Scientists say jaw bone fragment dating back 2.8 million years evidence of earlier evolution

Published March 05, 2015
FoxNews.com

NEW YORK – A fragment of jaw bone dating back 2.8 million years is evidence that the first humans evolved more than 400,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists reported Wednesday.

The fossil, which was uncovered in the Afar region in northern Ethiopia, is dated very close to the time that the human, or "Homo" genus, or group, split away from more ape-like ancestors like Australopithecus afarensis, best known for the fossil skeleton Lucy discovered in 1974.

Africa is a hotbed for human ancestor fossils, and scientists from Arizona State University have worked for years at the Ethiopia site, trying to find fossils from the dimly understood period when the Homo genus arose.

Our species, called Homo sapiens, is the only surviving member of this group.

The jaw fragment, which includes five teeth, was discovered in pieces one morning in January 2013 by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian graduate student at Arizona State. He said he spotted a tooth poking out of the ground while looking for fossils.

The discovery is described in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Science.

Arizona State's William Kimbel, an author of the paper, said it's not clear whether the fossil came from a known early species of Homo or whether it reveals a new one. Field work is continuing to look for more fossils at the site, said another author, Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Analysis indicates the jaw fossil came from one of the earliest populations of Homo, and its age helps narrow the range of possibilities for when the first Homo species appeared, Kimbel said. The fossil dates to as little as 200,000 years after the last known fossil from Lucy's species, which has been dated at around 3.2 million years old.

The fossil is from the left lower jaw of an adult. It combines ancestral features, like a primitive chin shape, with some traits found in later Homo fossils, like teeth that are slimmer than the bulbous molars of Lucy's ilk.

Despite that mix, experts not involved in the paper said the researchers make a convincing case that the fossil belongs in the Homo category.

And they present good evidence that it came from a creature that was either at the origin of Homo or "within shouting distance," said Bernard Wood of George Washington University.

The find also bolsters the argument that Homo arose from Lucy's species rather than a related one, said Susan Anton of New York University.

The new paper's analysis is first-rate, but the fossil could reveal only a limited amount of information about the creature, said Eric Delson of Lehman College in New York.

"There's no head, there's no tools, and no limb bones. So we don't know if it was walking any differently from Australopithecus afarensis," which was Lucy's species, he said.

It's the first time that anything other than isolated teeth have turned up as a possible trace of Homo from before 2.3 million years ago, he said.

"This fills a gap, but it hasn't yet given us a complete skeleton. It's not Lucy," Delson said. "This is always the problem. We always want more."

Also on Wednesday, another research team reported in a paper released by the journal Nature that the lower part of the face of Homo habilis, the earliest known member of the Homo branch, was surprisingly primitive. That came from reconstruction of a broken jaw that was found 50 years ago.

The finding means the evolutionary step from the Ethiopian jaw to the jaw of Homo habilis is "not so large," said an author of the Nature study, Fred Spoor of University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

I saw that in the news yesterday Bob. Always of interest as, amongst other things, Ive got a degree in Anthropology.....and its changed a bunch since I was in college ( Course we were learning then as Australopithecenes....)

Yes, Im that old....

Why you want to stir up schitt with Ringman?

Queue up the flat earth contingent.

Hell, you were studying them as second cousins.

Im waiting for the creationists to pipe up.

Exactamundo!

They should have consulted Ringman and his Bible. Don't you know scientific techniques are Satan's tools to trick us? Those bones are probably only fifty or sixty years old.

I took Anthropology one semester for a humanities elective. We got to study various early human remains. Coincidentally the same semester I had a classmate in an engineering class, who had a darn skull like a neanderthal. Big eyebrow ridges, and crest ridges on top of his skull. Smart guy and a good student, too. If someone finds his skull a million years in the future, it's going to create a huge controversy.

It also shows jumping to conclusions based on one data point is not always wise.

You have a point there..

When I was taking Anthro they were still talking about finding "the missing link"


Had a guy in class that was as you described and I always thought at the time " hell, the missing link is sitting three rows over!"

Bob how can this be?? There is other evidence that would suggest it's an inaccurate find. as so many are convinced otherwise.

Lets stir the pot..

http://www.discoverynews.us/DISCOVE...0Old%20As%20We%20Have%20Been%20Told.html

Woody, I question the veracity of your source!


