Fossils: Evidence of evolution or evidence of a global flood?

That is nonsense.

That is also nonsense.

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Then show us the peer reviewed articles that support a young earth and/or a recent global flood. In the realm of science, peer reviewed journals are the battleground and from what I can see the YEC/OEC community won’t even walk onto it.[quote=“r_speir, post:58, topic:37536”]
The good news is that it’s just a matter of time until news of a “large mammal with dinosaur” leak will finally erupt on the public. Who knows? Maybe in 2018. Hopefully soon in any event.
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If you claim that you have already won the war, shouldn’t you already have this evidence in hand?

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@r_speir,

But, alas, it is not just the complete lack of fossil finds showing mastodons and dinos occupied the same forest, tundra or plain. While I would enjoy watching your gyrations to explain why that should be the case, I think it would be a poor use of your time.

If we align the chronology of the fossil layers (even if we assign a highly compressed Young Earth time frame to the entire sedimentary framework)…

we come to the awe-full conclusion that Mastodons consistently drown long after all the dinos… even long after all the giant/tall dinosaurs!

There is not a single case of a dino… not even a tall dino … surviving longer than the mastodons.

Busted

Your interpretation is broken, null and void.

And I haven’t even begun to discuss how could so much Flood Period Mud could turn into solid rock, and sometimes folded solid rock, all within 4000 or so years!

One of my favorite take-downs of YEC and flood geology is Glenn Morton’s “Too Many Fossils for a Global Flood”. It details the VAST deposits made up of life, too vast to have been the result of a single flood. For example, sea lilies are interesting little animals (don’t let the name fool you) that live attached to the sea floor:

They are also called crinoids, and when they die the carbonate plates that make up their body separate and form deposits on the sea floor. There are rather large deposits made up almost entirely of crinoid plates. For example, the Mission Canyon-Livingstone unit is found in central North America:

“In the Canadian Rockies the Livingstone limestone was deposited to a thickness of 2,000 feet on the margin of the Cordilleran geosyncline, but it thins rapidly eastward to a thickness of about 1,000 feet in the Front Ranges and to about 500 feet in the Williston Basin. Even though its crinoidal content decreases eastward, it may be calculated to represent at least 10,000 cubic miles of broken crinoid plates.”
reference

Just to highlight what the quote is saying, there are deposits 2,000 feet thick made up of tiny little plates from sea lilies. This deposit alone is capable of covering the entire earth in 1/4 inch of crinoid plates. How in the world could there be that many sea lilies alive at one time to be buried in a flood? Just this deposit alone demonstrates that the geology we see on Earth could not be produced by a recent global flood. Of course, there are other crinoid deposits across the world that only add to this tally.

It doesn’t stop with crinoids. There are also massive plankton and diatom deposits. There are enough diatoms in deposits worldwide to bury the entire earth in 70 feet of diatoms. The carbon in these life forms also doesn’t come from nowhere. They have to get their carbon from the biosphere of the Earth. As Glenn Morton puts it:

“When it is realized that almost all of the limestone deposits in the world are biologic in origin, a problem quickly arises. There are 6.42 x 10^22 grams of carbon in the limestones of the earth and only 3 x 10^17 grams of carbon in the biosphere of the earth. The flood must have buried 214,000 times more living matter in limestone alone than is currently on the earth.”

We haven’t even got to the massive plant and animal deposits yet. Suffice it to say, when you hear a creationist say that the fossil deposits on Earth are consistent with a single event, it is difficult to not laugh. The YEC position is laughable, and it demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge as to the depth and extent of these deposits.

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@T_aquaticus,

Wow! Well done, sir!

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@r_speir,

Ummmm… wrong, big fella. There are at least 6 decent articles that explain how the heme molecules from the animal’s own blood acts like a preservative on these so-called soft-tissues.

What you cannot explain is why we have actual flesh in mastodon bodies… but not a single dinosaur with actual flesh.

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Bottom line. This is simply not true.

@r_speir, we’ve already explained this to you. Soft tissue remnants in “supposed” mya fossils are rare, very badly degraded, difficult to extract, and only visible under a microscope. They are only ever found in conditions that were optimal for their preservation. They have never been found to contain sequenceable DNA. The only remnants that are preserved are particularly durable molecules such as collagen.

On the other hand, ten thousand year old carcasses turn up in glaciers all over the place. They have fresh meat still on them, and near-intact sequences of DNA.

