The Great Creationist Fossil Failure

I'm still learning about radiometric dating. And mutation rates. If I get enough time I will go back to that. But my main reason for leaving the site at that time was the language and abuse. Other creationist's messaged me privately and advised me not to put up with it. Obviously I have no reason to put up with the abuse, there is no reason to have a scientific discussion in an uncivilised manner.

I enjoyed that whole article and believe the facts present in the entire article favour the ark story. So the more you quote the happier I am. thanks for quoting the extra detail. I just like to keep my quotes short if possible.The scientists in the article seem a little confused. Obviously this confusion is solved by the ark story, the origin of all post-flood terrestrial mammals should be from Turkey. The bible points to that.

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Regarding the huge gap, always the timeframes come up. There appears to be a huge gap in the time periods only in evolutionist's eyes because evolutionists believe in huge timeframes.

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In terms of time frames the gap is believed to be huge because the evidence leads us to that conclusion. And I would remind you that there are Old Earth Creationists who accept the evidence of age.Also, if you are going to deal with the ages - and you just brought it up - any alternative explanation (if you ever come up with one) is going to need to explain why there is such a massive gap at that point.

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Can you tell me the actual height distance in the layers between the stromatolite and the first exoskeleton? Any reason why that difference is impossible to be laid down over a few years while the first trilobite sheds the exoskeleton? A few meters?

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It isn't so simple. Relative dating is based on the relationships between the rock strata - and I would maintain that this is closely connected to the order. Height would be hugely variable, given erosion and uplift. So the "gap" would actually be revealed by relative dating, or the order of deposition.I don't think it unreasonable, given the fact that relative dating and radiometric dating largely agree to conclude that there is an awful lot of deposition between the earliest stromatolite fossils and the Cambrian explosion - and you have yet to offer any reason to expect a gap at all.

Yes I believe that most dinosaurs did rapidly adapt from the archosaur. But not necessarily ark archosaurs, these would have been marine flood survivors. Archosaurs being arguably of amphibuous habits. This is why their numbers are greater in the Triassic and Jurassic, ark animals only starting to appear in number a little later.You say: Do you have a shred of evidence for that? And they are just one instance of a general pattern, though. Are you going to make piecemeal excuses for everything that looks exactly like scientists are right?I am not making piecemeal excuses. There is actually evidence to support that trilobites and early bacteria thrived in warm anoxic sulfuric environments. This is not very conducive to other life. So as today, there used to be prevalent environments and rare environments. To expect every modern environment to be prevalent enough in the Cambrian to show fossils is not logical.Even evolutionists excuse the lack of transitional fossils before the Cambrian explosion. To expect creationists to come up with a rare "angiosperm/mammal" environment in a marine/swampy pre-flood world is a little ironic when evolutionists also have little evidence for transitional fossils before the Cambrian Explosion.The early precambrian was anoxic.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/...rticle/pii/S0301926805000355There is evidence to support that trilobites and bacteria existed in an anoxic sulfuric environment:
Just a moment...
"""Late Cambrian to early Ordovician trilobites, the family Olenidae, were tolerant of oxygen-poor, sulfur-rich sea floor conditions, and a case is made that they were chemoautotrophic symbionts. Olenids were uniquely adapted to this habitat in the Lower Paleozoic, which was widespread in the Late Cambrian over Scandinavia. This life habit explains distinctive aspects of olenid morphology: wide thoraces and large numbers of thoracic segments, thin cuticle and, in some species, degenerate hypostome, and the occasional development of brood pouches. Geochemical and field evidence is consistent with this interpretation. Olenids occupied their specialized habitat for 60 million years until their extinction at the end of the Ordovician.Colorless sulfur bacteria, a heterogeneous category of bacteria, are able to use reduced sulfur as a source of energy for growth and reproduction; as autotrophs, many use carbon dioxide as their sole source of carbon. They employ a variety of reactions to release this energy, reflecting a comparable variety of phylogenetic origins (1, 2). The bacteria require both a source of sulfur or sulfide and also a limited quantity of oxygen to permit oxidation."""

Two points in this.First, we do have evidence if transitional fossils before the Cambrian explosion (and good reasons why they should be rare). Creationists have no evidence, and the same reasons do not apply.Second, the fact that one (and only one) family of trilobites is specialised for low-oxygen conditions is hardly evidence that such conditions were so common that we should not expect to see fossils of modern Crustacea - or close relatives - from that period.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

