Evolution Cruncher
Fossils and Strata Part 2
7 - ABRUPT APPEARANCE
ABRUPT APPEARANCE OF THE HIGHER TAXA—(*#9/22 Abrupt Appearance*) The smaller, slower-moving creatures appear suddenly in the Cambrian. Above the Cambrian, the larger, faster creatures appear just as suddenly! And when these life-forms do appear—they appear by the millions! Tigers, salmon, lions, pine trees, gophers, hawks, squirrels, horses, and on and on!
Evolution cannot explain this sudden emergence, and competent scientists acknowledge the fact.
"The abrupt appearance of higher taxa in the fossil record has been a perennial puzzle. Not only do characteristic and distinctive remains of phyla appear suddenly, without known ancestors, but several classes of a phylum, orders of a class, and so on, commonly appear at approximately the same time, without known intermediates."—*James W. Valentine and *Cathryn A. Campbell, "Genetic Regulation and the Fossil Record," in American Scientist, November-December, 1975, p. 673.
"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories about the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."—*G.G. Simpson, The Major features of Evolution (1953), p. 360.
"The sudden emergence of major adaptive types as seen in the abrupt appearance in the fossil record of families and orders, continued to give trouble. The phenomenon lay in the genetic no-man’s land beyond the limits of experimentation. A few paleontologists even today cling to the idea that these gaps will be closed by further collecting . . but most regard the observed discontinuities as real and have sought an explanation."—*D. Dwight Davis, "Comparative Anatomy and the Evolution of Vertebrates," in Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution (1949), p. 74.
8 - STASIS
UNCHANGING SPECIES—(*#13/17 Stasis*) An important principle noted by every paleontologist who works with fossils is known as stasis. Stasis means to retain a certain form, to remain unchanged; in other words, not to change from one species to another! An important principle noted by every paleontologist who works with fossils is known as stasis. Stasis means to retain a certain form, to remain unchanged; in other words, not to change from one species to another! An important principle noted by every paleontologist who works with fossils is known as stasis. Stasis means to retain a certain form, to remain unchanged; in other words, not to change from one species to another! The problem for the evolutionists is the fact that the animals in the fossil record did not change. Each creature first appears in the record with a certain shape and structure. It then continues on unchanged for "millions of years"; and is either identical to creatures existing now or becomes extinct and disappears. But all the while that it lived, there was no change in it; no evolution. There were no evidences of what paleontologists call gradualism, that is, gradual changes from one species to another. There was only stasis. The gap problem (no transitional forms between species) and the stasis problem (species do not change) ruin evolutionary theories."The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
"Stasis: Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
"Sudden appearance: In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’ "—*Steven Jay Gould, "Evolution’s Eratic Pace," in Natural History, May 1977, p. 14.
Some creatures became extinct at the time of the Flood or shortly afterward. But all creatures which did not become extinct are essentially identical—both in fossil form and in their living counterparts today! This is a major point. No species evolution has occurred! The fossils provide no evidence of species evolution!
"There are about 250,000 different species of fossil plants and animals known . . In spite of this large quantity of information, it is but a tiny fraction of the diversity that [according to the theory] actually lived in the past. There are well over a million species living today and . . [it is] possible to predict how many species ought to be in our fossil record. That number is at least 100 times the number we have found."—*David M. Raup, "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology," in Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, January 1979, p. 22.
(1) The fossil evidence does not have enough different species, and (2) it reveals no successively evolving species in ancient times.
But, in addition, the fossil experts admit that far too many "new species" names have been applied to fossils which have been found. Consider this:
CONFUSION IN NAMES—At this point we shall mention a technical point that only adds to the confusion as paleontologists try to search for the truth about the fossils. It also gives the impression of far more extinct species in the fossil record than there actually are.Fossil hunters have the practice of giving different names to the same species if it is found in rocks of different periods! *Dr. Raup, head paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, says that as much as 70 percent of all the "new" fossil species found, are misnamed.
"Dr. Eldredge [American Museum of Natural History, New York City] was asked, ‘Do paleontologists name the same creatures differently when they are found in different geological periods?’ He replied that this happens, but they are mistakes. When asked the same question, Dr. Patterson [British Museum, London] replied, ‘Oh, yes, that’s very widely done.’ Next he was asked, ‘That doesn’t seem quite honest. You wouldn’t do that, would you?’ He said that he hoped he wouldn’t . .
"Would not this practice make a lot more species? Dr. Raup [Chicago Museum] said it would; perhaps 70 percent of the species described [in the fossil rocks] are later found to be the same as existing species. So 70 percent of the new species named should not have been [given new names but were], either through ignorance or because of the ground rules used by the taxonomists."—L.D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma (1988), pp. 130-131.
Obviously, such a practice deepens the problem for the experts. In this chapter our concern will be with underlying facts and principles, yet the doubling and tripling of names for the same fossil species only makes it harder for the experts to extract themselves from their Darwinian muddle.
"An assistant of Dr. Eldredge, who was studying trilobite fossils at the American Museum, explained to the author how he made the decision on naming a new species: ‘I look at a fossil for about two weeks and then if I think it looks different enough, I give it a new name.’ So it is simply a mailer of judgment with no firm ground rules."—Op. cit., p. 131.
The experts tell us there are "millions of species," when there are not that many. Taxonomists are the men who classify and give names to plants and animals. Among them, the "splitters" are the ones who find it easier to make up new names than to go to the trouble of properly identifying a specimen in hand.
"We all know that many apparent evolutionary bursts are nothing more than brainstorms on the part of particular paleontologists. One splitter in a library can do far more than millions of years of genetic mutation."—*V. Ager, "The Nature of the Fossil Record," Proceedings of the Geological Association, Vol. 87, No. 2, 1976, p. 132 [Chairman of the Geology Department, Swansea University].
(See chapter 11, Plant and Animal Species, for more on this.) It is well-known among the experts that there are far more splitters out there than lumpers,—simply because applying a new name for a fossil is easier and brings more fame than going through all the drudgery of researching into who had earlier named it.
*Edward Cope and *Othniel Marsh were two major museum fossil collectors in Western U.S. They fiercely hated one another, and for decades consistently double-named specimens—which had already been named earlier. (See chapter 11, Animal and Plant Species, for more.)
"Sadly, in the later bitter rivalry between Cope and Marsh, Leidy [an earlier fossil collector] was all but forgotten. Paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, director of the American Museum of Natural History, recalled that many of the Eocene and Oligocene animals had been given three names in the scientific literature: the original Leidy name and the Cope and Marsh names."—*Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), pp. 272-273.
