Posted on 07/31/2008 6:20:38 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
A slab of North Texas limestone is on track to rock the world, with its two imbedded footprints poised to make a huge impression in scientific and religious circles.
The estimated 140-pound stone was recovered in July 2000 from the bank of a creek that feeds the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, located about 53 miles south of Fort Worth. The find was made just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park, a popular destination for tourists known for its well-preserved dinosaur tracks and other fossils.
The limestone contains two distinct prints – one of a human footprint and one belonging to a dinosaur. The significance of the cement-hard fossil is that it shows the dinosaur print partially over and intersecting the human print.
In other words, the stone’s impressions indicate that the human stepped first, the dinosaur second. If proven genuine, the artifact would provide evidence that man and dinosaur roamed the Earth at the same time, according to those associated with the find and with its safekeeping. It could potentially toss out the window many commonly held scientific theories on evolution and the history of the world.
Finding scholars and experts on evolution, paleontology or creationism to speak about the discovery proved difficult. Some who were contacted said they didn’t want to comment on the prints without a personal inspection or without review of data from scientific tests.
However, Dr. Phillip Murry, a vertebrate paleontology instructor in the Geoscience department of Tarleton State University at Stephenville, Texas, stated in his response to an interview request: “There has never been a proven association of dinosaur (prints) with human footprints.”
The longtime amateur archeologist who found the fossil thinks that statement is now proven untrue.
(Excerpt) Read more at mineralwellsindex.com ...
“In a walking stride the heel strikes first, then the foot rolls forward. The weight is often distributed more laterally because of the arch. Finally the foot pushes off into the next step by flexing. At this point the front of the foot generally digs into soft soil slightly. Finally, the toes dig in slightly more as the foot pushes off.” [excerpt]Not when your trying to avoid sinking into mud....
“It's just amazing that we only find fossils of certain kinds of dinosaurs in certain ages of rock, I suppose. What a coincidence.Hydrologic sorting.
Never any fossil remains with humans, or as dirtboy notes, even a primate. Heck, if man and dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, dinosaur fossils should be found next to cats, deer, pigeons, etc.
Why aren't they?”
Cordially,
“And even the human footprint is incredibly bogus. How much longer is your “index” toe than your big toe?When was the last time you stepped barefoot in some nice squishy mud?
No human on earth EVER could have made that footprint.” [excerpt]
Cordially,
You apparently skipped over the section entitled Modern Dating Techniques.
In this magical world, rocks that are the same age somehow date differently based on hydrological sorting.
The dinosaurs, even the itty bitty little ones get deposited first, while the pigeons and camels float above waiting their turn.
Weirdly the humans were the very last, even though one might think the mesosaurs, who swam in the ocean for a living, would be the last. Instead, they were deposited much deeper.
But you can't argue with magic.
Mud becomes shale. This is limestone. And you couldn't make that footprint even in mud without a spoon and a bad sense of artistry.
Tell me how it works. Educate me.
Another relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-238 into thorium-230, a substance with a half-life of about 80,000 years. It is accompanied by a sister process, in which uranium-235 decays into protactinium-231, which has a half-life of 34,300 years.While uranium is water-soluble, thorium and protactinium are not, and so they are selectively precipitated into ocean-floor sediments, from which their ratios are measured. The scheme has a range of several hundred thousand years.
Natural sources of radiation in the environment knock loose electrons in, say, a piece of pottery, and these electrons accumulate in defects in the material's crystal lattice structure. Heating the object will release the captured electrons, producing a luminescence. When the sample is heated, at a certain temperature it will glow from the emission of electrons released from the defects, and this glow can be used to estimate the age of the sample to a threshold of approximately 15 percent of its true age. The date of a rock is reset when volcanic activity remelts it. The date of a piece of pottery is reset by the heat of the kiln. Typically temperatures greater than 400 degrees Celsius will reset the "clock". This is termed thermoluminescence.
Finally, fission track dating involves inspection of a polished slice of a material to determine the density of "track" markings left in it by the spontaneous fission of uranium-238 impurities.
The uranium content of the sample has to be known, but that can be determined by placing a plastic film over the polished slice of the material, and bombarding it with slow neutrons. This causes induced fission of 235U, as opposed to the spontaneous fission of 238U. The fission tracks produced by this process are recorded in the plastic film. The uranium content of the material can then be calculated from the number of tracks and the neutron flux.
