Need help debunking article on mixed up fossils

[Mr_Wilford]

So I'm in a debate with a creationist on youtube, and he cited this article to me, claiming it disproves the fossil record:
http://www.icr.org/article/dinosaur-fossil-wasnt-supposed-be-there

Can someone help me debunk it please?

 

[Collecemall]

First of all I'd point out that the one secular article they quote they didn't quote correctly. The article quotes the Rueters article but misquotes it. The creation institute says that the Reuters article says "wasn't supposed to be there." but the actual article from Reuters just says "We've never found a dinosaur in this location,". There's quite a difference between shouldn't be there and we haven't found one. Reading comprehension must not be essential when your agenda is spreading lies rather than reporting what is. Since they weren't capable of getting the first quote right I didn't bother reading the other 4-5 that quote other creationist crap.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE72O4TZ20110325

 

[Mr_Wilford]

First of all I'd point out that the one secular article they quote they didn't quote correctly. The article quotes the Rueters article but misquotes it. The creation institute says that the Reuters article says "wasn't supposed to be there." but the actual article from Reuters just says "We've never found a dinosaur in this location,". There's quite a difference between shouldn't be there and we haven't found one. Reading comprehension must not be essential when your agenda is spreading lies rather than reporting what is. Since they weren't capable of getting the first quote right I didn't bother reading the other 4-5 that quote other creationist crap.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE72O4TZ20110325

Ohhhhhh. I hadn't noticed that.

Well, it's a moot point now anyways. He's rambling on about parrots found in the cretaceous and won't listen to my rebuttals at all. It's sad, really

 

[Rumraket]

So an animal died somewhere and washed out to sea. This requires postulating a global flood? The whole thing is ridiculous. If the creationist case was true they'd not be jumping up and down at the find of a single out of place terrestrial organism, the entire fucking layer should be a random mix of organisms.

But it isn't, the only reason this is a sensation is because it happens so rarely, which is exactly what we would expect if individual organisms sometimes die near the shore and are washed out to sea.

Shouldn't the article be about how the whole layer is a haphazard mix of life, instead of the finding of a single misplaced fossil? This is why creationism is stupid desperation.

Also, while the organism in question might be georgraphically misplaced, it is chronologically where it should be(the layer has the right age). It's not a "rabbit in the precambrian" in case any creationist wants to insinuate that.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

First of all I'd point out that the one secular article they quote they didn't quote correctly. The article quotes the Rueters article but misquotes it. The creation institute says that the Reuters article says "wasn't supposed to be there." but the actual article from Reuters just says "We've never found a dinosaur in this location,". There's quite a difference between shouldn't be there and we haven't found one. Reading comprehension must not be essential when your agenda is spreading lies rather than reporting what is. Since they weren't capable of getting the first quote right I didn't bother reading the other 4-5 that quote other creationist crap.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE72O4TZ20110325

Ohhhhhh. I hadn't noticed that.

Well, it's a moot point now anyways. He's rambling on about parrots found in the cretaceous and won't listen to my rebuttals at all. It's sad, really

Well, to be fair, the article talks about finding an ankylosaur inside of a marine deposit. That is something that would be highly unlikely, but not impossible. The animal could have died near a beach and a large storm or large wave could have carried its remains out to sea. What is more likely, what I just proposed or this one fossil over turns everything we know about the geological record and a worldwide flood happened?

But finding a mixture of fossilized marine and land creatures together is not an unusual occurrence. For example, the famous dinosaur beds in the Morrison Formation at Dinosaur National Monument contain logs, clams, snails, and mammals.[sup]2[/sup]

Well, the Morrison Formation was a river delta, so of course there will be snails and clams there. Those animals can exist in freshwater and those are the types of clams and snails we find there. They are not marine snails or clams, thus Thomas is simply lying by claiming we found marine fossils in the Morrison Formation.

And the Institute for Creation Research's front lobby features a juvenile hadrosaur taken from the Two Medicine Formation—a sandstone formation which extends from the east side of the Rocky Mountains eastward to Edmonton, Canada—that was fossilized alongside marine clams and snails, as well as birds, mammals, and other dinosaurs.

I have never heard of the Two Medicine Formation, but judging from the small sample of fossils they point out (and assuming they are not lying like above); I bet it was beachfront property. It turns out I am correct:

Wikipedia[/url]"]Throughout the Campanian, the Two Medicine Fm. was deposited between the western shoreline of the Late Cretaceous Interior Seaway and the eastward advancing margin of the Cordilleran Overthrust Belt.

The above leads me to conclude that the beach that made up the Two Medicine Formation regressed and transgressed a few times, leading to terrestrial and marine deposits stacked closely on top of each other.

