Millions of years?

This is going to be a largely straightforward series.   I will be calling upon resources as usual from Creation Science to give you the straight scoop about fossils and fossil rocks.   You have been lied to from the time you could understand spoken languages.   Schools, secular science, the vast majority of academia and media all espouse Darwinism without question (and without evidence)!   How does one counteract such a thing?  It is like boxing against an opponent made of smoke, whenever you strike him you hit nothing but you see something nearby, not quite solid enough to either pin down or punch. It is the very mythical nature of Darwinism that makes it harder to debunk, because it is not built on a foundation of evidence.

Another way to approach the problem is to compare Darwinists to snapping turtles crossing the road.  They really need your help to save them from doom, but they will bite down HARD on you if given the chance!

Alligator Snapper

Perhaps you have lived in a region in which snapping turtles live?   Much of my life has been spent in the Midwestern states of Michigan, Indiana and Illinois with sorties into Canada and other bordering states. Snapping turtles in my area can get to be two feet long quite easily.   I believe the largest American variety was 219 pounds?  In any event, they have a bad habit of slowly crossing highways and, if you run them over they could do some damage to the underside of your vehicle.   More importantly, you are likely going to kill them in the process.   Numerous times I have parked on the side of a highway or even a superhighway, walked out to grab one of the wanderers and carry him to the other side.   They are never grateful!   They either retract that head in as far as possible while trying to claw you with their feet or they whip that head around and surprise you with how far that neck extends!!!   If you are holding a snapper in the middle of his shell, you may find that a part of you has been bitten off courtesy of your armored "friend" and it will not feel good!!!

carrying one

So the gentleman, above, has his hands close to the rear claws, where the neck cannot extend far enough to get you.   Actually this turtle could have nabbed that left thumb had he decided to attack.   But as you see, snap-guy is keeping his head in, being on the defensive.

So with Darwinists, it is difficult to reason with them as they have no fundamental truths to stand on and rather than evidence, they have fairy tales.   On the other hand, if you are in the field of science or education or politics and don't handle the subject of evolution JUST RIGHT, you are going to get hurt!

Fortunately, I am not trying for tenure at a university or running for President or seeking to have a paper be peer-reviewed, so the snapping turtle part of the equation is not my problem, I just have to deal with the smoke men.    Shall we dispel them and cause them to disappear yet again?

Sean Pittman's fine post, part one!

From Simple to Complex

What about the fact that the "simple" organisms are buried in the lower levels and the more "complicated" ones are buried in the higher levels? Doesn't this fact support the notion that simple organisms evolved into more and more complex organisms over time, with the more complex organisms buried and fossilized above the earlier and simpler life forms? Certainly this seems like a very logical assumption.  But, things just aren't that easy.

There are a number of potential problems with this interpretation of the fossil record.

For example, it is interesting to note that some general kinds of fossilized creatures are very generally found in the same relative vertical orientation, with respect to each other in the fossil record, that they would have naturally been found in during life. Single celled organisms make their first appearance in the lowest layers followed by multicelled ocean bottom-dwelling creatures like sponges and worms etc. Higher up come creatures like bony fishes, then land plants and animals, then birds and larger land animals.

Of course, this is a very general pattern and does not explain why certain creatures that lived on the bottoms of oceans, like trilobites, make their first appearance in the Cambrian (505-540 Ma) while other creatures that live on ocean bottoms, like crabs and lobsters, don't appear until the beginning of the Cretaceous (65-145 Ma).⁸³  Why would creatures that would seem to share the same general environment while alive be so widely separated in the fossil record if they did indeed live at the same time and in pretty much the same location? If the geologic column truly represents a series of closely spaced catastrophic burial events instead of long ages of time, how can this feature be explained?  Certainly this seems like a difficult and rather mysterious problem for those, like myself, who might think to question the long age notion of the fossil record. 

At least a partial explanation might be found in the fairly recently discovered fact that at least some nested hierarchical patterns to the distribution of different populations (both living and within the fossil record) seem to be strongly related to ecological and population-size factors.  

