12/31/2022 0 Comments Human footprint fossil![]() The Paluxy River tracks were discovered in 1908, after a flood broke away a layer of rock that had hidden them. The alleged human footprints (foreground) and dinosaur tracks. Dinosaurs were put on earth on the fifth day (“So God created the great sea monsters”) and man on the sixth day. ![]() Creationists, on the other hand, believe that the earth is about 10,000 years old and that all living things were created by God during creation week. During that 60-million-year gap, the earth was a constantly changing place: glaciers were shifting, oceans were moving, and species were appearing and disappearing. Most scientists believe that the dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago and that man did not make his first appearance on earth until at most 5 million years ago. As a creationist leader puts it, “One dinosaur or brontosaurus track found in situ with one human footprint is sufficient to bring the whole Darwinian theory down and to revolutionize all biology today.” The creationists maintain that the answer is yes the Paluxy River basin, they say, offers proof that the theory of evolution is a fraud. Where the two sides disagree is on the question of whether, alongside those dinosaur tracks, there can also be found fossilized human footprints. On this everyone is agreed, creationist and evolutionist alike. But controversial the Paluxy is, for the area around it contains one of the heaviest concentrations of dinosaur tracks in the country. The town closest to it, Glen Rose, has a population of around two thousand. With its sparkling spring-fed water, it is a pretty but unpretentious stream. The Paluxy seems an unlikely center for national controversy. ![]() But are the arguments valid? One place to look for an answer to that question is Texas, or, more precisely, the Paluxy River basin in North Texas, 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Taken as a whole, this creationist literature-and its advocates, many of whom flash impressive-sounding degrees-can seem persuasive. True believers like the Gablers can invariably cite chapter and verse from a large, and growing, body of literature arguing that creationism is at least as valid a theory as evolution. And other texts, such as a 1980 Houghton-Mifflin biology book, discuss both evolution and divine creation as possible explanations of the origin of life. ![]() Whereas a 1973 Charles Merrill text contained seventeen references to evolution in its index, the 1979 edition has but three. If there is one battle Mel and Norma Gabler have been winning in the twenty years they have been objecting to America’s textbooks, it is their fight to have creationism taught alongside evolution in biology classes: biology texts today often ignore or substantially downplay evolution. ![]()
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