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From: ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: ...and yet more responses
Message-ID: <690@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 12:59:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.690
Posted: Tue Oct 23 12:59:04 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Oct-84 06:46:04 EDT
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Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
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[]
     I'm very busy these days, so I'll be responding to Larry Bickford's
articles piecemeal as I find the time.  The following is a paragraph
from the second of his recent articles.

>Another of Ethan's points, this one for falsifiability, is "outrageous
>anachronisms in the fossil record would constitute disproof of
>evolution." HAH! Evolutionists don't give up that easily; they merely
>add some more secondary assumptions onto their basic model. "Living
>fossils" are one such anachronism - completely absent from the fossil
>record for millions (sometimes E8) of years, such that any rock
>containing a fossil of them would immediately have an ancient date, yet
>they are still quite alive! (Ethan's arguments fail, for how do we know
>that we are a recent product, and not just something that was rare and
>unsuccessful for a long time?) Both "Lucy" and the findings of Richard
>Leakey have caused revamping of the evolutionary timetable. Leakey's
>discovery gave him thorough fits: "...it simply eliminates everything
>we have been taught about evolution, and I have nothing to offer in
>its place." We can also note the treatment given to the dinosaur and man
>footprints in Glen Rose, Texas. Evolutionists will fight tooth-and-nail
>rather than let their pretty little system get blown to bits. (BTW,
>*ancient* human bones have recently been found there, *in situ*.)

     First, "living fossils" (I still hate the term) are anachronisms
in an evolutionary sense.  After a species has appeared in the fossil
record its subsequent fossil record depends on the success of the
species, the likelihood that the environment in which it lives are
conducive to fossil formation, and element of luck involved in its
discovery.  An true anachronism would be the discovery of a fossil
of great age with characteristics that belong to a group that evolved
much later.  To more specific, about 26 million years back we start
finding fossils of large primates with characteristics reminiscent
of the great apes and of humans.  These specimens also resemble lower
primates in many ways and so can be seen as an intermediate link.
It is therefore inconceivable, from an evolutionary viewpoint, that
creatures that were recognizably more like the great apes or humans
would appear in the fossil record from significantly earlier times.
It would represent a massive discrepancy with an otherwise reasonable
progression in the evolution of primates.  The Leakey quote is both
(probably) accurate and completely bogus.  I believe that he said that, 
but he was obviously speaking about the details of *human* evolution.
Humans are an example of a line which has been poorly preserved in
the fossil record.  The line from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens is
very well understood.  The connections to be made back from that
are tentative with the precise relationships between different
specimens sometimes uncertain.  It is being deliberately obtuse
to confuse that with the question of whether or not human beings
evolved.
     As for the alleged human remains ....
The following is taken from the "Creation/Evolution Newsletter",
Volume 4, No. 3 (May-June 1984).  It has been posted to the net
before, but quite a while ago.  The article in question is a report
on the 1984 National Bible-Science Conference.  It's too long for me
to type in, so I will confine myself to the part relevant to 
Mr. Bickford's comment. The rest reports on various talks on
geocentricity and other topics.  (To be fair, the report also notes
that the large number of speakers on geocentricity seems out of
proportion to their importance in the creationist movement.)

**************
     "Hugh G. Miller and Rev. Carl Baugh reported on excavations
at the Paluxey River site.  They are still finding "human footprints"
of course, and recently someone discovered two travertine skulls, 
apparently washed out of the 120 million year old rock of the
riverbed.  They displayed the skulls, which had been sawed in half
to show their internal structure.  Baugh identified one as a cat, and
the other as either a human infant or some sort of primate.  He claimed
the cat skull still showed enamel on the teeth.  Since primates and
cats evolved much less than 120 million years ago, Baugh claims these
fossils contradict evolution.

     After the presentation, Frank Zindler, hurried up to the pulpit
to examine the "skulls".  He came back much amused.

"They were silicified nodules of limestone weathered so that the
surface was irregular and bore a vague resemblance to skulls," he says.
"In the cross-section, no internal structures could be found which
could be related to surface features.  If, for example, the surface
were made of bone, one would expect bony structure to be detectable
on the cross-section.  However, no structures at all were visible
except for a few randomly distributed solution solution cavities of
small size."

And what about the "teeth" the creationists detected in the alleged
cat fossil?  "There were a few very fine needle-like silica spurs,"
says Zindler.

Thus, Baugh's paleontology is on a par with his taxonomy (he named
his alleged new species of man "humanus bauanthropus"."

************

     I think this says enough about Baugh's credibility as a scientist.
My personal opinion is that if he assured me, to my face, that my
hair is brown, I would assume he had made a lucky guess.

                         
"I can't help it if my     Ethan Vishniac
    knee jerks"         {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
                           Department of Astronomy
                           University of Texas
                           Austin, Texas 78712