Basic and Remedial Fossil Identification

I would like to explore the fossil record some. There are a couple of threads still open that are more or less on the topic but they are science threads and since I am likely to interject some typical YEC thinking on the thread perhaps this shouldn't be located there.Partly I would like just to know a lot more about the fossil record, specifics about what fossils are found exactly where and in what quantity and that sort of thing -- information I find very hard to come by online.I'd appreciate it if instead of exclusively using the era titles like "Permian" and Ordovician" and the like, or the supposed age of the strata, the location or depth of a particular layer in the geological column might be indicated to help me visualize the situation better.On one of the threads on this subject, this was posted:http://EvC Forum: Fossil Record as the Strongest or most compelling evidence of Macroevolution -->EvC Forum: Fossil Record as the Strongest or most compelling evidence of Macroevolution For my purposes it would help if the interpretive terminology of evolution were avoided or at least supplemented with physical information as I suggest above. So that, for instance, the above would be rewritten to describe 1) what the oldest rocks are made off and where they are to be found; 2), 3) and 4) exactly what-kinds-of-rocks-found-where exhibit arguable-to-certain fossils of unicellular life but no other kinds of fossils; I don't know where #5) went, but for 6) and 7) some idea of what these multicellular animals are like, and how high up in the column we're talking, and the names of the "periods" involved could be useful here too, and if there are absolutely no other kinds of life found in these strata to this point and so on...and on up the column. I'm getting tired trying to spell this out but maybe I'll come back and fill it out further later, or just take up the rest if the thread gets promoted, since what I'm getting at is probably clear enough from what is said so far.Just as a general statement about the YEC view of the fossil sorting, the answer has been given many times that the whole geologic column is taken as having been laid down by the flood of Noah, one layer at a time over some unknown period of time, perhaps the span of the flood itself or some of it during its recession, a period of many months in any case, and that the great preponderance of fossils found everywhere on earth are of living things that died in the flood; and that the general order reflects a gradation of mobility and intelligence, and natural habitat as well, so that the lower layers entombed the creatures with the least opportunity to survive the flood, while subsequent layers hold those which were able to survive longer and longer on up the scale, due to natural habitat or ability to escape to higher ground etc. Also, YECs hold that the record isn't as perfect as it is claimed to be anyway; there are anomalies of various kinds, including the polystrates which are so ridiculed here.In any case, while I expect the theories to be discussed too, I hope above all that a much clearer picture of just what fossils are found where will emerge in this discussion -- if this is known, that is. Could be that all anybody knows is the fanciful scenarios and illustrations that are discussed only in terms of ages and environments instead of the nitty gritty facts of fossil location??Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : Corrected link, corrected title etc.Edited by Faith, : added "geologic" to "column"

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I think that's something that is going to be very hard to find online, simply due to the enormous number of fossils and the enormous number of people collecting them.It would be like asking for the locations, quantities, and identification of every insect that has ever been collected. It's certainly the case that entomologists keep records of where they find their specimens; but all that information is curated with the insects themselves - on little labels on the insect's pin - and not compiled into some kind of database for you to search through.My guess is, if you want to see something approaching a comprehensive view of fossils that have been found, you're going to need to travel around the various universities in the world and talk to a lot of geologists and ask to see their collections. A massive project to map out the locations of fossils that have been found has not, to my knowledge, been even attempted.Actually, though, it's not such a bad idea. You could drop that into Google Earth and scroll around... it'd be a pretty large undertaking, though. Well, the geologists themselves know the locations, obviously - they keep track when they put them into their collections. If that's something you'd like to peruse through, you either have to find a geologist's collection, or be lucky enough to stumble on a university that's been forward-thinking enough to set up a database of their geologic finds.

No criticism here. Just a comment. You may want to stick to the geologic names and simply abstract them to "labels that correlate to radiometric age". Depth is a poor indicator of "age" as many areas are exposed at radically different depths of the column. Some places may be exposed to the Triassic, other exposed to the Pre-Cambrian.Besides, if the flood created the current topography then it would ALSO mean a depth to age comparison would be sketchy even in a flood model.You could also stick to relative positioning. X fossil is always found above/below Y fossil.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Faith: let me get home to my book on the subject this evening, and I'll answer at some length. One caution, though: the names like Permian and Mississippian are probably still going to show up a lot. Those names were coined to describe fossil assemblages, not particular kinds of rocks, and not specific ages, either. The parson-geologists of the early 1800's didn't have much of a handle on ages of rocks, though they pretty quickly learned to see that Ordovician was older than Triassic.There are sandstones, limestones, shales, and coals that are all, say, Permian rocks. Each tends to sample a different environment and so tends to preserve a different mix of fossils.More detail this evening, and a real geologist may weigh in before then.

OFF TOPIC, for the time being anyway. DO NOT RESPOND

Faith for starters why don't you explain how the Flood would deposit the animals and plants in the following order, from lowest layer to highest layer, based on the sequence linked here:
http://jersey.uoregon.edu/...ick/AskGeoMan/RelTimeScale.html10.Man + everything below except dinos.
9. No more dinosaurs but everything below is there.
8. mammals + everything below
7. dinosaurs + everything below
6. reptiles + everything below
5. amphibians + everything below
4. land plants + everything below
3. fish + everything below.
2. shelled animals + unicellular life
1. Unicellular life.Edited by AdminNosy, : No reason given.