You say : you have yet to offer any reason to expect a gap at all.I have offered a reason. The bacteria collected on the surface first.Then after a few years the first exoskeleton would have been deposited. Fossilisation does not occur every time something falls to the ground. Who knows how long the bacteria were multipying before the first exoskeleton actually got fossilised.Here's another reason we could have bacteria existing together with trilobites from creation week, but the trilobite fossils are rarely found at the lowest layers:
http://inyo.coffeecup.com/site/latham/latham.html
The main reason there are so few complete, intact trilobite specimens to be found in the Latham--and at other early Cambrian sites, for that matter--has to do with the original fragility of the animal's exoskeleton. In actual life, trilobites possessed a thin outer covering composed of chitin--a hard, horny substance protecting the delicate soft-bodied organism within. While this material can be preserved in the rocks for millions of years, the problem is that the primitive early Cambrian trilobites--among the earliest known animals with hard parts--had loosely attached body segments. Thus, the head, thorax (middle portion) and tail tended to separate very easily upon the animal's death. Also, trilobites molted throughout their lives, periodically shedding their chitinous external covering in much the same way their modern-day relatives, insects, crabs, scorpions and pill bugs regularly shed their own exoskeletons during the molting process. The result was that the trauma of the molting often caused the already free-moving body segments of the trilobite to disassociate and break off, to be scattered by the sea currents.These animals did all exist together with bacteria in the Pre-Cambrian:
http://inyo.coffeecup.com/site/latham/latham.html
All told, roughly 21 different species of fossils--from tracks and trails of soft-bodied organisms (who left no other evidence of their existence)--to a siliceous sponge have been identified from the Latham Shale of the Marble Mountains. In addition to trilobites, the fossil faunal list includes a coelenterate (possible jelly fish), three species of brachiopods, two kinds of mollusks, an annelid (worm), an echinoderm, anomalocaris fragments (this was the largest predator of the early Cambrian seas--olenellids likely ducked whenever they saw this monster lurking about...), and Girvanella nodules (precipitated by a species of cyanobacteria, blue-green algae).

My understanding was that pre-Cambrian oceans were largely anoxic. If you can show me evidence of vast areas of aerobic pre-Cambrian oceans then I would be more inclined to expect modern lobsters back then. If not vast areas then they would be confined to rare niche environments which would explain the lack.

You say you do have evidence for early transitional fossils. Please show me any evidence for any ancestor of the trilobite. A transitional type with a form about halfway between bacteria and a trilobite would be particularly convincing.

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You say : you have yet to offer any reason to expect a gap at all.

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I have offered a reason. The bacteria collected on the surface first.

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Put barely like that it is hardly a reason at all - and as I have already pointed out there is no good reason to expect it to be true. Nor is it a reason to expect any significant gap. Or really any gap - if a stromatolite is growing on the sea floor it would hardly be difficult for an exoskeleton to be deposited nearby or even in a stratum with a similar relative date.

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Then after a few years the first exoskeleton would have been deposited. Fossilisation does not occur every time something falls to the ground. Who knows how long the bacteria were multipying before the first exoskeleton actually got fossilised.

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In other words you are assuming that quite large stromatolites can form much quicker than trilobites can grow. To the point where every Precambrian stromatolite that we have found had been completely formed long before there were any significant number of moulted exoskeletons. I think that is implausible, and needs more evidence.

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Here's another reason we could have bacteria existing together with trilobites from creation week, but the trilobite fossils are rarely found at the lowest layers

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No, it isn't. There is a huge difference between finding incomplete fossils and finding no fossils.

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These animals did all exist together with bacteria in the Pre-Cambrian:

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The quoted material refers to fossils found in the Latham Shale which is Cambrian, not Precambrian.

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You say you do have evidence for early transitional fossils. Please show me any evidence for any ancestor of the trilobite.

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Transitional fossils are rarely identifiable as direct ancestors - the fossil record is usually too sparse for such identifications to be reliably made.Trilobite ancestry is obscure, but we do have earlier relatives, such as the anomolacarids and arthropod traces can be dated back to the early Cambrian.

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A transitional type with a form about halfway between bacteria and a trilobite would be particularly convincing.

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Do you imagine that trilobites evolved directly from bacteria ? Perhaps you would like to explain - at least roughly - where this intermediate of yours would fit into the actual tree of life.

Yes, you have made such claims and yet as expected offered no evidence to support those assertions. Again, there is absolutely no evidence to support your Biblical fantasy. All you are doing is making shit up to pretend the Bible stories actually reflect reality instead of fantasy. There is nothing in either of the Biblical flood myths to suggest the fountains of the deep mean anything other than water. Again, what you are doing is once again (just as Biblical Christians do with the Bible) taking pieces parts out of context to tray to make reality fit your fantasy.Yes there were sea level incursions but never a period when all the earth was under water. And there was dry land surrounding those inland sea incursions throughout the period.There is not even one human fossil, one human artifact that has been found below the P/T boundary.BUT wait, there is more:There is not one single example of any modern critter found below the P/T boundary. Not one human example, not one cattle kind, not one bird kind, not one example of flowering plants, not one raven kind (note the Bible separates ravens and doves as different kinds), not one camel, not one lion or tiger or bear, OhMy.So a Biblical flood at the P/T boundary to kill of humans that simply did not even exist is REALLY stupid of God or it is clear evidence that the Biblical flood failed since not a single modern critter got killed.

And yet another totally unsupported assertion. There is no evidence of an Ark or any reason that the Ark story explains what was found unless as usually you just make stuff up.The Ark story has the unusual animals that come going on the Ark and so they would not be found as fossils.Also there are NO mammal critters found below the P/T boundary. You still need to 'splain that.

That's right people have never imagined things that never existed. That you think serpopauds mean people lived with dinosaurs means a lot about your critical thinking skills and your ability to discern reality.Are you ready to present your evidence on mermaids? Griffins?

If you look at the DNA evidence it is clear that humans originated in Africa. The mixture of Neanderthal DNA is another clue.And the "map with arrows" reflects that evidence.Better stay away from those creationist websites--they're lying to you!

They're lying to you.But if you want to discuss the issue, I started a thread just for that late last summer. Bring the problems with radiometric dating to that thread.