        "The common pattern of species identities associated with species area relationships is the 'nested subsets' pattern. This pattern arises when species that appear on few islands occur only on the islands with the most species, while only the most widespread species are found on the islands with few species (Wright et al., 1998). The nested subset pattern arises because species differ in their distributions across space. Some species use a wider range of resources or persist across a wider range of habitats than others (Brown, 1984; Brown et al., 1996; Hanski and Gyllenberg, 1997). Generally, species that use a wide range of resources or tolerate a variety of abiotic conditions can establish more populations in more places than comparable species with relatively narrow niches (Brown, 1995; Cook and Quinn, 1995). Differences in the ability of species to distribute themselves across space have distinct consequences for the structure of communities. Sites that encompass a greater area tend to have more species (Rosenzweig, 1995). This is because large areas include a subset of species not found elsewhere. Therefore, the nested subset pattern of species distribution in space is thought to reflect the gradient in abundance among species (Gaston, 1996; Leitner and Rosenzweig, 1997; Maurer, 1999). . . [These features are consistent with the hypothesis of] "isolated habitat 'islands'." ¹⁰⁹

Using this line of reasoning, one might reasonable hypothesize that trilobites appear in the fossil record before crabs and lobsters at least party because of the relative abundance of trilobites compared to crabs and lobsters.  This hypothesis is at least plausible given the author's conclusion that, "Species identities and their relative abundances are non-random properties of communities that persist over long periods of ecological time and across geographic space.  This is consistent with species abundance contributing heavily to evolutionary patterns." ¹⁰⁸  After all, "It's very rare to find fossils of lobsters" ( Link ). General mobility, ability to survive catastrophic conditions, and other ecological/habitat factors could also reasonably contribute to the differential location of trilobites vs. lobsters and crabs in the fossil record.  For example, coelacanth fish exist in the fossil record for what are thought to have been 400 million years.  Then they suddenly disappear from the fossil record some 80 million years ago only to reappear alive an well swimming around in oceans today.  Clearly, some types of coelacanths lived in habitats that did not lend themselves to fossilization while others did.  Some habitats are clearly more susceptible to the preservation of fossils. If those specific habitats are not occupied by a particular kind of creature, it may not be preserved in the fossil record even though it is still alive and well in some other habitat.  Consider also that the crayfish was once thought to have evolved from lobster-like ancestors around 140 Ma.  This was until very modern-looking crayfish were subsequently found in sedimentary rocks dating up to 300 Ma ( Link ).  

This brings up the interesting problem of the "first appearance" of all kinds of fossils being pushed farther and farther back in supposed geologic time - often dramatically so.  For example, in January of 2008,  Rudkin and his colleagues, including Graham Young of the Manitoba Museum, spotted fossils of horseshoe crabs buried in rocks thought to be 445-million-years-old from the Ordovician period in central and northern Manitoba. They describe the discovery in the January issue of the journal Paleontology. Of course, horseshoe crabs are not true crabs.  They more closely resemble spiders and scorpions in their body plan. However, it is interesting that these creatures were thought to exist no farther back than 350 million years (Carboniferous period) before this discovery pushed them back another 100 Ma to 445 Ma. Both the Carboniferous and the Jurassic fossil discoveries indicate the "ancient" horseshoe crabs greatly resembled their modern-day counterparts. 

And, amazingly enough, analysis of the recent finds also indicates the ocean creatures haven't changed much over the eons. "We wouldn't necessarily have expected horseshoe crabs to look very much like the modern ones, but that's exactly what they look like," Rudkin said. "This body plan that they've invented, they've stayed with it for almost a half a billion years. It's a good plan," Rudkin told LiveScience. "They've survived almost unchanged up until the present day." ( Link )

This whole thing is turning into somewhat of a routine.  Older and older specimens of various creatures are being found quite commonly and almost always their modern-day counterparts, if they exist, are essentially no different.  How odd from an evolutionary perspective to find example after example of morphologic stasis over hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary time . . .

