Billions of footprints are preserved in the rock record. While bones get all the attention, fossil footprints, a type of ichnofossils outnumber bones. How can we make sense of this observation? Surely, preserving a bone must be far more likely than preserving a footprint? I have written about how paleontologists use information from footprints and bones... Continue Reading →
Have you ever wondered about the origin of mythological creatures like dragons and griffins? Many ancient cultures believed in the reality of such creatures and depicted them in their art and stories. But where did these beliefs, these myths find their origin? Did they come straight from the imagination of social influencers of the day?... Continue Reading →
Paleontologists can get excited about fossils even if they are not dinosaurs, mammoths and hominids though this story has a Jurassic Park dino connection which helps. In this case several tiny fossil mosquitos had scientists abuzz in 2013. Fossils of mosquitoes are known from amber (fossilized tree sap) but are extremely rare in sedimentary rock... Continue Reading →
Young-earth creationists have been wrangling for decades over how to identify where the Flood/post-Flood boundary is to be found. I described the most popular hypotheses put forward by YECs in a recent post, Where is Noah's Flood in the Geological Column? I have also recorded a YouTube video based on this article. https://www.youtube.com/embed/7gEwLe6c3Wg There is... Continue Reading →
Yes, multituberculates have something to say about the ongoing division among YECs about where to locate the Flood/post-Flood boundary in the geological column. Is that boundary to be found in the Quaternary, at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary or way down in the Pennsylvanian Period? These are the three primary models that YECs have proposed. The problem... Continue Reading →
One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to participate on graduate student committees. Many times this allows me to get up close and personal with data sub-disciplines extend far from those of my particular expertise. You know that I have a fondness for fossils and the stories they tell. So... Continue Reading →
Baby sea turtles emerge from their sandy nest and quickly make their way down the beach and into the sea. As they do so they leave tiny footprints in the sand, but the tracks are short-lived. Blown away or destroyed by the next large wave, they are lost forever. Imagine the footprints you leave during... Continue Reading →
Here is a puzzle: Where can you stand on dry ground and look up to see a river channel above you? Yes, New Orleans is a good answer. However, I'm talking about looking up 100 feet from a non man-made location. There are many places on Earth and possibly on Mars where such... Continue Reading →
Everyday a new piece of earth's history is uncovered. And everyday those discoveries add a new puzzle piece for young-earth creationists to try to fit into their 6000-year picture of earth's biological and geology history. Yesterday's new puzzle piece comes in the form of seven large footprints on a slab of rock. They were found... Continue Reading →
One headline reads “Giant Prehistoric Toilet Found” another refers to the discovery of an ancient latrine. Don’t know how I missed those headlines when the first news was released. Surely had I seen that headline I would have had to clicked on it to find out what that was all about. The actual title, The... Continue Reading →
You can learn a lot from a series of unfortunate events. Collapsed caves can leave entry holes on the surface that become hazards to local fauna. The image below is from inside a famous natural pitfall trap in Wyoming. The surface above is rather flat and prey running from a predator sometimes fall into this hole... Continue Reading →
If a global Flood destroyed all humans except Noah and his family just 4350 years ago, why don’t we find human fossils in the same layers of rock believed to be set down by Noah’s Flood? This is a perfectly natural and appropriate question for a young-earth creationist (YEC) to ask. After all, according to... Continue Reading →
The Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky is literally built on trillions of dead things. This fact would seem to support Ken Ham's popular response to what we would expect had the world been subject to a global flood: "Billions of dead things in rock layers..." But the fossils that form the foundation of his Ark park... Continue Reading →
Life is incredibly diverse. Millions of species fill the seas, land and skies of our planetary home. It seems as if there is no end to the discovery of new animals, plants and other life forms. As a biologist who teaches a class about plant diversity, I can always count on discovering a new group of plants... Continue Reading →
Every day dozens of articles are published that contain evidence that runs contrary to the young-earth creationist’ (YEC) view of earth’s history. The young-earth view proposes that much or most of the thousands of feet of fossil bearing rocks—and the fossils themselves—that make up the world’s land masses were deposited during a single catastrophic world-wide... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 