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 →
Young-earth creationists have a geological column problem that 50 years of research has yet to solve: where is the boundary between Flood deposits and post-Flood deposits?
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 →
During the last Ice Age when the oceans were up to 300 feet lower than they are today, an extensive cave system on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico was exposed, above sea level, allowing it to potentially be occupied by animals and humans. When the massive ice sheets melted from the Earth’s surface causing the... 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 →
One of the largest volcanic eruptions in earth’s history, the Toba super eruption has been a special interest to anthropologists and climatologists because of its potential impacts on past human populations. I have explored the implications of the Toba eruption on human history in previous posts (See: The Toba Super Eruption: A Global Catastrophe that... 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 →
In Egypt the Nile River Valley conceals a massive canyon that once was as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We have explored the origins of this lost canyon in the previous posts. We found that geologists attribute the origins of this massive canyon to the great drying up of the Mediterranean... Continue Reading →
A massive canyon lays hidden below the Nile Valley in Egypt. In Part II we looked as how this massive canyon was formed. Before we go on to look a bit deeper into this canyon and how it fits into Biblical chronology lets look at the chronological sequence of historical events—according to the consensus of geological experts—that must... Continue Reading →
A meandering river on a wide river plain running through Egypt is the source of one of the best-known ancient civilizations. But the Nile Valley has a deep secret. A huge canyon lies buried underneath the Nile Valley attesting to an ancient history of events that took place long before the Egyptians came to inhabit... Continue Reading →
An eleven-foot snake slithers among a cache of eggs and a sauropod dinosaur hatchling. Before it can grab the hatchling a landslide or windstorm buries the eggs, hatchling and snake. This is the scene preserved in Late Cretaceous deposits in India (Wilson et al. 2010). These same rocks have yielded thousands of sauropod eggs, hatchlings,... Continue Reading →
The Grand Canyon is one of the best-know geological formations on earth. Today I want to introduce you to another geological formation you have probably never heard of. I call this canyon the lost grand canyon of Egypt. Through a series of four posts I will introduce you to this amazing canyon and demonstrate that... 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 →
A volcano slides into the sea causing an 800 foot wave to crash onto into an adjacent island. As that wave crashes onto land it picks up 700-ton boulders and throws them uphill leaving them stranded far above their source. It sounds like a plot from a Hollywood movie but this is real. It happened in the Cape Verde Islands off of the west coast of Africa long ago.
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 →
Naturalis Historia 