The "Kind" of argument we are having

I just finished writing something and I wanted to write a little about the creationist concept of kind.  As I noted in my last blog post, Ray captioned a picture with this.

Prof Stanford: "There’s evidence of evolution in the Galapagos." Ray: "Could you give me one instance?" Prof Stanford: "Yes, we have an example from a group of birds called Darwin’s finches." Ray: "What have the finches become?" Prof Stanford: "They've become anatomically new and genetically new, recognizably different species." Ray: "So they’re still finches?" Prof Stanford: "Well, of course they’re still finches, yes."

In creationism, finches, the family Fringillidae with almost 20 genera and over a hundred species, have long been considered the same "kind".[1]  Ray seldom gives his criteria for a change of kind.  In the quote above, Ray says that still being a member of the family is not a change of kind. Just to give an idea of the kind of diversity that we are talking about, the family Mustelidae (wolverine, badgers, weasels, otters) is considered the same kind.[2]  So something could be as different as a wolverine from a sea otter and you could still say there has been no change in kind.   Sometimes there is more diversity than that.  The suborder Ceratopsia is almost uniformly considered considered a kind by creationists and it includes bipeds and quadrupeds.  So your parrot could become as big as a car, grow horns, and walk on all fours and still not be considered a change of kind (but dogs and seals are not part of the same kind?).

So what evidence would Ray accept?  Well, he has held out the crocoduck, a hybrid between two different classes of animals.  Sure toothed birds and feathered reptiles have been demonstrated to have existed, but there is no evidence to trace birds through crocodylia.  Which leads me to my next point, the evidence Ray wants doesn't exist, because that is not how nature works.  Creatures don't give birth to overtly different creatures.

Two things recently caught my eye.  One, the author of the Mammalian Ark Kinds had an interesting discussion when it came time to classify the family Bovidae.

There are 50 genera and 143 species in the family Bovidae (Wilson and Reeder 2005). Horns, which are characteristic of this family, consist of a bony core attached to the frontal bone and a hard keratinous sheath (Nowak 1999). There is considerable hybrid data within two subfamilies: Bovinae which includes cattle and Caprinae which includes sheep and goats. In fact, sheep and goats have been so commonly thought of together that the Bible has a single word that refers to a flock of sheep and/or goats: צאן (tsoan). While isolated reports of hybrids between the subfamilies Caprinae and Bovinae and between them and members of Cervidae exist, they are not well documented enough to be considered reliable (Lightner 2006c; Lightner 2007).

There is considerable diversity in this family. Most people would tend to think of sheep and goats as distinct from cattle. For these reasons it was decided to split the family and consider the subfamily the level of the kind. This probably over-estimates the number of kinds since antelope are found in more than one subfamily, but it is the simplest way to split until more information becomes available.

For fairly weak reasons, she can accept that sea otters and wolverines share a common ancestor, but not cows and goats.

Also, this was recently posted in an article on Answers in Genesis[3].

How many different created kinds of dinosaurs were there? If we define a “created kind” as animals that can successfully interbreed, we see that many different genera and species could descend from a “kind.” Speciation—the development of species—is not the same as evolution and only involves variation of genetic information already existing within each kind of animal.

However we have known for quite a while that as animals get genetically further apart, they lose the ability to interbreed.  Generally this phenomenon is known as "ring species".[4]  This occurs even within what creationists might call the same kind.[5] Ray responded to the evidence of ring species a few weeks ago noting that they are still the same kind.

A number of times she says that there’s "tons" and "mountains" of evidence, but all she offers as her best observable evidence for Darwinian evolution is birds changing into birds and salamanders changing in salamanders.

Ray's take on humankind

OK if you have been reading my blog, you know how this goes.  Ray shared the following two pictures on his facebook.

Neanderthal

Homo erectus

The first is an image of neanderthal woman despite Ray and other creationists captioning it as "nebraska man".  The second image is a Homo sapien with a Homo erectus.  Ray considers both to be a part of what he calls "humankind". [1][2][3]

The caption for the picture of the neanderthal:

Prof Stanford: "There’s evidence of evolution in the Galapagos." Ray: "Could you give me one instance?" Prof Stanford: "Yes, we have an example from a group of birds called Darwin’s finches." Ray: "What have the finches become?" Prof Stanford: "They've become anatomically new and genetically new, recognizably different species." Ray: "So they’re still finches?" Prof Stanford: "Well, of course they’re still finches, yes."

