Dinos and Men (How do we assess the claims of sources?)

Folks,I have recently encounted a young creationist who is asking lots of questions but many need some help in performing critical analysis of sources. In a recent discussion, they used the following source as support to the idea that Evolution has problems. I have no real knowledge in this area and would like some assistance. I will get my young friend to take a look at the answers and we hopeful ask some questions later on.

quote:

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"There are a number of known scientific facts which raise serious questions concerning the geologic column and timetable. One such example would be the existence of numerous contemporaneous human and dinosaur prints found in Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and other U.S. localities. These tracks are widely distributed and are usually only exposed by flood erosion or bulldozers.

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They have been carefully studied and verified by Palaeontologists and cannot be dismissed as frauds. Furthermore. there are places in Arizona and Rhodesia where dinosaur pictographs have been found drawn on cave or canyon walls by man. Unfossilized dinosaur bone containing blood have even been found.

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The obvious implication is that man once lived contemporaneously with dinosaurs, contrary to the commonly accepted chronology of the geologic column and timetable. Job 40:15-41:34 provides an interesting reference in this connection which seems to refer to land and marine dinosaurs living in Jobs day. It is also intriguing to not that in 1977 a Japanses fishing ship snagged teh decaying body of a possible "plesiosaur" 900 feet underwater near New Zeaand. It has been said that we do not know more about the surface of the moon than we know the depths of the seas.

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Five toed llamas alledgedly became extincy 30 million years ago according to the evolutionary framework. Yet, archaeologists have found pottery with etchings of five toed llamas on it. Skeletons of five toed llamas have also been found in association with the Tiahuanacan culture. An ancient Mayan relief sculpture of a bird resembling an Archaeoptryx has been found. This indicates a discrepancy of about 130 million years. If the geologic column is correct, the two should never have met. Apparently, the geologic column is in error.

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An amazing discovery was made by William Meister on June 1, 1968 in Utah. He found the fossils of several trilobytes in teh fossilized, sandaled footprint of a man! But according the the evolutionary timetable worked out in the geologic column, trilobytes became extinct about 230 million years before the appearance of man!! Thus, to find a modern, sandal-shod man existing contemporaneously with trolobytes is utterly devastating to the geologic column and evolutionary framework....." the collapse of evolution by Scott M. Huse

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1. How would you perform an analysis of such claims? 2. if people would be so good, can we examine the claims and provides some links or evidence for my friend to look at? Admins: I'm not sure where this should go - while on one level it is a discussion of the geological column, on the other the intention is to help a keen student develop skills that encourage critical analysis of claims and "evidence"This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 01 February 2005 12:26 AMThis message has been edited by Charles Knight, 01 February 2005 12:28 AM

Moved from PNT by AdminJar.

The first thing to notice as part of the big picture is that none of those things, even if true, have anything to do with disproving evolution. Thinking that they do usually comes from a mischaracterization of evolution. The fact that two species coexisted when previously thought they did not or that an ancient species is actually not extinct only changes what we know about the details of the fact part of evolution.As for examining these claims you have to ask to what degree one personally needs verification. If all you need is a casual description of why all those things are false then a simple internet search for the numerous sites, talkorigins.org not the least, should be enough to pacify.If one needs deeper verification then it seems only natural that the original sources for the claim must be examined first. If no original sources are provided then there should be grave suspicion. Alternativly you can look at the counter argument and investigate the sources of those for leads.

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By the way, for a fun second-term drinking game, chug a beer every time you hear the phrase, "...contentious but futile protest vote by democrats." By the time Jeb Bush is elected president you will be so wasted you wont even notice the war in Syria.
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

TalkOrigins mentions some of these items - the "pleisiosaur" is apparentlt a rotted basking shark, and the Meister print is discussed here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/meister.html
It is apparently a vaguely shoe-sole shaped area in a rock. The "unfossilized dinosaur bone containing blood" contained degraded heme, a constituent of blood, but not actual blood.

