3 replies to this topic

[usafjay1976]

I ordered several creation videos last week and watched a few of them last night. They were great!

One I watched was called Evolution: The Grand Experiment vol. 2.

I found a brief article on the video and pasted some things that were discussed in the video.

Dr Werner traveled over 100,000 miles and found modern day animals/plants in the same layers where dinosaurs were discovered. (Bolded portions in quotes will be added by me.)

“We found fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum living today including: arthropods (insects, crustaceans etc.), shellfish, echinoderms (starfish, crinoids, brittle stars, etc.), corals, sponges, and segmented worms (earthworms, marine worms).

There is also this

Cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays), boney fish (such as sturgeon, paddlefish, salmon, herring, flounder and bowfin) and jawless fish (hagfish and lamprey) have been found in the dinosaur layers and they look the same as modern forms.

And

Paleontologists have found 432 mammal species in the dinosaur layers; almost as many as the number of dinosaur species. … But where are these fossils? We visited 60 museums but did not see a single complete mammal skeleton from the dinosaur layers displayed at any of these museums. This is amazing.

Any museum I've ever visited separates dinosaur fossils from the rest (dinos in one section, mammals another, fish another, etc.) If these animals were living together, why separate them? It's the same in artist recreations of the scene. Never will you see a dinosaur with a squirrel in one of their displays.

Lastly, I wanted to bring up this:

A scientist found a fossil sea urchin in Cretaceous rock that looks nearly identical to a modern Purple Heart sea urchin, but assigned it to a completely new genus (Holaster). If you saw that creature alive in the ocean you would recognize it as a Purple Heart sea urchin (genus Spatangus). The different name suggests that sea urchins have changed over time, but this is contrived ‘evidence’ for evolution. The fossil looks the same as the living one.”

By watching this video, there were tons of examples of where the fossilized version had a different genus then the living one.. Snakes, starfish, shells, alligators, plants, etc. all had a differenet genus assigned.

Here is an example.



The above is a fossil sea urchin, genus Holaster


The below is a living sea urchin, genus Spatangus




One more example of shrimp below:



The one on the left is Penaeus. The one on the right is Antrimpos.

The fossilzed shrimp is supposedly 150 million years old.


All dogs are assigned to the genus Canis lupus familiaris. Yet for some reason, there are 100s if not more fossils that are virtually unchanged when compared to the living one, and they are assigned a different genus.

Is this intellectual dishonesty and an attempt to make it look like these animals evolved?




Read more about Werner here: http://creation.com/...-living-fossils

[aelyn]

“We found fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum living today including: arthropods (insects, crustaceans etc.), shellfish, echinoderms (starfish, crinoids, brittle stars, etc.), corals, sponges, and segmented worms (earthworms, marine worms).

Um... yeah ? As one would expect given every single one of those phyla appeared long before the dinosaurs did and has existed in every time period since. And since when does "fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum" mean "modern day animals/plants" ? "Phylum" is a huge grouping. You, for example, belong to the phylum Chordates. That's right, not even just vertebrates, we're talking anything with a notochord here. Pikaia is a "fossilized example from the major phylum" you belong to. Is Pikaia a modern-day animal ? For that matter, are dinosaurs modern-day animals ? They're chordates. Were they found in the same layers where dinosaurs were discovered too ?

Cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays), boney fish (such as sturgeon, paddlefish, salmon, herring, flounder and bowfin) and jawless fish (hagfish and lamprey) have been found in the dinosaur layers and they look the same as modern forms.

Fascinating, that's more like it. It would totally disprove the theory of evolution too, if the theory said animals change at a constant rate but since it doesn't it's pretty irrelevant. I'm curious though, did Dr. Werner also find those same fish in Devonian strata ? Or Silurian ? Or Cambrian ? And does Dr. Werner give the ratio of the number of animals that look the same as modern forms to the number of those that really don't ? If finding a few animals in Mesozoic strata that look the same as modern forms is such a big deal then I wonder what Dr. Werner thinks of the fact that the overwhelming majority of animal fossils found in those strata are very different from modern forms. And why every strata contain very different sets of species. That are yet very similar to the sets of species in the strata just above and below them.