I wrote about something similar to this here and here. I could be wrong, but I think that Ray is playing the same bait and switch.  Ray asks for an ape man, a transitional form.  With his brow ridges, no chin, smaller skull, robust skull, smaller cheekbones, and protruding jaw, Homo erectus looks like it would fit that bill.
Even though, most creationists consider Homo erectus to be part of humankind, I don't think that most creationists consider the implications of what that means.  When you put a picture of Homo erectus next to a picture of Homo sapien, one does not look human.  This is a little less so with the neanderthal.

I cannot prove it, but I think the implication behind these two images is that only the Homo sapien is human.  Ray seems to be implying something that he doesn't actually believe.

This argument doesn't work in their favor

If you have been reading my blog lately, you know the drill.  Ray shared the following cartoon on facebook.

Richard Gunther

OK, let's start with the truth.  In the 90's a Cretaceous lake bed was discovered with more bird fossils than any other location yet discovered.  The revolutionary fossil finds led to a black market and in 1999 a Chinese farmer glued two to five different bird and therapod dinosaur fossils together and presented it to paleontologists.  The fraud, archaeoraptor, worked for a time, because all of the species in the fraud were not then known to science.  By the following year, 2000, other paleontologists exposed the fossil as a fake.[1]

However, I don't really think this story works in Ray's favor.  One, let's start with the back end of the reptile, Microraptor zhaoianus.  Microraptors not only were feathered dinosaurs, but they had flight feathers on all four limbs.[2] The cartoon is a little misleading with a feathered bird on the front and a naked reptile on the back.

Now the bird parts came from, Yanornis martini. For the purpose of our discussion here, it is necessary to note that martini had teeth and two claws on both its wings.[3]  Neither of these features show up in Richard's cartoon.  It is important to reiterate that both these bipedal animals had feathers, teeth, and claws unlike any non-extinct reptile or bird today.   It is also important to note, that what are the odds that feathered reptiles and birds existed if there is no evolutionary connection?

It is not like archaeoraptor was a 
crocodile's head on a duck's body.

Next, who discovered the fraud?  Was it Ray or any creationist?  Remember neither of these species had been discovered in 1999.  Yet even with unknown fossil parts, it only took about a year for other paleontologists to expose the fraud.  Also, who created the fraud?  Was it a paleontologist?  No, it was a farmer who decided to fraud the scientific community.  Like with soft tissue in fossils, it is evolutionists that are making the discoveries.  It is evolutionists who are exposing the frauds where they are found.  This self correcting nature is something that Ray chides.  Honestly, I think that it adds credibility.

In the comment section of his cartoon, Richard answered a similar criticism to the one that I made.  Steve wrote:

If it's "one of many," why do you keep harping on the same few? The back end of the dinosaur (the famous Microraptor) had feathers -- these are clearly visible in this fossil and in others of Microraptor. Microraptor, in fact, looks quite a bit like Archaeopteryx, although the "wing" feathers on its legs are more visible in the surviving fossils. The front end was the fairly modern bird Yanornis; note that both Yanornis and Microraptor had larger wings than your drawing indicates.

Richard answered:

Sounds like a fairly good description of this fraud. Seems rather unfortunate that a supposedly solid scientific theory should rest on so many frauds, deceptions, misleading comments, evidence-free claims and hyperbole? Creation, on the other hand, has solid eye-witness accounts, reliable testimonies, real-time evidence and consistent scientific backing.

Almost a decade and half ago, archaeoraptor was debunked by scientists and Richard seems to think that the theory rests on this fraud.  The theory of evolution does not rest on animals that do not exist.  

Ray seems to argue with himself

Recently Ray posted the following image.

Richard Gunther

This is not fresh tissue, but Ray does have a point this was not predicted by evolutionary theory and two decades ago would have been touted as ridiculous.  However Ray also posted this cartoon.

Richard Gunther

I hope Ray knows that there are no uncontested soft fresh dinosaur tissues either.  Everything is contested, but the question is why it is contested.

