Claimed Fossil Anomalies

Morris, John D.  “The Paluxy River Mystery.”  ICR Impact (151).  Jan 1, 1986.  Published in Acts & Facts 15(1).  The Institute for Creation Research's withdrawal of the claim, written by the author of the 1980 book that had promoted it;  Morris was later ICR's president.  Paragraph numbers count from the first body paragraph.

1. 1a.

   Paragraph 19:  “Even though it would now be improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution, in the light of these questions, there is still much that is not known about the tracks and continued research is in order.  We stand committed to truth, and will gladly modify or abandon our previous interpretation of the Paluxy data as the facts dictate.”  The final paragraph.  The first clause is often quoted alone, which overstates the withdrawal;  "these questions" are the six points listed just above it, one of which is the "chemical agents" line. ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Paragraph 11:  “The various controversial prints labeled as human by Carl Baugh in recent years are of uncertain origin, and at best are not comparable in quality to prints at the sites discussed above, thereby providing no support for the original position.” ↩

3. 1c.

   Paragraph 16:  “Applying a reddish stain to a rock surface can easily be accomplished by the application of certain readily available chemical agents.”  The fourth of six "mysterious points" Morris lists four lines above the withdrawal.  He does not assert tampering;  he lists the possibility. ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  “Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.”  Creation Ministries International.  2026.  Creation Ministries International's standing list of arguments it advises creationists to drop, in two tiers, kept up to date since 2006 and maintained by its senior scientist.

1. 2a.

   Section What arguments are doubtful, hence inadvisable to use?:  “CMI now believes that enough years have passed, and photographs can now be taken with a smartphone, that dinosaurs have died out, and contrary claims require proof, not excuses. Similarly, plesiosaurs and other giant marine reptiles need to come up for air, so we should have seen them, just as we have seen giant marine mammals (whales).” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Section What arguments are doubtful, hence inadvisable to use?:  “Gold chains have been found in coal.”  “Several artefacts, including gold objects, have been documented as having been found within coal, but in each case the coal is no longer associated with the artefact. The evidence is therefore strictly anecdotal”.  The entry names no single object;  it covers coal finds as a class. ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 2c.

   Section What arguments are doubtful, hence inadvisable to use?:  “Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks have long since withdrawn their support.”  “There is a need for properly documented research on the tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “Many of Carl Baugh’s creation ‘evidences’.”  “So we advise against relying on any ‘evidence’ he provides, unless supported by creationist organisations with reputations for Biblical and scientific rigour.” ↩ ↩

5. 2e.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “These are not sound examples—the Castenedolo skeletal material shows evidence of being an intrusive burial, i.e. a recent burial into older strata, since all the fossils apart from the human ones had time to be impregnated with salt. The Calaveras skull was probably a hoax planted into a mine by miners.” ↩

6. 2f.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “This claim has been circulated through the Internet for years, but in reality the images associated with it were manipulated in Photoshop.” ↩

7. 2g.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “This carcass was almost certainly a rotting basking shark”.  “Also, detailed anatomical and biochemical studies of the Zuiyo-maru carcass show that it could not have been a plesiosaur.” ↩

8. 2h.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “Archaeopteryx was genuine (unlike Archaeoraptor, a ‘Piltdown bird’), as shown by anatomical studies and close analysis of the fossil slab.” ↩

9. 2i.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “Unfortunately, there are talented creationist speakers with reasonably orthodox understandings of Genesis who continue to promote some of the Wyatt and Baugh ‘evidences’ despite being approached on the matter.” ↩

Jerlström, Pierre.  “Live plesiosaurs:  weighing the evidence.”  CEN Technical Journal 12(3):339–346.  Nov 1998.  Review in Creation Ministries International's technical journal, now the Journal of Creation, by a creationist writer who set out the anatomical and biochemical evidence on the Zuiyo-maru carcass and concluded it was a basking shark, while leaving open the survival of plesiosaurs elsewhere.

1. 3a.

   Section The scientific report:  “The majority of the findings clearly indicated that the carcass was a decaying basking shark.”  “General opinion favours identification as a shark. A possible method to approach a more accurate identification may be to focus on the basking shark.”  The second quotation is Jerlström's quotation of the Japanese research teams' own summary. ↩

Chadwick, Arthur V.  “Precambrian Pollen in the Grand Canyon: A Reexamination.”  Origins.  2009.  A creationist's re-examination of the claim that Precambrian pollen occurs in the Grand Canyon, here in a 2009 web version of a 1981 study.  The original is Chadwick 1981 in Origins 8:7–12, with a follow-up in 1982.  Chadwick is a creationist, then at Loma Linda and later at Southwestern Adventist University, who went to the canyon with Burdick in 1971 under a National Park Service permit and re-sampled on three further trips.  The fossil-order article cites it as a creationist who did the careful work, got a negative result and published it.

1. 4a.

   The result, in Chadwick's own words:  “No single example of an authentic pollen grain was obtained from any of these samples.”  Fifty samples from the same strata Burdick had studied, with all slides completely scanned.  The Hakatai slides were in most cases free of any material of biological origin at all, modern or fossil. ↩

2. 4b.

   A modern surface-pollen sample from near Burdick's collecting site (Sigels 1971) has bisaccate conifer pollen 30%, juniper 12%, Ephedra 16% and angiosperms 42%.  Burdick's identifiable grains, n = 18, were bisaccates 37%, possible juniper 11%, Ephedra 11%, and angiosperms and unassignable 34%.  The assemblage matches the plants growing on the rim today, taxon by taxon, to within a few percent. ↩

3. 4c.

   The opening summary says that creationists have often cited Precambrian pollen in the Grand Canyon as evidence against the geologic column, and that on examination Chadwick.  “does not find it to be credible.”  A creationist did the careful work, got a negative result and published it.  The fossil-order article offers this as the model. ↩

Halley, Keaton.  “Problems mounting for the Ta Prohm 'stegosaur' carving.”  Journal of Creation 39(2):119–126.  Jul 2025.  A creationist review of the carving's anatomy and of the creationist literature on it, published by Creation Ministries International.  It concludes that the stegosaur reading faces mounting problems, favours an Asian rhinoceros, and recommends that creationists stop using the example.

1. 5a.

   “Therefore, it is recommended that creationists avoid using this example as evidence for dinosaurs living in recent centuries.” ↩ ↩

Parker, Gary.  “Origin of Mankind.”  Impact.  Institute for Creation Research.  Nov 1, 1981.  A popular article by a young-earth biologist introducing the human-origins displays in the Institute's museum.  It is still served on the Institute's site with a later editor's note that corrects one claim about Piltdown and no other.

1. 6a.

   “Secondly, we have evidence that people walked upright before Lucy was fossilized—the Kanapoi hominid, Castenedolo Man, perhaps even the Laetoli footprints discovered by Mary Leakey, and most especially the man-like tracks preserved with those of dinosaurs in the rocky bottom of the Paluxy River in Texas.”  “The statement in this article that over 500 doctoral dissertations were done on Piltdown Man was taken from Malcolm Muggeridge and has since been determined to be an error.”  The second quotation is the editor's note. ↩ ↩ ↩

Rana, Fazale.  Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth.  RTB Press, Covina CA.  2016.  A popular book by Fazale Rana, a biochemist with Reasons to Believe, an old-earth (day-age) Christian ministry.  Its stated purpose is to explain why soft tissue can be preserved in fossils several hundred million years old.  The soft-tissue article uses it for Rana's concession that the soft tissue is authentic, and for the decay figures and claims he reports.  The ISBN is 978-1-886653-18-4.