11 -
LARGER ANCIENTLY THAN TODAY LARGER FOSSILS ANCIENTLY—It is an intriguing fact that, if the fossil evidence supported any species modification, it would be devolution—not evolution! Ancient plants and animals were frequently much larger than any now living. Not only do we find no crossing over the species line among fossils, but we also discover that species are not evolving, but degenerating with the passing of time.A cardinal principle of evolutionary theory is that creatures must evolve into more complexity as well as bigger size. But the fossil record bears out neither theory. There is clear evidence of the complexity to be found in invertebrates, the supposedly "lowest" form of life. But there is a size differential as well:
"[Edward Drinker] Cope is known to many students only for ‘Cope’s Law,’ which asserts, roughly speaking, that everything goes on getting bigger . . Alas, it is not generally true. The modern tiger is smaller than the sabre-toothed tiger of the last ice age . . The horsetails of our ditches are tiny compared with the sixty-foot [18 m] horsetails of the Carboniferous. And where are the giant snails of the early Cambrian or the giant oysters of the Tertiary?"—*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p 122.
The Bible indicates that in ancient times, people lived longer and were much larger. So it should not be surprising that extinct creatures were frequently larger than those alive today. They probably lived longer too. Among the fossils we find the following:
Plants: (1) Enormous plants once existed, far exceeding anything alive today. (2) Fifty-foot [152 dm] high ferns with 5-6 foot [15-18 dm] fronds. (3) Scouring rushes grew to a width of 12 inches [30.48 cm] in diameter. (4) One-hundred-foot [30.4 dm] high scale trees, with trunks 4-6 feet [12-18 dm] in diameter are found only in fossil form. None are alive today.
Small sea life: (5) Giant trilobites up to 18 inches [45.72 cm] long, with none alive today, and the creatures now living and most similar to them are quite small. (6) Fifteen-foot [457 cm] long straight-shelled cephalopods (Enckiceras proteiforme), and [9-foot 1274 cm] sea scorpions (Euryprids) once lived. Nothing of such immense sizes is found among them today. Those fossil Euryprids were the largest arthropods that ever lived.
Insects: (7) Some insects were 4 to 8 inches [10.16-20.32 cm] in length. Dragonflies had a wingspread of 29 inches [73.66 cm], and some centipedes were 12 inches [30.48 cm] in length.
Amphibians: (8) Today’s amphibians are small salamanders or frogs. But in the past, there were the giants of Stegocephalia, of which Onychopus gigas alone weighed 500 pounds [226.8 kg].
Larger marine life: (9) How would you like to meet a shark with jaws 6 feet [183 cm] across? That is what sharks were like in ancient times. (10) Basilosaurus was a marine mammal with a 4-foot [12 dm] head, 10-foot [30 dm] long body, and 40-foot [12.2 m] tail.
Birds: (11) Diatiyma looked somewhat like an ostrich, but was 7 feet [21 dm] tall and had a head as big as a horse. (12) The Phororhacos was nearly 8 feet [24 dm] tall with a skull 23 inches [58.42 cm] across. (13) Dinornis was 10-feet [30.5 dm] tall, and was the largest bird that ever lived.
Larger mammals: (14) The Mongolian Andresarchus had a skull 2½ feet [76 dm] long, and was one of the largest carnivores ever to live. (15) Imagine meeting a long-horned rhinoceros 14 feet [4.3 m] tall? Another rhinoceros, Baluchiterium, was 13 feet [40 dm] high and 25 feet [76 dm] long. (16) There were huge wooly mammoths, gigantic hairy mastodons, and 14-foot [43 dm] tall imperial mammoths. (17) Giant armadillos once lived, and ground sloths as big as elephants. (18) Pigs (Entelodonts) were 6 feet [18dm] high. (19) One bison (Bison latifrons) had a 6-foot [18 dm] horn spread.
Reptiles: (20) Crocodile-like phytosaurs were 25 feet [76 dm] long, and dolphin-like ichthyosaurs were 30 feet [91 dm] in length. (21) There were 35-foot [171 dm] long marine reptiles (Mosasaurs) and 11-foot [34 dm] marine turtles (Archelon). (22) The Pteranodon had a 25-foot [76 dm] wingspread. (23) And then there were gigantic land reptiles, including the 45-foot [137 dm] Tyrannosaurus Rex, the 65-foot [189 dm] long Brontosaurus, the 10-ton [9,072 kg] Stegosaurus, and the 80-foot [244 dm] long Diplodocus. The Brachiosaurus was 50 feet [152 dm] tall, 100 feet [305 dm] in length, and weighed 80 [72.5 mt] tons. That would make it approximately three times as large as the largest dinosaur now known, and place it in the range of size of the blue whale—called the largest creature on earth.
In 1971, three specimens of the largest bird were found in Texas by *Douglas Lawson. The Pterosaur had an estimate wingspan of 51 feet [155 dm], twice as large as any flying reptile previously discovered. By way of contrast, the bird with the largest wingspan, the wandering albatross, measures 11 feet [33.5 dm], and the McDonnell Douglas F-15A jet fighter has a wingspan of 43 feet [131 dm].
"So far as we can judge from the geologic record, large changes seem usually to have arisen rather suddenly, in terms of geologic time. Fossil forms intermediate between large subdivisions of classification, such as orders and classes, are seldom seen."—*Paul A. Moody, Introduction to Evolution (1962), p. 503.
WOODMORAPPE’S WORLD RESEARCH PROJECT—Since early childhood, we have all been exposed to these charts of rock strata and fossils, with the impressive dates alongside. It is called a "Geologic Column" chart.
A correlative scientific analysis, remarkable for its in-depth thoroughness and worldwide coverage, was published in the December 1983 issue of Creation Research Society Quarterly. Authored by John Woodmorappe, the 53-page article contains 807 references, 17 very detailed charts and graphs, 35 world maps, and 2 regional maps.
In this lengthy article, Woodmorappe validates several interesting points, among which are the following:
(1) Fossils do not tend to overlay one another in successive strata; instead they tend to be mixed together in successive strata. One third of them span three or more strata levels.
(2) There is not an orderly progression of strata, from bottom to top. Successively "higher" index fossils are not found in "higher" strata as they are supposed to be. Index fossils do not tend to overlay one another in successive strata; instead they are generally found here and there on what approximates a chance arrangement! Such fossils are often clumped at a great horizontal distance from the index fossils they are supposed to overlay. More than 9500 global occurrences of major index fossils were marked on 34 world maps in order to analyze overlay occurrences. Great care was taken to be sure that the data on these maps would be as accurate as possible. After preparing maps for each type of index fossil, Woodmorappe overlaid them on a light table in order to compare and tabulate instances in which index fossils were above each other in harmony with classical evolutionary rock strata theory.
Table 3 was then prepared to compare the 34 world maps of index fossils. Using it, you can make xeroxes of these maps and make your own overlay analyses on a light table. Or you can make copies onto overhead projector transparencies—and show them to students and other audiences.