I think that the approach has to be the same as we try to apply to pretty much anything posted here or that one might be exposed to anywhere.The first thing is to get clear just what is being claimed and what the evidence looks like.This should be used to be sure that any statement of facts are actually factual and try to decide if the "fact" is reasonable well supported.Of course, much of what we accept or reject is based on the body of knowledge we already have and past experiences. For example, we don't tend to believe someone who has lied to us in the past. We tend to have a higher degree of skepticism if someone has something to gain from one side or the other of the issue.I'll stop now and have a look at what has been discussed here about the items you list. I'd like to see them as separate threads.Is this thread about examining sources or about the individual claims?Only the llama claim hasn't been discussed here before. Though the o nly dinosaur tracks that I think we have discussed have been the Paluxy river ones (which some creationist sites agree aren't well founded).Back with more later: meanwhile let's have the sources and refrences for each of the claims."They have been carefully studied and verified by Palaeontologists and cannot be dismissed as frauds."We'd have to see the published material that describes the apparent verification for example. I'm reasonable sure that this statement will be found to be unfounded.ABE
The trilobite and sandal claim is here:
Message 137It is apparent looking at the picture (if this is the same one as your friend is putting forward) that it is NOT a sandal.2nd addition
Message 59
This is a picture of a petroglyph and it is discussed there. Again clearly a suspect piece of evidence. It doesn't require a lot of knowledge to realize this is either not strong or even faked.Once a source has supplied a few pieces of poor data one should start to suspect everything supplied by it.I'll find the "plesiosaur" pic next. I've seen it. It is not what is claimed. Kent Hovind's Plesiosaur
was a thread devoted to this topic. I understand that the DNA has been examined.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-01-2005 14:16 AM

One of the discussions on rock drawings of dinosaurs was here.As I said back in that thread in Message 45 of that thread, I have personally wandered over much of that part of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah as well as much of the area around Palaux, Tx, and the drawings being called dinosaurs are not frauds but rather simple misidentification of very common objects found throughout the area. I hesitate to say that it is intentional misrepresentation but it is very definitely intentional that other similar drawings found in the same area that would question the identification as a dinosaur are left out.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The basic methodology is always be skeptical. You have to decide on the degree of skepticism to apply to each situation, but you should always consult multiple sources, especially sources with different viewpoints and axes to grind, for any claim that you consider important.When you intend to use some claim as an element of a discussion with others, you are putting your imprimatur on that claim, explicitly or implicitly, even if you include caveats. Therefore, in those situations you bear greater responsibility for double- and triple-checking before diving in.Finally, with time and experience you get a feeling for what sources are likely to be trustworthy (because their claims have checked out so often in the past), and you may check those less thoroughly than others. You also get a feeling for what sources are not likely to be trustworthy; sources whose claims did not check out in the past, sources that change the subject or disappear whenever you question their claims, sources that deny that evidence exists but cannot list or discuss the evidence that is alleged to exist, sources that never answer questions, and sources that claim they could expound further but happen to have convenient excuses for not doing so (e.g. "it's not worth it, you won't listen anyway").(In re that last item, I love this post).One way of evaluating a source is how easy it is to check their claims. For example, you quoted "One such example would be the existence of numerous contemporaneous human and dinosaur prints found in Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and other U.S. localities. ... They have been carefully studied and verified by Palaeontologists and cannot be dismissed as frauds. Furthermore, there are places in Arizona and Rhodesia where dinosaur pictographs have been found drawn on cave or canyon walls by man. Unfossilized dinosaur bone containing blood have even been found."Each of those sentences should contain or be immediately followed by some information as to the source of the claim, where the interested reader could go the get further detail.Another clue to unreliability is the "Gish Gallop": a rapid fire of different claims with no discussion or references; each claim spewed out in that manner can take hours to weeks of research to evaluate adequtely.As to the specific claims you list, I haven't run into the five-toed llama one before. However, the others are old chestnuts, and a source that propagates such hoary falsehoods should automatically be suspect in areas that you can't check or haven't checked. The real stories are easily found on the Web; TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy is always a good place to start (feel free to check opposing viewpoints by using their extensive links to creationist sites, a courtesy which is seldom reciprocated; one wonders if the creationists are trying to stifle honest inquiry). Especially look at the extensive Index to Creationist Claims which has brief discussions of many claims and lots of pointers to more information.There are no validated or even likely "man with dinosaur" tracks or dinosaur bones with blood or human footprints in trilobite-fossil-bearing strata. There is no such thing as a marine dinosaur (admittedly an unimportant quibble). The Japanese "plesiosaur" was a shark.On the dinosaur tracks, the most famous example is the Paluxy tracks, beloved of Carl Baugh (Creation Evidence Museum of Texas) (he's also the sandal-print-over-the-trilobite guy). Even the Institute for Creation Research has given up on Paluxy (Acts and Facts Magazine | The Institute for Creation Research), as has Answers in Genesis ( Arguments to Avoid Topic | Answers in Genesis , about halfway down the page, and be sure to apply this kind of critique to their other evidence of human-dinosaur coexistance). The canonical reference, from the man who convinced John Morris of the ICR but is seldom if ever credited by creationists, is Glenn Kuban's The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy. There's long discussions of the issue at Creation/Evolution Issue 15 (Volume 5, Number 1 - Winter 1985) and Creation/Evolution Issue 17 (Volume 6, Number 1 - Winter 1986).(Note how long ago this information was available to the casual researcher. You didn't state which edition of Huse you are using, but the third edition was issued in 1998 and the first edition was 1983. There's no excuse for Huse not at least mentioning the viewpoints contrary to his own in the third edition ... unless, of course, he's solely interested in propagandizing and doesn't care a whit for veracity.)Glenn Kuban's site is also the canonical reference for The "Meister Print": An Alleged Human Sandal Print from Utah and the last source for Answers in Genesis's critique of Carl Baugh What About Carl Baugh?.The dinosaur blood claim is summarized in the Index to Creationist Claims at Claim CC371 and is discussed extensively in the recent article Dino-blood and the Young Earth. The pleisosaur claim also appears in the Index to Creationist Claims at Claim CB930.2 and in detail by our old friend Glen Kuban at Sea-monster or Shark? (uncharacteristically, there's no link for the former to the latter, but it's easy to Google from the information in the Index to CC).It's difficult to debunk the dinosaur drawings claim because it's so vague, but Claim CH710.2 and Claim CH710.1 may be relevant.{Fixed bad link}This message has been edited by JonF, 02-02-2005 10:36 AM

