Without spoiling the forthcoming article, I’ll just say this for now: the video’s claim that it “is common practice in evolutionary analysis to ignore where species actually show up in the fossil record and place them wherever makes Darwinian sense” is completely false and a gross misrepresentation of the careful work that paleontologists do to ensure that the specimens we study are known in their proper stratigraphic contexts.
The video’s portrayal of the dates ascribed to the layer of the La Meseta Formation in Antarctica where the whale mandible was found is extremely misleading. In fact, I searched through all of the studies I could get my hands on that the video cites (in the bar graph with ranges of dates), and I often had trouble lining up the dates in the papers with the ranges indicated on the bar graph for that paper. In other cases, the video showed a range of dates for the entirety of the geologic formation, while ignoring that the proposed dates for the specific layers in question were estimated to be much younger. The video also rails against the Buono et al. paper specifically, but fails to recognize that all of the authors who originally described the fossil and proposed the older age…are also co-authors on the Buono et al. paper, which estimates a younger age estimate based on more recent studies and evidence.
Well, that’s all I’ve got time for right now. I hope it helps. I’ll try to check in again later, but with all the prep I have to do for the fall semester, I won’t have too much time to spare in the coming weeks. 