paleontology and tell me what you come away with. i'm really not trying to sound elitist here, but science doesn't exist to preach. if you'd like to understand it, you have to study it if you want to understand it. they don't hand out pamphelets. and it's a simple fact of life that the majority of people will never go in depth into science.you can't expect the gratuitous details you seem to be after from something you want watered down so you can also understand it. you either study it, or you get the general popularist discovery-channel-version. but it's far, far too large of a field for you get both the macroscopic and microscopic views at the same time.

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I beg your ridiculously naive apologetic pardon. Science preaches itself into a lather about evolution in every kind of pop science presentation to the public, and this is precisely what I'm talking about. They want us to accept what they preach which is nothing but their interpretations of the billions of bits of data they are NOT presenting for our consideration. They present their just-so little scenarios with their fanciful illustrations and their assertions about the age of this that or the other even though it's a tiny fragment of a bone the whole thing is based on. We are always hearing about this or that "discovery" but we have no way of judging the context, it's all pre-digested in evolutionist terms. Just as the list of strata I quoted in the OP does. This is NOT acceptable. This is mystification, intentional or not.By the way, this is a side topic and I want to get back to the actual business of looking at fossils where they are found in the strata worldwide. No, that web site is still not helpful to me. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

...because people are trying to get religion taught in schools. if creationism['s attempt to get into schools] went away tomorrow, so would the "preaching" of evolution. people spread misinformation about science, and scientists often feel the need to correct that misinformation. again, this stuff isn't exactly state secret. go take three semesters of biology, three semesters of geology, and then go take a few paleontology classes. if you keep going at it, eventually you might get to masters level, or even doctoral level -- and deal with the information yourself. even collect it, in the field if you'd like.if that's too much, there are a number of technical journals.but you don't want to understand this -- otherwise, you'd be going down one or both of those routes. you want to complain about how the information isn't available, en total, with excruciating detail, explained in terms a 4 year old can understand. i'm sorry -- it takes effort. if you're not willing to put in the effort required to study something -- don't complain that someone else has digested it for you. it's really one or the other, and i wish you'd stop whining to us about the choices you make. nevermind that it lists half a million individual specimens and which specific sub-strata they are found it, and where specifically they were found in the world down to precise geographic coordinates. it even lists what kind of rock, and which specific formation they were found it. so no, that's not useful at all. it appears that you have no will to even try. nothing will satisfy you, not even exactly what you are looking for.i'm unimpressed, faith.Edited by arachnophilia, : editted brackets for clarityEdited by arachnophilia, : typo

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Let's completely forget for a second that fossils are a record of living things. Let's just look at them as fancy rocks, no different than gemstones.If I wanted to put together a map of all the different types of gemstones that have been found EVERYWHERE in the world. That is a hurculean task. Especially since there are currently 6 billion people possibly finding stones at any given moment in time and no universal system for cataloging or reporting what they've found.There are sources which can identify various fossil beds, including travel guides.But what you are asking be done is simply ridiculous.To put it in your terminology -Please provide us with a map of every Bible in the world, which publisher, what language, who's using it and how they pray.

Wow! Faith, you gotta stop.I went for a hike two days ago. I saw an unusual rock and picked it up. It was a fossilized shell. I'm going to assume it was a snail. It's currently sitting on my bookshelf.Who would I report that information to? How would they verify it?Should we also have a database for "grain of sand size and color"?

Come on. You're saying you want a massive worldwide database about a subject which you refuse to study and you want it in terms that you can easily understand?I don't speak French. I would like a massive online database of everything every written or spoken in French. However, I don't want to have to be able to read or understand French in order to use the database. Am I being rational?