Fresh Dinosaur Tissue

Richard Gunther

Ray recently shared this cartoon on his facebook.  Below is further context.  I would like to point out that none of the paleontologists appear to think the tissues look fresh.

Ray keeps making the same mistakes

Using Common Sense to Debunk Evolution - CBN.com (by The Christian Broadcasting Network)

[T]here is a big bang, life forms, and after millions of years a dog evolves. It is the first dog. He has got legs, tail, teeth, eyes - and it's good he has good he has eyes because he has to look for a female, he has been blind for millions of years but now he can see. He has got to find a female. She has got to be evolved at the right place at the right time with all the reproductive organs and a desire to mate. Because without a female, he is a dead dog.

You might think that Ray has since learned better, but he recently posted the following cartoon on his facebook.

Richard Gunther

When some of the most godly, anointed, conversion producing people are trying to demonstrate that you are a moron and a failure, it is really nice to hang out with people who at least think that you are not crazy. Thousands may avoid hell because of these anointed ministries, but they are really messing with my head.

Cold Outside - Feminist version :)

I simply must go - Baby, it's cold outside
The answer is no - Bye darling, don't catch cold outside

Just poking fun at the idea that romance is often built around not taking "no" for an answer. 

Obama, Loyalty Day, Pledge of Allegiance

Just an interesting note: Starting in 2010, Obama started using Loyalty Day to encourage people to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

2010

Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2010, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon the people of the United States to join in this national observance, to display the flag of the United States, and to pledge true and steadfast allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

2011

Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2011, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

2012

Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2012, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

2013

Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2013, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

Loyalty Day Proclamations

Was Peter talking about meteors or nuclear weapons?

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Peter 3:10)

When the atomic bomb burst over Hiroshima in 1945, the thoughts of Bible-believing Christians everywhere turned almost immediately to this verse. There was also widespread concern that man's newly discovered ability might get out of control and cause all "the elements to melt with fervent heat"! Seemingly, Peter had prophetically anticipated, 1,900 years in advance, the modern discovery of nuclear fission.

Super sonic meteor impacts melt the elements and predate atomic weapons. In fact, craters created by atomic weapons jump started the study of meteor craters. I visit the Chesapeake crater frequently which was created by a force greater than all the atomic weapons in the world combined. Why couldn't Peter have been talking about meteor impacts rather than puny atomic weapons?

http://www.icr.org/article/7508/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

How do you know it was effortlessly?

I was watching a "documentary" on how the world governments are actually fighting aliens. The "expert" mentioned that they can disable our technology so effortlessly. Let's just say for the sake of argument that I bought the whole Obama fighting space aliens thing, how do you know that it was effortlessly? Perhaps every time they disable our technology one must sacrifice their unborn child and immediately eternally endure the punishment for abortion in the Apocalypse of Peter (One of your secretions congealing into cannibalistic monsters that devour you, while your aborted fetus fries you with fire from their eyeballs).

What if we had the bodies of 50,000,000 babies...in a museum somewhere?

"What if we had the bodies of 50,000,000 babies piled on top of each other in a museum somewhere?"

Just doing the math:  Assuming current rates, about 78.9% of those 50,000,000 were 10 weeks or less, mean they were about an inch long or less.  That is 39,450,000 grape sized embryos or about the equivalent to 90,000 gallon swimming pool. 9.1%, 4, 550,000, were  11-12 weeks and about 2 inches which adds about another 21,000 gallons.  6.6% were 13-15 weeks and up to 4 inches long which is about another 30,000 gallons. 3.8%, 1,900,000, were at the most 10 inches or about 43,000 gallons.  Even being generous, the 1.5%, 750,000 that were over 20 weeks were generously 20 inches or at the most about 34,000 gallons.   Total about 220,000 gallons.

I don't know if it would make the point that she wants it to make.  On the one hand, seeing all those aborted at one time could make a point.  On the other hand, you could physically put all those aborted into one location 1/3 the size of an Olympic swimming pool.  More to her point about late term abortion, 10 weeks and less abortion amount for 78.9% of abortions, but only 41% of the contents of our hypothetical abortion exhibit. One could use this as an argument to prevent later term abortions, but the vast majority of mothers would not abort an 11 week old fetus. 