Other examples of fossils being dating much older than previously thought include:

• Australopithecus (ape thought to be ancestral to humans) dated 4 million years older than previously thought ( Link ).
• Platypus dating 40 million years older than previously thought (to 120 Ma) pushing the first appearance of mammals back to the time of the dinosaurs ( Link ).
• A block of amber (fossil resin) encasing an extinct, stingless bee (Proplebeia dominicana) carrying a clump of orchid pollen on its back shows that these "masterpieces" among flowers appeared sometime between 76 million and 84 million years ago, much earlier than previously believed. ( Link ).
• Orb-weaving spiders arrived during the Jurassic period, not the Cretaceous period, making them about 100 million years older than has been believed, the Times of London reported Wednesday ( Link ).
• Ants 40 million years older than previously thought ( Link ).
• Animal fossils associated with the Ediacaran Period (635 to 543 million years ago) have been found in sediments that date squarely in the Proterozoic Eon, 1.6 billion years ago - a billion years older than previously thought ( Link ).
• The phylogenetic group of crustaceans includes nearly 100,000 species, including relatively big creatures such as prawns, lobsters and crabs, but also smaller specimens such as sea fleas and bay barnacles. In geological terms, the group is as much as 480 million years old; some rare fossils even belong to the late Cambrian and date as far back as 505 million years ago. The new fossil is part of the Lower Cambrian and is no doubt the oldest representative of modern crustaceans ( Link ).
• Crayfish were once thought to have originated about 140 million ears ago (compare with the oldest known lobster at 167 Ma; Link). Most researchers assumed that crayfish had descended from lobsters around that time and gradually made their way inland. However, Hasiotis has discovered 220-million-year-old specimens that are almost identical to modem ones. He thinks crayfish may be as much as 300 million years old. (Link ).

There is also the problem of last appearance, which is becoming similar to the problem of first appearance.  Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Bristol, noted an interesting phenomenon along these lines when studying the KT-boundary.  During a program entitled, "The KT Boundary"(June 23, 2005), as part of the BBC radio series In Our Time, Benton commented:

"The fact is that many major groups of organisms did die out at that time, rather catastrophically, and I've observed that over the last 10 or so years as people have looked at the fossil records ever more closely, certain records, for example the ammonites, this major group of marine organisms, used to look rather gradualistic, meaning species disappeared step by step, one at a time for many metres below the boundary, but when people have gone back to the sections and collected more intensely, they're filling the gaps, so  a lot of these records that used to look gradual stepwise dropping off, become more and more catastrophic with time and more and more species go up to the boundary, and that's true of the dinosaurs as well." (Link)

Consider also that the generally orderly distribution of fossils in the fossil record is also somewhat problematic for those who hold that the geologic column and fossil record developed over many hundreds of millions of years.  It seems like the fossil record is simply too neatly sorted.  Creatures suddenly appear without any prior record and then suddenly disappear without any subsequent record, only to reappear tens of millions of years later - alive and well (such as the history of the Coelacanth described in more detail below).  Many layers also have only a limited number of preserved creatures - far too limited an array to support a viable ecosystem.  For example, the fossils of some layers consist primarily of large meat eating dinosaurs. Yet, there simply aren't near the number of preserved creatures that could serve as prey for these very large carnivores.¹  What on Earth did they live on for millions of years?  How did they get preserved in abundance in certain layers while other creatures did not? The same thing is true of millions of fossils of very large plant eating dinosaurs in places like the Morrison Formation.  This huge formation contains millions of preserved plant eating dinosaur bones but hardly any plant fossils.^34,35  Could the difference in preservation between dinosaur bones and hard woody plant remains be that significant? - especially when large seems of coal and other finely preserved plant fossils are abundant elsewhere? And, what about pollen order?  Pollen appears fairly neatly sorted in the fossil record.  It seems, perhaps, that it is just too sorted.