But I was pretty bummed to see our magnetic field is degrading, centrifugal force could toss me off the planet at any minute!

We wouldn't have that problem if the earth was flat....

You do understand dino's were non existent don't you? We had to change baby sitters years ago when our kids were young because of this BS info they were bringing home.

And the KKK contingent. Looks like everyone's got one in the "wood pile"...

Some just arrive late to the party. It's only been 400 years since the earth began rotating around the sun.

I just read in a book that the Sun rotates around the earth. The earth is the immovable center of the universe. Which pretty much includes everything.

They don't have a clue about human evolution.

A few teeth and they are ready to rewrite history. Kinda like a warm August day and global warming. miles

Yep. I'm convinced.

Especially since I saw a Muzzie mullah on youtube the other day giving a lecture about how the satanic western scientists' lies about the earth circling the sun rather than the other way around were not only ridiculous to any thinking person, but a sneaky way to lure True Believers away from the True Faith.

too little data, and too much genetic variability.

One interesting thing I learned a few years ago - they found a skull belonging to one of the early prehumans, that was a couple million years old. Same species as Lucy, IIRC.

The skull had four large puncture wounds in it. They checked it against a modern leopard skull, and the bite marks matched perfectly. So leopards haven't changed much in a couple million years.

One question: Did they carbon date it? My guess is, no.

Wait a minute, I know I missed Les and his girlfriend but now are you telling me the earth ain't flat? You can only pull my leg so far. So what is the earth, square?


As far as young earth - old earth thing the earth is exactly as old as the earth. There! Question answered. Prove me wrong.

The, so called, Missing Links are alive and well in Detroit and New Orleans.

Here I am.

Just be aware that circular reasoning is a belief or dogma that then sees any new discover or "evidence" as confirmation of what you believe already want to continually reaffirm.

I'm am not dogmatic about how God created the work or in what time span ((New Earth vs Old Earth) but do believe the evidence is irrefutable. That there were bipedal hominids that were not human (without a soul) and animal and who were precursors to an historic Adam and Eve is proposed by Hugh Ross, an astro-physicist. You can google him if interested further.

A book for the "other side of the of the story," is Bones of Contention." Can't find it in my book case right now for the author but he is a theologian-anthropologist. Is is widely known that anthropology is one of the sciences that has been/is rife with conjecture, frauds, and constructs, etc in regard to some of the iconic finds we have all grown up, such as Peking Man, Java Man, and many others.

So, in the spirit of "fair and balanced," I offer up these other references for reviewing pleasure.

Good stuff there.

The introduction to a book I have been working on for a while.



GENESIS 1: 1-12
1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3. Then God said, "Let there be light "; and there was light. 4. God saw that the light was good ; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6. Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7. God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse ; and it was so. 8. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. 9. Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear "; and it was so. 10. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas ; and God saw that it was good. 11. Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation : plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. 12. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind ; and God saw that it was good.

The teller of this tale has no clue as to the exact number of days or just how God created the earth, nor does he care. It is enough to know the earth wasn't and then it was. The teller of this tale does have thoughts about what all went on in the process as it relates to the part of earth where he resides, that part now known as the Pacific Northwest on the Continent of North America.

It must have been one wild ride. There is evidence of vast inland lakes that are now long gone. There are multiple mountain ranges and deep canyons, some scoured by water and others seem to have been created by violent splits in the earths crust or perhaps formed by the finger of God. There are volcanoes that have spewed forth ash and lava from deep within the earth's core, sometimes bringing various other minerals and elements along for the ride. There is also evidence of ancient rivers that are no more. The teller of this tale does not think it would have been fun to live here when all this took place, but he takes great joy in the beauty and splendor of what is there now.

The gullibility of otherwise level headed common people never ceases to amaze.

1 Timothy 6:20
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:

Holy schitt. Why god and evolution can't coexist to some of you guys is beyond me. Hell, if god created gravity, atoms and orgasms, why not evolution? TFF

Bowsinger, I thought you said the earth revolves around the Palin?

Nope, God can't do that.

Yep.

Yep, makes much more sense to believe that dinosaurs went on the Ark with Noah and all the other animals.



note: not directed at you personally OO, I was just responding to the quote itself. Regards.