1. 7a.

   Page 30:  “it does indeed appear that the soft tissue remnants isolated from a wide range of fossilized specimens are authentic endogenous materials, despite the protests of some skeptical paleontologists.” ↩ ↩

Johns, Warren H.  “Puzzle of the missing angiosperms in the fossil record.”  Journal of Creation 36(2):106–111.  2022.  A review in Creation Ministries International's journal, by a creationist, of three creationist claims of flowering-plant pollen in Precambrian and Cambrian rock:  the Grand Canyon, the Salt Range of Pakistan and the Roraima Formation.  It concludes that all three are contamination and asks creationists to stop using them.  Its abstract places the Roraima in Suriname;  the body correctly says British Guiana.

1. 8a.

   Page 109:  “The conclusion is that all three of the major sites of purported Precambrian and Cambrian pollen can be now explained as contamination. The questionable evidence for Precambrian and Cambrian angiosperm pollen of Grand Canyon, the Punjab of Pakistan, and the Roraima Formation of South American should be added to the list of arguments that creationists should not use to support creation.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Tabler, Dave.  “Human-like tracks in stone are riddle to scientists.”  Appalachian History.  Mar 7, 2016.  A local-history blog post that reprints a Science News Letter report of 29 October 1938 on footprint-like marks found in Carboniferous sandstone south-east of Berea, Kentucky, by the Berea College geologist Wilbur G. Burroughs.

1. 9a.

   “The prints were found in a sandstone formation known to belong to the Coal Age, about 12 miles southeast of Berea, KY, by Dr. Wilbur G. Burroughs, professor of geology at Berea College, and William Finnell.”  “They are the right size to be human- 9 or ten inches in length – and they are almost the right shape.”  “The highest known forms of life in the Coal Age were amphibians.” ↩ ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “A real Jurassic World?”  Institute for Creation Research.  Aug 4, 2015.  News commentary by an Institute for Creation Research science writer on reports of living dinosaurs in the Congo and Papua New Guinea, prompted by the film Jurassic World.

1. 10a.

   Paragraph 4:  “Mackal only obtained indirect evidence of the fabled monster—fascinating, but not scientifically definitive.”  Paragraph 8:  “On the other hand, live dinosaurs wouldn't necessarily overturn evolutionary origins theories. Those who believe the canonical assertion that dinosaurs all died off about 65 million years ago would simply build an exception—a dinosaur example of a living fossil.” ↩

Creation Evidence Museum of Texas.  “The London Artifact.”  Creation Evidence Museum.  2013.  The museum's own exhibit page for the hammer.  It gives the find as a loose rock in 1934, describes density scans and a file cut, and lists open questions, including the chlorine and the age of the nearby Cretaceous sand.

1. 11a.

   “In June of 1934, Max Hahn discovered a rock, sitting loose on a rock ledge beside a waterfall outside London, Texas. Noticing that this weathered rock had wood protruding from it, he and family members cracked it open with a hammer and chisel”. ↩

Rusch, Wilbert H.  “Human Footprints in Rocks.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 7(4):201–213.  Mar 1971.  A survey of claimed human footprints in old rock by a creationist biology professor, which opens with a caution against "misplaced enthusiasm" and prints the earliest known account of the Oklahoma iron pot, with the affidavit and the letters that came with its photograph.

1. 12a.

   Pages 201–202:  “He threw the two pieces of coal into the fire, but passed on to others the pot, which ultimately wound up in the private collection of an individual in Missouri. … He personally saw the pot, and examination of it indicated nothing that would contradict the story. Since then, the owner died and the pot has been lost.”  “I learned that this "friend" of Nordling's had died and his little museum was scattered. Nordling knew nothing of the whereabouts of the iron cup.”  The second quotation is from Frank Marsh's letter to Rusch of 3 February 1966. ↩

Cabrera Darquea, Javier.  El mensaje de las piedras grabadas de Ica.  Ica.  1976.  The collector's own book, quoted here in an unattributed English rendering of two chapters.  It gives his history of the stones and his reply to the 1975 press and police reports that two local farmers had carved them, including his own attempt to show by arithmetic that they could not have.

1. 13a.

   Chapter The Mystery of Ocucaje:  “My husband told them that all of the stones he sold to Dr. Cabrera he had carved himself. That he hadn't dug them up.”  Uschuya's wife, as reported by the Lima magazine Mundial, no. 6, 17 January 1975, and quoted by Cabrera.  Cabrera spells the name Uchuya. ↩

bible.ca.  “The Alvis Delk Track: New fossil human with dinosaur footprint.”  bible.ca.  n.d.  Retrieved Oct 4, 2026.  An unsigned page on a creationist site whose track section carries Don Patton's material;  it promotes the slab.

1. 14a.

   Section opening paragraphs:  “Mr. Delk found the loose slab against the bank of the Paluxy River, about one mile north of Dinosaur Valley State Park.  He flipped over the rock and saw an excellent dinosaur track, so he took it home where it sat in his living room for years, with hundreds of other fossils.”  “He began to clean the rock, and that was when he discovered the fossil human footprint underneath the dried clay!” ↩

Walker, Tas.  “The Alvis Delk human-dino footprints artefact.”  creation.com.  Jan 5, 2019.  Walker is a geologist with Creation Ministries International;  the Paluxy tracks article answers a reader's question.

1. 15a.

   Section body:  “The first problem is that the rock with the tracks was not observed, photographed, and documented in situ.  This is referred to as the fossil's provenance.”  “The second problem is that only single prints are present, which is a major weakness in the claim.  Any footprint claim needs to locate the print within a trackway.  A third problem is the long period between allegedly finding the rock with the dinosaur print and observing the 'human' print.”  “It is hard to envisage how a person could leave a track that is so straight from big toe to heel, even if they turned their leg inwards.  Then their other toes would not leave such an impression.  Also, the print appears to lack an arch, and it looks like the dino stomped in the human track but just pressed inwards without disturbing the human track in any other way.”  “The questions these problems raise can't be answered because the contextual evidence of the rock's provenance no longer exists.  This means that the artefact has no real apologetic value.” ↩ ↩

Morris, John D.  “An Amazing Anomalous Fossil.”  Acts & Facts 39(2):16.  Institute for Creation Research.  Feb 1, 2010.  A one-page article by the then president of the Institute for Creation Research, who had the bell analysed at the University of Oklahoma in the 1970s.  It presents the bell as intriguing and calls the other coal artifacts unusable.

1. 16a.

   “There have been several artifacts like this one found, but all are poorly documented and therefore unusable. I would never use questionable evidence for creation and the Flood without a disclaimer. I present this one here because the possibility is so intriguing.” ↩

Kuban, Glen J.  Moab Man — Malachite Man.  2016.  A web page by Glen Kuban, with a copyright line of © 2002–2016, on the 1971 find in which major portions of two human skeletons, stained blue-green by copper minerals, were found in the Big Indian Copper Mine (later the Keystone Azurite Mine) near Moab, Utah.  The rockhound Lin Ottinger, leading a field trip, found them after a bulldozer stripped about fifteen feet of overburden, and John Marwitt, then Field Director of the Utah Statewide Archaeological Survey, led the rest of the excavation.  Kuban reports that Marwitt reported loose, poorly consolidated blowsand around the bones, against hard consolidated sandstone away from them, and bones that were unfossilised.  The fossil-order article cites it for that matrix observation, and for the two checkable errors in the circulating version of the story. ↩

1. 17a.