There are so many other features of the geologic column and fossil record that seem just as difficult, if not more so, for the notion that very long periods of time are represented.  For example, it seems that many land animals, excluding birds and mammals, do not generally have their footprints located in the same layer in which their bodies are found, but in lower layers.⁵⁶  Did the footprints evolve before they did?  The footprints of dinosaurs, for example, are generally located in lower levels than the actual fossilized bones of the dinosaurs.^1,56,82  Why would this be?  What is there to explain this apparent sorting of body from footprint fossils? Leonard Brand and James Florence comment on this most interesting phenomenon:

If the geologic column represents sediments that have accumulated over many millions of years, and the fossils from each geologic period are the remains of animals living in successive time periods, it would be reasonable to expect that the stratigraphic patterns of footprint diversity should roughly parallel the patterns of equivalent body fossil diversity.⁵⁶

Some have suggested various potential problems for this interpretation of Brand and Florence. However, these objections seem fairly well covered in the paper. I also discuss a few of these objections in detail in a Google Talk.Origins debate (Link).⁸²

Some argue that such finely preserved trackways as are observed in the fossil record, such as the horseshoe crab fossil and trackway pictured here,⁵⁷ were probably the result of the creature being trapped in an "anoxic lagoon".  But how are such crisp footprints and such a well-preserved body going to be preserved at the milky bottom of some anoxic lagoon?  Where are such conditions described preserving such fine fossils today?  Also, scavengers are still active even in highly anoxic conditions.  What made it possible for such delicate footprints and bodies of such creatures to be preserved in such fine detail - avoiding all hints of bioturbation? 

Bioturbation is an extremely effective way of destroying layering in sedimentary rocks by mixing up the sediment and homogenizing it. It is easy to find modern-day examples of this. Hurricane Carla laid down a distinctive layer of sediment off the coast of central Texas in 1961. About twenty years later, geologists returned to find out what had happened to this layer. Most of the layer had been destroyed by living creatures burrowing into it and disturbing it; and where the layer could still be found it was almost unrecognizable.

In the light of such modern day findings, it is very difficult to imagine how such layering of sediment found throughout the geologic column and such crisp lines between these layers could have been kept in such pristine condition for not only tens or hundreds of years, but hundreds of thousands and even millions upon millions of years of time. It is even more difficult for me to imagine how such finely detailed fossils and trace fossils could be preserved. 

Rather, it seems to me that the fossil presented here, with its trackway, was preserved by rather rapid and deep burial by sedimentary layering.  The horseshoe crab survived the first periods of layering, making its trackway on a newly deposited surface, only to be overcome quite suddenly by a subsequent depositional events which were so rapid that the horseshoe crab, which was probably very good at digging, was trapped with such pressure that it could not escape.  Its body and fine trackways were also preserved because of the sheer deepness of the burial - which prevented subsequent disturbance by bioturbation. 

To suggest that such trackways, in particular, could be preserved in the bottom of some anoxic lagoon just doesn't make nearly as much sense to me.  However, if someone can show me a real life example, I'd be more open to such potential explanations. 

Also, what is usually overlooked is that fact that there is no such animal as a "simple" animal.  All living things are extraordinarily complex. The "simplest" one celled organism, such as a bacterium, is just a complicated as a single cell that exists in the body of a human being - using just as many genetic functions at any one time.  A rat is also no less complex than a human as far as the information needed to build a rat.  In fact, out of 35,000 to 40,000 genes that the human genome contains, the rat is only about 500 genes different.⁹  Certain plant species also require a similar amount of functional genetic material (i.e., genes).  

Consider also the fact that many mainstream scientists believe that almost every metazoan phylum with hard parts, and many that lack hard parts, made a first appearance in the Cambrian. The only modern phylum with an adequate fossil record to appear after the Cambrian was the phylum Bryozoa, which was not known before the early Ordovician until 2010 when Landing et. al. discovered a late Cambrian specimen in southern Mexico. ¹¹⁰

Of course, not all animal phyla have actually been found in the Cambrian layer since many have only soft body parts that are difficult to preserve or fossilize. Still, based on phylogenic analysis nearly all animal phyla that exist today are believed by most scientists to have arisen during or just before the Cambrian period over the course of a few tens of million years.  

