la brea tar pits/ humphreys

It is not silly. but I will not open any windows yet but to inform you that I have "drilled" my way up into this part of the site and expect on past performance only better things to come. I am an debted in this post-EvC sense to Humphries for giving me the inside tract on Einstein I had not tried to open before. I approve of the whole truth thus but it will be material where Humphries writes about the "basic principles". I may have longitutde and latitude reversed here because of evolutionary influneces but this would only be possible for me to very in long time or if someone esle finds out this possible error of mine first and continues to bring if that to my attention.

Hi forgiven. Missed this reply the first time around. I guess thanks are owed to Brad for resurrecting this thread from the depths.

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quetzal, i think the creationist view runs something like, there's at least one area (i've read many), only about 4 cubic feet, in which so many fossils are located, from so many different types of creature, that it would be impossible without the 'catastrophic' scenerio (ie the flood)... you might wanna look into that, i haven't been able to find any website that even attempts to explain the occurance in evolutionary terms

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I've honestly never heard this claim before. Could you post a link to one of the creationist sites that describes the issue? The problem is that the journals I normally frequent don't appear to have addressed the issue at all (or at least not in those terms). To me, this indicates it might be a non-issue from a scientific standpoint. OTOH, I may just be looking in the wrong place or using the wrong search terms. Thanks.

Originally posted by Quetzal:
Hi forgiven. Missed this reply the first time around. I guess thanks are owed to Brad for resurrecting this thread from the depths.

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quetzal, i think the creationist view runs something like, there's at least one area (i've read many), only about 4 cubic feet, in which so many fossils are located, from so many different types of creature, that it would be impossible without the 'catastrophic' scenerio (ie the flood)... you might wanna look into that, i haven't been able to find any website that even attempts to explain the occurance in evolutionary terms

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I've honestly never heard this claim before. Could you post a link to one of the creationist sites that describes the issue? The problem is that the journals I normally frequent don't appear to have addressed the issue at all (or at least not in those terms). To me, this indicates it might be a non-issue from a scientific standpoint. OTOH, I may just be looking in the wrong place or using the wrong search terms. Thanks.The page you were looking for doesn't exist (404)this is the article i was originally referring to

Hi Graedek,Thanks for the link. I was wondering what the actual claim was.There seem to be several areas that the article you linked claim are "impossible to explain from an evolutionary standpoint" (I always wonder where creationists come up with this idea). I'm not going to try and rebut every single argument in the article (you can explore the Page Museum website I linked to if you're actually interested), but I would like to bring out a few of the specifics for consideration.1. The article appears to state there are "too many fossils" to be explained by entrapment events. The actual case is that, while there have been millions of specimens recovered, the actual number of individual animals recovered is consistent with about ten large mammals being trapped every decade over a period of 30,000 years. Not an overwhelmingly impressive number. The article disingenuously neglects to bring out this distinction.2. The article states that an unexplainable "anomaly" is the ratio of carnivores to herbivores (more of the former than the latter). The article tries to draw a spurious comparison with the ratios in living populations in Africa and Canada, (ratios which are dependent on energy flow and carrying capacity in an ecosystem). In other words, they're trying to compare apples and oranges. The only way this comparison can even be remotely viable is if all entrapment of every animal was completely random and dependent on population density. That isn't the case. One herbivore (say a mammoth) gets trapped. A pack of dire wolves comes in to feed on the unlucky victim and several members are in turn trapped. How many herbivores were trapped and how many carnivores? Isn't it also possible that trapped carnivores might in turn attract even more carnivores or scavengers? Herbivores are likely to avoid a carcass, not approach it, especially if there are carnivores around.3. Too many eagles. Apparently the author of the article is unaware that eagles, as well as being good hunters, are also quite opportunistic scavengers. How many doves have you seen feeding on dead animals? The same idea as with mammalian carnivores applies. Something gets stuck, something else comes to eat it and also gets stuck. It's also fairly easy to dismiss the comparison to the Arizona tar pit left by a road crew that is the only counter-example the author tries to use to refute the "trapped herbivore attracting carnivore" explanation. Note one glaring discrepancy in that refutation? See any large mammals being trapped in the Arizona example? See any reason for an eagle or other known scavenger bird to land in it?4. The article claims there are too many landbirds vs waterbirds. Excuse me? Tar looks like water? The tarpits are a land-based phenomenon. Why is it surprising that land based birds such as turkeys would be more likely to wander in...?5. Damaged bones. I'm going to quote the article directly, here.

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The superior grade of preservation that characterized the individual specimens stood in stark contrast to the ravaged appearance of the fossil material as a whole. A majority of the bones were damaged in some way: sharp-edged broken ends, splinters, cracks, impact depressions, deep grooves, broken-off chips, and/or heavy abrasions.