I'm enlisting the good folks in talk.origins to look into the llama and archaeopteryx claims.The archaeopteryx (mis-spelled in your original post) claim is mentioned at MODERN GEOLOGIC THEORIES ARE THEY ACCURATE?. (As an aside, this page is another one chock full o' PRATTS [Points Refuted A Thousand TimeS] and incredible ignorance. Picking just one example, the "Human body in strata supposedly 100 million years old" is Moab Man [AKA Malachite Man] and is yet another one debunked by Glenn Kuban; see Claim CC110:. It could be interesting for your group to look up some of these claims on talkorigins.org.) Anyhow, the reference given there is to "Science Digest, Nov. 1968" which someone is looking up and will report back on later this week.Several people have noted that Mayan art is both representational and abstract,and it's often difficult or impossible (lacking detailed knowledge of the Mayan culture) to separate the two. One famous example is the Sarcophagus of Pakal the Great, which Erich von Daniken interpreted as an astronaut in a rocket ship with a air tube in his nose. For an example from our culture, see Wisconsin (partly a joke and partly serious ... how would someone who knows nothing of our culture interpret that?)Otheres have noted that the Hoatzin "looks prehistoric" and has clawed fingers as juveniles, as Archaeopteryx did. RELIC OF PREHISTORY? explicitly compares the Hoatzin to Arcaheopteryx. And this bird is found where the Maya lived. Might not be too surprising to find an Archaeopteryx-like representation of a Hoatzin in Maya art.More on this claim later when we get the report from Science Digest.The llama claim is found in TIME UPSIDE DOWN, in chapter 7. The source of the claim that long-extinct llamas had five toes is given as "Colbert, E. 1955. Evolution of the vertebrates. NY: Wiley". The source of the claims about pottery art and recent skeletons is listed as "Honore, P. 1964. In quest of the white god. NY: Putnam's". I bet the first reference would be available in a large city or good university library. Finding the second in a library is a bit more problematic, but Google shows there are copies available for as little as US$8.50 or so; Alibris. This could be a good research project and learning experience if someone wants to put up a little money and time (bearing in mind that getting the Honore book is probably not the last step; you'll need to check his references). Does the 1955 reference support the claim of extinction of five-toed llamas? Do more modern references, using new data obtained in the last fifty years, support the claim? Is the representation of llamas unquestionably representational and clearly five-toed? Is the pottery unquestionably ancient? Are five-toed llama fossils really found in unmistakable association with modern skeletons and unambiguously and rigorously documented as being so? Could be a heck of a learning experience for the group, and the results could be useful to talkorigins.org or to a creationist organization, depending on how it plays out. (Of course, I have an opinion on how it'll play out, but it's not yet supported by evidence).