But Werner found that a fossil mixture of very different kinds was typical. He told Creation magazine:

Paleontologists have found 432 mammal species in the dinosaur layers….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.[sup]3[/sup]

[Emphasis in original]

This one is painful. Mammals and dinosaurs both evolved during the Triassic, thus finding mammal fossils throughout the "Age of Reptiles" is expected. A statement this ignorant can only come from someone that has gone out of their way to ignore the last 100 years of fossil finds. Furthermore, complete fossils are rare in the first place, but there are a few mammal fossils on display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in the Mesozoic Halls. Now, I am not saying this is true of all museums, but I would like to see the list of the 60 museums Dr. Werner visited, so that claim can be verified. I also wonder if he discounted displays that contained mammals simply because the complete fossil was not on display. Using a dishonest tactic like this is not above a typical creationist's play book.

Werner also learned that dinosaur-containing rock layers have "fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum living today," and that dinosaurs were mixed in with varieties of fish, amphibians, "parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc."[sup]3[/sup] If museums displayed these real fossils instead of adorning dinosaur dioramas with feathers, then the evolutionary story that "dinosaurs evolved into birds" would be quickly seen as the fiction that it is.[sup]4[/sup]

Finding every major invertebrata phyla living today that lived during the Mesozoic is not special. Second, the citation for the claim that "parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc." have been found leads to a creationist source with no citation given to support said claim; it is just stated as a fact. Thus, claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

There are many other examples of land-dwelling dinosaur fossils mixed with sea creatures.[sup]5[/sup] This kind of evidence is to be expected if a world-destroying flood was responsible for the bulk of the world's fossils, dinosaur and otherwise, considering that "the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered."[sup]6[/sup]

Proselytizing aside, the article that is cited discusses a huge burial that is made up almost entirely of Centrosaurus, yet the author wants to claim it as evidence of a flood. If that is the case, why is mostly Centrosaurus found there and not a mixture of several animals? The article even says that few swimming animals are found with these animals. Now, the scientists claim a huge tropical storm washed these critters out to sea, where they drowned in mass. As with the first fossil, what is more likely, what the scientists proposed or this one fossil bed overturns everything we know about the geological record and a worldwide flood happened?

 

[Rumraket]

This one is painful. Mammals and dinosaurs both evolved during the Triassic, thus finding mammal fossils throughout the "Age of Reptiles" is expected. A statement this ignorant can only come from someone that has gone out of their way to ignore the last 100 years of fossil finds. Furthermore, complete fossils are rare in the first place, but there are a few mammal fossils on display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in the Mesozoic Halls. Now, I am not saying this is true of all museums, but I would like to see the list of the 60 museums Dr. Werner visited, so that claim can be verified. I also wonder if he discounted displays that contained mammals simply because the complete fossil was not on display. Using a dishonest tactic like this is not above a typical creationist's play book.

Not to mention, just how incomplete were these skeletons? Are they occasionally missing toes, or a few ribs?
If it's missing one of the two hind limbs for example, the incompleteness is irrelevant because of bilateral symmetry. The other limb will just be a mirror image.

He doesn't specify anything about his claims of incompleteness so nothing can be verified. On that account it is entirely rational to dismiss the claim as unsupported assertions.

 

[Mr_Wilford]

Well, he's blocked me from further posting, and spammed me with this in response to my arguing the inner ear of pakicetus was close to that of modern whales.

http://creation.com/whale-evolution-fraud

Now I obviously cannot reply to him anymore, but I'm still curious by what the article claims:

Creation article wroter Werner reveals that in a National Geographic documentary in 2009 Dr Gingerich still claimed that Pakicetus should be classed with whales, based on its ear-bone. However, the ear-bone is not like a whale, which has a finger-like projection (sigmoid process), but is plate-like, like the fossils of land animals known as artiodactyls.

Now I'm detecting bullshit here, as those who discovered the fossil claimed it was quite whale like. So what the hell are they on about?

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Well, he's blocked me from further posting, and spammed me with this in response to my arguing the inner ear of pakicetus was close to that of modern whales.

http://creation.com/whale-evolution-fraud

Now I obviously cannot reply to him anymore, but I'm still curious by what the article claims:

Creation article wroter Werner reveals that in a National Geographic documentary in 2009 Dr Gingerich still claimed that Pakicetus should be classed with whales, based on its ear-bone. However, the ear-bone is not like a whale, which has a finger-like projection (sigmoid process), but is plate-like, like the fossils of land animals known as artiodactyls.

Now I'm detecting bullshit here, as those who discovered the fossil claimed it was quite whale like. So what the hell are they on about?

:facepalm:

Whales are artiodactyls! Thus, stating Pakicetus cannot be a whale because its inner-ear is like that of a artiodactyl is like saying a tiger cannot be a cat because it has canines like a carnivore.

Furthermore, who cares what a creationist says about anatomy? Anatomy is not something you can learn on a weekend. It takes years of specialized training to identify different processes and tuberosities found on different skeletal remains. Frankly, I find creationists that comment on such matters to be insulting.

 

[Mr_Wilford]

I wasn't aware that they were classified as artiodactyls. That resolves the issue for me, and I think can say from now on I'm not even going to give creationist claims the benefit of the doubt. This track record of misrepresentation and lies is incredible.