Sorry, deerbreh but this is premature.Faith's OP requests more information that may eventually lead to the conclusion of the order you present.It is not time to jump to discussing conclusions. We need to stick to the nature of the evidence. That is the fossils and the geology they are found in.

The problem is that these facts are totally suppressed in the public presentation of the ToE and this is truly unconscionable. What you describe is indeed the case, that if I want to know about the actual positions of fossils I have to research it in a million different locations. The fact that this information has not already been accumulated and abstracted for the public is reprehensible, because it makes it prohibitive for the average person to question the evo interpretation.To be clear, no, I don't attribute this to evil motives, just to the total blind unquestioning belief in the ToE that is held by the scientific community.

Part of the problem Faith is simply that the number of fossils are just so great that they are almost ubiqitous. For example, the collection at Berkley alone is over three quaters of a million fossils from about 25,000 locations. And that is just one of the collections. In the US alone there are over a billion fossils just in museums and universities.AbE:for an online list of some of the collections Look HereEdited by jar, : add link to a few of the online collections

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

As I understand it, the ages correspond to an "ideal" column that is supposed to be more or less uniform around the planet although intact only in scattered fragments. So whatever layer happens to be exposed is not going to change the order or the age assigned to it.And yes, relative position may be sufficient. In any case I don't expect perfect attribution of depth, just a relative positioning within the column as a whole to help me visualize what is being talked about better. I suppose if I'd memorized the names of the "ages" this wouldn't be a problem, and in fact I can keep referring to a chart of same, but since I want to think about the physical location of strata and fossils it would be very helpful if we all talked as much as possible in the same basic frame of reference. Use the official terms as WELL, that's fine, but please help me out by reminding me of their rough position in the column if this is possible. Yes, sketchiness is not a problem. But if you mean that this sketchiness makes the age questionable that's already interesting.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's not a REAL problem, that's just a problem of nobody considering it important enough to collect the data in one place so it can be abstracted and generalized, and interesting anomalies noted, and that sort of thing. There could be a central "bank" somewhere that processes the information from all the outlying sources. No real problem, just lack of motivation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

the average person doesn't read paleontological journals. it's not an issue of it being inaccessible to the public. if you can't get it over the internet, wander into the local university library, and try from there. if they don't have the physical issue of nature or science or some of the more technical journals, they probably have a subscription to something like jstor or lexis-nexus or whatever the appropriate service is for such things over the internet. it's not like they're hidden in a dark room somewhere. it's just that, frankly, it goes way, way over the heads of the average person. it goes over the heads of most college-educated people, too. afterall, they are technical journals. it takes a certain knowledge of the field to even understand the jargon.can you imagine trying to read a journal on combinatorics or graph theory without having even passed calculus? i've taken two semesters of calc -- and i can't even begin to approach my own father's doctoral thesis in graph theory. i can't even tell you what it's on, or explain the theorems he proved in it. every year, i work at a graph theory conference, and sometimes go talks. i told my father one year that it made me feel stupid -- and he said "i don't get half the stuff these people are talking about either. we just go and listen and try to follow along as best as we can." it's not any different for other academic field, including biology, geology, and paleontology. it's pretty heady stuff -- it's just not for the average person. that's why people devote their entire lives to studying these things. it's not easy.what you're essentially asking for is a contradiction. you want something technically specific, but dumbed down for the public. if i give you a stephen jay gould book, or even the book i recommended christian (full of skeletal drawings) you'll look at it and say "not enough actual evidence." and if i hand you a copy of the journal of paleontology you'll say "but that's not everything all in one place" or maybe even "i don't understand it, or trust the scientists' conclusions even though i don't know what they're saying!"what you really want is something that contains the entire accumulation of the world's paleontological knowledge, in depth, but understandable by a single average human being. and unfortunately (for the yec view) that's simply an impossibility. we have far, far too many paleontologists who have worked in the past, and are working today, and far, far too many fossils for it to even be readable by a single person. and you can't have something that's both technical, and plebian.

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That would be wonderful! Thank you. Well, if you are conversant with the relative position of all these layers it would help if you would just add a note to that effect where relevant. But if that's too much trouble I will simply do my best with a chart of the geo timetable. It would be wonderful if some of this could be sketched out. I've been SO frustrated about the apparent inaccessibility of this kind of information.

hey, look what i found.[added by edit:] i'm checking, and i only get 5 specimens for archaeopteryx (and i know there are 7 "complete" specimens, and one feather), meaning the database is not complete. but it's sort of what you're looking for, i think.Edited by arachnophilia, : abe

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Actually it isn't just the average person that is frustrated in this effort, scientists too who might want to be able to look at the whole record would encounter the same problem. Of course some of them may have the resources, the grants and the research staff for such a project. But it's revealing, I think, that scientists aren't even interested in such a project, apparently see no need for this. Apparently only a creationist would like to have this kind of information.