Pretty much. I'm sure they "believe" in man made global warming too.

wow am I behind, I thought all homo genus evolved over the last 50 years.

Agreed. The two are not mutually exclusive, save only in the minds of zealots on either end of the spectrum.

If I had been teaching all this time that "3.2 million years" was the correct answer, then some foreign exchange student tripped over a tooth in the dirt which "proved" that I was wrong by a HALF A MILLION YEARS......It would seem prudent to just start teaching "we obviously don't know", rather than jumping to new conclusions.

I didn't, I am still a cave man at best.

The question of whether Creation and Evolution can co-exist does not depend on the power or ability of God. It is a man-made crutch for those who cannot accept the Biblical account of a six-day creation, of 24-hour days, divided roughly in half darkness and half light, of seasons, and seed-time and harvest. (This allows for the scientific discovery of photosynthesis, for example.) Days (and hence light and darkness) of "billions and billions" of years flies in the face of Divinely inspire Scripture. You cannot have it both ways.

Sure you can

So, how old it the planet?

Religion, the opium of the masses. I wonder if my 450NE 3 1/4" would work on a T-Rex. Solids of course...

Spot on IMO..

Welcome to the "Clan"

I was going for the "group" definition of genus.

When God created a full grown Sequoya tree, how old was the tree on day 7 of the creation?


Figure that out and you'll figure out the answer to your question.

You and I make a group. Please pass the Mastodon sausage.

=============

That's the rub for the literal believing side of the Bible, really. The literal interpretation believers of a God's word must rationally and logically conclude their God could not have created evolution.

In other words, you and Ringman are of the mind that man walked with dinosaurs, the entire earth was flooded, and it's only a few thousand years old.

Gotcha.

LOL, the sausage part really scares me Scott.

Obama wasn't born in Hawaii

allegory - illustrating complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible to its viewers, readers, or listeners; a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning (that would be difficult to understand otherwise).

It's really good if you throw a little brontosaurus into it for flavour.

It's more like creationism is stupid as a scientific theory and evolution is stupid as a theological theory. The two disciplines, Science and Theology, by the definitions of the disciplines do not interact. So they are neither compatible nor incompatible - they just don't "compat" at all.

I disagree wholeheartedly. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive at all. I believe in Creation through Evolution. I believe the world and life on this earth are God's creation, and I believe that evolution was a very clever way that God used to achieve His creative objectives.

That is because you both "think" and you "believe". That's rare.

Please don't think this an insult, because it's intended as the exact opposite.

I think Im gonna go eat some Brontosaurus with Scott.....

Here is how they dated it.

http://www.livescience.com/50032-earliest-human-species-possibly-found.html

Antlers, what is the number one reason why you believe God used (man's theory of) evolution to create the world and everything in it. Just curious.

Antlers,

I see it this way: Science is about the things we can observe. Observe phenomena, make a theory to predict what will happen under certain conditions, and conduct an experiment to see if the theory is any good. The "scientific method." HOW things came to be.

Theology is about things we cannot observe, like God and why He acted/acts directly with this universe for instance. (Long and old theory for that, see Aquinas for one.) WHY, not how, things came to be the way they are.

To repeat an example, the theory of quantum electrodynamics allows for the possibility of light not traveling in a straight line and (so far) the theory works extraordinarily well. We know HOW to predict events and can observe if we're right. WHY it works that way and who made it do that is scientifically a meaningless question. All Science cares about is the HOW, we can set up an experiment for that and observe the results. The WHY part is the province of Philosophy and Theology.

revolving

Well said.

Were all just monkeys, some more monkey than others...

When we die, we just rot in the ground.

take it you dont believe in an Ice Age....answer to alot of the chit on there makes sence if you realize sea levels have moved 300 feet in the last 10,000 years or so.....the Great Barrier Reef is actually really phugging young, most of the animals there arent even endemic, they moved down with the sea level changes out of the reefs in the various Southeast Asian and Pacific Islands.....aborigines in Australia were walking on hard ground where the reef is now for thousands of years....also tells you why the Mississippi river delta doesnt ook that big and Niagara, which was covered with ice and not eroding for quite awhile due to there being a mile of ice over top of it....

Reality, first and foremost.....and two centuries of consistent scientific data by thousands of logical and educated minds the world over.