Sources - http://www.lifesitenews.com/twenty-weeks-pregnant-with-twins-but-last-week-she-had-an-abortion.html
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
http://www.traditionaloven.com/culinary-arts/volume/convert-sphere-1-in-d-to-galon-gal-us.html
http://www.babycenter.com/slideshow-baby-size?slideNumber=7

So who is real?

Looking for xmpls of devout Muslims converting to Christianity. Problem is so many are fake (or exaggerated) ex-Muslims. So, who is real?
— Ed Stetzer (@edstetzer) August 11, 2013

Gonna ignore this?

• I do sleep through three hour movies.
• I really don't cuss, but I find that people cry out to God as much as they swear. (God knows, Lord have mercy, God damn it, Our Father who art in heaven...) One could argue that this is largely cultural or taking the Lord's name in vain, but I would argue that most of our profanity in general is rooted in a Christian western culture. Also, how is "God damn it", "Bless his heart", "Lord help us" any more vapid than a "Trust God", "Hallelujah", or any other Christianese that comes off our tongues?
• I think Twain pointed out pretty well the enigma that is a worship service. Worship services involve us doing things that are so counter to our weekly life. Outside of church, how often does one sing out loud with other people for fifteen minutes at a time? Still how does one worship a celebrity? One doesn't serenade them generally or follow their commandments. God receives far more worship than any celebrity.
• If God wrote a facebook meme and commanded a repost then maybe it might be denying God. However, I will repost it anyway.

Were you there?

http://creation.com/dinosaur-footprints-found-in-china

So it’s easy to understand why the dinosaurs panicked. They were fleeing the rising waters of Noah’s Flood. Footprints mean the animals were alive, so the waters were still rising and had not yet covered the whole earth and destroyed all air-breathing animal life (Genesis 7:19–23).

Even assuming that he has the chronology right, there is no way that he possibly could have known that.  Still...Gish claims that dinosaurs coexisted with post KT mammals. Where are the post KT mammal tracks fleeing the same flood?  There is not even one rabbit track.

Paluxy River Footprints

For a while now I have been a fan of Monstertalk. I am grateful that many of their episodes have transcripts and are now searchable. I grew up hearing annually about the Paluxy River footprints being concrete proof of human-dinosaur coexistence. Unfortunately I was in college before I gave this one up. Anyways this episode of Monstertalk stood out to me.

Glen: Yeah, in the case of things like alleged plesiosaur carcasses, they would argue that 1) it might somehow disrupt the conventional geologic time-table. They seem to think that if scientists conclude that plesiosaurs went extinct with the dinosaurs, for example, then that is somehow some critical tenet of evolution, when really it is not. Now the Paluxy tracks which we can get into are a more interesting case. That would be much better support for their position if there actually were human tracks alongside dinosaur tracks because the general pattern of the fossil record does indicate that large modern mammals, and especially humans, did not appear until long after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. So the finding of human tracks back in the Cretaceous rocks with dinosaurs would, in fact, be a major problem for conventional geology, much more of a problem than say finding a modern plesiosaur, which all that would mean is that some group of reptiles survived longer than we thought.

Blake: In the case of Creationists who have used plesiosaurs or other brachiosaurs or a similar animal in Africa—that seems to be a popular one as well, and of course there’s the pterodactyls…

Glen: Right, right. In all those cases, like I say, they really—many Creationists imply they would be huge problems for conventional geologists to explain, but really not. In fact, just like with the discovery of the coelacanth, the gingko, conventional scientists would celebrate those finds. They would say, “Oh great. Some creature we thought was extinct is still alive.” You know, they would not be a problem for them whatsoever. On the other hand, again, finding human tracks in Mesozoic rock, that would be a different story. That would be a big problem.

Blake: How have the Creationists been using it in their literature and in their program? It seems like you presented a few cases where they had.

