henry (03/31/83)
The latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer carries a detailed article discussing a scientific expedition which examined all the alleged "human tracks" at the Paluxy River limestone bed near Glen Rose, Texas. The expedition included two anthropologists and a geologist/paleontologist. Herewith a condensation of the article (reproduced without permission): ----- "The limestone bed of the Paluxy River has an excellent international reputation for the excellence and quantity of the dinosaur footprints found there... "...scientists' explanations about the real natures of the features the creationists were confusing with legitimate human footprints were quite accurate, but they did not get the attention they deserved... There was, and is, no single place that one could turn to obtain the necessary information to refute the creationists about this particular problem... "To avoid this mistake in the future, Godfrey and her colleagues plan to publish a detailed and illustrated monograph on the 'human footprints', including their history and place in the culture of pseudoscience, in a future issue of *Creation/Evolution*.... "The results of the Paluxy River expedition are easy to summarize: no evidence for genuine human footprints was found among all the tracks examined, but the scientific investigators were able to discover six major methods by which the elongate depressions, which the creationists claim to be of human origin, were formed. The investigators examined, measured, mapped, and photographed all the specific objects that are identified as human footprints in the creationist literature. Three sites were investigated in detail: the State Park Ledge, the McFall site (where the excavation of International Baptist Congress is in progress), and a site near New Braunfels, Texas. "Not a single 'man track' examined had the correct anatomic features of a human foot either at rest or in stride. This observation is also true for the famous carvings of the giant man tracks from Glen Rose. The person who carved those tracks had only a primitive knowledge of human foot anatomy and produced tracks that superficially resembled giant human footprints but that are quite unmistakably artifacts to a trained physical anthropologist. These notorious carvings are not accepted as real human footprints by some of today's sophisticated creationists, but most believe they are genuine... None of these tracks, however, have proper human footprint dimensions or impressions of the instep, toes, or ball of the foot. The 'human track trail' we examined had stride and pace lengths and directions uncharacteristic of human beings... "If we ignore these carvings, the origin of all the oblong or elongate depressions in the Cretaceous limestone that the creationists claim are human footprints can be explained by natural, nonhuman causes. Although this statement has been made by scientists for more than twenty years, the different 'human tracks' have different origins, and it is now possible, after detailed investigation by the team of scientists, to ascribe the origin of each specific impression to a specific cause. "Most of the 'man tracks' are simple erosion channels or gouges on the limestone river banks produced by water currents during flood conditions... One would expect to find a few superficially human- foot-shaped depressions in the Paluxy River banks, and most of the 'man tracks' turn out to be these. Most of the State Park Ledge 'human footprints', the ones most people see, are simple erosional features. [They] are invariably elongated parallel to the river and occur together with depressions of similar size and depth but different shape. The 'insteps' of these erosional 'footprints' are created by the undercutting of limestone layers of different hardness... "Since river erosion is such an easily understood and logical explanation... [it makes it easy to dismiss creationist claims.] Therefore, the creationists have gone to a great deal of effort to remove a thick layer of limestone at the McFall site to expose a limestone bed underneath that contains many well-preserved dinosaur tracks and, in the words of the project's director, the Reverend Carl Baugh, 'twenty-nine human tracks, 27 of which are 16 inches in length'. The creationists are pleased with these tracks, since there is obviously no way their existence can be ascribed to erosion by flood water. But what is one supposed to think of 16-inch-long featureless depressions that are all about 3 or 4 inches wide?... These elongate depressions have no anatomic features that suggest to a scientist that they are of human origin... [There are several possible causes for them, the most probable of which is that they are dinosaur tracks. Dinosaur tracks of similar length, depth, and pace-length are found in close association with most of the 'man tracks'.] A genuine human footprint in the limestone would be much shorter and shallower... "...One 'man track' at the McFall site was created by the trace fossil *Planolites*, which was extremely abundant on the limestone surface... At the New Braunfels site, creationist-identified 'man tracks' are actually dinosaur tracks distorted by repeated growth of a Cretaceous algal mat in and around each footprint depression on the tidal flat... creationists claim these are human despite the fact that they occur in perfect spacing and orientation with the well-preserved and exposed dinosaur track trails..." ----- Doesn't sound too impressive, does it? Henry Spencer U of Toronto
jwb (03/31/83)
I thought all this creationism stuff was supposed to move to net.religion (or whatever it wound up being called) !! Jack Buchanan UNC-CH
jeff (04/01/83)
The Congressional Record gets loaded up with any junk Congresspeople want to put in it; does that have to happen to net.misc also? Shouldn`t contributors keep their contributions reasonably short, with long quotations from the open literature avoided? Have some consideration! jeff: