Permian Extinction: The Origin of Specious Geological Events

March 9, 2009 — The Permian extinction – one of the most dramatic events in the history of life on Earth, in which some 90% of species went extinct...is now being interpreted as a “nonevent” by four geologists.

Robert Gastaldo and two geology colleagues from Colby College in Maine, and geologist Johann Neveling from Pretoria, studied the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Karoo Basin of South Africa and published a paper in Geology this month,1 titled, “The terrestrial Permian-Triassic boundary event bed is a nonevent.”

Well, isn’t this an upset. How much lag time will it take to change the textbooks and documentaries? The BBC, Nova and other evolution-drunk interpreters of science have treated the Permian extinction as solid fact. The goods were right there, in the Karoo Basin, for anyone to see. Whoops....

This announcement goes to show that rocks and layers do not interpret themselves. They are placed in a prior philosophical framework first, then the stories and animations follow. Notice how an interpretation at one site was extrapolated to the whole world. How can such sweeping generalities be justified? These geologists, bless their hearts, understate the lesson here: “extrapolation of the laminated interval to other continents as the terrestrial expression of the Permian-Triassic boundary event is imprudent,” they said. How about “reckless”? (07/02/2007).

We’re still suffering from the consequences of the bad assumptions by early geologists (especially the Charlie & Charlie partners in crime, Lyell and Darwin, 07/25/2008). Science is supposed to be progressing toward better and better knowledge of nature, but when it comes to geologists and their tales of earth history, but it’s hard to follow the lead of a staggering Dar-wino with a hangover (01/02/2007, 05/15/2008).

Good questions and response. I was going to respond very similarly as the oldman, but he beat me to it. Your points 1, 3, and 4 are valid concerns, but as has been pointed out, they are universally addressed in college level courses, and often in high school.

The thing is, though, that creationists have much different “concerns” with evolution. If this is all they were, we’d not have any issue at all with discussion or conversation on the matter. I’m somewhat surprised none of them attempted to flay you for your reasoned concerns.

They weren’t wild enough.

Your post has a tinge of conspiratorial paranoiac thinking that alarms me. Biologists (the vast majority, anyways) think evolutionary theory is valid and important. Of course they want it taught. What else are they supposed to do? It's not that they couldn't imagine alternatives, it's that the alternatives creationists propose are wrong (or improper to teach in science classes). This is what I mean by high schools not being an appropriate place for a scientific debate -- scientific literature changes first, and then high school curriculum (gradually) follows. So if creationists wish to 'challenge' evolution, they need to do it in Nature and not on the Kansas Board of Education.

You are correct that the teaching of subjects like the Cambrian Explosion does not reflect any serious challenge to the 'tenets of evolution'. This is because virtually no reputable biologists believes that these subjects pose a serious challenge to evolutionary tenets. Debates are covered from the perspective of the scientific community, as is proper in science classes. A good example is Gould and Eldridge's punctuated equilibrium hypothesis. Note that this followed the correct pattern for scientific ideas: data (Burgess Shale etc) ---> articles in scientific literature ---> tumult, debate, bitchy academic backstabbing --> more data, less heated debate and analysis ---> respectability ---> inclusion in school textbooks.

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