"Table 3 has been drafted to show the results of superposing Maps 1-34 against each other. There are 479 cross-comparisons; every fossil versus every other that belongs to another geologic period. It can be seen that only small percentages of all localities of any given fossil overlie, or are overlain by, any other single fossil of another geologic period. Thus fossils of different geologic periods invariably tend to shun each other geographically, and this in itself may be taken as prima facie evidence that all fossils are ecological and/or biogeographic equivalents of each other—negating all concepts of evolution, geologic periods, and geologic time. To the Diluviologist, this tendency of any two different-‘age’ fossils to be geographically incompatible allows an understanding of fossils in light of the Universal Deluge [the Genesis Flood]."—John Woodmorappe, "A Diluviological Treatise on the Stratigraphic Separation of Fossils," in Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1983, p. 150 [bold type ours].
Table 4 was prepared to show possible multiple fossil overlays rather than just two as with Table 3. The results of this presentation are disastrous for evolutionary theory.
"There does not appear to be any trend for individual fossils to be exceptionally commonly juxtaposed or non-juxtaposed with others."—Op. Cit., p. 151.
As we have earlier explained, it is the "index fossils" which are relied on as the proof of the evolutionary theory of fossil strata placement and dating. Here is Woodmorappe’s conclusion in regard to these so-called "index fossils":
"A total of over 9500 global occurrences of major index fossils have been plotted on 34 world maps for the purpose of determining superpositional tendencies. 479 juxtapositional determinations have shown that only small percentages of index fossils are juxtaposed one with another. Very rarely are more than one-third (and never more than half) of all 34 index fossils simultaneously present in any 200 mile (320 kilometer) diameter region on earth."—Op. cit., p. 133 [bold type ours].
(3) Beginning on page 151 of his article he considers possible causes and Flood mechanisms, as possible solutions to why these fossils are to be found in such a confused pattern.
(4) Woodmorappe concludes with an extensive discussion, on pages 167-171, of why so few mammal, bird, and human fossils have been found.
You may wish to obtain a copy of his article to read through and make transparency charts to share with others. The Creation Research Society Quarterly is one of the best publications in its field.
ASKING THE EXPERTS—Let us briefly pause in our examination of the strata/fossil evidence and what it reveals. We will now journey to three of the largest paleontological museum holdings in the world:We will first go
to the British Museum of Natural History. *Dr. Colin Patterson is in charge of its large paleontology (fossil) collection.After publishing his 1978 book, Evolution, *Dr. Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History was asked why he did not include a single photograph of a transitional fossil. In reply, Dr. Patterson said this:
"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise [portray] such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it.
"[Steven] Gould [of Harvard] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test."—*Dr. Colin Patterson, letter dated April 10, 1979 to Luther Sunderland, quoted in L.D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma, p. 89.
Let us now leave *Dr. Colin Patterson in London, and go to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. It is one of the largest and oldest natural history museums in America—and probably in the world, and houses 20 percent of all fossil species known. Having had opportunity to carefully study these materials for years, *Dr. David Raup the leading paleontologist at this Field Museum, is in a position to speak with authority. He begins a key article summarizing what the fossil evidence reveals by saying:
"Most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument made in favor of Darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true."—*David Raup, "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology," in Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, January 1979.
*Dr. Raup then quotes a well-known statement by *Charles Darwin that he (*Darwin) was "embarrassed" by the lack of fossil evidence for origins (the Cambrian problem) and transitions (the gap problem) in his day. Then *Raup declares that the situation today is even worse—for we now have so much more fossil evidence which tells us the same message it told *Darwin! Noting that *Darwin wrote that he hoped that future discoveries would unearth fossils which would fill the gaps and provide the missing links, *Raup then says:
"We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time! By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."—*Dr. David Raup, in op. cit.
We will now leave Chicago and journey to one of the largest museums in the nation, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where *Dr. Niles Eldredge is in charge of its massive fossil collection.
While attending a science writers’ convention in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in November 1978, *Dr. Eldridge was asked by a reporter for evidence from the fossil record of transitional changes from one species to another. A report of his reply was printed shortly afterward in the Los Angeles Times:
"No one has found any such in-between creatures. This was long chalked up to ‘gaps’ in the fossil records, gaps that proponents of gradualism [gradual evolutionary change from species to species] confidently expected to fill in someday when rock strata of the proper antiquity were eventually located. But all the fossil evidence to date has failed to turn up any such missing links.
"There is a growing conviction among many scientists that these transitional forms never existed."—*Niles Eldredge, quoted in "Alternate Theory of Evolution Considered," in Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1978.
Drs. *Patterson, *Raup, and *Eldredge spent a lifetime in fossil analysis before giving the above statements. Together, they have been in charge of at least 50 percent of the major fossil collections of the world. They have the evidence, they know the evidence, they work with it day after day.
Figuratively, they sit on top of the largest pile of fossil bones in the world! They know what they are talking about. Their conclusion: "There are no transitional forms."
But WITHOUT transitional forms there can be NO evolution—for THAT IS what evolution is all about! Evolution is not copper changing into sulphur, it is not air changing into sunlight, nor is it wolves changing into German shepherds. It would be a true species change.Evolution is one basic type of plant or animal changing into another basic type of plant or animal (apple trees into oak trees or goats into cows). There should be fossil evidence of those changes. The evidence would be "transitional forms" filling the "gaps" between the basic types. But such transitions are nowhere to be found.
THE FISH THAT BECAME OUR ANCESTOR—(*#10 From Fish to Amphibian*) According to one of the legends of evolutionary theory, a critical point in our ancestry came one day, when a fish decided to crawl out of the water and start walking. He found it all so exciting that he turned into a land animal. The rest is evolutionary history: amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and man resulted. So you have a lot to thank that fish for.In the 1980s, Luther Sunderland interviewed the head paleontologists of five of the largest natural history museums in the United States, overseeing at least 60 percent of the fossil collections in the world. One of the questions he asked them was about that fish that came out on land and began walking around. Another question was about whether they knew of any transitional species. The answer to both questions, by the five men, was either studied silence or an embarrassed sidestepping of the matter. For the story of his interviews, go to (*#10 From Fish to Amphibian*), which means go to our website, evolution-facts.org; then to Appendix 10 at the back of this chapter (Fossils and Strata). For more on this wonderful fairy tale, read chapter 22, Evolutionary Science Fiction.
DARWIN’S GREAT CONCERN—Over a hundred years ago, *Charles Darwin recognized the importance of the problem of fossil gaps (lack of transitional halfway species) in the strata. The gaps were already well-known in his time. Charles Darwin recognized the importance of the problem of fossil gaps (lack of transitional halfway species) in the strata. The gaps were already well-known in his time. Realizing that those gaps immensely weakened his general theory, he wrote this:"This perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."—*Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, 6th edition (1956), pp. 292-293.
But *Darwin expressed hope that the gaps would later, after his death, be filled.