   The circulating version has two errors.  The depth is given as fifty feet, where Marwitt and creationist authors alike report about fifteen for the 1971 finds.  The bones are said to be in the same Dakota Sandstone as the dinosaurs at Dinosaur National Monument, but the Dinosaur National Monument quarry is in the Jurassic Morrison Formation. ↩

2. 17b.

   Clifford Burdick wrote the find up in the Creation Research Society Quarterly in 1973, apparently from a sensationalised newspaper account rather than from Marwitt.  Carl Baugh bought one skeleton from Ottinger in the mid-1980s for the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose.  Don Patton and David Willis relaunched the material as "Malachite Man" in 1997–98. ↩

Barker, Harold et al.  “British Museum natural radiocarbon measurements VII.”  Radiocarbon 13(2):157–188.  1971.  A date list from the British Museum's radiocarbon laboratory, giving each sample, its laboratory number, its age and a comment from the submitter.

1. 18a.

   Page 183:  “958 ± 116 BM-496. Castenedolo skeleton A.D. 992 Collagen separated from vertebrae and costae of human skeleton (ref. Castenedolo I) found at Castenedolo, Brescia, Italy … Comment (K.P.O.): comparison of nitrogen content of Castenedolo bones with range of nitrogen values of bones from Italian sites indicated that these skeletons were intrusive burials in Pliocene marls”. ↩

Taylor, R. E.  “Six decades of radiocarbon dating in New World archaeology.”  Radiocarbon 51(1):173–212.  2009.  A review of radiocarbon dating in American archaeology by the head of the laboratory that dated the Calaveras material in 1992.  It mentions the Calaveras result in passing and gives the wrong year, 1854, for the skull's discovery.

1. 19a.

   Page 183:  “a 14C determination of 740 ± 210 BP (UCR-2161B/AA-1879) on an organic fraction of the Calaveras Skull was, in a sense, anticlimactic (Taylor et al. 1992). However, this measurement put an absolute fini to a much too long debated subject.” ↩

Di Peso, Charles C.  “The Clay Figurines of Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico.”  American Antiquity 18(4):388–389.  1953.  A short field report by the archaeologist of the Amerind Foundation, Arizona, who examined Julsrud's collection in 1952 and watched a "test" excavation of a new cache.  It is the only first-hand archaeological account of the figurines coming out of the ground.

1. 20a.

   Page 388:  “The cache had been very recently buried by digging a down sloping tunnel into the black fill dirt of the prehistoric room. … This bit of evidence, plus the presence of some fresh animal manure in the tunnel fill, offered proof enough that the material had been recently planted.” ↩

Carriveau, Gary W., and Mark C. Han.  “Thermoluminescent Dating and the Monsters of Acambaro.”  American Antiquity 41(4):497–500.  1976.  A laboratory report on thermoluminescence measurements of the Julsrud figurines.  Twenty randomly chosen figurines all failed the plateau test that a valid date requires, and the signal that regrew in samples first measured in 1969 indicated firing about thirty years earlier.

1. 21a.

   Page 499:  “This places the time of firing at about 30 years before 1969, a time very near to the discovery of the figurines”. ↩

Conrad, Ernest C.  “Tripping Over a Trilobite: A Study of the Meister Tracks.”  Creation/Evolution 2(4).  1981.  The Utah Museum of Natural History's assessment, as Conrad reports it:  “nothing more than a slab of Wheeler shale that has a fragment spalled off in the form of a footprint, which reveals a trilobite.”  A 1981 study of the Meister tracks, a footprint-shaped mark on a slab of Wheeler shale, published in the journal Creation/Evolution in its Fall 1981 issue.  University of Utah geologist William Lee Stokes supplies the terminology: this type of fracture is called spalling and the detached part is called a spall.  The fossil-order article uses it for the claim that the print is a natural fracture and not a footprint.

1. 22a.

   The three diagnostics: the feature occurs on both sides of the slab in opposite relief, which is what a fragment breaking out of a slab produces and not what a foot pressed into mud produces; the laminations beneath are undeformed, where a real track deforms them.  The sides are unnaturally angular, and the depth difference between "heel" and "sole" is about one-eighth of an inch.  The Wheeler Shale generates such features abundantly, in many shapes, by solution penetration, spalling and weathering, so a shape-matching claim is only as good as the population of shapes the process produces. ↩

Neufeld, Berney.  “Dinosaur Tracks and Giant Men.”  Origins 2(2):64–76.  1975.  Origins is the journal of the Geoscience Research Institute, a Seventh-day Adventist creationist body.  Neufeld's team from Loma Linda University, including Arthur Chadwick and Leonard Brand, worked the Paluxy in 1970 and sectioned purchased slabs.

1. 23a.

   Section Elongate Tracks, Series 1:  “Examination of the downriver end of the tracks (toward the lower edge of Figure 7) reveals that several of them show the print of a three-toed dinosaur.  It is not clear how the prints acquired their elongated shape, but it is obvious that the tracks cannot be both man and dinosaur.” ↩

Senter, Phil, and Sally J. Cole.  “"Dinosaur" petroglyphs at Kachina Bridge site, Natural Bridges National Monument, southeastern Utah: not dinosaurs after all.”  Palaeontologia Electronica 14(1):2A.  2011.  A field examination of the four Kachina Bridge figures that creationists had called dinosaurs, by a palaeontologist and a rock-art specialist, using the naked eye, binoculars and telephoto lenses under changing light.  It found the famous "sauropod" to be two separate pecked figures with stained "legs," and the other three to be stains or non-animal shapes.  No pigment or weathering tests were made.

1. 24a.

   Page 1:  “Examination reveals that the "neck" and "back" of Dinosaur 1 are a composite of two separate petroglyphs, and its "legs" are a natural mud or mineral stain.” ↩

Burnett, Scott E.  “A Stegosaur Carving on the Ruins of Ta Prohm? Think Again.”  Skeptical Inquirer 43(4).  Jul 2019.  A critic's account from ten days of visits to the Angkor park in 2011 and 2017, comparing the carving with the roundels around it and with other temples.  It rejects both the stegosaur reading and the claim that the carving is a modern fake.

1. 25a.