This rather sudden appearance, relatively speaking, of  essentially all animal phyla during the Cambrian period is referred to as the 'Cambrian Explosion'. After this period essentially no new phyla are thought to have evolved over the course of hundreds of millions of years.Compared with the 35 or so animal phyla that still exist today, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100 different phyla. This prompted those such as Roger Lewin to ask, "Why, in subsequent periods of great evolutionary activity when countless species, genera, and families arose, have there been no new animal body plans produced, no new phyla?" ⁷⁸  (Back to Top)

All reference numbers are found at the original post and you click here to go there!

Sean Pittman has a great deal of information about the fossil record posted online. I will be using his post as a basic template for the series, but his pages will not be the only source.

Below are a few pictures from past blogposts for your viewing pleasure.  A look at some of Radar's Greatest Hits!

Millions of years?

This looks like classic flood layering. But according to Uniformitarians the rocks here represent millions of years of time. Funny how they go back and forth from mudstone to sandstone, eh?




Could stone be bent like this? Or was this still-moist flood layers being folded in the dynamic aftermath of the Noahic flood, as or after the majority of he water had receded into oceans?

The CSI-entific method, Megabreccias, Interbedding and Rock Taffy!

(Yes, I did repeat two pictures but they are great pics.  See if you can find the person in the photo, above, to give you a scale for these massive boulders that would have required either powerful water flows to move them along in a sediment flow)

THE CSI-entific method.

First, the ACTUAL scientific method now ignored by Darwinists:

Isaac Newton:
• Investigate the evidence
• Make a supposition
• Frame it as a testable hypothesis
• Test, test and retest
• Positive results – propose a law
• Other parties test repeatedly
• If all agree, then a law is established

CSI best to worst case scenario (standard procedure police investigative practices)

• Alerted to a crime
• Apprehend subject in act (win!)
• Witnesses (probably a win)
• Witness (good chance)
• Collection of evidence in any case
• Analysis of evidence for circumstantial assumptions (maybe)
• Attempt to “prove” those assumptions without witnesses (very difficult)

Evolution (Throw away Abiogenesis and Thermodynamics and begin the fairy tale)

• Aware of a state of existence
• Ignored witnesses (throughout Bible)
• Made suppositions
• Made hypotheses
• Test, test and retest
• No positive results
• Ignore the results and declare evolution to be factual
• Spin the evidence along with media brainwashing and fraud

Anthropic Global Warming (Lie to the world, win a Nobel Prize!)

• Presume mankind is warming the earth
• Change weather stations to get warmer readings
• Manipulate and make up evidence to produce “hockey stick graph”
• Find a buffoon to provide a front man for the product (Al Gore)
• Invest in carbon offset companies to reap fortune at world’s expense
• Try to cover up the fraud when exposed
• Claim that the warming is happening even as the proof rolls in against it
• Spin the evidence along with media brainwashing and fraud

Sunday, February 21, 2010

polystrate fossils? Can't be found?!

The top picture was one particular polystrate that was preserved at a length of 7.6 meters through several layers supposedly traversing hundreds of thousands of years at a minimum. How could there be so many polystrate fosssils and rock layers twisted like taffy and megabreccias found commonly in rock layers. Why are tracks and ripples and animals caught in the act of birth or in the process of eating? Catastrophism. Massive and world-wide catastrophism.

This link takes you to a site with more pictures including an explanation for the many polystrate "forests" found thrust upright or angled through thousands and even supposed millions of years by Darwinist thinking. Such tree trunks are found stripped of leaves and branches and often even bark and are then sorted and left in place.

Yes, we have found even human fossils in the "wrong" rock layers but these are hushed up by the powers that be in the "science" world. They would prefer to come up with faked "finds" like Ida and Pakicetus!

For those who would like to learn more rather than remain brainwashed.