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And the explanation that the article seems unaware of: Conditions of fossilization from the Page Museum site.I think that's enough for now. I hope I've shown that yet another CRS article doesn't hold up very well under any kind of scrutiny.

thanks for the clarification quetzel. I read that paper some time ago, and haven't really thought too much of it since then. I had originally wondered if the curiosities of the pits had resulted from a glacial flood event, but had no idea(message 13 of this thread). Also, this area is shaken up quite regularly by quakes, and i had wondered if that played a part in the 'mixing' up of the bones.------------------ [This message has been edited by graedek, 12-19-2002]

GraedekSince you're not getting much on Humphreys' cosmology I'll chip in.As a theoretical physicist who has studied general relativity, I'm very enthusiastic about Humphreys' work. I think it's the answer, at least qualitatively although I am no longer able to follow the finer points of the maths.His model in detail may need to be massaged but the basic idea is sound. It very clenly explains how one can have a 6000 yo universe with 15 billion year old galxies that are visible to us. Humphreys has rebutted Ross' claims. It's all on the web.It's clear that the creators of the Big Bang had to find a way for the Big Bang to warp only space and not time. They succeded by assuming matter was spread evenly throughout the universe for all of its existence. That was an assumption. If you take that assumption away you get a huge-warping of time centred on the centre of the universe as well as space. As simple as that.This is God's universe and God's relativity. A young universe as viewed from the centre basically falls out of general relativity without so much as a nudge.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-19-2002]

Are you sure or certain that you wish or continue to speak of time differentially in the same formal splits as I or you may with space?

I was not intending to reply on the Pit part of your post, but since "ice age" (show I saw on DVD) your link is thankfully not that!

I'm not sure what you mean Brad? Are you referring to my 'time-warp centred on the centre of the universe'? That's exactly what GR on a bounded manifold predicts.

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Originally posted by Brad McFall:
I was not intending to reply on the Pit part of your post, but since "ice age" (show I saw on DVD) your link is thankfully not that!

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Originally posted by Brad McFall:
I was not intending to reply on the Pit part of your post, but since "ice age" (show I saw on DVD) your link is thankfully not that!

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did you check out the link?
To be a 'fly on the wall' and witness an event like thatwow
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As you probably know I speak for myself. I do not think that space and time can be simply networked potentially either way as Wolfram lends us the carrot to continue his work off of on, what I meant was that differential time is not something I understand very well but spatial evolution I am willing to postulate so I have no problem with an extra SPACE dimension but if I came across the cosmology and it attempted to explain to me an extra TIME dim then (and this is not so far out as to what Rene Thom whanted communicated in his writings on extending catastrophe models to better approximation to nature and/or science) I would not have likely chosen to post on cosmology and remained with my standards of bashing Provine etc. It seemed to me however that this is what you said but since you phrase in "what GR on a bounded manifold predicts" I may have once again misread your post. I dont know why that happens to me more frequently with yours than others but Inter Alia I mention that Menge may not be Manifold and that I would have first thought only about the gravity waves before a general prediction of GR. I do not have that expertise and since I am finding that I disagree with Einstein on more easily grasped stuff I doubt it will turn to some Borel vs Lebseque difference in terms of GR but it was SR that gave me this confidence. I had a high-school thought on looking at Penrose twistors about g-waves and the Humphreys model gave me a similar feel on the watching the Video. At one place Einstein talks about summing of indexs and I have deviated in the margin at this point for which subjectvity of my own i need a re-read before I weave this into the writing.

Yes, I have not started to discuss CRS articles generally on the web.

Hi Quetzal,Did you hear anything from Dr Offord, yet?I was browsing a bit and encountered your comments on the La Brea pit:Q: 2. The article states that an unexplainable "anomaly" is the ratio of carnivores to herbivores (more of the former than the latter).PB: Indeed, the La Brea fossils demonstrate a 10 to 1 ratio for herbivores and carnivores, of which 3 out of 10 are smilodon fatalis (sabre tooths).Q: The article tries to draw a spurious comparison with the ratios in living populations in Africa and Canada, (ratios which are dependent on energy flow and carrying capacity in an ecosystem). In other words, they're trying to compare apples and oranges.PB: I always thought that comparison of apples and oranges is allowed in evolutionism. Evolutionists do it all the time. They compare chimp to human to fishes to trees to whatever. So, this can hardly be an argument.Q: The only way this comparison can even be remotely viable is if all entrapment of every animal was completely random and dependent on population density. That isn't the case. One herbivore (say a mammoth) gets trapped. A pack of dire wolves comes in to feed on the unlucky victim and several members are in turn trapped.
How many herbivores were trapped and how many carnivores? Isn't it also possible that trapped carnivores might in turn attract even more carnivores or scavengers?PB: ...and upon the entrapment of the carnivores more packs of carnivores came, who became entrapped, and that attracted more carnivores, who became entrapped, that attracted more canrivores, etcetera. So, it probably took only a couple of centuries to fill the tar pit with thousands of skeletons. It elegantly explains the 10:1 ratio.Q: Herbivores are likely to avoid a carcass, not approach it, especially if there are carnivores around.PB: Probably the presence of carnivores alone would be sufficient.Best wishes,
Peter

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Originally posted by peter borger:
PB: ...and upon the entrapment of the carnivores more packs of carnivores came, who became entrapped, and that attracted more carnivores, who became entrapped, that attracted more canrivores, etcetera. So, it probably took only a couple of centuries to fill the tar pit with thousands of skeletons. It elegantly explains the 10:1 ratio.

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Your scenario of chain feeding carnivores would require an enormous population density of carnivores, an unreasonable density. What you propose would quickly wipe out the carnivores locally, and by the time more colonize the area the trapped animals would sink into the muck and stop the cycle. Until another herbivore wandered into the trap.------------------
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