Since his time (*Darwin died in 1882), a major campaign has been underway for over a century to close up those "imperfections." But the hundreds upon thousands of fossils which have been found and examined only reveal with deeper clarity and distinctness merely the species we now have today, plus some extinct ones.
WORSE THAN BEFORE—*Charles Darwin speculated that, in our modern world, natural selection is changing species into brand new ones. But we find that *Darwin was wrong (see chapters 9, 10, and 11, Natural Selection, Mutations, and Plant and Animal Species).*Darwin also said that the fossil record ought to show that natural selection had being doing this in the past, and that later discoveries of additional fossils would show his idea to be true. But the fossils show that *Darwin was wrong. *Raup says that the fossil situation is now even worse than it was in the days of *Darwin. Other experts agree with him.
The desperate straits of the evolutionists are caused by their frenzied search to prove evolution true! It has only brought to view a vast wealth of fossil data able to bury the theory. And it would bury it too, IF we all knew the truth of the situation. But the textbook and popular magazines continue churning out the statement, "evolution has now been proven to be a fact
," and then vindicating those statements by referring to the peppered moth and recapitulation as proofs of evolution! (See chapter 9, Natural Selection for the peppered moth; and chapter 16, for Recapitulation. Also see chapter 17, Evolutionary Showcase. That chapter is astounding.)Whether it be the fossil past or the natural world around us today; the only variations are within the true species, never across them. We can breed new varieties of roses, pigeons, or dogs, but they remain roses, pigeons, and dogs. Genetic studies clearly show that mutation and natural selection—working alone or together— cannot produce evolutionary change. Fossil evidence confirms this.
WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE—Speak of "survival of the fittest"! The long survival of evolutionary theory disproves the phrase!of "survival of the fittest"! The long survival of evolutionary theory disproves the phrase! Here we have survival of the weakest, most foolish, and most easily disproved of "scientific" concepts.Evolution as a theory survives because
(1) the public does not know what is going on, (2) most scientists are working in very narrow fields and do not see the overall picture that you are learning in this book, and (3) many conscientious researchers dare not speak up lest they be relieved of their positions and salaries.Yes, the scientists are working in narrow fields—
• The biologists and geneticists bemoan the lack of evolutionary evidence in their fields (living species and genetic research), but then comfort themselves that, perhaps, the fossil evidence has established it.
• The paleontologists and stratigraphers bemoan the void of evolutionary evidence in the fossil strata (species which earlier lived on the earth) but conclude that, surely, the startling advances in species discoveries and genetics research upholds it.
The scholars and researchers attend their own narrowed scientific meetings and rarely have time to check with those in other fields of study. The experts in each scientific specialty imagine that other experts elsewhere have solidly proven evolution, even though in their field of study it is ready to fall through the floor.
So much is known about so little in the sciences today that few experts can see the BIG picture. And the general public is given the WRONG picture. Evolution is as dead as the Dodo bird of the Mascarene Islands that died nearly two hundred years ago, and most people in the modern world are not aware of it.
SOME OF THE PROBLEMS—Here are a few of the key problems with the fossils in the strataHere are a few of the key problems with the fossils in the strata. These problems are serious enough that any one of them is enough to overthrow the evolutionary theory in regard to paleontology and stratigraphy:(1) Life suddenly appears in the bottom fossil-strata level, the Cambrian, with no precursors.
(2) When these lowest life-forms appear (they are small slow-moving, shallow-sea creatures), they are extremely abundant, numbered in the billions of specimens, and quite complex.
(3) No transitional species are to be found at the bottom of the strata, the Cambrian.
(4) Just below the Cambrian, in the Precambrian, there are no fossil specimens.
(5) No transitional species are to be found below the lowest stratum, in the Precambrian.
(6) No transitional species are to be found above the bottom stratum, from the Ordovician on up.
(7) Higher taxa (forms of life) appear just as suddenly in the strata farther up. These higher types (such as beavers, giraffes, etc.) suddenly appear with no hint of transitional life-forms leading up to them.
(8) When they appear, vast numbers of these life-forms are to be found.
13 - THE FOSSILS IMMENSE NUMBER OF FOSSILS—One of the most startling facts about the sedimentary strata around the world is the vast quantities of fossils they contain. Without a worldwide Flood, it would be impossible for such huge amounts of plants and animals to have been rapidly buried. And without rapid burial they could not have fossilized.Yes, there are immense numbers of rapidly buried fossils; read this:
About one-seventh of the earth’s surface is tundra—frozen mud,—containing the fossil remains of millions of mammoths and other large and smaller animals. Then there are the log jams of dinosaur bones found in many places in the world. Over 300 different kinds of dinosaurs have been excavated from one place in Utah. Vast fossil beds of plants exist in various places. We today call them coal beds. In Geiseltal, Germany, were found the remains of 6,000 vertebrates. Great masses of amphibians have been found in the Permian beds of Texas. Elsewhere in Texas huge masses of fossil clams have been unearthed—yet never are living clams so tightly packed together as we find here. Examining them, we find clamshells that are closed! When a clam dies, its shell opens—unless before death it is quickly buried under the pressure of many feet of soil and pebbles. In one area alone in South Africa, there are about 800 billion fossils of amphibians and reptiles in an area 200,000 miles square [517,980 km
2].Old Red Sandstone in England has billions upon billions of fish, spread over 10,000 square miles [25,899 km
2], with as many as a thousand fish fossils in one square yard. Trilobites are among the smallest of the fossils. They are found at the bottom of the strata, in the Cambrian. And the Cambrian—with its trilobites—is also found 7,000 feet high in the mountains. Yet trilobites were small shallow-sea creatures! What flood of waters carried them up there?These vast beds of sedimentary fossil-bearing strata cover about three-fourths of the earth’s surface, and are as much as 40,000 feet thick.
COLLECTED HEAPS—There are heaps and heaps of fossil specimens in the collections of paleontologists and museumsThere are heaps and heaps of fossil specimens in the collections of paleontologists and museums.Men have searched for fossils since the beginning of the 19th century, and the facts are now available: there is no evidence of evolution in the fossil record.
Forty-three hundred years ago, a great catastrophe, the Flood, overspread the world.
In our own day, a great catastrophe has inundated evolutionary theory. No less an authority than a Smithsonian paleontologist describes the basis of the problem:.
"There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and identified, in museums around the world."—*Porter Kier, quoted in New Scientist, January 15, 1981, p. 129 [Smithsonian scientist].
*David Raup, head paleontologist of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, describes the heart of the problem:
"So the geological time scale and the basic facts of biological change over time are totally independent of evolutionary theory. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found—yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks."—*David M. Raup, "Evolution and the Fossil Record," in Science, July 17, 1981, p. 289.
NOT MADE NOW—Several years ago, two scientists tried to make some fossilsSeveral years ago, two scientists tried to make some fossils. According to the school textbooks, it should not be hard to do.
