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.
Are you really going to try to tell me that the corpse was left out in the elements, subject to slow, millennial processes, and preserved itself as shown in the picture?
Yeah, predators are a lot rarer than worldwide floods.
Occam's Razor.
Regards,
I didn’t think horses were native to the Americas. I thought the Spanish brought them over.
We are more 'knowledgeable' in specific areas, but mostly ignorant of anything else. If we had to live 10,000 years ago, few of us could survive more than 3 days. Plus, they passed on knowledge to their children from the start. We let our kids look it up on Google.
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.
Hmmmm.... the general public may be that way, but there are some exceptions. I imagine you are one.
I read the article - twice. It’s the typical Brian Thomas M.S. codswallop that in the minds of the un-, mis-, and poorly- informed passes for critical review. It’s comical, willful ignorance and the height of arrogance for him to cite Steve Donovan as a source to dispute the well understood processes of fossilization; Thomas is simply out of his intellectual and academic league.
It is not science to simply proclaim that one doesn’t believe the well supported evidence of Earth’s history because it conflicts with one’s theological view - to be taken seriously you have to go beyond saying, “Nope. God did it and everyone who actually studies this stuff is wrong.”
If you want to know how fossils are made, read one of Donovan’s books, and then start going through his countless other publications - but don’t buy into any of the crap that comes out of the ICR.
Good point (albeit sarcasm).
Which means the water was full of predators as well. Poor horse, predator chasing him, water full of predators.
It's a miracle there was enough left to identify.
: )
He was thrown in a lake over 2,000 years ago. He’s got a bit of company, too - there are more than 1000 examples of this type of preservation.
The scientific community is as corrupt as the politicians. Too much at stake (grant money, careers) to investigate anything but "established science" and if anyone dares to bring up anomalies, they come up with lame "the horse drowned" scenarios and go out of their way to destroy the heretics.
Probably all drowned trying to rescue the horse.
Now, I’m going to go and wash the lenses of my glasses.
And hide my embarrassment. There are FOUR FISH. That I can see.
Horses evolved in the New World, but died out in the Americas around the end of the last Ice Age.
They're even in the photo.
FWIW - I count 6.
More pseudoscience from the Institute of Creative Imagination....”
can’t stand the Truth, eh????
There is a fifth one over the dorsal thorax area, just a little faint. Must have been a thinner fish!
Hmmmmm.... my question is.... where did the water go as the 'flood' receded ?
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What is a creation geologist?....””
most likely one that believes millions of years are not necessary for the formation of geological layers....which are not.
Fossils can form in a few decades (depending on how much fossilization is to take place).
Obviously millions of years are not enough for evolutionist, since soft tissue is still found......
I’m thinking it was a mini-horse, a proto-horse. Not what we think of as a modern horse.
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