Any museum I've ever visited separates dinosaur fossils from the rest (dinos in one section, mammals another, fish another, etc.) If these animals were living together, why separate them? It's the same in artist recreations of the scene. Never will you see a dinosaur with a squirrel in one of their displays.

Mammal skeletons of that time are small and fragile, I doubt many if any of those 432 are a complete skeleton (and why is that ? Why are there dinosaurs in those strata, and small shrew-like but decidedly non-modern mammals, but no elephants or even saber-toothed tigers ?)
As for why nobody ever shows squirrels with dinosaurs, it's because there aren't any squirrel fossils in those layers. I've seen pictures of dinosaurs with small shrew-like mammals in the underbrush pretty often though.

[usafjay1976]

Um... yeah ? As one would expect given every single one of those phyla appeared long before the dinosaurs did and has existed in every time period since. And since when does "fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum" mean "modern day animals/plants" ? "Phylum" is a huge grouping. You, for example, belong to the phylum Chordates. That's right, not even just vertebrates, we're talking anything with a notochord here. Pikaia is a "fossilized example from the major phylum" you belong to. Is Pikaia a modern-day animal ? For that matter, are dinosaurs modern-day animals ? They're chordates. Were they found in the same layers where dinosaurs were discovered too ?

So why aren’t these seen in museums with dinosaurs? Generally speaking, when you see dinosaurs, you see them ONLY with other dinosaurs (with the exception of your shrew). You don’t see that as being deceptive? To someone who isn’t familiar with the theory of origins, the museums tend to make everything ‘look’ evolved.

Fascinating, that's more like it. It would totally disprove the theory of evolution too, if the theory said animals change at a constant rate but since it doesn't it's pretty irrelevant. I'm curious though, did Dr. Werner also find those same fish in Devonian strata ? Or Silurian ? Or Cambrian ? And does Dr. Werner give the ratio of the number of animals that look the same as modern forms to the number of those that really don't ? If finding a few animals in Mesozoic strata that look the same as modern forms is such a big deal then I wonder what Dr. Werner thinks of the fact that the overwhelming majority of animal fossils found in those strata are very different from modern forms. And why every strata contain very different sets of species. That are yet very similar to the sets of species in the strata just above and below them.

The article below discusses some of your questions. It also gives some examples of stratigraphic range extension.

http://www.answersin.../v14/n1/fossil'> http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v14/n1/fossil

Here is a quote from the article:

The irony of the position taken by Cuvierists, neo-Cuvierists, and standard evolutionary-uniformitarians is the fact that fossil succession is a reality only to a limited extent. As we shall see, the Flood-related mechanisms discussed above need not have been overly efficient to account for only the limited degree of fossil succession that does exist. Successive episodes of time, however conceived, also are completely unnecessary to explain the limited degree of fossil succession.When we consider the fact that fossil succession is limited in overall extent, it is another way of stating that there are many fossils which are found at many stratigraphic intervals. In fact, only a minority are confined to rocks attributed to only one geologic period.

I’m unaware of the fossils found that are not similar but that’s not the point. What about the ones that haven’t changed? Why haven’t they changed? Why don’t we see salmon jumping in streams next to dinosaurs in artist recreations at museums?

Mammal skeletons of that time are small and fragile, I doubt many if any of those 432 are a complete skeleton (and why is that ? Why are there dinosaurs in those strata, and small shrew-like but decidedly non-modern mammals, but no elephants or even saber-toothed tigers ?)
As for why nobody ever shows squirrels with dinosaurs, it's because there aren't any squirrel fossils in those layers. I've seen pictures of dinosaurs with small shrew-like mammals in the underbrush pretty often though.

Let’s forget the squirrel and focus on the 100s of fossils that were discovered. They are virtually unchanged from what is unseen today from supposedly 100s of millions of years ago. Yet again, they are not shown in museums. They are not shown with dinosaurs. If you don’t find this deceiving, please explain why.

Any comments on last part of my first post, in regards to the different genus assignments?

[aelyn]

So why aren’t these seen in museums with dinosaurs? Generally speaking, when you see dinosaurs, you see them ONLY with other dinosaurs (with the exception of your shrew). You don’t see that as being deceptive? To someone who isn’t familiar with the theory of origins, the museums tend to make everything ‘look’ evolved.