*Rainer Zangerl and *Eugene S. Richardson, Jr., placed dead fish in wire cages and dropped them into several Louisiana lagoons and bayous. When the men returned six and a half days later, they found that bacteria and scavengers had consumed all the soft parts of the fish and had scattered the bones in the cages.Sedimentary strata are filled with fish fossils, yet when a fish dies today, it never fossilizes; it bloats, floats, and then is eaten by scavengers and other small creatures.
"When a fish dies its body floats on the surface or sinks to the bottom and is devoured rather quickly, actually in a matter of hours, by other fish. However, the fossil fish found in sedimentary rocks is very often preserved with all its bones intact. Entire shoals of fish over large areas, numbering billions of specimens, are found in a state of agony, but with no mark of a scavenger’s attack."—*lmmanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval (1955), p. 222.
The strata have lots of animals in them, but when an animal dies today, it never fossilizes; it rots if the buzzards do not find it first. Dead animals do not normally produce fossils.
"The buffalo carcasses strewn over the plains in uncounted millions two generations ago have left hardly a present trace. The flesh was devoured by wolves or vultures within hours or days after death, and even the skeletons have now largely disappeared, the bones dissolving and crumbling into dust under the attack of weather."—*Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology (1949), p. 39.
There is an abundance of fossilized plant life in the strata; yet, when a weed, bush, or tree dies, it turns back to soil; it does not harden into a fossil.
It requires some very special conditions to produce fossils. Those conditions occurred one time in history. The evidence is clear that it was a worldwide phenomenom, and that it happened very, very quickly...
RAPID BURIAL—A striking fact about the fossils is that they were obviously all laid down at the same time—and very, very rapidly!Where are the bison today? As we just read, most were slain by buffalo hunters in the Plains States of America over a hundred years ago. But where are their fossils? None are to be found. Millions of bison died, but there are no fossil remains. They rotted, were eaten by scavengers, decayed, and slowly returned back to the earth.
The fact is that fossils never form at the present time, yet in the sedimentary strata we find literally billions of them! Examination of the strata bearing them reveals it was obviously laid down by a massive flood of water.
The sheer immensity of these fossil graveyards is fantastic. And to think that it never happens today! Speaking about sedimentary deposits that he found in the Geiseltal, in central Germany, *Newell says:
"More than six thousand remains of vertebrate animals and a great number of insects, molluscs, and plants were found in these deposits. The compressed remains of soft tissues of many of these animals showed details of cellular structure [with] well-preserved bits of hair, feathers and scales . . The stomach contents of beetles, amphibia, fishes, birds and mammals provided direct evidence about eating habits."—*N.O. Newell "Adequacy of the Fossil Record," in Journal of Paleontology, May 1959, p. 496.
It would be impossible for vast numbers of plants and animals to be suddenly buried under normal circumstances. Yet we find that the fossils were buried so quickly that the food could be seen in many of their stomachs. Even the delicate soft parts of their bodies are visible, so rapid had been the burial. Quick, high compression adds to the evidence for extremely rapid burial. All of the life-forms were suddenly flattened out. Sharks have been found flattened to ¼ inch in thickness with the tail still upright, suggesting sudden catastrophic burial. It took rapid action to do that.
"Robert Broom, the South African paleontologist, estimated that there are eight hundred thousand million skeletons of vertebrate animals in the Karro formation."—*Op. cit., p. 492.
Describing herring fossils in the Miocene shales of California, a U.S. Geological Survey expert tells us:
"More than a billion fish, averaging 6 to 8 inches in length, died on 4 square miles [10.36 km2] of bay bottom."—*Harry S. Ladd, "Ecology, Paleontology, and Stratigraphy," in Science, January 9, 1959, p. 72.
What happened? Some terrible catastrophe occurred that suddenly overwhelmed the earth! Fossil seashells have been found in the highest mountains of the planet, including the highest range of them all, the Himalayas, which reaches in an arc across central Asia.
FISH SWALLOWING FISH—Princeton University scientists were working in Fossil Lake, Wyoming, when they found a fossil fish that was swallowing another fish. Because both fish had been pressed flat by the sudden burial, the paleontologists could see one fish inside the other with only the tail sticking out of the larger one’s throat. It was a perch swallowing a herring.Obviously, this required a very sudden event to capture and kill a fish swallowing a fish! Nothing like this happens today.
In the Hall of Paleontology, at Kansas State University, can be seen a 14-foot fish that has swallowed a 6-foot fish. The fish that was swallowed was not digested,—and then both had been suddenly entombed.
FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS—Leonard Brand and James Florence did some excellent research! They gathered together the great majority of fossil footprint records from approximately 800 published papers, as well as from data in five major paleontological museums. This information was then correlated with burial records on the fossils themselves.Comparing it all, they came up with some surprising conclusions:
(1) Birds and mammals were buried on about the same levels as the footprints of their species were found. This was in the Quaternary and Tertiary at the very end of the Flood.
(2) But, below these top strata, the footprints of amphibians, non-dinosaur reptiles, and dinosaurs were made well below the levels where the bulk of their bodies were buried!
That second discovery is rather astounding. If long ages had occurred during each strata, then the footprints and bodies should be found together. But if a worldwide single Flood was responsible for all the strata, then we would expect to find large numbers of amphibians, reptiles, and dinosaurs walking around earlier in the Flood, yet buried later in it!
For further data and charts on this, see the reference given below:
"During the early to middle part of the Flood large numbers of amphibians and reptiles were moving about, and thus producing footprints. Later as the Flood progressed (upper Jurassic and Cretaceous) there were very few live amphibians or reptiles to produce footprints, except for the large dinosaurs. During the Cretaceous when the only footprints preserved were the large dinosaur tracks, there were many amphibian and reptile bodies that were being buried to produce the abundant Cretaceous body fossils. During the Cenozoic almost no amphibian or reptile footprints were preserved.
". . During the flood the birds and mammals were in the uplands, away from the depositional basins, because of ecological differences and/or more adaptable behavioral responses to the unusual biological crisis caused by the flood."—Leonard Brand and James Florence, "Stratigraphic Distribution of Vertebrate Fossil Footprints Compared with Body Fossils" in Origins, Vol 9, no. 2 (1982), p. 71.
PLANTS AND ANIMALS NOT TOGETHER—According to the theory, over a period of millions of years, plants and animals died, dropped to the ground and changed into fossils (even though such fossilization never occurs today). Gradually, they were covered with dirt as, over the centuries, falling leaves turned into dirt.
But in reality, it is only rarely that we find plants and animals together in the fossil beds! That is why "Minium’s Dead Cow Quarry" in Kansas is so very much appreciated by paleontologists: it is an exception to the rule and does have plants and plant seeds in the same rock with animals (*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution 1990, p. 307).