Also, are you aware of any of the existing research into how long it takes various biological molecules to degrade? For example, Allentoft et al (2012)? They found that under optimal preservation conditions, DNA can take as long as 6.8 million years to completely degrade into single bases. Yet the only molecules found in dinosaur soft tissue remnants are ones that are much more durable than DNA.

Listen, this is not some kind of game of “my evidence is bigger than your evidence.” This is about getting your facts straight. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Those plates came from life, and it takes a long time for that much life to accumulate.[quote=“r_speir, post:66, topic:37536”]
Listen, I am not about to get into a knife fight with you people where you pull out your laundry list of what I cannot explain in nature and I pull out mine which you cannot explain from your angle. You think your list is impressive but so is mine.
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We haven’t seen anything from your list.[quote=“r_speir, post:66, topic:37536”]
Bottom line. You cannot explain soft tissue in supposed mya fossils. Heck, I can’t explain it either! I have no reason to believe it should be there after 4500 years! So your unimaginable timeline is the “laughable” one, not mine.
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What needs to be explained? Those fossils are 65 million years old, and they have preserved soft tissue. This means that soft tissue, as it is observed in these fossils, can survive for 65 million years in the right conditions.[quote=“r_speir, post:66, topic:37536”]
I have no reason to believe it should be there after 4500 years! So your unimaginable timeline is the “laughable” one, not mine.
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Reality isn’t forced to conform to what you believe or don’t believe. An argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy for a reason.

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Where have you shown that they should be non-existent? I am aware of zero science demonstrating that soft tissue can not be preserved for millions of years. Just repeating “it’s ridiculous” is not science, and it isn’t a reasonable or logical argument.[quote=“r_speir, post:70, topic:37536”]
I don’t believe Glenn Morton. He is jaded and has an axe to grind. He overstates his case on a regular basis.
You and he are citing a 1960 paper admittedly setting forth a “rough estimate”. I don’t believe the 10,000 cubic mile figure. Cite follow-up research to confirm.
Have these accumulations been drilled for core samples? What were the findings? How do I know that we are not talking about a mere 1,000 or 2,000 cubic miles of biotic debris lying atop 8 to 9 thousand cubic miles of silica cementation?
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All of it is referenced. Simply refusing to accept the facts won’t change them.

Crinoids aren’t the only problem. There are enough diatoms in the fossil record that you could bury the entire Earth in 70 feet of diatoms. Floods don’t produce life, so a global flood can’t explain these sediments.

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Ah. You wish to make a case that dinosaurs are never found in frozen climates, only warm ones.

This should be interesting. Who’s got popcorn?

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For an article showing the accumulation of fossils couldn’t represent all of the animals present at one time see @Joel_Duff’s Quadrillions, Quintillions and Beyond: The Vast Fossil Record Refutes the Flood Geology Hypothesis

Looking forward to your IGNORE response.

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Regarding rapid fossilization and the supposed need for a global flood to account for so many fossils, please keep in mind that the confusing YEC position on fossilization really is that rapid burial by a flood is necessary except when it is not necessary. Their own timelines includes billions of fossils that have been formed after the Flood (ie. all lemur fossils, all canine fossils, all whale fossils, all bear fossils, all cat fossils, all sheep fossils, all…). I’m just finished writing up a post about elephant, sloth and camel, yes camel!! fossils in a high alpine lake in Colorado.These are all post-ice age fossils according to the YEC timeline and so were not formed by a flood or even a local catastrophe but under placid conditions no different than we find today. Fossils certainly can be formed in flood and but it is not a prerequisite for fossil production.

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You mean scientists? It certainly was an interesting reaction when Schweitzer first published. This is what I think a neat article write up on her and her results:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/i-don-t-care-what-they-say-about-me-paleontologist-stares-down-critics-her-hunt

All in all though, what she is looking for is extremely rare in any 65-100 million year old fossils. So at this point, I ask myself, what makes more sense given the rarity of such finds:
a) that all the other fossils rapidly degraded and all the DNA disappeared (despite its 500 year half life and despite well preserved rapid burial just ~4,000 years)
b) there is a natural explanation to what she’s found that preserves the remnants of various proteins in very rare conditions (also given that no other teams have yet been able to replicate her results)

I want to believe that the answer should be obvious.

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Not sure what you mean by article. The link was in the message above.

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