Oh, there's an exception now ?
Different museums have different ways of displaying things. A lot of those I've been to had different sections for different animal groups so they naturally wouldn't put fossils from disparate groups together. I also prefer to see things presented as ecosystems, and there are other museums that do that. I really don't see what it has to do with evolution though. If anything I'd think presenting the whole ecosystem would be more suggestive of evolution than showing disparate fossils because it really drives home the point that the Earth in the past didn't just contain more extinct animals, the whole biomes were different.

The article below discusses some of your questions. It also gives some examples of stratigraphic range extension. http://www.answersin.../v14/n1/fossil'> http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v14/n1/fossil Here is a quote from the article: The irony of the position taken by Cuvierists, neo-Cuvierists, and standard evolutionary-uniformitarians is the fact that fossil succession is a reality only to a limited extent. As we shall see, the Flood-related mechanisms discussed above need not have been overly efficient to account for only the limited degree of fossil succession that does exist. Successive episodes of time, however conceived, also are completely unnecessary to explain the limited degree of fossil succession.When we consider the fact that fossil succession is limited in overall extent, it is another way of stating that there are many fossils which are found at many stratigraphic intervals. In fact, only a minority are confined to rocks attributed to only one geologic period.

The main point of this article seems to be that new discoveries extended what was previously thought to be the range of a handful of fossils, therefore the whole concept of fossils being found in certain ranges of strata only is... what ? He can't be saying it's wrong, because he also has tons of flood-related hypotheses for why fossils would be found in certain ranges of strata and not others. I don't know. Anyway considering we deduce what a species' range of existence was from the fossils of it found it's pretty obvious that new fossil find will often lead us to re-evaluate that range. It's not like we've discovered all the fossils there are to be found yet, far from it. So a bunch of fossils found in strata a few million or tens of million years earlier or later than the previous specimens of that species had been found hardly constitutes a "randomization" of the fossil record.

It's interesting though because he has many hypotheses about how the flood could have caused fossils to be in the strata they are - differential escape of organisms during the flood (aka the "grass runs faster than velociraptors" theory), sorting of organisms during the flood (aka the "mammoths are lighter than albatrosses" theory), ecological zonation of life-forms before the flood (which a global flood somehow kept pristinely divided), and TABs (Tectonically-Associated Biological Provinces—wherein different life forms occur in successive horizons of rock as a reflection of successive crustal downwarp of different life-bearing biogeographic communities), whatever that means...
With all those hypotheses he should be able to articulate which strata he would expect to see which fossils in, and make predictions based on how the distribution of fossils with his hypotheses differ from the distribution of fossils according to evolution, and then go look for fossils in strata where his theory says they should be and evolutionary theory says they shouldn't. That would be a great test of both theories.

I’m unaware of the fossils found that are not similar but that’s not the point.

You've never heard of dinosaurs ? Placoderms ? Trilobites ?
This site actually some fun fossils, I highly recommend it :
http://www.lifebeforethedinosaurs.com/

What about the ones that haven’t changed? Why haven’t they changed? Why don’t we see salmon jumping in streams next to dinosaurs in artist recreations at museums? Let’s forget the squirrel and focus on the 100s of fossils that were discovered. They are virtually unchanged from what is unseen today from supposedly 100s of millions of years ago. Yet again, they are not shown in museums. They are not shown with dinosaurs. If you don’t find this deceiving, please explain why. Any comments on last part of my first post, in regards to the different genus assignments?

"Salmonidae first appear in the fossil record in the middle Eocene", which is after the Cretaceous so no salmons jumping in streams next to dinosaurs either.
Natural selection makes species adapt to their environment. If a group hits upon a successful form in a certain environment and that environment doesn't change to make it less successful, then natural selection will make them stay the same. Also, with fossils we can only see basic morphology; if a species changes in its physiology or behavior we won't necessarily see that in the fossil record.
And I don't know which fossils you're referring to that aren't shown in museums, for example some sharks have been unchanged for a long time and museums show plenty of shark fossils.