Why would plants and animals normally not be found together in the fossil strata?
The reason is simple enough. They were all washed into place by the worldwide Flood. The water tended to sort them out, resulting in rafts of vegetation being floated into place, which became our present coal beds, while other pockets in the strata became filled with "fossil graveyards" as animals were washed into other locations. IN WHAT FORM ARE THE FOSSILS?—There are millions upon millions of fossils. You may wonder what those fossils are like. Here are the seven primary types of fossils:(1) Hard parts (the bones and shells) of some plants and animals were preserved.
(2) Carbon alone was preserved. This is where our coal beds came from.
(3) The original form is preserved only in casts and molds. The original material dissolved away and a cast of its shape was preserved. This would also require sudden burial.
(4) Sometimes petrification of wood occurred. An excellent example of this would be the Petrified Forest in Arizona, where we find entire tree trunks that have turned to stone. After sudden burial, each cell in the wood was gradually replaced by minerals from an underground flow of water.
(5) There are prints of animal tracks. Thousands of animal tracks have been found preserved in stone, and the prints are always shown running away from something. In Glen Rose, Texas, and several other places, prints of giant humans have been found. In the same bed with the human footprints have been found dinosaur tracks! This shows that the dinosaurs lived when man did, and not millions of years earlier, as the evolutionists claim. (Much more information on this will be found in chapter 13, Ancient Man.)
(6) Ripple marks and rain drop splashes. Ancient hail imprints (which are quite different than raindrops) have never been found. The weather must have been consistently warm when the Flood began (*W.H. Twenhofel, Principles of Sedimentation (1950), p. 621).
(7) Worm trails, droppings, feathers, chemicals, and even fish odor were preserved by sudden burial!
CAMBRIAN FOSSILS IN FINE DETAIL—Before concluding this section on what is included in "fossils," we should mention that the soft parts of the plants and animals are at times clearly traced in the rocks. One excellent example of this is the Burgess Pass fossils.In 1910, a pack train loaded with supplies was struggling over a mountain path high in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, near the Burgess Pass, when a horse kicked a dark rock and stumbled. One of the men examined the rock and found that it had fine, exquisitely detailed fossil markings. Later, the Smithsonian Institute sent out paleontologists and workmen who quarried out tons of rock from the side of that and nearby mountains, and sent 35,000 fossils to be analyzed and housed in our national museum in Washington, D.C.
These specimens were primarily bottom-dwellers from ancient seas, such as worms, trilobites, brachiopods, lampshells, and more. Here, in these very high mountains, the soft parts of these creatures are from Cambrian deposits (the lowest of all strata) were clearly visible. Even delicate internal organs were traced on the stone. The transitional species leading up to those common Cambrian specimens ought to have been found, but they were not. Yet Burgess Pass, and nearby digging sites (such as Mount Stephen), ultimately yielded almost copious amounts of fossils of nearly every major type of life-form.
POLYSTRATE TREES—Here are two views of upright, fossilized trees in sedimentary strata. One is a drawing; the other a photograph.
Polystrate trees could not possibly occur if the strata were slowly laid down over millions of years, as the evolutionists claim.
"These went further [than merely including fossil bones]—with the outline of the body, even the soft internal organs were often traceable like miniature X-ray films. Among the many fossils found are a wide range of major kinds. I already referred to three main kinds—brachiopods, worms and arthropods (the trilobites). Almost every major kind of animal has been found there, except those with backbones."—Harold O. Coffin, "Famous Fossils from a Mountaintop," in Origins, January 1, 1974, p. 46.
BURIED FORESTS—Another dramatic evidence of a catastrophic flood of massive proportions—as the cause of the sedimentary strata—is the buried forests.
Coal beds, of course, are one such example of buried forests. They will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
One of the best places to see buried forests is Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone Park, in Montana. You will there find a succession of petrified tree layers. The uniformitarian evolutionists claim that the trees grew there, died, and were gradually covered by soil deposits over oncoming ages as the dead trees stood there. Gradually, after tens of thousands of years, additional trees died and were covered over by more millennia of soil deposits!
But careful analysis of the entire ridge reveals a unity of age, burial conditions, and surrounding deposits. A succession of strong currents, interspersed with flows and volcanic showers from another direction, washed the sedimentary strata into place.
(Both later in this chapter, in chapter 14, and somewhat in chapter 6, we give more attention to the implications of these fossil upright trees, also called polystrate trees.))
Stop and think of it a minute: Would a vertical tree die and stand there for half a million years while rock strata gradually covered it? Yet we find polystrate trees in the strata and even in coal beds.
NON-EXTINCT FOSSILS—The great majority of animals and plants that lived long ago were just like those alive today, with the exception of some extinct species. Here is a sampling of what you will find in the complete strata of the "geologic column"—but remember that this "complete" strata is to be found in its entirety nowhere in the world. Beginning at the bottom, and proceeding to the top, this is what we find: Precambrian . . . . . . algae, bacteria, fungiCambrian . . . . . . . . sponges, snails, jellyfish
Ordovician . . . . . . . . clams, starfish, worms .
Silurian . . . . . . . . . . . scorpions, corals
Devonian . . . . . . . . . sharks, lungfish
Carboniferous . . . . . ferns, cockroaches
Permian . . . . . . . . . . beetles, dragonflies
Triassic . . . . . . . . . . pines, palms
Jurassic . . . . . . . . . . crocodiles, turtles
Cretaceous . . . . . . . . ducks, pelicans
Paleocene . . . . . . . . . rats, hedgehogs
Eocene . . . . . . . . . . . lemurs, rhinoceroses
Oligocene . . . . . . . . . beavers, squirrels, ants
Miocene . . . . . . . . . . camels, birds
Pliocene . . . . . . . . . . horses, elephants
Pleistocene . . . . . . . . man
(Later in this chapter, under the section, "Mixed-up Fossils," we will learn that the fossils are not neatly contained in certain strata; they are often far above or below their assigned strata.)It is obvious from the above list, that the species we had before, we have now. Those fossils are just like their counterparts living today. Yes, there are some extinct species, for some kinds have died out. But it is of interest that even a number of the anciently extinct species—have in recent years been found to be still living!
Here are some of the thousands of creatures alive today that are totally identical to what they looked like millions of years ago:
Cockroach (250 million years); starfish (500 million years); shark (181 million years); sea urchin (100 million years); ginkgo tree (200 million years); dragonfly (170 million years); bacteria (600 million years).Consider the bat: All the fossil bats look just like the ones that fly around now. It was reported that *Jepsen had found the oldest fossil bat ever! (*G.L. Jepsen reported in Science, for December 9, 1966). A photograph of its skeleton, plus an accompanying sketch are shown in the article. That oldest-known bat is supposedly 50 million years old, and yet it is just like a modern bat skeleton. And below it? not one transitional fossil anywhere that leads us from "lower forms of life" to the bat. When the bat first appears, it is all bat, and nothing but bat!