Doesn't that require the assumption that God created gravity, atoms and orgasms?

Not only that, but it's a beautiful, elegant design that allows for Creation to continue in wonderful, mysterious ways. Human culture to doesn't remain static, nor the planet to remain constant. In fact, the design was for exactly the opposite. Evolution is simply another marvelous part of Creation.

cause the other option means every so often god gets a wild hair up his arse and kills off some critters and makes a bunch of new ones, some of which only slightly different from the last....evolution(change over millions of years) makes more seance than constant killing and inventing new or slightly changing by god every so often......

Even for the non-believer, that really is the fundamental question...

We share something like 95% of the same DNA as [bleep] and other higher primates, but something beyond basic molecular biology defines us as "humans" and them as "animals".

Given that scientifically we can't explain that difference when comparing Humans to primates species that are alive today, I am damn sure they won't be able to do it for species that lived hundreds of thousands years ago simply based on a few fragmented remains..

The thing that impresses me about all these assorted early remains is how many died violently; embedded spear points, smashed-in skulls, and evidence of systematic cannibalism.

Heck, even Otzi, the Iceman, a mere 4,000 years old, was shot in the back.

Hardly a bare sprinkling of hominids/humans on the face of the earth, the ultimate rural society, and they made it more dangerous than the wrong side of Detroit. Musta took considerable time and effort on their part.

Here's a pretty impartial link from Indian Country.com of all places reporting what is known about the life and times of Naia, a young teenage girl who fell into a cave in the present-day Yucatan around 13,000 years ago.

Surprising from Indian Country because near as we can tell these very early Paleoindians were decidedly politically incorrect:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwo...cted-face-ancient-american-indian-158693

Jim Chatters, co-leader of the Hoyo Negro research team that excavated and reconstructed Naia, believes that the reason Paleoindian facial features look so different from those of modern Native Americans is that these are all indications that the earliest Americans were “risk-taking pioneers” and “the toughest men were taking the spoils and winning fights over women.” He has dubbed them “Northern Hemisphere wild-type” people that are “bold and aggressive, with hypermasculine males and diminutive, subordinate females.”

Fascinating stuff, hard to know how such a society would have functioned, cooperation between males bound by ties of kinship and/or longterm friendship seems otherwise to have been the lynchpin of human survival.

Birdwatcher

Pete E,



This is dated information. The similarities have been down graded to 88% or lower. We share 50% of our DNA with bananas. These facts show we share DNA similarities and that's about it.

This post reminds me of what Mark Twain once wrote:
Scientists get such a wholesale lot of conjectures from such a trifling investment of facts. That guy Jim must be a genius to figure all that out from a girl's skeleton.

Nope.

It used to be published that the commonality was >98.5%. It's now considered 95%.

Got a link to your diminished numbers?

I didnt say I assumed, I said if...

Ah, so!

Yes, 2.8 million years ago...those were the days and we thought they would never end...

I agree with you.

I'll fire up the grill, what time can you be here?

Sure I believe in ice ages but so much of this is total horse chit..Can you cozy up to these interpretations? I probably could after a half bottle of Buff Trace!

"On the basis of facts obtained from 1835 to 1965, this magnetic field appears to have a half-life of just 1,400 years. On this basis, even 20,000 years ago there would have been enough "Joule" heat to liquefy the entire earth! One million years ago the earth would have had greater magnetism than all objects in the universe and it would have vaporized"

"Consider this: If the world were even 1 million years old, there should be nearly 84 feet of top soil! That would be a farmers delight . . . but the fact is, the shallow topsoil points to an earth that is not over 10,000 years old."

seriously? you realize topsoil is also used not just deposited....stuff is pulled out of it by plants which convert it to tissue, which is eaten by animals, turned to ash and CO2 and such in fires and released into the air....or just blown or washed away by rain....there is a reason dams silt in over time, whole lot of topsoil winds up in rivers and slowly makes its way to the oceans and eventually subducted due to plate tectonics....come up here Woddy and check out our badlands, unreal how much "top soil" can disappear quick in the right conditions....hell the jobsite im shooting cross sections for is so highly errosive you can watch the stuff move as the ground thaws, making its way down stream with this winters snow melt

not to mention how much topsoil is just blown away by our winds....i get sandblasted by the stuff all year long as it blows its way east....its not just put down never to move again....

