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.
Then there really is/was Global Warming.
: )
The planet as a whole was caused to contract, a simple heart beat, if you will.
Thus, the water levels being constant, one can imagine how a contraction of the actual land mass would cause the entire orb to be covered in water, then when the land mass expands once more, voila, there are fish and horse skeletons everywhere.
neat, concise, covers all the facts...elegant.
Or both.
Maybe, but that doesn't fit the narrative that's being submitted as the explanation.
It could happen.
It could. How many other possible theories are there that can be submitted on no more evidence than "It could happen.", and how fast will it produce absolute gridlock if all of them have to be considered equally?
Your whole reply is good.
Scientific method is only as good as the honesty of the researcher.
The historical value of the Bible has been proven reliable over and over, not even the most ravenous evol’st will not dispute that.
(the honest ones)
. Oh crap!
here I thought we were just funnin'.
Didn't realize were ere being graded, and there would be an exam at the end.
It is difficult to be serious sometimes, as the actual narrative is somewhat..shall we say....entertaining?
Here’s the deal about theories. A)They have to explain all the available evidence, B)They have to be falsifiable (what evidence may be available that would disprove the theory?), and C)They have to provide a mechanism. Now, convince me...
Oh - and you’ve got to tell me where all that water went...
OOps ,you are wrong in your assumptions:
“...Evolution is a fact..”
last I checked it is only a theory (as you mean it)
Sorry, scientific “facts” and the Bible are not incompatible.
I am a Creationist, you a “(theistic) evolutionist”
I have no problem with that.
we will disagree on evolution being a fact.
we have opposing views.
I have no problem with that.
I haven’t read Steve Donovan’s books. This author suggests that Donovan’s view is that fossils are created over long periods of time. However, it’s totally reasonable that a horse in muck at the bottom of a lake would disintegrate by scavenging & microbes.
If you’ve got a crazy mix of animals & plants very well preserved together it’s also reasonable to consider that they died and were preserved by a rapid accumulation of sediment during a major disaster. You’ve got to agree that this is possible.
Then you call Thomas “arrogant” for daring to question Donovan and then say he’s “simply out of his intellectual and academic league”. Just because there’s LOTS of documentation out there to support your view doesn’t mean it’s correct. It seems to me that the wrong person has been called arrogant.
Again, rather than sending me off to someone’s “countless other publications”, what is YOUR guess as to how these fossils were made?
EVOLUTION IS FACT!
(Digging furiously for a book, any book, oh where is that article, the absolute truth that I read and printed out)..I will get back to you.
Besides, I don't need to prove it, I have absolute faith that it did indeed happen.
I was told so, and I read it somewhere.
CREATIONISM IS FACT!
THE STATIC EARTH IS FACT!
THE PULSATING EARTH IS FACT!
GOD PUT FOSSILS THERE TO CONFUSE EVERYONE!
“Hey, you! Mister clippy-clop! You’re voted off the island! Buh-bye!”
“..Fossilization is a process that takes place only under certain conditions. Time is of no importance....”
no argument there, Mt St Helens is modern example. (trees in lake)
Now, when the land mass was re-expanded, then the waters simply receded to lower levels, as we find them today.
This is getting to be fun.
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