Glen: Yeah, well to be completely honest, they—the Creationists and cryptozoologists, for that matter—have really not used either of these cases in recent years very strongly. Most cryptozoologists have backed off from the Japanese plesiosaur and have acknowledged that itís most likely a basking shark. And in the case of the Paluxy tracks almost all the major Creationists leaders and groups have admitted that they were wrong or likely wrong in a lot of their initial identifications and that there is no compelling evidence of human tracks in the Paluxy or in the ancient rocks, as far as that goes. There are only a few individuals still promoting the Paluxy man-tracks, as they call them, but they’re considered disreputable or unreliable even by most Creationists, so really that controversy has faded, most of them have back-pedaled from their older claims.

Karen: Have there been any major scientists or spokespeople who’ve rescinded their endorsement of this creature as being as a plesiosaur? Any one in particular?

Glen: Well it was primarily a few cryptozoologists and several Creationists who promoted the plesiosaur interpretation initially. I don’t think any of them were actually experts in the field of marine science or paleontology or anything like that. So, I don’t think it was ever the case where conventional scientists were embarrassed by misidentification. They—especially the American scientists—seemed to be pretty cautious initially and they speculated, you know, it could be a shark or perhaps a whale or a large turtle with the shell missing, something like that, but they waited for the tissue analysis before drawing any firm conclusions, which was good, you know. Unfortunately the initial sensational reports seemed to get a lot more attention than, you know, the scientific reports of the tissue analysis which pretty much…

Ben: Well, that’s always what happens, you know. The original claim is just this big headline-grabbing, you know, “Mermaid Found!” Oh wait, hold on, never mind. I was going ask, can you…

Glen: Well, that’s why basically I wanted to do the article, to kind of compile the history of the case, and explain all the lines of evidence which pointed to the fact that it was almost certainly a basking shark. To try to just set the record straight, that sort of thing. And occasionally you’ll still see an article here or there which is not familiar with the whole case and suggest that it could still be a plesiosaur, but those are few and far between. It seems like almost all Creationists, cryptozoologists and mainstream scientists have come to agree that it’s almost certainly a basking shark.

Ben: A lot of our listeners may not be familiar with the Paluxy case. Can you sort of give us a little thumbnail sketch of the whole incident and basically what your thoughts are on it?

Glen: Yeah, that’s something that’s largely consumed my spare time for about thirty years. I began investigating the tracks right after college in 1980, and would fly down to Texas and work in the riverbed for a week or two or three almost every year since then, and I was just there a few weeks ago in fact to try to finish up some mapping in the State Park where a lot of the tracks are exposed. It’s hard to summarize the case in just a minute or two. You can reference my website where I have many articles explaining the whole controversy.

Ben: What website is that, Glen?

Glen: Well, my homepage is paleo.cc and from that there are links to my Paluxy articles as well as my plesiosaur/shark article that will give listeners a chance to look into it in more detail, but I can try to summarize quickly. Around the turn of the century, in 1908, there was a large flood in the Paluxy, which is a riverbed about sixty miles south of Fort Worth, near the town of Glen Rose, Texas, and the flood ripped up some limestone layers revealing many dinosaur tracks, which the locals initially mistook for ancient elephant tracks. Some of the elongated forms, they thought were giant human tracks, or as they called them, moccasin prints, giant moccasin prints. And in the 1970s and ‘80s many strict Creationist groups seized on these tracks, they did a film there, took a lot of photographs, and didn’t do a lot of rigorous work but wrote a lot of articles, and again the film that promoted these elongated footprints as giant human tracks alongside dinosaur tracks and claimed that that proved that evolution could not be true and the conventional geologic time table had to be wrong and the Earth was only several thousand years old, which was kind of their argument, and this was one of their best tangible lines of evidence they claimed.

