Creationist Idiocy in South Carolina

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What's next for South Carolina's mammoth debate?

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The South Carolina Senate insisted on its version of House Bill 4482 which refers to the Sixth Day of Creation on a 28-13 vote on April 30, 2014, and so the bill proceeds to a conference committee. As NCSE previously reported, HB 4482 was intended to designate the Columbian mammoth as the official state fossil and passed the House on a 94-3 vote in February 3, 2014, but the Senate amended it to add "as created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field" after each instance of "mammoth." When the amended bill returned to the House, it was rejected on a 72-30 vote.

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Appointed to the conference committee from the Senate were Kevin L. Bryant (R-District 3), who introduced the "Sixth Day" amendment after his amendment to designate Genesis 1:24-25, which describes the sixth day of creation, as the official state passage from an ancient historical text, was rejected; Kevin L. Johnson (D-District 36), who was among the thirteen senators to vote to abandon the amendment on April 30, 2014; and Ross Turner (R-District 8), who was among the twenty-eight senators to vote to insist on the amendment.

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Appointed to the conference committee from the House were Phillip D. Owens (R-District 5), who voted for the amended bill in the House; William M. Hixon (R-District 83), who was absent from the vote on the amended bill in the House; and Robert L. Ridgeway III (D-District 64), who introduced the original version of HB 4482 in the first place, at the behest of a constituent eight-year-old paleontology enthusiast Olivia McConnell and who voted for the amended bill in the House. In all, four of the six members of the conference committee have already voted for the "Sixth Day" version of the bill.

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A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago[1][2] in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae which contains, along with mammoths, the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors.

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The earliest known proboscideans, the clade which contains the elephants, existed about 55 million years ago around the Tethys Sea area. The closest relatives of the Proboscidea are the sirenians and the hyraxes. The family Elephantidae is known to have existed six million years ago in Africa, and includes the living elephants and the mammoths. Among many now extinct clades, the mastodon is only a distant relative of the mammoths, and part of the separate Mammutidae family which diverged 25 million years before the mammoths evolved.[3]

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The following cladogram shows the placement of the genus Mammuthus among other proboscideans, based on hyoid characteristics:[4]

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__ Mammut (Mastodon)
___/
   \    __ Gomphotherium
    \__/
       \    __ Stegodon
        \__/
           \    __Loxodonta (African Elephant)
            \__/
               \    __ Elephas (Asian Elephant)
                \__/
                   \__ Mammuthus (Mammoth)

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Since many remains of each species of mammoth are known from several localities, it is possible to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the genus through morphological studies. Mammoth species can be identified from the number of enamel ridges on their molars; the primitive species had few ridges, and the amount increased gradually as new species evolved and replaced the former ones. At the same time, the crowns of the teeth became longer, and the skulls become higher from top to bottom and shorter from the back to the front over time to accommodate this.[5]

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The Columbian mammoth is on track to become the official state fossil of South Carolina, with no mention of its appearance on the Sixth Day of Creation.

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Yet the committee prepared a new version of the bill that omits any reference to the Sixth Day of Creation, simply stating:

Whereas, giant mammoths used to roam South Carolina; and

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Whereas, scientists have identified the fossils of about six hundred and fifty species of vertebrates in South Carolina to date; and

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Whereas, it has been recognized that fossilized mammoth teeth were discovered in a swamp in South Carolina in 1725; and

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Whereas, this discovery has been credited as the first scientific identification of a North American vertebrate fossil. Now, therefore,

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Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

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SECTION 1. Chapter 1, Title 1 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:

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"Section 1-1-691. The Columbian Mammoth is designated as the official State Fossil of South Carolina."

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SECTION 2. This act takes effect upon approval by the Governor.

The amended version of HB 4482 was passed on a 98-0 vote in the House on May 13, 2014; it now presumably returns to the Senate for its approval.

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