People need to watch more Dinosaur Train

Recently, an author going by Scordova wrote something for the blog, Uncommondescent.com.  Uncommondescent markets themselves as an intelligent design blog and like most in the intelligent design movement, they have a biblical creationist (young earth) bent.  In this particular entry, Scordova relies heavily on two articles written on Kent Hovind's Creation.com.  Neither site has proven to me their trustworthiness and this post is no exception.  

Scordova starts by listing Bill Nye's request for a mammal to be demonstrated in the "trilobite layers" (the Paleozoic).  This author seems to be one of those creationists that denies the geologic column (unlike many creationists), so one wonders if he understood Nye's request.  When he begins to present his evidence that would absolutely change Nye's mind, we know that he did not understand Nye's request.  Quoting extensively from Calvin Smith's The so-called ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ at Creation.com, he begins to attempt to prove that mammals are contained in "dinosaur rock".

"Dinosaur rock"?  When Nye said "trilobite layers", he clearly understood that he was talking about the Paleozoic Era.  Dinosaurs and mammals first show up in the beginning of the next era, the Mesozoic Era, which Smith refers to three times as "dinosaur rock".  So what is the big deal? Google Books has a book from 1979 called Mesozoic Mammals and those authors note a 1854 discovery of a Mesozoic mammal.  This is not even listed as the first discovery.   I grew up on PBS, Discovery Channel, Walking with Dinosaurs, and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.  My children watch a PBS show called Dinosaur Train which teaches about these mammals along with dinosaurs and birds.  

Well, according to Smith, unlike my family, "Many people are surprised when they hear of these creatures being buried together and wonder why they never heard of it before."  Good question, why are the public not as educated on this subject as maybe they should be?  Perhaps, the Mesozoic needs to be taught better in schools.  Perhaps more children need to watch Dinosaur Train.  Well as you may expect, Smith has another answer quoting from one of Carl Werner's interviews.  Dr. Donald Burge notes that he does not have the time to process the fossils.  Burge specializes in reptiles and dinosaurs so he does not have the time or expertise to sort through the extra 20,000 pounds of clay containing mammal fossils.  

In his book, Werner argues that Mesozoic mammal fossils are constantly misidentified, because they actually belong to Cenozoic families.  Werner draws his conclusions not from professional research, but from combing through tens of thousands of photos his wife took at museums.  The 2001 Burge quote suggests to Werner and Smith that there are fossils of modern mammals coexisting with dinosaurs and they are just falling through the cracks due to massive evolutionary bias.  In the Uncommondescent blog, Scordova demonstrates his lack of understanding by taking it a step further.

So is there a possibility anomalies are edited out and instead a practice of false reporting (perhaps innocently done) has been perpetuated. They probably think something like: “We found a mammal, that’s clearly contamination because we know mammals aren’t in that era”. So thus we never hear official reports of the anomalies because the anomalies are regarded as contaminants since according to the false narrative, certain creatures didn’t live in certain eras.

Again, Mesozoic mammals have been known for at least a century and a half.  In the comment section of Smith's article someone makes this point.  Smith responds with this anecdote.

Your statement "...this comes as no surprise to anyone." is absolutely incorrect. I can tell you from personal experience that I have met many hundreds of people (both creationists and evolutionists) that have been exposed to this type of information at CMI presentations that were completely surprised by the fact that birds like ducks and mammals like platypus and beavers etc lived with dinosaurs.

Maybe these people should watch more Dinosaur Train?  Museums are filled with fossils that need to be studied.  I have little doubt that there are more people digging up mammal fossils than there are qualified researchers studying them.  However, the claim that paleontologists are missing modern mammals, this I doubt.  I'll deal with the following misconception in my next blog.

To the surprise of many, ducks,1 squirrels,2 platypus,3beaver-like4 and badger-like5 creatures have all been found in ‘dinosaur-era’ rock layers along with bees, cockroaches, frogs and pine trees. Most people don’t picture a T. rex walking along with a duck flying overhead, but that’s what the so-called ‘dino-era’ fossils would prove!