   “As for the second contention, there is no reason to think that the Ta Prohm carving is a modern hoax.” ↩

Niedźwiedzki, Grzegorz et al.  “Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland.”  Nature 463:43–48.  Jan 14, 2010.  A Nature paper describing trackways with digit marks made in Eifelian marine carbonate rock.  The tracks are still Devonian and still lie above every fish group and below every amniote, so the paper moved a first-appearance date inside the sequence and did not break the sequence.  The fossil-order article uses it as its clearest case of trace fossils moving a first-appearance date with no bone at all, and the fish-to-tetrapod article on this site treats the find and its age control in detail. ↩

Hochuli, Peter A., and Susanne Feist-Burkhardt.  “A boreal early cradle of Angiosperms? Angiosperm-like pollen from the Middle Triassic of the Barents Sea (Norway).”  Journal of Micropalaeontology 23:97–104.  2004.  Section abstract:  “The new finds of angiosperm-like pollen are the earliest in the fossil record so far and show an astonishing high diversity.”  Pollen grains from Middle Triassic rock of the Barents Sea whose shape is comparable to Early Cretaceous pollen generally attributed to flowering plants.  The same two authors also published "Angiosperm-like pollen and Afropollis from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) of the Germanic Basin (Northern Switzerland)," in Frontiers in Plant Science 4 (2013): 344, doi 10.3389/fpls.2013.00344.  The claim remains contested, and "angiosperm-like" is doing real work in the title, because the grains are known only as dispersed pollen with no attached parent plant.  The field's response was to argue about it in print for two decades.  The fossil-order article uses it because the claim puts angiosperms, or their stem lineage, about a hundred million years before the conventional Early Cretaceous radiation. ↩

Lacey, Troy.  “Humans with Dinosaurs Evidence.”  Answers in Genesis.  Aug 30, 2025.  Answers in Genesis's current graded list of art and other evidence for people living with dinosaurs, in four tiers from "Most Reliable Evidences" to "Evidences to Avoid."  It is the organisation's own register of which cases it still uses, and it states that its belief rests on Scripture rather than on these objects.

1. 28a.

   Section Evidences to Avoid, Paluxy River Tracks:  “At this stage, we advise caution, but we also encourage researchers to publish documented findings in reputable peer-reviewed journals such as ARJ, CRSQ, etc.” ↩

2. 28b.

   Section Bishop Bell's Tomb, Carlisle Cathedral:  “So the engraving on Bishop Bell's tomb not only looks like two sauropods but also included accurate anatomical information that was not known to science for another 500 years.” ↩ ↩

3. 28c.

   Section Evidences to Avoid, Paluxy River Tracks:  “we do not believe those claims of coexisting human and dinosaur prints are wholly supportable.” ↩

4. 28d.

   Section Ica Stones:  “More research, collaboration, and documentation with archaeologists need to be done with these stones for them to be good evidences of dinosaur-and-man coexistence.” ↩

5. 28e.

   Section Acámbaro Figures:  “Even so, more rigorous testing and peer review would need to be performed on these figures to make them stronger, more usable evidences.”  The section sits under "Evidences That Are Questionable and Should Be Cautiously Mentioned or Avoided," as does the Ica Stones section.  Its summary of Di Peso, that he found the figures' good condition implausible, does not match Di Peso's 1953 note, which says they were planted. ↩

6. 28f.

   Section Most Reliable Evidences, Kachina Bridge Sauropod Petroglyph:  “At one location (Kachina Bridge), there are several handprints, carvings of geometric shapes, animals, such as a bighorn sheep, a turtle, and what appears to be an obvious sauropod dinosaur. … The Anasazi people clearly saw living sauropods.” ↩

7. 28g.

   Section Stegosaur Depiction at Angkor Wat:  “He compared the relief of decorative flourishes on other engravings against the relief of the stegosaur plates, and the difference of three-times-greater relief depth on the stegosaur strongly reinforced the stegosaur with plates interpretation. … If using this evidence in an apologetics argument, be upfront and state that there is dissenting opinion on the specific creature, even among creationists.” ↩

8. 28h.

   Section Plesiosaur Caught by Japanese Fishing Boat:  “Later analysis of tissue taken from the creature before it was dumped overboard showed that it was elastoidin, likely from a basking shark.”  “Therefore, this "evidence" should be avoided.” ↩

9. 28i.

   Section Scripture Is Our Authority! But Evidences Can Corroborate Scripture:  “we can boldly state that mankind lived with dinosaurs and pterosaurs after the flood.”  “They may have lived even later (and some may still be living today in deep lakes or the deep sea).” ↩

10. 28j.

    Section Scripture Is Our Authority! But Evidences Can Corroborate Scripture:  “We must reiterate that we believe man lived with dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles, not because of the above or other evidences, but because Scripture says so.” ↩

Morris, John D.  “The Paluxy River Tracks.”  ICR Impact (35).  May 1976.  The Institute for Creation Research's first statement of the claim, published in Acts & Facts 5(5).  Morris was later ICR's president and wrote the 1986 withdrawal.

1. 29a.

   Section Proper Identification:  “Even if a perfect human footprint were found, it would not be very convincing unless it were found as one of a series, a right-left-right-left trail of prints, all conformable to one another in size and shape.  The prints should be separated by a relatively consistent length, representing the stride of the individual, and laterally by a few inches representing the natural straddle between the two feet.” ↩ ↩

Creation Evidence Museum.  “Alvis Delk Cretaceous Footprint.”  creationevidence.org.  n.d.  Retrieved Oct 4, 2026.  The museum's own display page for the slab, which it bought from Alvis Delk in 2008.

1. 30a.

   Section opening paragraphs and Scientific Verification of Footprint Authenticity:  “This fossil of dense Glen Rose limestone consists of Dinosaur footprint (Acrocanthosaurus) and an eleven-inch human footprint intruded by the dinosaur print.”  “In early July, 2000 Alvis Delk, assisted by James Bishop (both of Stephenville, Texas), was working in the Cretaceous limestone on the McFall property at the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas and discovered a pristine human footprint intruded by a dinosaur footprint.”  “The fossil was transported to a professional laboratory where 800 X-rays were performed in a CT Scan procedure.  Laboratory technicians verified compression and distribution features clearly seen in both prints, human and dinosaur.  This removes any possibility that the prints were carved or altered.” ↩

Gentet, Robert E.  “The Case for the Calaveras Skull.”  CreationHistory.com.  Jun 20, 2022.  A web repost, by one of its two authors, of the 1997 Creation Research Society Quarterly defence of the Calaveras skull, unchanged in its argument.  Its page metadata records a revision in June 2026.

1. 31a.

   The page's metadata gives a publication date of 20 June 2022 and a modification date of 26 June 2026.  Its text repeats:  “We realize that others firmly believe the Calaveras Skull to be a hoax.” ↩

Owen, James.  “'Skeleton of Giant' Is Internet Photo Hoax.”  National Geographic News.  Dec 14, 2007.  A news article by James Owen in National Geographic News.  The Nephilim article says the 'Skeleton of Giant' photograph is an internet photo hoax, and it traces where the picture came from.  The Nephilim article uses it to trace the giant-skeleton photograph that circulates as proof of the Nephilim.

1. 32a.

   “The picture, however, is an innocent fake.”  “The image was lifted from Worth1000, a Web site that hosts contests for digital artists. Created by an artist using the alias IronKite, the picture placed third in a 2002 competition”. ↩

Mitchell, Tommy.  “Were Giant Skeletons Found in the Desert?”  Answers in Genesis.  Aug 3, 2010.  A short article on Answers in Genesis's "Arguments to Avoid" page.  It sets the internet photographs of giant skeletons beside the originals they were made from, a mastodon dig and a University of Chicago excavation in Africa, and shows the giants were added.

1. 33a.

   “However, the photographs in question are faked. They are the product of a competition for digital photographers who were trying to create an archaeological hoax.” ↩

Williams, Alexander R.  “'Oldest' hominid footprints show no evolution!”  Creation 15(4):32.  Sep 1993.  CMI's case for a human maker, resting on Russell Tuttle's 1987 chapter in Leakey and Harris, Laetoli:  A Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania, pp. 503–523, which it quotes.

1. 34a.