Although JonF pretty thoroughly deconstructed this quoted passage, I'd like to take a stab at the discrepancies in the archeology paragraph. In the first place, only by the greatest stretch of the imagination can "llama" and "extinct for 30 my" be used in the same sentence. Llamas (or, in fact, any camelid) didn't exist 30 mya. At that time we are still looking at basal artiodactyls, including the anthracotheres which were the lineal ancestors of the camelids and hippos (for instance).Secondly, llamas are even-toed ungulates as are all camelids. A five-toed version, extinct or not, would be, hmmm, unusual to say the least, and would be a major source of debate and argument. No such argument exists, the phylogeny of camelids is very well understood. Without a reference or at least distinct species name for this animal, a tentative conclusion would be that such an organism doesn't exist except in the author's imagination.Inre the alleged carvings from the Tiahuanacan culture, without a reference it is impossible to determine exactly what was depicted. Llama were domesticated in the Central Andes around 6000 ya, and figured prominently in all aspects of Andean culture up to the time of the Spanish Conquest. Many carvings, engravings, and paintings, etc, of llama and its kin are known from the region. Five-toed versions, however, are not listed in any of the archeological collections I have encountered.As to the alleged Mayan Archeopteryx, this is an old claim long-debunked. The quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) figured prominently in Mesoamerican mythology. The Maya (Kukulkan), Toltec and Aztec (Quetzalcoatl) cultures ALL had feathered serpent gods. The most parsimonious explanation is they are all derived from the quetzal, since this magnificent bird is native to the region formerly occupied by these cultures. In addition, Mayan ceremonial headdress is known to have been composed of quetzal feathers. The similarities between the quetzal (and depictions of the various gods), and Archeopteryx are extremely superficial. Quetzal in flight. Artists reconstruction of archy.If you squint a bit, maybe the two look alike. Again, this is quite obviously a flight of imagination.

Nicely done. Especially the bit about camelids.In the abstract, this points out the necessity of investigating every aspect of a creationist claim, and illustrates the degree of effort involved in investigating every aspect of a Gish Gallop series of claims as was found in the original quote.Why is it that creationist works, especially the small web sites but also the major organizations and published books, contain so many errors of fact? I think it's largely because they uncritically copy from each other so often, and sometimes "improve" the story a bit in the copying. But IMHO it also points to a more fundamental problem; they just don't think facts and reality are important. I don't think facts and reality are the only things that are important; but, to me, they are important.

One feature of the explosion in communication that has taken place over the last 100 years (telegraph, facsimile, then radio, phone, television and internet) is that vast amounts of raw data has been made available. Often the data is presented as information as opposed to just data. Rumor and opinion are presented exactly the same as fact or theory. News and entertainment are now one and the same.One thing that is sorely neglected in today's education systems is the formal teaching of methods of discrimination, discernment. We don't teach kids how to sift through large volumes of data quickly and form a realistic estimate of whether the data is pertinent and relative, or how reliable it might be. We don't teach judgement or verification.Based on that I wonder what we should be doing differently?How can we teach people the techniques needed to handle the vast amounts of often unfiltered data that they recieve?Do critical thinking and discrimination need to become cornerstones of education?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Ya know, I might have been a bit hard on the author. There WAS a very diverse lineage of odd-toed browsers that lived in South America from about 7 mya almost to the present: the Litopterna. They're actually hooved, although have no relationship at all to any modern hooved animals, and a reduction in toes from the most ancient five-toed version to three and even one has been documented. The last living litoptern Macrauchenia patachonica apparently went extinct ~20 kya. I suppose it's just barely conceivable that an isolated population might have survived up to the time of human occupation (if you take the 12.5-13 kya dates for Monte Verde, f'rinstance). Meaning that some skeleton might have been found in proximity to a human area. It now comes to my mind that M. patachonica was one of the fossils Darwin collected during the Beagle voyage. Add to that the possibility that the creationists are accidently or deliberately confusing the name (Auchenia is latin for "llama"), with the form (it sort of resembles a camel, although it apparently had a short proboscis or long flexible snout), and the habitat/range, and I can see how they could confuse the two. Of course, M. patachonica only had three toes, so maybe not.I'd be curious to see if this is the case, or at least if this formed the basis for the claim. Yeah, the incestuous nature of creationist websites never ceases to amaze me. They seem to propagate any claim ever put forward by anyone without checking any facts. Even when one or another is debunked, you can guarantee that others will continue to reproduce it. "Facts? We don need no steenkin' facts!"

Regardless of whether such critters lived alongside humans, is there a possibility that skeletons of such critters might be found by modern humans in the area?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Absolutely. I mentioned that Darwin found one, right? Finding a litoptern skeleton would be no less likely than finding any other fossil of a widely distributed organism. OTOH, getting from even a mostly-complete skeleton to an engraving of a living animal is a stretch, IMO. I pretty much think the whole thing is made up, if not out of whole cloth, then by "accretion" of random bits of unrelated data.

Update from talk.origins: John Harshman claims that there were Eocene camelids, e.g. Poebrotherium. My checking indicates that Poebrotherium is usually listed as Oligocene, but is also listed at about 35 million years old (e.g. Object of the Month: January, 2004) which makes it Eocene. John comments "Well, even-toed ungulates did start out with five toes, as did all mammal groups. The earliest known artiodactyl, Diacodexis, has 5 toes on the front limbs and 4 on the rear."