You believe in erosion? Do you believe in erosion enough to believe the continents, at present rates, will erode into the ocean in only 14,000,000 years? What would that do to a fossil deposit 15,000,000 years old?

I'm not disputing geology just the methods for calculating the time envelope. So given this data you believe the earth is little over 10,000 yrs old?

Your not intellectually honest enough to accept a factual answer even if it's provided.

Hell, you're not even intellectually astute enough to get paid for the work you actually do, or did.

Tell us again how the Earth is only 4,000 years old.

also to point to the mobility of topsoil, part of the reason the Amazon exists is that a whole lot of nutrients in the sands of the Sahara in the form of tiny agae and similar particals from the last time it was wet get blown across the Atlantic and dropped with the rain on South America....each lil piece is tiny enough to need magnification to see...specs of gnat chit type stuff, but every year enough of it blows over to add up to many tons......

topsoil is HIGHLY mobile.....living in Nebraska i wouldnt think this would be a foreign idea to you....i get why someone in the PNW ot Gulf Plains might not see it but you live on the Great Plains where you should be experiencing it moving just like we do up here

know enough to know that data aint right.....in order for it to be right the topsoil has to never move but it does

Woody you also realize the water flowing in the rivers is not pure H2O, its full of minerals and organics dissolved in it thats been leached(removed) from the top soil.....yeah each rain removes very tiny amounts but add it up over the last 10,000 years there has been grasslands where i or you stand and its a whole hell of alot of material....not to mention as the organics decay they get converted to gases like CO2 and methane and such and get released into the air....once again, each one doesnt amount to much but it adds up to millions of tons as years go on....

Long before Nebraska top soil even existed we were covered by an inland Cretaceous sea as evidenced by swimming fossils.It wasn't 4K,10K or even 1 million but around 84 mil to be exact.

Compared to Obummer's birthplace evolution vs creation seams relatively simple...

i know, where i live was the shore of that sea 68myo....its the source of our gumbo and bentonite.....and the T-rex and triceratops fossils(from where the shoreline, inland deltas were) seashell fossils where the ocean was.....have some ammonites and baculite fossils from it not 5 feet from where i am sitting from the ocean part.....hope to add some dino fossils from here this year from the road cuts i have to work

Ringman, having seen you embarrass yourself any number of times over the years, I have to say I agree with 4ager; you're not intellectually honest enough to accept an explanation.

I know that guy Jim's conclusion was based on ten paleoindian male skeletons and a number of female skeletons. From that sampling a few things stand out.

1) Facial features/skull morphology (that means "shape") quite unlike any modern group, including Indians.

2) A shared genetic mutation in common with modern American Indians.

3) A marked sexual dimorphism in size between adult males and the adult females, greater than in any modern group.

4) Evidence of childhood/adult malnutrition in females (the dead teenager in the cave was already suffering from osteoporosis, perhaps from the effects of having given birth to/nursed a child).

5) A large number of healed injuries among the men, especially skull fractures.

You may also note "that guy Jim" puts forth theories (ie. possible explanations) based on this evidence.

Birdwatcher

Nope.

I did about two minutes looking and came to the following cut and paste. That is as far as I am going to look for you. It looks like I am not even current.

Human and [bleep] DNA--Nearly Identical?
by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. *
Evidence for Creation

For the past several decades, the standard mantra has been that humans are 98 percent genetically identical to [bleep]. However, this claim is based on cherry-picked data and does not take into account the vastly different regions of the two respective genomes.

Major research published over the past decade comparing human and [bleep] DNA was recently reviewed and critiqued.1 In every single publication, researchers only reported on the highly similar DNA sequence data and discarded the rest—apparently because it was too dissimilar. In fact, when the DNA similarities from these studies were recalculated using the omitted data, markedly lower levels—between 81 and 86 percent similarity—were found. Even the well-known [bleep] genome paper published by evolutionists in 2005 provides a genomic similarity of only about 80 percent when the discarded nonsimilar data are included and only 70 percent when the estimated size of the [bleep] genome is incorporated.2,3

Birdwatcher,



You flatter yourself in that you think you know my feelings.



Was this information posted earlier? I missed it.