   Section main text:  “Strictly on the basis of the morphology of the G prints [prints found at a site labelled 'G'], their makers could be classified as Homo sp. because they are so similar to those of Homo sapiens, but their early date would probably deter many paleoanthropologists from accepting this assignment.”  “The feet that produced the G trails are in no discernible features transitional between the feet of apes … and those of Homo sapiens. They are like small barefoot Homo sapiens.”  Both are Williams quoting Tuttle 1987;  the bracketed gloss is Williams's. ↩

Morris, John D.  “Who or what made the Laetoli footprints?”  Acts & Facts 26(2).  Feb 1, 1997.  ICR's reading of the prints as human, written on Mary Leakey's death.

1. 35a.

   Paragraph 6:  “Thus we see that it is the creationists, not the evolutionists who are the empirical scientists. A human footprint must be made by a human foot!” ↩

Mitchell, Elizabeth.  “Laetoli footprints revisited.”  Answers in Genesis, News to Know.  Nov 12, 2011.  AiG's response to a Society of Vertebrate Paleontology presentation on the site G trails.

1. 36a.

   Paragraph 5:  “Despite many evolutionists' insistence that the footprints belong to an extinct human ancestral ape called Australopithecus afarensis, the footprints appear to belong to modern humans, albeit barefoot ones.” ↩

New Creation.  “Who made the Laetoli footprints?”  New Creation.  Jan 18, 2023.  A young-earth creationist essay from the Core Academy of Science circle, bylined "Peter", that argues against the human reading of the prints.

1. 37a.

   Paragraph 1:  “Creationists have sometimes used them as evidence for an early appearance of humanity. However, a closer look at the anatomy of the footprints suggests that they may not have been made by humans.” ↩

Golovin, Sergei.  “Human and Dinosaur Footprints in Turkmenistan?”  Creation 18(4):52.  Sep 1996.  A one-page magazine report, still published on both the Answers in Genesis and the Creation Ministries International sites.  It relays a 1995 Russian newspaper story of human footprints among dinosaur tracks on a plateau in Turkmenistan, and a 1983 Moscow News item in which the expedition leader declined to identify them.  Mirror:  Creation.com

1. 38a.

   “Human footprints lie alongside thousands of dinosaur prints on a Turkmenian plateau, a Russian newspaper has reported.”  “is that among the footprints of dinosaurs, footprints of bare human feet were found!”  The second sentence is the journalist Alexander Bushev's, from Komsomolskaya Pravda, 31 January 1995. ↩ ↩

2. 38b.

   “However, at present we don’t have enough grounds to say this. We’ve imprints resembling human footprints, but to date have failed to determine, with any scientific veracity, whom they belong to, after all.”  Kurban Amanniyazov, head of the expedition, as quoted from Moscow News, 1983, no. 24, p. 10.  The article then comments:  “The new report proves that nothing has changed.” ↩ ↩

3. 38c.

   “who walked in his swimming suit along the sea-side”. ↩

Genesis Park.  “Fossil Footprints.”  Genesis Park.  n.d.  Retrieved Oct 17, 2026.  An exhibit page of Genesis Park, a creationist museum website run by David Woetzel, that collects reports of human footprints in old rock and presents the Turkmenistan and Kentucky reports as genuine.

1. 39a.

   “In 1983 Professor Amanniyazov, Director of Turkmenia’s Institute of Geology, reported what appeared to be human footprints in Mesozoic strata.”  “We can say the age of this footprint is not 5 or 10, but at least 150 million years old.” ↩ ↩

2. 39b.

   “Perhaps the most intriguing such fossil footprint report was that made by the head of department at Berea college in Kentucky of a human-like track left in sandstone of the Upper Carboniferous Period.” ↩ ↩

3. 39c.

   “Ingalls suggested that they were made by some unidentified amphibian.”  Albert G. Ingalls, writing in Scientific American in 1940, as summarised by Genesis Park, which goes on to argue against him. ↩

Lubenow, Marvin L.  Bones of Contention:  A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils.  Baker Books, Grand Rapids.  Revised and updated edition.  2004.  The most widely read young-earth book on human fossils.  It argues that the fossils form a continuum of humans living side by side, not a sequence, and uses brain size as one test of humanity.

1. 40a.

   Page 129:  “That is to place all of the relevant fossil material on a time chart according to the evolutionist dates for each of the fossil individuals”.  “When this is done, as it is done in this book, the evidence is strongly in favor of a morphological continuum, both horizontally across species and vertically over time. The horizontal continuum shows that anatomically modern Homo sapiens, Neandertal, early Homo sapiens, and Homo erectus all lived as contemporaries over extended periods of time.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  Earth's Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood.  Volume 2.  Institute for Creation Research, Dallas.  2009.  The two-volume textbook of Flood geology by the Institute for Creation Research's leading geologist.  It is cited here for its single sentence on claims of pollen in Precambrian and Cambrian rock, which it does not defend.

1. 41a.

   Page 737:  “There have been claims of such pollen being found, even as low in the geologic record as the Cambrian strata, but these have not been unequivocally documented.”  Snelling's footnote 15 lists the 1966 Roraima report among these claims. ↩ ↩

Silvestru, Emil.  “The evolutionary paradox of the Roraima pollen of South America is still not solved.”  Journal of Creation 26(3):54–59.  2012.  A paper in Creation Ministries International's journal by a young-earth geologist who specialises in caves and karst.  It accepts the 1966 pollen report and argues from the geology of the table mountains that water could not have carried modern pollen into the hornfels, so that the rock's Precambrian age, not the pollen, must be wrong.  It is the fullest young-earth defence of the claim, and it concedes that most scientists think otherwise.

1. 42a.

   Page 54:  “The consensus seems to be that the microfossils represent a case of contamination.”  “a reluctance on the part of the scientific establishment to get involved in topics challenging evolutionary dogma.” ↩ ↩

2. 42b.

   Page 58:  “there should also be plenty of pollen in the superjacent rocks if contamination really occurred, and yet nothing of the sort has been reported.” ↩

3. 42c.

   Page 58:  “Under normal circumstances the presence of limonite (FeO(OH) ∙ nH2O) is evidence for secondary (epigenetic) chemical alteration of the rock.” ↩

Batten, Don.  “Pollen problem.”  Creation 36(2):56.  Apr 2014.  A one-page magazine piece by a Creation Ministries International scientist, put on the web in 2015, that presents the Roraima pollen as fact and cites Stainforth's 1966 report and Silvestru's work.  It shows the claim in CMI's popular magazine after its journal had printed the technical case.

1. 43a.

   “No wonder that one finds pollen all the way down in Precambrian strata (supposedly more than a billion years before dinosaurs!).” ↩ ↩

Price, Paul.  “The Salt Range saga:  The 'Precambrian rabbit' challenge revisited.”  Creation Ministries International.  Apr 13, 2020.  A web article for Creation Ministries International, updated 16 July 2020, arguing that Birbal Sahni's plant and insect remains from Cambrian salt in Pakistan are genuine fossils out of order and that the mainstream verdict of contamination is ideological.  It quotes Hughes's review at length and reports a later German examination that found nothing, which it answers by calling the question forensic rather than experimental.

1. 44a.

   “This is not just one ‘Precambrian rabbit’, but several at once!” ↩ ↩

2. 44b.