Before this, during my studies in college I began reading Creationist literature and ran across these claims about human tracks alongside dinosaur tracks, and I didn’t know what to make of them, and I wasn’t satisfied really with the level of documentation either in the Creationist literature or the mainstream responses. A lot of conventional scientists had dismissed the claims as just all carvings or all middle-toe impressions of dinosaurs or as one thing or another without apparently a lot of careful research to determine what exactly they were. So I decided right after college to fly down there and try to investigate and figure out what they were, and it turned out to be a perfect time. The riverbed was dried up and all the sites could be accessed and I was able to, with a friend of mine, clean off and photograph and study a lot of the impressions which were claimed to be human tracks. And it wasn’t before long we had concluded that some of them were just erosional features, natural irregularities, or erosional marks that had been selectively highlighted to look kind of human. And there were some cases of what appeared to be carved prints—most of the carvings were on loose blocks of rock. But there were some, definitely some striding trails of elongated prints which did not look like typical dinosaur footprints. Bipedal dinosaurs typically make footprints with three large toes, almost like large bird tracks, and these are much longer, and the toes are not very distinct on many of them, they did look somewhat like moccasin prints in some cases. But when we cleaned the surface very well we could see on almost all of them indications of a three-toed—a long three-toed pattern in the front. So it was becoming clear to us even before the end of our first trip that they must be some type of reptilian or unusual dinosaur prints, but we really didn’t understand what was causing them to be that elongated and take on that roughly human-like shape.

To make a long story short, in the subsequent trips there and further studies at other sites I found more and more examples of these elongated footprints and better and better indications of a three-toed pattern at the front. And it appeared to me that—at first I thought maybe there was a dinosaur with an unusually long foot making these impressions. And then it suddenly dawned on me, it wasn’t a dinosaur with an unusual foot; it was a dinosaur walking in an unusual fashion. It was putting weight on its soles and heels in what they call a plantigrade type way of walking. I call these metatarsal tracks because they’re impressing their metatarsals, their soles and heels rather than just being up on their toes like most dinosaurs. Well, when I showed this evidence to some paleontologists, initially they kind of downplayed it and said that dinosaurs, as far as we know, they don’t walk that way, so you must be mistaken, but I gathered more and more evidence and some very clear examples of these metatarsal tracks. And then in 1986 I gave a couple of papers at the First International Convention on Dinosaur Tracks and they all then agreed that these were in fact metatarsal dinosaur tracks and they did appear to explain most of the alleged human tracks in the Paluxy. And during all this I was also writing letters to many of the Creationists who made the claims urging them to come down to the Paluxy and look at the evidence that I was uncovering and reexamined, some of the tracks and trails that they said were human, because in almost every case you could see some pretty strong evidence of these dinosaurian toes at the front of their human tracks. I wasn’t sure if they had not cleaned the tracks well enough or that they just were selective in what tracks and which trails they had shown.

But in 1985, the evidence was becoming even plainer that many of these were dinosaur tracks because we noticed that, on their most famous sites, the digit impressions of the dinosaur’s tracks were infilled with a secondary sediment, and the infilling was rusting as we had cleaned and exposed them repeatedly. The iron in the infilling material was actually oxidizing and becoming a dark rusty brown color and was contrasting with the limestone and increasing the contrast. In other words, they were becoming more and more obviously dinosaurian. And finally after they saw enough of our pictures and diagrams and so forth, a representative from the largest Creationist group in California, ICR, the Institute for Creation Research, and representatives from the company that did the film, Footprints in Stone, they came down and were quite shaken when we showed them all the evidence, and they admitted that they apparently had made a mistake. And soon afterwards, they withdrew the film from circulation, and ICR stopped selling their book, although…

Ben: That’s—I don’t mean to interrupt—that right there is pretty remarkable. I’ve rarely heard Creationists admit they made a mistake.

Glen: Yeah, well, they weren’t too eager to do it.

Blake: That’s exactly… [Laughter]

Glen: There’s a little bit more to the story. John Morris, who’s now the Director of ICR—he was at that time the son of Henry Morris who was the Director—he wrote the longest Creationist treatment on the subject with the book called Tracking Those Incredible Dinosaurs, and when I showed him all this evidence, he looked quite upset and said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do, we just printed thousands more copies of this book.” And I said, “Well, John, you’re going to have to tell people the truth,” and he says, “Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do, I don’t know what we’re going to do, I have a lot of pressure from the group,” and he was saying things like this, and then he said, “Well how do I know that some of these features weren’t painted on the tracks?” And I said, “John, you can see that, you know, there’s not just the color contrast, but there’s indentations or cracks or other indications of these three-toed dinosaur patterns on the tracks, you know.” And he said, “Yeah, I can see that.” So he admitted on site, in other words, that these were actually dinosaur tracks, that the coloration features were part of the infilling phenomenon, they weren’t—it wasn’t painted on. And he also acknowledged that there were cases of carving in—highlighted erosion marks and so forth. But he says, “I don’t know if I can just come out and say all this.” He kept looking for ways to kind of backpedal without admitting fully that they had misidentified these things.