I read your posts for quite awhile now and noticed you are not intellectually honest enough to accept an explanation. Sad, isn't it?

You have no clue, do you? Carbon dating doesn't work that far back. Instead they use isotopes of other elements with much longer half-life..

Some of it on the link, but then you'd have to have read and understood it.

The rest was presented in the IIRC the most recent issue of National Geographic magazine.

As for the rest of your post; there ya go looking like an idiot again. You'd best go consult with Dr. Somebody-or-other on some Creationist website and then come back with more arguments like your completely moronical soil erosion-as-proof-of-young-earth analogy

See, YOU don't have to feel anything to embarrass yourself here, in fact it would make you look even stupider if you were entirely unaware of it, as is apparently the case.

Just telling it like it is.

Birdwatcher

That's my argument. I read that every sample of fossil or fossil fuel has been carbon dated, even diamonds. The maximum half life of carbon 14 is about 50,000 years. Kinda creates a problem doesn't it?

There you go again not doing your homework. I got the info from an evolutionist geologist. He told me as the continents erode in 10,000,000 to 14,000,000 they also rise. He didn't realize he gave me, a creationist, fuel to use some day in the future; which is now.

Who should be embarrassed? Just asking it like it is.

no because they all bottom out the scale at 50,000 years ago.....which is the oldest you can use for carbon dating.....kinda like saying a 300 pound person only weights 250 pounds cause they bottomed out a 250 pound scale....no they dont weight 250, you need a different scale which is where things like Potassium-lead, calcium-argon, Chlorine-36 or other dating methods.....just cause you bottom out a scale doesnt mean its the only way to measure......get another, bigger phuggin scale

The half-life of carbon 14 is 5,730 years.

As las pointed out, potassium-argon and uranium-lead are dating methods using radioactive isotopes that have much longer half-lives than carbon 14, and they can be used to date objects much older than carbon 14 can. Over 100,000 years back for potassium-argon, and over a million years back...up to 4.5 billion years back...for uranium-lead.

On one side of these arguments you have the faithless, hell-bound fools and on the other side you have the uneducated, blinder-wearing Bible thumpers (or at least that's how it seems they view each other when you read the banter).

And both views are probably 90% wrong-90% of the time.

Just like both sides are probably only 90% correct about the "facts" they spout (on either side of the argument).





And even with the same set of completely factual facts rights in front of them neither side will agree with the other, because they're viewing those facts through the lens of what they already "know". In that way these creation threads are just like the cop threads, just with different players and lingo.

i worry more about the future than the past for my children's sake.

and some of us have yet to figure how an old earth and evolution automatically cancel out god.....

course then again some people think a picture is faked just cause they have no clue there are places other than North America with different looking critters seen alot of people claim that weasel photo is faked cause "woodpeckers dont look like that"......they do if you live in Europe.....

cant figure how anyone that reads anything about biogeography, which is simply the study of where critters live and why, can come up with anything but evolution.....but it requires learning bout a whole lot of different critters just not what lives in your back yard.....there are very definite reasons about why frogs only live in some places....or why marsupials vanish part way through the Indonesian archipelago...

course none of that says that god didnt kick start it all orhow we got to where we are todays....those are the why, why is theological....how is science....they arent mutually exclusive but they dont give yah facts to show how to mix the two....

rattler,



If the entire earth was carbon 14 it would decay into nitrogen in 50,000 years. But aside from that you are not keeping up with progress. There is a machine, I think it is, called an electron mass spectrometer. It is maybe 10 time more sensitive than anything prior to it. It shows carbon 14 in every sample that has been tested by it.

As far as the other dating methods you mentioned, if you break off chunks from the same rock and date them using different dating methods you can get dates varying as much as a billion years. That give confidence only to the faithful.

Rattler, everything you just said could be summed up by saying "I don't understand why they can't, or aren't smart enough, to see it my way".

you realize carbon is everywhere.....in the air, on your skin....hell you transfer it from you to everything you touch....its in some of the CO2 you breath out so yeah it will turn up everywhere.....but just the presance of it isnt what they test for, they are looking for ratios in uncontaminated samples.....samples are easily contaminated for the very reasons i stated....

has nothing to do with smarts, has to do with ignorance.....people dumber than me do often know alot of chit i dont, and i often know stuff people that are smarter than me dont....difference is the willingness or not to actually learn....my biogeagraphy example has nothing to do with fossils though they do sorta factor in when you want to look at how it has changed over time....but just the study of animals alive today will have anyone with the ability to learn anything asking questions about the voracity of the Noah story being exactly as said....