   “the clear geological evidence that shows the Saline Series (Salt Range) belongs to the so-called Cambrian or Pre-Cambrian (rather than an evolutionarily ‘later’ stratum such as the Eocene) has won the day.” ↩

3. 44c.

   Section Failure to repeat the find?:  “The results of these investigations (“by every known technique”, according to Schindewolf) were entirely negative. No plant remains or other fossils of younger aspect were found in any rocks from the Saline series or the overlying Cambrian sequence.”  Price is quoting another writer, his reference 12, on the German examination of Otto Schindewolf's Salt Range collections.  Price replies that a failure to repeat a find does not cancel it. ↩

4. 44d.

   “Hughes simply dismisses the evidence altogether with essentially no reasons given (other than the assumption of evolution, of course).” ↩

Froede, Carl R. Jr.  “Precambrian Plant Fossils and the Hakatai Shale Controversy.”  Creation Research Society.  n.d.  “is not required by either uniformitarian or creationist frameworks and it ignores documented evidence of Precambrian plant material.”  A Creation Research Society web page by Carl Froede, whose abstract argues that rejecting the presence of plant fossils in the Hakatai Shale or in abundance in other Precambrian strata.  The fossil-order article's assessment is that the argument equivocates on "plant fossil", and that equivocation is the whole of it: the opening pages establish, correctly and uncontroversially, that biological material occurs in Archean and Proterozoic rock as old as 3.4–3.5 Ga (billion years ago), citing Schopf, Walter, Margulis and Strother, and those are stromatolites, cyanobacterial microfossils and isotopically biogenic kerogen (carbon of biological origin), Schopf's own three categories; none is a vascular plant and none is pollen.  The page is undated on its face, and the society may or may not treat it as its current position.  The fossil-order article cites it because the defence remains published, which is checkable, and quotes the key sentence of the abstract verbatim: ↩

Creation Evidence Museum of Texas.  “Displays.”  Creation Evidence Museum.  2013.  The museum's index of its exhibits, with a one-line description of each.

1. 46a.

   “This artifact is a metal hammer in Cretaceous rock.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Possible Human Artifact Found in Coal.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Feb 20, 2013.  A news commentary by an Institute for Creation Research science writer on Russian press reports of an aluminium object in coal, presenting it and two older coal finds as possibly pre-Flood.  Its sources are three news reports, not a laboratory paper.

1. 47a.

   “The Pennsylvanian coal came from the Chernogorodskiy mines from the Khakasis region north of Mongolia. According to international Russian news source Komsomolskaya Pravda, biologist Valery Brier helped analyze the odd-shaped object. X-ray diffraction revealed that it was mostly aluminum with about two to four percent magnesium. This unique alloy is not generally produced today.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Pre-Flood Human Fossils Revisited.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Oct 30, 2015.  A web article by an Institute for Creation Research science writer listing young-earth answers to the absence of human remains in Flood rock.  It mentions three coal artifacts as possible pre-Flood objects and says they need testing for fraud, which makes it both a promoter of the coal finds and a caution against them.

1. 48a.

   Section Fossilization, Runoff, and Pennsylvanian Coal:  “Although these artifacts are intriguing, we need more thorough investigations that test against fraud before building a case on them.” ↩

2. 48b.

   “Although we know of no undisputed human skeletal remains in Flood rocks, a few unique artifacts may have come from pre-Flood humans.”  The artifacts Thomas then lists are the iron cup, the brass bell and the aluminium gear from coal, which he says need tests against fraud before a case is built on them. ↩

Frair, Wayne.  “Freiberg Human Skull Composed of Coal.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 30(1):36–39.  Jun 1993.  A review of the history of the Freiberg coal "skull" by the then president of the Creation Research Society, who examined it in Freiberg in 1979.  It draws on German studies of the object and concludes that it is a moulded artefact of no value as evidence.

1. 49a.

   Page 36:  “There is no evidence that this artifact contains fossil bone. The skull is not a fossilized human head; nor is it a carving. It was molded by somebody using particles of brown coal and other materials probably prior to the summer of 1813. Therefore it has little or no significance in creation/evolution considerations.” ↩

CreationWiki.  “Out-of-place artifact.”  CreationWiki.  n.d.  Retrieved Dec 6, 2025.  A young-earth wiki's list of claimed out-of-place artifacts, given as a reference list without assessment.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 50a.

   “The Wonderstone Spheroids, now numbering 200 or more, found in a silver mine in South Africa. They are of a nickel-steel alloy that cannot have occurred outside a laboratory or a steel mill.”  “A brass bell with an iron clapper, found in a lump of coal.”  “An iron pot found within a lump of coal in Thomas, Oklahoma.” ↩

Woetzel, David, and Dennis Swift.  “Can the Ica Stones be independently authenticated?”  Journal of Creation 30(3):67–73.  Nov 2016.  The strongest young-earth case for the Ica stones, published by Creation Ministries International.  The authors sent three stones, one souvenir carving, one Cabrera stone and one stone excavated by the Palpa Museum in 2001, to two commercial laboratories for patina and metal-trace tests, and report that the souvenir failed and the other two passed.  The laboratory reports are not published.

1. 51a.

   Section abstract:  “Genuine pre-Columbian burial stones ('Ica stones') can be distinguished from modern souvenir stones by patina analysis and metallurgical analysis. The Palpa Museum stone bearing etchings of a sauropod dinosaur and other animals was confirmed as ancient.” ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Did Medieval Artists See Real Dinosaurs?”  Institute for Creation Research.  Jun 29, 2018.  An account by an Institute for Creation Research science writer of his visit to Carlisle Cathedral, arguing that two creatures on Bishop Bell's brass are sauropods.

1. 52a.

   “After sifting the evidence, I decided to disagree with the rector at Carlisle Cathedral. I cannot deny the clear dinosaur decor on Bishop Bell's tomb.” ↩

s8int.com.  Dinosaurs in Literature, Art and History.  2014.  The web page that first presented a Palestrina mosaic animal as a dinosaur;  it credits Genesis Park for part of its reading.

1. 53a.

   “These "Ethiopians" are pursuing what appears to be some type of dinosaur. The Greek Letters embedded in the mosaic above the reptilian animal in question are: KROKODILOPARDALIS which is literally translated Crocodile-Leopard.”  The same page adds that "some had suggested the dino was just a badly drawn croc." ↩

Grigg, Russell M.  “Dinosaurs and dragons: stamping on the legends.”  Creation 14(3):10–14.  Jun 1992.  Creation Ministries International's popular statement of the case that dragon legends from many cultures are memories of dinosaurs.

1. 54a.

   Section Dragon stories:  “Although doubtless over the years many of these dragon stories and drawings have gained embellishments, the fact of their virtual worldwide existence, and the many items of similarity between the creatures slain and known dinosaur fossils, clearly point to an underlying reality.” ↩

Ham, Ken.  “Dragons—Did the Legends Come from the First "Fossil Hunters"?”  Ken Ham Blog, Answers in Genesis.  Jan 12, 2023.  A blog reply by the founder of Answers in Genesis to a magazine article arguing that dragon legends came from fossils.

1. 55a.

   “In the recent past, people actually lived with real live animals they called "dragons," and many dragon legends are just the exaggerated memory of a time when humans and what we now call dinosaurs interacted with one another.” ↩

Institute for Creation Research.  “Dragon Encounters at the ICR Discovery Center.”  Institute for Creation Research.  n.d.  A short page from the Institute for Creation Research's museum listing historical dragon reports.