LIVING FOSSILS—(*#17 Living Fossils [coelacanth and plesiosaur]*) [Appendix 17 on our website has stories, four photographs, and more, but no quotations.]There are species found only in rock strata, and supposedly millions of years old, which have been declared "extinct for millions of years." This has been considered another "proof" of evolution, although extinction is no evidence of evolution; evolving into new life-forms is.
Yet in recent decades a number of these "extinct for millions of years" species have been found to not be extinct after all!
The BIG question is this: Where then were they all those "millions of years" they were missing from the upper rock strata?"Long before I began to research the subject in any detail, I had brooded about a number of puzzling features—things which didn’t seem to fit the [evolutionary] argument—which the textbooks largely ignored.
"There is, for example, the fact that some creatures fail to evolve but chunter on quite successfully as ‘living fossils.’ Bees preserved in amber from the Tertiary period are almost identical with living bees. And everyone has heard of the coelacanth, supposed to have been extinct since the beginning of the Cretaceous period. The plant world also offers living fossils, such as the gingko, with a leaf unlike that of any modern tree."—*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), pp. 25-26.
So many of these "living fossils" have been found that scientists have given a name to the study: Cryptozoology, the study of "hidden animals." According to evolutionary theory, they were once alive, then got hidden for millions of years, and continue living today. Here are some of these "living fossils," all of which are alive today:
(1) Coelacanth fish: The crossopterygian fish—"extinct" since Cretaceous. It has not been found in the strata for the past "50 million years"—yet is alive today.
(2) Metasequoia: The "dawn redwood"— "extinct" since Miocene; not in the strata for the past "60 million years," yet it is alive today.
(3) Tuatara: A beakheaded reptile—"extinct" since Cretaceous; not found in the strata for the past "135 million years"—but today is alive.
(4) Neopilina: A segmented deep-sea mollusk— "extinct" since Devonian. Although missing from the strata for the past "500 million years," it is alive now.
(5) Lingula: A brachiopod shellfish—"extinct" since Ordovician; not in the strata for the past "500 million years," yet it is happily living today.
The now-famous Coelacanth was a large fish known only from its fossil and allegedly extinct for 50 million years. Extinct, that is, until several specimens were found in the ocean! The first was found in a fisherman’s net off the coast of Madagascar on December 24, 1938. Since then eight more specimens have been found alive.
It only requires a moment’s thought to arrive at a startling fact: How could the Coelacanth have become extinct 50 million years ago, and then be found now? In order to be declared "extinct" such a long time ago, the creature would obviously have had to have been found by paleontologists in older strata—and then not found at all in more recent strata. Why is the Coelacanth not in those more recent strata? Did it decide to hibernate for 50 million years?
This is clear-cut evidence that the sedimentary strata was the result of a rapid laying down of sediments during the Flood,—rather than the tortuously slow "inch a hundred years" deposition pattern theorized by the evolutionists.
Interestingly enough, some of these "living fossils" formerly were used by evolutionists as "index fossils" to prove the ancientness of certain rock strata! As you will recall, most index fossils are small marine organisms. They live so deep in the ocean that many of them (trilobites, graptolites, ammonites, etc.) may still have living representatives alive today, since we have but only slightly explored the ocean bottoms.
There are scientists who believe they will find living trilobites before long (see "Start Search for Living Trilobites," Science Digest, September 1959), and one living fossil, very close to the trilobite has already been discovered (see "Living Fossil Resembles Long-extinct Trilobite," Science Digest, December 1957).
Many other examples could be cited. Here are two:
"In the 19th century, hunters reported tales among Congo tribesmen of a large, cloven-hoofed animal with a giraffe-like head and zebra stripes on its hindquarters and legs. Most zoologists dismissed it as a local legend, but Sir Harry H. Johnston was fascinated when he read about this unknown beast of the deep forest. Years later, he launched an expedition in search of the creature, which the natives called okapi (o-CAP-ee).
"After a nearly disastrous series of misadventures, he finally captured an okapi in 1906. One of the few large mammals discovered in the 20th century, the okapi turned out to be a living representative of a genus (Palaeofragus) known from fossils and believed by zoologists to have been extinct for 30 million years."—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 102.
"According to Science News (June 9, 1990, p. 359), a species of dogwood tree, the Diplopanax stachyanthus, was believed by botanists to have died out about 4 million years ago. Apparently only fossil records remained of this tree.
"But now a botanist at Washinton State University has examined the fossil fruit of trees believed to be 15 million years old and found them to be essentially identical to the fruit of a dogwood family discovered in China in 1928.
"But wait a minute. If evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest, then I would expect older and inferior species to die out and be replaced by newer and better evolved species. If that be the case, what is a 15 million year old tree doing hanging around today? It should have died out long ago. Or else the figure of 15 million years is grossly wrong. In either case, something is evidently wrong with the theory of evolution."—Bob Vun Kannon, "A Living Fossil," The Adventure, September 1990.
The existence of "living fossils" is a serious one for the evolutionist. Evolutionary theory is based on several concepts, two of which are violated here: (1) If a species becomes extinct, it cannot come back to life. (2) Species evolve upward, and can never return back to an earlier form. If that particular species has not existed for the past 15 million years, how then could it exist today?
THE EXTINCT DINOSAUR—Ever since *Charles Lyell, the extinct dinosaur has been considered an outstanding example of evolution. Yet all that it proves is that animals can become extinct; there are no facts related to dinosaurs which prove evolution (species change) in life-forms. That which extinct dinosaurs do prove is that the uniformitarian theory (which is the basis of evolution) is incorrect. Some massive catastrophe overwhelmed and destroyed the dinosaurs.In order for the dinosaur to prove evolution, there would have to be transitional forms leading up to them. But the dinosaurs are like everything else: distinct species.
LIVING DINOSAURS—Evolutionists are anxious that it be thought that no dinosaurs are alive todayEvolutionists are anxious that it be thought that no dinosaurs are alive today. According to their theory, dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic era—from about 225 million years ago to 65 million years ago. If some of them were to be found alive today, then evolutionists think this would weaken their theory. But actually that would neither prove nor weaken their theory, since dinosaurs—past or present—present no evidence of the evolutionary process.In museums all over the world, dinosaur-bone displays are exhibited as a proof of evolution. Their very extinction is supposed to establish it. —But did you know that a living dinosaur has been found?
In April 1977, a Japanese fishing vessel caught a 4,000 pound [1814 kg] dead creature in its nets off the east coast of New Zealand. It was photographed, sketched, carefully measured, and flipper samples were kept for tissue analysis. It has every appearance of being a Plesiosaur, or sea-dwelling dinosaur—which prior to 1977 had only been found in fossil form! Japanese scientists are convinced it was indeed a Plesiosaur. Japan even printed a postage stamp of the creature, in honor of the find. (A photograph and sketch of one is shown on page 107 of Ian Taylor’s excellent book, In the Minds of Men.)
