Images cited in ICR article.
Posted on 06/20/2013 6:51:51 AM PDT by fishtank
New Fossil Book Won't Showcase Obvious Catastrophe by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
Not just horses and fish, but—like a whole ancient zoo buried together—lizards, alligators, stingrays, snakes, squirrel varieties, bats, long-tailed turtles, lemur-like primates, birds, frogs, insects, and sycamore, palm, and fern leaves were all fossilized in Wyoming's Green River Formation. A new book showcasing some of the more spectacular fossils provides secularists another opportunity to reinforce their ideas about how these diverse creatures were encased in what became a giant rock formation. Commonsense observations refute their slow-and-gradual scenario, however, and point to a more violent explanation.
Lance Grande collected the stunning fossil images for the book, The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time. He works as one of the curators at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. One of his images shows a now-extinct variety of horse—one with a tiny stature and long hind legs for its size—surrounded by fossil fish. Horses and fish don't usually hang out together, but apparently they died together. How did they end up in the same fossilized bed?
LiveScience featured some of the book's images on its website, including the "Mini-Horse." There, its image caption reads, "Researchers aren't sure how the horse ended up at the bottom of the middle of Fossil Lake but they suspect it drowned, possibly trying to escape a predator."1 Then, supposedly its carcass sank neatly to the bottom without having been scavenged by any of the many fish represented in the formation's fossils.
The horse body's next trick also defied commonsense. According to LiveScience, "Over thousands of years, dead animals rained down into the muck deep below the surface of long-gone Fossil Lake."2 Not only does the slow-and-gradual story require a magic wand to wave off the persistent problem of scavenging, but it calls upon the ancient deep "muck" to do what experiments have shown it cannot do—keep a carcass from rotting away to nothing.
And what strange process preserved these animal bodies so well as they supposedly rested on the lake bed before the slow-settling sediments covered and buried them over the long years? This story defies horse sense. Clearly, they had to have been buried deeply by fast-building sediment in order to preserve at such high quality.
Supposedly, a lack of oxygen preserved the whole carcasses. But God created microbes to function even without readily available oxygen. The problem is that fish and other animal carcasses rot in just a few weeks, even when buried in mud that has very little oxygen.3 What the scavengers don't eat, anoxic microbes quickly consume. That is why today's anoxic lake and ocean bottom muds form no fossils.
Whatever buried the horse did so rapidly and catastrophically. Fast-flowing water mixed with fresh volcanic ash and washed over the diverse assembly of creatures, burying them alive and trapping them in the Green River's series of basins.
The Genesis Flood provides a context for that catastrophe. Some creation geologists suggest that residual catastrophes immediately after the Flood formed Green River Formation, while others propose that it formed when water ran off the continents in the waning Flood months. Either scenario sets a catastrophic-enough stage to trump slow-and-gradual speculations and to bury alligators, horses, lizards, and fish together quickly and completely.
References
Gannon, M. Images: Stingray Sex, Mini-Horses & Other Curiosities of Fossil Lake. LiveScience. Posted on LiveScience.com June 9, 2013, accessed June 10, 2013.
Gannon, M. Lost World Locked in Stone at Fossil Lake. LiveScience. Posted on LiveScience.com June 9, 2013, accessed June 10, 2013.
Donovan, S.K., (Ed.) 1991. The Process of fossilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 120-129.
Image credit: Lance Grande from The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time, © 2013, the University of Chicago Press. Adapted for use in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holders.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on June 17, 2013.
Images cited in ICR article.
Could be the work of a tidal wave that swept them all into one grave.
More pseudoscience from the Institute of Creative Imagination.
Some creation geologists suggest
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What is a creation geologist?
Evolution raises it’s heretical head ... again!
Noah tossed him off the ark for disobeying the "no horseplay" rule.
Good argument for these fossils coming from a catastrophe but not necessarily an argument that ALL fossils come from a catastrophe. It is troubling that science avoids catastrophic causes for past processes when even by my short time on earth that large sudden events do occur and have major impacts on environment.
From DARWIN'S GHOST by Steve Jones ... page 202.
"Human remains in peat bogs retain the hair, clothes and pained expressions of their original owners. As the flesh was tanned by acids in the soil, the bones were dissolved to leave mere bags of skin. Animals can topple into lakes of pitch as the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles or stick to tree gum that turns into amber. All the household means against decay -- deep frozen mammoths, Spanish wooly rhinos marinated in a salty swamp, ground sloths in south American caves reduced to beef jerky by slow evaporation -- help to conserve these Mona Lisas of the fossil record."
Couldn’t possibly have been buried there due to a catastrophic worldwide flood. Must have run there “trying to escape a predator”.
If you leave a corpse of any living thing out for “gradual processes” to affect, it just rots, it doesn’t fossilize.
It would have to be suddenly buried under great amounts of pressure. A catastrophe.
Based on the location in modern day Wyoming, this may coincide with one of Yellowstone’s past super volcano eruptions. The next one will include human remains with cameras strapped to their necks. “Oh look honey, Old Faithful!”
More pseudoscience from the Institute of Creative Imagination.
Did you even read the article? The author presents a very good argument that given the blend of animals and the setting in which they were found it’s extremely unlikely that they were fossilized the way that secular psuedoscientists postulate. He then concludes that the Bible presents a very feasible explanation that matches very well with the evidence presented in this book.
What’s your guess as to how these fossils were made?
My understanding is different scientists believe that the bible is true and if its true it will lead them to discoveries about our world. I used to follow some of the biblical archaeology scientists/researchers and they claim making discoveries of ancient buildings based on using the bible where others have discounted its value as a source.
I trust that the scientific method will endure faulty approaches from creationists. I also trust the bible will always stand as being true.
God does not change. His creation is His work and does not change by man's ignorance. Only man's understanding of God's creation changes.
Interesting. A localized worldwide flood.
Catastrophe on a global scale is acceptable to geologists only if it doesn’t involve water....Asteroids, volcanoes, earthquakes, any and all but under no circumstances is a global inundation to be mentioned unless to it is to mock the idea.
Another quote from Darwin's Ghost ...
"The creationist movement is part of a triumphal New Ignorance the rules in many places, the United States more than most."
It depends on how you want to define catastrophe. Fore example, a 500 year flood or massive landslide may be locally catastrophic, but events that take place on anything greater than a regional level are extremely rare. As far as “major impacts on the environment”, disturbance is what guides many processes, and while they may effect subpopulations or small regions, organisms and geomorphology are much more subject to long-term gradual change.
He's a bit past his "freshness date", but he looks pretty spry for being over 2,000 years old.
I’m not attempting to define catastrophe. I am observing that most attempts at describing past events seem to be biased toward gradual changes over time (with an exception for Niagra falls).
A similar bias I observe is attributing ancient pieces of art such as pottery as being created for religious purposes. Our observations of current human behavior (pet rocks is one example) is we humans sometimes create stuff “just because its fun”.
Another bias is the assumption that ancient peoples were ignorant about all things compared to us today. My experience is that based on writings by various sources leads me to believe we are less intellectual than our ancestors. For example, the Hebrew language and biblical stories was originally understood to have multiple meanings and messages even down to each word. For us we are only able to absorb one level of meaning.
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