This scheme has application over a wide range of geologic dates. For dates up to a few million years micas, tektites (glass fragments from volcanic eruptions), and meteorites are best used. Older materials can be dated using zircon, apatite, titanite, epidote and garnet which have a variable amount of uranium content. Because the fission tracks are healed by temperatures over about 200°C the technique has limitations as well as benefits. The technique has potential applications for detailing the thermal history of a deposit.
Large amounts of otherwise rare 36Cl were produced by irradiation of seawater during atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapons between 1952 and 1958. The residence time of 36Cl in the atmosphere is about 1 week. Thus, as an event marker of 1950s water in soil and ground water, 36Cl is also useful for dating waters less than 50 years before the present. 36Cl has seen use in other areas of the geological sciences, including dating ice and sediments.
The USGC says that,
Interweaving the relative time scale with the atomic time scale poses certain problems because only certain types of rocks, chiefly the igneous variety, can be dated directly by radiometric methods; but these rocks do not ordinarily contain fossils. Igneous rocks are those such as granite and basalt which crystallize from molten material called "magma"....Most sedimentary rocks such as sandstone, limestone, and shale are related to the radiometric time scale by bracketing them within time zones that are determined by dating appropriately selected igneous rocks, as shown by a hypothetical example.
RADIOMETRIC TIME SCALE
Another source, The Utah Geological Survey, says,
Of the three basic rock types, igneous rocks are most suited for radiometric dating. Metamorphic rocks may also be radiometrically dated. However, radiometric dating generally yields the age of metamorphism, not the age of the original rock. Most ancient sedimentary rocks cannot be dated radiometrically, but the laws of superposition and crosscutting relationships can be used to place absolute time limits on layers of sedimentary rocks crosscut or bounded by radiometrically dated igneous rocks."
http://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/gladasked/gladage.htm
Cordially,
Update: Global Warming disporportionately affects dinosaurs. Man and global warming survive, Dinosaurs extinct.
“Tell me how it works. Educate me.”I think you would learn a lot more if you actually did the experiments yourself.
•Lots of water.Remember to take lots of notes and pictures.
•Lots of dirt.
•Various sizes of small dead animals.
•A large box or area to run the experiment.
I’m not sure what we’re arguing about. If a rock layer underlying a sedimentary formation can be dated and a rock layer overlying that same formation can be dated, and we know that sedimentary layers can’t be formed underneath existing rock, then we pretty much know the period when that sediment was deposited, no?
The fact is that we have a pretty dang good handle on the geologic column from a variety of radiometric tests, none of which are in conflict, although some of them produce some slight variation. This gives an error margin of several hundred thousand years, which sounds HUGE to a young earth creationist, but is simply a margin of error for the scientist attempting to assign the probable date.
We’ll never get to the point where we can pinpoint the date of a formation to a single month or even century. Rock formation doesn’t work like that, except in volcanic events.
No, I described your explanation accurately, and you called it a strawman.
You can even look up this asinine theory on Creationwiki.
http://creationwiki.org/Flood_geology
The fact that it makes no sense appears to be irrelevant to you.
LOL. I'm holding my breath.
This thread is an IQ test, isn't it?
The tracks of Man and Theropod
Were planted, by a playful God
To test the use of Human minds
Confronted with such puzzling finds.
The first upon Jehovah's list
To see it, a Creationist;
He swallowed hook, and line, and sinker,
Showing God he was no thinker.
The second looked, and laughed and laughed
To see the shoddiness of craft;
His open eyes would not be guiled,
And God looked down and simply smiled.
The third to look was just a boy
Who looked at it with open joy
And thought "that looks like so much fun,
I'll try to make another one!"
When even children plainly see
A fake, it is no mystery;
But as we grow, we often find
Some choose a path that leaves them blind.
And it should come as no surprise
They trust their faith, and not their eyes;
And will not hear if you explain
That--maybe--God prefers the brain.
I grew up barefoot as a child when we lived on a beach.
I’m not contesting that toes spread when a person goes barefoot all the time, and/or steps through mud. Not at all.
But this footprint in limestone is anatomically incorrect. The toes aren’t actually spread. They line up nicely with one another as a grouping but are weirdly turned at an angle totally out of alignment with the bones of the feet.
Yeah, that’s a pretty cute poem, and I applaud the talent that God bestowed on you to compose it. However, you must not really understand how He views the topic...
Proverbs 3:5
Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.
Reject God’s Word if you must, but don’t say that it says something that it doesn’t.
Explain to me what that means in this situation. Does it mean that I can't use my own eyes or knowledge of geology to know that someone IN THE NAME OF GOD is trying to trick me?
If you invoke God, even in an oblique way, does that trump everything else you know to be true?
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