But there are other living creatures which answer to the description of "dinosaurs." What is a dinosaur? Very simply, it is a large reptile. Crocodiles, alligators, and caiman are large reptiles.
"Although they are now 99 percent extinct and seldom exceed twelve feet in length, the American alligator attained lengths of nearly twenty feet as recently as the turn of the century (see National Geographic Magazine, January 1967, p. 137). Only about 500 years ago the aepyornis, a dinosaur bird nearly ten feet [30 cm] tall and weighing half a ton [456 kg], still lived on the island of Madagascar (see National Geographic Magazine, October 1967, p. 493)."—John C. Whitcomb, World that Perished (1988), p. 30.
"Because the huge skeletons that were built up out of fossilized remnants were clearly reptilian in nature, they were called ‘terrible lizards,’ which in Greek is dinosauria, by the nineteenth-century zoologist Sir Richard Owen. But the ancient giant reptiles are more closely related to alligators than to lizards, and should have been named dinocrocodilia."—*Asimov’s Book of Facts (1979), p. 136.
We have both small and large alligator-type creatures alive today. Some extinct dinosaurs were as small as a chicken, but some modern alligator-type creatures are quite large. Some crocodiles alive today (Crocodylus porosus), can reach a length of 33 feet [100.6 dm]; all are large, heavy, fierce reptiles.
The komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is another large reptile and looks very much like a dinosaur. It was discovered in 1912; and, although evolutionists tried to explain it away by calling the komodo a "lizard," it surely is more than that! Consider the following description:
"The body is covered with small scales; the neck is thick and the head broad and elongated. The huge mouth contains teeth ½ in [1 cm] long and deeply cleft tongue 12-16 in [30-40 cm] long. The legs are well developed and there are long claws on the toes. The muscular tail has no fracture planes and is somewhat laterally compressed.
"The Komodo dragon is the biggest predator on the islands [in Indonesia] where it lives. It hunts hog, deer, wild pig, macaques, and rats, and digs up the eggs of mound birds . . It can run as fast as a man for short stretches. Smaller specimens are said to lurk in trees above tracks used by game and jump onto the backs of deer or pigs."—*Great Book of the Animal Kingdom (1988), p. 152.
The komodo dragon, truly a reptilian giant, attacks and kills large hogs has a lifespan of 25 years, is 10 feet [30 dm] long, and has a weight of 350 pounds [158.76 kg]! It is decidedly larger than some of the extinct reptiles, called "dinosaurs." (There was a wide variety of extinct dinosaurs: some of the extinct ones were quite small; some ran rapidly like ostriches and caught birds with their front paws, and some flew like birds.)
The komodo dragon is the biggest of the monitors, of which there are 31 species. Some are quite large. Most live in the islands north of Australia. One of these, the Papua monitor (Varanus salvadori) is longer than the komodo dragon—over 13 feet in length—although it is not as bulky.
A number of prominent scientists, including *Myer, consider crocodiles and alligators to be "living fossils."
"Nile crocodiles and American alligators belong to a group of reptiles called broad-nosed crocodilians. In the warmer parts of the world, broad-nosed crocodilians are the largest predators to walk on land. They are living fossils in the sense that they resemble ancient forms in the shapes and the ruggedness of their heads and bodies."—*Ernst Myer, "Crocodilians as Living Fossils," in Living Fossils (1984), p. 105.
EXTINCT FOSSILS—What about the fossilized creatures which are now extinct? All that extinct fossils—such as dinosaurs—prove is that animals can die out. Extinction is not evolution, and provides no evidence of evolution.
In addition to the dinosaurs, a number of other animal and plant species became extinct also. Interestingly enough, the extinct species were generally more complex than plants and animals now living!
NONE OF THE FOSSILS OR STRATA ARE ANCIENT—Fossils from every level of sedimentary strata have been analyzed by amino acid dating methods (see chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods.) Scientists have been shocked to discover that both the "youngest" as well as the "oldest" fossils (even those of the Cambrian!) reveal traces of amino acids! This is astounding news, and runs counter to evolutionary theory. This means that, instead of being hundreds of millions of years apart, ALL of the fossil-bearing strata were laid down fairly recently at about the same time! In order to "save the fossils" as a trophy of evolution, there has been speculation that amino acids in the "oldest" fossils are merely contaminants that somehow got there at some recent time.Shells from as far back as the Jurassic strata, which is supposed to be 135-180 million years old, have been found to have amino acids still locked into protein structures.
Shells from as far back as the Jurassic strata, which is supposed to be 135-180 million years old, have been found to have amino acids still locked into protein structures. The amino acid residues came from inside those shells—so the shells cannot be more than a few thousand years old!
Amino acid studies in the fossil-bearing sediments reveal that there are no ancient fossil strata!
HUMAN REMAINS IN ANCIENT DEPOSITS— Near the end of chapter 13, Ancient Man, we will describe a number of instances in which evidences of human beings have been found in what evolutionists consider to be extremely ancient rocks and coal. That information clearly disproves the geologic column dating theories, so we will summarize some of that information here. For more detailed coverage, we refer you to the chapter on Ancient Man.Evidence from chapter 4, Age of the Earth, and the last part of chapter 13, Ancient Man, reveals that both the planet and mankind are quite young—and have not been here over 6,000-10,000 years.
Here is a summary of some of the data found near the end of the Ancient Man chapter:
(1) Guadaloupe Woman: The almost-complete skeleton of a woman was found in limestone which is supposed to be 28 million years old. The limestone sheet, in which the skeleton was encased, was hard, thick, and over a mile [1.609 km] in length.
(2) Calaveras Skull: A completely mineralized human skull was found in Pliocene stratum which dates to over 2 million years old.
(3) Human footprints: Human footprints have been found in various sites in the United States, as well as in Laetoli, Africa. These would include:
[1] Glen Rose tracks: Children’s and adult footprints, up to 15 and 21½ inches [38-54.6 cm] in length, have been regularly found in Early Cretaceous rock throughout most of this century on the former riverbed of the Pulaxy River in Texas. Children’s tracks always accompany those of adults, tracks go across very large dinosaur tracks and have been found above them, and all tracks are running. These tracks are in Early Cretaceous formations, which date to 120 million years ago.
[2] Antelope Springs tracks: William Meister and others have found sandaled human tracks stepping on trilobites in Cambrian strata (570 million years old), in Utah.
(4) Evidence in coal: Human remains and relics of various kinds have been found in coal, dating to millions of years ago. This includes a human skull, two giant human teeth, a gold chain, gold thread, steel nail, metal screw, wedge-shaped object, and an iron pot.
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