Not at all, Faith. I myself have been frustrated in trying to find exactly the kind of resource you describe.It's no conspiracy though, it's surely a question of finding the time, money and people to condense vast amounts of data and material into some form of catalogue that the layman can understand - some sort of "Encyclopedia Fossillicus".Maybe some of the geologists here could start a funding campaign!EDIT:Just saw Arachs link! Obviously just a drop in the ocean, but very useful nonetheless.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

This thread is not about how there needs to be a worldwide paleontological database.This thread is not about how scientists should be spending more time creating popularizations of extremely technical material.It is not about how scientists preach evolution too much.It is not about creationist efforts to alter public school science programs.This thread is not a license to complain every time the world doesn't turn out to be the way you expect it should be.If you posted a message after this one that is off topic, then please go back and fix it before I see it.Faith, sorry to specifically call you out again, but I've already suspended two members for their responses to your off-topic characterizations of science, such as that it is suppressing information. If you're really interested in this topic then there is much people can tell you, but the information cannot be expected to exist in forms that fit your preconceived notions. Please stop giving expression to your frustrations and focus on this topic that your started. If you conclude that something underhanded is going on then these feelings are best kept to yourself except in threads intended to discuss that possibility. If you propose such a thread now I'll be happy to promote it.By the way, if you're really just seeking scientific information then this thread is in the wrong forum. To belong in this forum it would have to have a title like, "Bible-based Fossil Identification".

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Bravo!Just nominated this post for a POTM.

Ok I had an off topic response regarding the whining but I see it has been addressed.Edited by deerbreh, : Remove off topic response to Faith

You are all losing sight of the context in which I want the information that I can't find. Or maybe you don't care, but simply prefer trying to make the creo look foolish, calling it "whining" when I raise this real problem with how science deals with the public, and pretending I object to your not reporting your find of a snail fossil.I already said maybe an enormous data base is too much to ask. I really don't know. But the basic information I want whenever I have read a popular presentation of evolution based on some fossil find or other is NOT too much to ask.And no, Arach, you are wrong. Evolutionists have ALWAYS preached, this is not just a reaction against current creationist political efforts. It was preached to us in high school in the fifties already.And your snail fossil is a very silly straw man -- can't remember if that was Nuggin or Deerbreh. Whoever. As if I were asking for every single find to be catalogued. No, I'm asking for BASIC information about the disposition of fossils in the geological column INSTEAD OF what the science world gives us hapless laypeople, their own pre-digested interpretations of same.I wouldn't be asking about a database if the conclusions and interpretations that are so often presented to the public about fossils were backed up with the information they based them on (other than in a footnote to a technical journal) -- which surely is available to them or they wouldn't have arrived at the conclusions they did. It's a matter of what they want to present to the public and they'd rather present their interpretive scenarios than the facts that underlie them. They'd rather tell us that a particular fossil is a certain number of millions of years old and lived in a particular environment than give us the facts from which to decide for ourselves.An example I gave was the quote in the OP. The physical strata that contain physical fossils are described in terms of eras of time and evolved creatures instead of the simple physical facts. There's something that smacks of mystification in this, but it's standard. We aren't presented a stack of physical strata with its interestingly peculiar sediment layers and peculiar fossil contents, we are presented with scenarios about life on earth millions of years ago.I clearly said, Rick B, that I don't regard any of this as a conspiracy, though I thank you for saying you've felt this same frustration about getting at the data.It's the data, the facts, that make it possible to actually think about evolution. Without it one simply can't think clearly about it at all.===========================Now, I for one would like to put this particular discussion to rest and see if we can go on, considering the dearth of actual facts we've been discussing, to some questions I have about fossils as they are found in the strata. I just want to try to get a picture of what is meant by saying that chordates are found in such and such a time period, or dinosaurs or whatever -- what the actual physical evidence is.I also want to give Coragyps' posts some serious consideration because he/she went to some trouble to get that information.AND I have work to do first so I'll see you all later. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry - posted wrong placeEdited by deerbreh, : Posted wrong place.

You're not sorry to say it at all. You are simply in apologetic mode for the science elite that wants to control what people think and keeps the public in the dark.============
Sorry, for some reason I'm posting as "admin." Don't know how I get into it and can't seem to get out of it.Edited by AdminFaith, : No reason given.

Faith's above post is accidental. While the Faith account is suspended the AdminFaith account automatically fills in. Faith is still getting used to her super powers. Her suspension is over Friday afternoon.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director