1. 56a.

   “The ancient historians Josephus (37-100 AD) and Herodotus (400s BC) mentioned winged serpents.” ↩

Answers in Genesis.  “Dragons: Fact or Fable?”  Answers in Genesis.  n.d.  An undated popular page arguing that dragons were real animals, that the Hebrew tannin means dragon, and that Behemoth and Leviathan were a sauropod and a marine reptile.

1. 57a.

   “The beast the passage describes fits well with something similar to a sauropod dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. … Next, God describes at length a leviathan, a fire-breathing sea monster with impenetrable scales that none could face except its Creator. Read Job 41 and see if you picture a ferocious marine reptile, like a Kronosaurus.” ↩

Niermann, D. Lee.  “Dinosaurs and Dragons.”  CEN Technical Journal 8(1):85–104.  1994.  A young-earth paper in Creation Ministries International's technical journal arguing that Behemoth and Leviathan were dinosaurs and that dragon legends worldwide describe them.

1. 58a.

   Page 85:  “These descriptions fit precisely all that we know about certain dinosaurs, the giant sauropods, but no other animal that we know of”. ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  “Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.”  Creation Ministries International.  Feb 25, 2018.  The archived copy of Creation Ministries International's list of retired arguments on 25 February 2018, the first archived copy to include living dinosaurs and plesiosaurs.  The copy archived on 31 January 2018 does not include them.

1. 59a.

   Section What arguments are doubtful, hence inadvisable to use?:  “There are living dinosaurs and plesiosaurs today.”  “it is time to say that dinosaurs are no longer alive today, unless proven otherwise.” ↩

Ham, Ken.  “What really happened to the dinosaurs?”  The New Answers Book 1.  Master Books.  2006 (edition of 2007).  Chapter by the founder of Answers in Genesis setting out the young-earth account of dinosaurs, from their creation to their extinction after the Flood.  It is still on the Answers in Genesis website, which says it was last featured in August 2021.

1. 60a.

   Section Are Dinosaurs Really Extinct?:  “Explorers and natives in Africa have reported sighting dinosaur-like creatures, even in the twentieth century.”  “These have usually been confined to out-of-the-way places such as lakes deep in the Congo jungles. Descriptions certainly fit those of dinosaurs.” ↩

Clarey, Tim.  “Even Sherlock Holmes can't explain African dinosaurs.”  Institute for Creation Research.  Nov 19, 2020.  Short news commentary by the Institute for Creation Research's geologist on a paper about African dinosaur diversity, arguing that the Flood explains the dinosaurs' disappearance at the end of the Cretaceous.

1. 61a.

   Paragraph the one beginning Uniformitarian scientists struggle:  “Only the dinosaurs on the ark survived. And they have since gone extinct, leaving no post-Flood fossil evidence.” ↩

Hovind, Eric.  “Mokele-Mbembe:  the beast of the Congo.”  Creation Today.  Feb 21, 2011.  Short promotional article by the president of the young-earth ministry Creation Today, recommending William Gibbons's 2010 book on Mokele-mbembe.

1. 62a.

   Paragraph 1:  “Dozens of expeditions into the swamp have been completed, and lots of evidence gathered to make the remarkable claim that these creatures still roam the earth.” ↩

Whitcomb, Jonathan D.  “Reports of living pterosaurs in the southwest Pacific.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 45(3):200–212.  2009.  The fullest statement of the ropen case by its main promoter, collecting eyewitness reports from Papua New Guinea, the 1994 to 2007 American expeditions and two videos of night lights, and replying to critics.

1. 63a.

   Page 200:  “Although no direct proof has been presented, the indirect evidence is substantial and intriguing.” ↩ ↩

Genesis Park.  “The Ropen of PNG.”  Genesis Park.  n.d.  Online exhibit presenting the ropen of Papua New Guinea as a living pterosaur, drawing on Woetzel's 2004 expedition and later reports.  Its closing paragraph repeats the conclusion of Woetzel's 2006 paper.

1. 64a.

   “Two species appear to persist in PNG.” ↩

Armitage, Mark H.  “A critique of Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth.”  Journal of Creation 31(1):45–50.  2017.  A critique of Fazale Rana's book by Mark Armitage, published in the journal of Creation Ministries International, a young-earth creationist ministry.  It points out one checkable chemical fact: osteocytes (bone cells) and DNA have no cross-linking, the chemical bonds that Rana's mechanisms depend on.  The soft-tissue article uses it for that one point only. ↩

Thomas, Brian.  Collagen remnants in ancient bone.  University of Liverpool.  2018.  A PhD thesis that compiles radiocarbon results from Mesozoic dinosaur bone and evaluates possible sources of carbon-14 in it.  The radiocarbon article uses it as the most careful young-earth compilation of radiocarbon measurements on dinosaur bone, and as the source of the uranium figure that the radiocarbon article disputes.  Mirror:  Liverpool.ac.uk ↩

1. 66a.

   Table 7.1, page 206:  The Mesozoic entries, in pMC (percent of modern carbon, the ratio of radiocarbon in a sample to that of modern air):  CM00088 stegosaurid 1.03 bulk / 6.61 apatite;  CM21728 Diplodocus longus 0.71 / 3.52;  CM00094 Diplodocus 1.12;  HRS08267 1.64….  The table lists 21 values in all.  Thomas's caption says that.  “<collagen”.  marks samples with too little collagen to date, and.  “>”.  marks an infinite age that overlaps the machine blank. ↩

Batten, Don.  “Living fossils:  a powerful argument for creation.”  Creation 33(2):20–23.  2011.  An interview by a Creation Ministries International scientist with Carl Werner about his book Living Fossils.  Werner describes his search for modern-looking organisms in dinosaur-age rock and what he did not find.

1. 67a.

   Section Were any modern organisms not found?:  “I did not find any large mammals.  The largest mammal discovered in a dinosaur layer so far (live size) is 30 pounds (13 kg).” ↩

Rupe, Christopher.  “"Lucy" and the Pygmy Human Hypothesis.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 62:208–227.  2026.  A refereed creationist paper by Christopher Rupe, a young-earth creationist with a PhD in the earth sciences, arguing that Lucy's species should be reclassified as small-bodied humans.  Along the way he rejects the claim that Lucy's pelvis was faked in reconstruction, which makes his verdict hard to dismiss as a critic's.

1. 68a.

   Page 209:  “The allegations of fraud or a manipulated reconstruction do not stand up to scrutiny.” ↩

Stainforth, R. M.  “Occurrence of Pollen and Spores in the Roraima Formation of Venezuela and British Guiana.”  Nature 210(5033):292–294.  Apr 16, 1966.  A short report written by Stainforth on behalf of the Venezuelan association of geologists.  It summarises how three oil-company palynologists recovered pollen and spores from baked shale in the Roraima Formation, dated as Precambrian, and sets out the members' two opposed views:  that the pollen got in later, or that the rock's age is wrong.  It gives no list of pollen types and no photographs, and it ends without deciding.  Mirror:  Archive.org ↩

1. 69a.

   Paragraph the one describing the 1964 visit to Cerro Venamo:  “The original samples were loose, weathered fragments from the talus slope below. New samples of unweathered rock were collected from the face of the undercut.”  “some of the pieces processed were the central nubs left after chipping away the external parts of large blocks of the rock”. ↩

2. 69b.

