Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.17 $; site uiucdcsb.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcsb!miller From: miller@uiucdcsb.UUCP Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: misc replies Message-ID: <32500024@uiucdcsb.UUCP> Date: Tue, 19-Feb-85 14:04:00 EST Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.32500024 Posted: Tue Feb 19 14:04:00 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 22-Feb-85 21:29:31 EST Lines: 79 Nf-ID: #N:uiucdcsb:32500024:000:5165 Nf-From: uiucdcsb!miller Feb 19 13:04:00 1985 I do wish the evolutionists on this net would do some minimal amount of self education before posting articles. Alas, that seems to be as impossible as trying to find evidence of transitional forms. But, for Stan's benefit: ICR, as I pointed out, is *not* a membership organization. CRS is, but not ICR. Dr. Gish is an *employee* of ICR; he is a member (presumably) of CRS, BSA, etc. ICR is extremely influential, but consists of a small group of scientists on staff. CRS is less influential, but has a membership of several hundred scien- tists. It's the same difference as your own job, Stan, and groups like AAAS, ACM, etc. But, on to a different subject ... Someone passed the following into my hands the other day. It, of course, should remind everyone of the Paluxy River data, which is fatal to the presumed evolutionary geological sequence. One extra note, however: no one can accuse the Soviet Union of having a "creationist bias". In fact, this is the *last* thing I would expect to see in Pravda. Yu. Kruzhilin and V. Ovcharov, "A Horse from the Dinosaur Epoch?" Translated by A. James Melnick, MOSKOVSKAYA PRAVDA, Feb. 5, 1984. Soviet paleontologists have discovered the fossilized tracks of an unknown species of perissodactyles (odd-toed animals) in the spurs of the Gissar Moun- tains in southern Uzbekistan near the village of Baysun. Even by itself, such a find would be a sensation. However, what it later turned out to be was a "bolt out of the blue". An analysis of the rocks, which were taken to Tash- kent, indicated that their age was about 90 million years old! The paleontologists on the expedition immediately thought of comparing the 86 horse-shoe-shaped tracks with equine imprints of hoofs. In any case, one could talk about animals very much resembling the horse. Here, though, the scholars came to a deadlock - you see, the horse has existed on this planet in its present form for only about one and a half million years! The first thought of the scientists, headed by Candidate of Geological- Mineralogical Sciences V. Kurbatov, was this: somewhere a mistake had been made. Tracks of an animal which has existed for only one and a half million years could not be imprinted in 90 million year-old rock. They spent the rest of the summer, fall, and part of the winter trying to check everything again and again very carefully. However, the paleontologists of the Ministry of Geology of Uzbekistan, lithologists - specialists in sedimentary rocks, geomor- phologists - specialists in land relief and in sea and ocean floors, all con- firmed the fact that the sandstone from Baysun really was formed in the middle of the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs "ruled" the earth. The tracks which had been uncovered, so ran the second conclusion, could not have been made later. How should the Baysun phenomenon be explained? A TASS correspondent turned to the famous Soviet paleontologist, Academician B. Sokolov, Secretary of the Department of Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences, for an answer to this question. "As a geologist and paleontologist," the scientist said, "I am used to dealing with interpreting various phenomena of the distant geological past with great caution. But, judging by the data I receive from my colleagues during the 30th Session of the All-Union Paleontological Society (which recently took place in L'vovX, there is not the slightest doubt concerning the accuracy of the determination of the geologic age of the `Baysun tracks'. They are of the Cretaceous period and the Cenomanian stage, that is, from a time that is sepa- rated from us by about 90 to 100 million years. There is also no doubt that the tracks belong to an animal of that time and not to some later one - which sometimes takes place. Yet the main question remains - what animal is it? It is completely obvious that these are not the tracks of a dinosaur. The tracks of any reptiles similar to these tracks are unknown to science at the present time. It is also difficult to place them with confidence with any known group of mammals - the horse which they are now compared with, indisputably, appeared much later. Most likely, we are talking about the discovery of some whole new group of animals. In the face of so important a scientific discovery, it is necessary that detailed geological, paleontological and paleographical research in this area be established. I was amused to see part of the same logic which is used as a defense against the Paluxy River human prints also used here. That is, with the Paluxy prints evolutionists claim, depending upon how much they know of the finds: 1) The prints don't exist. - for those who don't know much about them 2) They are erosion or a hoax. - for those who have heard a little about them 3) The prints do exist & do date to that period, but *must* belong to some unknown, hypothetical creature, rather than what they plainly appear to be. - this is for those who have studied the area extensively. This is also where the Russians now appear to be. A. Ray Miller Univ Illinois