Like I said....

Great post with a humble and open minded attitude.. You won't see this from the hard core evolutionists who like to maintain a self anointed sense of arrogance and label any who would question the "dogmatic tenants of their faith" as "flat earthers".
I don't know exactly how the observable world was created but I do know that if you start with the assumption there is no God, you can only interpret any findings you make, within the framework of your presuppositions.
I seem to remember a whole set of evolutionary conclusions made from a "tooth". From that tooth, a whole humanoid of some type was constructed (Peking man I think?). For years it was touted as "established science". Turned out to be the tooth of an extinct pig.
Who knows, someday after thousands of years of scientific discoveries regarding the origin of the universe and climbing the "mountain of knowledge", we may just arrive at the pinnacle only to find several theologians have been there for a thousand years

Really? Tompkins?

Jeffrey Tomkins

Key claims

Biblical literalism
Young Earth
Old Earth
Global flood
Intelligent design


Jeffrey Tomkins is a "research associate" at the Institute for Creation Research. He has a PhD in genetics and master's degree in "plant science" from Clemson University and the University of Idaho respectively.[1][2]

His research for the ICR tends to be genetics related, and concentrated in 2011 on the genetic similarity between humans and [bleep]. He made much of his research's apparent discovery that the similarity between humans and [bleep] was 'merely' 86-89%. In 2012 his ICR News article on the sequencing of the Gorilla genome, Gorilla Genome Is Bad News for Evolution,[3] was attacked on Pharyngula as failing to understand the science.[4]

Some folks’ grasp on their religious beliefs is so tenuous, so shaky that they’re afraid the least puff of knowledge will blow it away.

"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith...?"

So true. New earth - old earth, neither messes with my salvation so I really don't care.


Bring it on fellow believers, I can stand the heat.

Interesting link you have posted. Made me do a little research.
Earth Rotation:
Anything but smooth and steady. The average day is growing longer by about 15 to 25 millionths of a second every year. Pesky little events like earthquakes keep speeding things back up by a couple of microseconds. In any event, in 140 million years, give or take a few, we are all going to need 25 hour clocks.
Looking back to the beginning, the earth was without void. Just a big mass of gas, dust, and rocks. A big spin zone.

Magnetic Field Decay:
According to National Geographic and the earth's geologic record, our planet's magnetic field flips on an average of once every 200,000 years.
We are way overdue, our last flip was about 780,000 years ago. And each flip takes a few thousand years. This is called maintenance and prevents that dreaded decay.

Earth's Topsoil:
In the past 1 million years there has, no doubt, been much more than 84 feet of top soil on average. Deposited and eroded in endless cycles that can be measured and counted by anyone with honest eyes. The rocks keep the records.

Niagara Falls:
Were created about 10,000 years ago when all that Wisconsin ice melted. Hell of a mess.

River Deltas:
The modern day Mississippi River Delta plain is about 7-8,000 years old. And it don't look nothing like the delta cycles that came before. Trust me on that.

Growth of Ocean Coral:
Again we are back to all that ice melting. Wiped out most the continental shelve coral reefs about 10,000 years ago, but the Great Barrier Reef is closer to 20,000 years old. Volcanoes and tectonic plate shifting took the rest.
NEWSFLASH: Sea levels rise and fall. Coral drowns in 500 feet of sea water.

Tree Rings: Of course, everyone knows that the California Sequoias are mere teenagers. The Bristlecone pine is the current record holder at a tad over 11,000 years. Almost 5,000 years for live trees. Cloning trees without tree ring measurement such as quaking aspen have been estimated to be 80,000 years old.

Then there are all those petrified trees and their rings mixed in with the dino bones.

Class dismissed.

The scientist in that link, "Dr." Thomas G Barnes:

This is a very scientific and interesting site that discusses creation vs evolution from many different angles. I became interested in this web site when I heard Dr. Bert Thompson in person, when he came to deliver a message at our church back in the 1980s. Very powerful speaker.

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9