   “The rock cleaves along finely laminated bedding planes which are coated with limonite.”  “T. van der Hammen (Leiden) recognizes a mixture of Mesozoic and Cenozoic elements, but suspects that they represent foreign material concentrated along cleavage planes as, after cleaning fragments ultrasonically, he found the matrix practically barren.” ↩

3. 69c.

   “The palynological assemblage has not yet been matched conclusively against any known suite”. ↩

4. 69d.

   Paragraph 1:  “Individual authors will doubtless publish detailed stratigraphic and palynologic accounts of the occurrence in due course.” ↩

5. 69e.

   “The Roraima sandstones are quartzitic, of low permeability, hence carriage of extraneous pollen through them by percolating water seems highly improbable. Even if this process could occur, entry of such pollen and spores into the nonporous hornfels lacks an explanation.”  The view of the second of the two groups whose opinions the report sets out, those who doubted contamination and questioned the rock's age. ↩

Stainforth, R. M.  “Discussion of the Age of the Roraima Formation.”  Boletín Informativo, Asociación Venezolana de Geología, Minería y Petróleo.  Nov 1964.  Stainforth's report of a meeting held on 19 November 1964 to discuss the Roraima pollen, written before the 1966 summary.  It records each speaker's view:  the palynologists' differing readings of the pollen's age, the thin sections showing that the rock is hornfels, and the preference of the man who made them for contamination.  The meeting reached no decision.

1. 70a.

   Section Bowen's contribution:  “Intense search for plant microfossils in the thin sections was unsuccessful.”  “He therefore favored an external origin, though he could not explain how such contamination took place”. ↩

Hughes, Nigel C.  “Biostratigraphical dating conundrums in the Cambrian and earlier stratigraphy of the Indian subcontinent.”  The Palaeobotanist 66:1–15.  2017.  A review by a Cambrian palaeontologist at the University of California, Riverside, of six long-running disputes over the dating of early rocks in India and Pakistan.  On the Salt Range it sets out the geology that places the salt in the Cambrian and concludes that Birbal Sahni's plant and insect remains are modern contamination.  It argues this from the stratigraphy and the nature of the material, not from a new test of Sahni's samples.

1. 71a.

   Page 4:  “In 1944 Prof. Birbal Sahni published an initial analyses of samples from the Salt Range Formation mentioning fragments of angiosperm wood, gymnosperm tracheids and insect cuticle that suggested that the Salt Range Formation could not be Cambrian in age, as it must postdate the evolution of angiosperms”. ↩

2. 71b.

   Page 4:  “As it is now accepted that the Salt Range Formation was deposited during the Cambrian, its association with this modern–looking biota becomes yet more incongruous.” ↩

3. 71c.

   Page 4:  “identified only to division level in the case of plants, and ordinal level in the case of insects. The sole detailed determination was that of the dipteran gnat Chironomus primitivus, which belongs to an extant genus.” ↩

4. 71d.

   Page 4:  “not only replicated Prof Sahni’s finds from the Salt Range Formation, but also found similar structures in association with many stratigraphic levels within the Jhelum Group”.  Hughes is describing the work of Ghosh and his associates in the 1940s and 1950s. ↩

5. 71e.

   Page 6:  “The organic–walled material recovered from the Salt Range Formation and associated units is therefore clearly a modern contaminant. Given that similar material was found in several different rock types and that there is no compelling evidence that this material was ever fossilized, the most likely source is modern organic dust particles introduced from the ambient environment, despite the efforts made by Sahni’s group to sterilize the samples.” ↩

Fanti, Federico et al.  “New Data on Two Large Dinosaur Tracksites from the Upper Jurassic of Eastern Turkmenistan (Central Asia).”  Ichnos 20(2):54–71.  2013.  A field survey by Italian and Turkmen geologists that mapped the Hojapil-Ata track surface with GPS, laser scanning and photogrammetry and described a second large site nearby.  It is the most detailed published record of the plateau where the "human" prints are claimed.

1. 72a.

   Section Abstract:  “The track-bearing surface, Upper Jurassic in age, is discontinuously exposed over an area of 28.500 square meters, with 24 trackways and at least 913 footprints preserved.”  “The collected data support the previously identified co-occurrence of the two ichnogenera Megalosauripus and Therangospodus”. ↩

Bird, Roland T.  “Thunder in His Footsteps.”  Natural History 43(5):254–261, 302.  May 1939.  Bird collected fossils for Barnum Brown at the American Museum of Natural History and excavated the Paluxy sauropod trackway displayed there.  This popular article, written with the museum's oil-company patron in mind, is the first published mention of the "man tracks".

1. 73a.

   Page 255:  “I'm afraid your Jack Hill has found himself a pair of fake footprints.”  Bird to the clerk at the Gallup trading post, after examining the two "human" slabs in the window. ↩

Kuban, Glen J.  “Elongate Dinosaur Tracks.”  Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, 57–72.  Cambridge University Press.  Edited by David D. Gillette and Martin G. Lockley.  1989.  Kuban's chapter in the proceedings of the First International Symposium on Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, Albuquerque, 1986;  the statement of the metatarsal explanation that the field accepted.

1. 74a.

   Page 57:  “Numerous elongate dinosaur tracks with apparent metatarsal impressions occur in the Paluxy River bed, near Glen Rose, Texas.  These tracks vary somewhat in size, shape, and clarity, but are typically 55 to 70 cm long (including the metatarsal segment), and 25 to 40 cm wide (across the digits).  In many cases the digit impressions on such tracks are indistinct, due to mud collapse, erosion, or a combination of factors — causing some to resemble giant human footprints, for which they have been mistaken by some creationists and local residents.” ↩

Morris, John D.  “Paluxy River: The Tale of the Trails.”  Acts & Facts 42(5):12–14.  Apr 30, 2013.  ICR's current statement, written by its president twenty-seven years after the withdrawal.

1. 75a.

   Section Project History:  “Our chemical analysis confirmed that the colored areas contained more iron inside than outside, and we could find no evidence that any foreign chemical had been added.” ↩

2. 75b.

   Section Project History:  “We looked diligently for evidence of foul play, but as yet no direct evidence of evolutionary fraud has been uncovered.” ↩

Pope, Marvin H.  “Job.”  The Anchor Bible 15.  Doubleday.  3rd edition.  1973.  A major critical commentary by a scholar of Ugaritic and the Hebrew Bible, which reads Behemoth and Leviathan as monsters of Canaanite myth rather than as the hippopotamus and crocodile.

1. 76a.

   Pages 271–272:  “As applied to the tail of the hippopotamus, the hyperbole is extreme since the tail of this animal is absurdly small in proportion to its massive body.” ↩

Loxton, Daniel, and Donald R. Prothero.  Abominable Science!  Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids.  Columbia University Press.  2013.  Book-length critical history of five famous cryptids by a science writer and a paleontologist.  Its Mokele-mbembe chapter traces the legend from colonial reports through every major expedition, and Prothero describes taking part in a 2009 television search.

1. 77a.

   Page 283:  “Every attempt to obtain reliable photographs, films, or footprint casts of this alleged creature has failed. The film shot by zoologist Marcellin Agnagna in 1983 is also useless. Agnagna claimed first that he had failed to remove the lens cap and then that the camera had been set at macro-focus rather than telephoto.” ↩