Blake: Did they consider putting a sticker on their book?

Glen: Well, yeah, he actually did keep selling the book for a while, and in most cases did not have disclaimers in it. Eventually he stopped selling it. But what really disturbed me is that he—when he did finally write a statement about the tracks he said—he admitted that they had made some possible mistakes, but that it is possible that some of these features may have been artificially applied with paint or acid or something like that. And in the context of talking about my research he kind of insinuated that I or my colleagues might have doctored the tracks to make them look more dinosaur-like when he admitted on site that that was not the case, so that disturbed me, that he could not just come clean and say he was wrong. In any case, most groups, they praised him for admitting the possible mistake, and ICR and other groups no longer promote the tracks. There are only a few individuals that still do so and again, they’re not considered reliable even among Creationists, so the controversy has died somewhat.

Blake: Well, I knew that John Green, Bigfoot journalist, had written about these tracks and wanted to know why no specialists in fossil footprints had investigated them, but he wrote that a few years before your investigation.

Glen: Yeah, I was—I didn’t claim to be a fossil footprint expert when I began studying the Paluxy tracks, but I’ve learned an awful lot in the course of my research and I have often worked with professional paleontologists in the Paluxy, and in fact just a few weeks ago again I was doing more work with some paleontologists, Jim Farlow from Indiana Purdue University, and representatives from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and so forth, so I’ve not done all this by myself, but I did kind of spearhead the resolution of the controversy, maybe because no one else was really doing it. For some reason, especially when I first started working, footprints in general, fossil footprints were not—didn’t seem to be too interesting to many paleontologists, and I think some of them might have been staying away from the Paluxy tracks just because of all the Creationists involved, made them more reluctant to get embroiled in the whole controversy, which I think was a mistake because we learned an awful lot about dinosaur behavior, locomotion, posture and so forth just from studying the dinosaur tracks, even aside from the human footprint controversy.

Blake: How big are these tracks, you said giant human footprints?

Glen: Well, they’re not all that huge. A typical metatarsal dinosaur track is about two feet long, sometimes shorter, but the portion of it which appears human-like is the metatarsal section at the back. These tracks appear roughly or superficially human when the digits are subdued by either erosion or infilling or mud collapse or some combination of those factors, and it’s that back part, the metatarsal segment, which roughly resembles a human foot. And in many cases it’s somewhat larger than a normal human foot; it might be, you know, fourteen, fifteen, you know sixteen inches long or longer, and that’s why when some of the locals during the Great Depression carved some giant human tracks in loose blocks, I think they were just trying to make better examples of what they assumed were human prints or human moccasin prints, and in the Paluxy, I don’t even know that they had any anti-evolutionary motivation. I think they were just trying to make a little extra money. They probably didn’t even understand that human tracks weren’t supposed to be with the dinosaur tracks geologically. And I’m not even one hundred percent sure that they sold the tracks as real tracks; they might have even admitted they were carvings, for all I know.

I recently, during my last trip, met the grandson of the man who apparently carved most of the loose slabs, and they recently found another one in the cellar, and the family acknowledges that this man did carve the tracks, his name is George Adams. They all have—the ones on loose blocks—anatomical problems, usually the toes are too long, the ball is misplaced, and so forth, and several have been cross-sectioned and sub-surface features abruptly truncate [garbled] depressions and that shows pretty clearly they were carved. But again, I think he was trying to make better examples of what he assumed were human tracks in the Paluxy riverbed, which again I think began when locals misidentified these metatarsal dinosaur tracks as human tracks, and when they’re not well cleaned they do look roughly like large human tracks. They do have that general shape. So it was an understandable misidentification for the locals. Now the Creationists, most of them I think were sincere but they could have done a lot better research, they just don’t seem to have—not cleaned and studied the tracks carefully and kind of jumped to the conclusion that they were human tracks, which was what they wanted to conclude they were. But again, most have backed off, backpedaled in recent years and very few promote them anymore.