That takes me back. I was there in the early 70s and you are pretty much right. The closest class we had to evolution was comparative anatomy, which traced the movement and origin of all those jawbones. It was an awful class with lots of rote memorization, and one of the main weed-out classes. Some evolution in embryology and but amazingly little in genetics. This was during the Jesus movement as well, so I remember a bit of culture conflict, but really not a lot over the subject. Interesting how knowledge has advanced in the last 50 years, and how that has changed the narrative. Culture also changed. Even though Morris wrote in the 1960’s, I don’t remember hearing of him until Ham and AIG became prominent, along about the time of the fundamentalist resurgence in the late 1990’s. Of course, my memory is probably pretty selective and has more gaps than the fossil record. And I was there.
Ironically it was more of a theological hot potato. I remember reading a book titled “Creation and Evolution”. It says something about the over all relevance of evolution that I did not keep it or note the author but it was the fist time I had seen in print someone claim that God could use evolution. In truth I have spent more time defending evolution to Christians than I have attacking it with scientists. I have been arguing TE (thought it wasn’t even named then) for over 40 years and was pleasantly surprised to find BioLogos…
I used to like David Attenborough but as the years have passed he has got more and more anti-God and pro Naturalistic evolution (ToE). I actually saw him describe the change from a gill slit to a jawbone on TV and my own jaw dropped. It was just unbelievable (to me). The series went on to show a pre-avian climb a tree and jump off, glide down, feather its wings and land, claiming that it had yet to learn to fly… It was beautiful graphics but it belied the skill and understanding needed to accomplish this feat… And this is now my main thrust. That Nature can invent bird flight? (and other complex automated systems)
Richard
Rest of quoted post restored and emphasised to make it clear that @RichardG is trying to use an escape-hatch that was already closed:
Ok, I’ll go back to treating you with a mixture of hilarity and well-deserved contempt.
That fossilisation of feathers was not broached in your college teacher training course does not mean that it was considered beyond the scope of the fossilisation process. It just means that your teacher training course did not cover the topic.
That your teacher training course did not include any pictures of Archeaopteryx with preserved feather impressions does not mean that “Soft tissue was considered beyond the scope of the process”. It only means that you didn’t learn enough about the fossilisation process to make that statement.
That fossils with preserved feathers had been known for more than a century is incontestable. That the fossilisation process was known to be able to preserve feather impressions, including the fronds, is also incontestable. Such preservation is admittedly rare (which was also known), but ‘rare’ is incontestably not the same as ''beyond the scope".
The claim you made in this post:
is incontestably, unmistakable, unquestionably, absolutely wrong.
That you refuse point-blank to admit that it was wrong is contemptible.
That you are trying to argue against the dinosaur-to-bird lineage without knowing the most basic details of the discovery or nature of Achaeopteryx fossils shows a staggering level of misplaced confidence.
That you are defending your false statement on the grounds that anything not covered by your teacher training course must have been unknown to science is side-splittingly hilarious.
And fossil clams older than dinosaurs with preserved pigment and ligament proteins have been known for longer than dinosaurs.
Archaeopterix was the exception that proved the rule. It had enough feathers to identify them.
And it was the only feathered creature before birds. To many it was actually bird not a dinosaur. Which is where all this discussion about feathered dinosaurs comes from . None had been found (as far as we knew)
Richard
You mean like the fisheries biology professor where I attended university who lectured on how that came about? and what a delightfully simple progression it was?
Chemistry and physics.
So are the changes from then to the early 1990s in what can be detected and measured – like how pressure makes plant material and feathers collapse differently, and how close analysis can tell the difference.
My mind still boggles at the bivalve fossil where the “foot” could be distinguished from the rest of the body, and also the “poop” in the waste tubes. That was back in . . . 1978, I think? It was amazing that the minerals that filled in the different parts depended on the chemical makeup of what they were replacing.
And when first described in one geology class there were girls who refused to touch the samples!
That is seriously kool!
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