A disturbing archaeological site: the banks of the Paluxy in Texas

Lost Civilizations (@lostcivilizations)

Published in 

lostworlds

 · 4 Dec 2023

The fossiliferous site of the Paluxy River, in Texas (USA), poses a real problem for evolutionist paleontologists: human footprints flank those of dinosaurs. For them this is impossible.

According to their chronology, the dinosaurs appeared in the secondary era, called for this reason the era of Reptiles, which lasted from 225 to 70 million years (Ma). For human beings, even if it is difficult to admit a date of appearance of hominids around 4 or 5 Ma, an abyss of about 17 Ma separates them from the last dinosaurs. It is therefore absolutely impossible that they could have coexisted and left their footprints together in the same archaeological layers.

However…

It all began in 1939 on the banks of the Paluxy river, when traces of dinosaur paws along with those of human feet were discovered in the limestone bed of the river (fig. 1). This discovery made by American "creationists"^[2] was surprising and extraordinary. It made a lot of noise at the time and scandalized scholars, paleontologists and geologists, for this reason: the traces of dinosaurs were imprinted in a Cretaceous limestone bed^[3] and estimated at 110 Ma. Given their consistency with the established age from the geological scale, the dinosaur footprints were recognized as authentic by the scientists.

Fig. 1 Dinosaur and human foot prints found in the same limestone bank.

Those of human feet, on the contrary, were declared false as they could not be contemporary with dinosaur tracks. The scientists claimed that those feet were artifacts carved in limestone and accused the American creationists who had participated in the excavations of being the architects of these shameful frauds in order to confirm their vision of creation in a biblical sense.

This discovery called into question paleontological science in its evolutionary interpretation.

Furthermore, the human traces posed an even more delicate issue as it involved a giant whose foot measures 38 cm in length (fig. 2). It is mentioned several times in the Bible, see for example Gen. 6.4, where it is said that, shortly before the Flood, "there were giants at that time". For creationists, the authenticity of these traces posed no doubt: they could easily be interpreted within the framework of the Flood and testified to the truth of the ancient biblical stories. This discovery therefore raised violent controversies and passionate opposition in the field of supporters of an evolutionary vision of the appearance of life.

Fig. 2 Giant human foot prints.

This type of trace is normally fragile and easily erased. Those of the Paluxy bed were exceptionally preserved because they had been buried under sediments accumulated and suddenly solidified during gigantic catastrophic events. Furthermore solidified imprints of drops of water can be observed in these same places, testifying that the burial of the places was carried out in rainy times, which still evoked a scenario similar to the one described in the Bible for the Flood.

Faced with this sedimentary provocation, scientists, paleontologists and prehistorians, all cried foul. They decreed such traces "unscientific" and not worthy of attention. So they didn't talk about it. There has been no contradictory scientific debate to ascertain the reality of the facts. Years of controversy followed in which everyone claimed to be right.

Some rather embarrassing discoveries and dates…

In 1982 the American physicist Hugh Miller resumed the study of the Paluxy River site. It was a question of knowing how much credit to give to the discoveries of 1939.

The results obtained from his excavations are disconcerting: they confirm previous findings that had been rejected by official science.

Then, deliberately leaving aside the discussed problem of human traces, Hugh Miller and his team wanted to determine the age of the dinosaur, whose traces were considered authentic by paleontologists, using techniques for direct measurement of radioactive isotopes that had been developed after the first excavations. It was important verifying whether they were a hundred million years old, according to the geological scale, or whether they were young enough to be contemporary with man, as the presence of human traces seemed to indicate.

Miller dated fossilized dinosaur bones as well as calcined wood remains from the same geological layer (which was estimated to be between 110 and 70 million years old) with C-14. It should be noted that C-14 does not allow you to date an object older than 30 or 40,000 years. The dating of these objects must therefore have proved impossible.

To everyone's surprise, the fossils could be dated and results provide ages of 36,500 and 32,500 years B.P. respectively^[4], which was certainly astonishingly young for the Cretaceous period estimated by geologists at 110 million years! A counter-analysis, again with C-14, but this time with the new AMS technique^[5] rejuvenated them a little more: at 23,760 and 25,750 years B.P. without however arousing apparent emotion.

We would like to point out that the AMS dating method, which has become very fashionable^[6], has always been presented as reliable, an "absolute" dating method. Hugh Miller should therefore have obtained the same dates for the two samples who were the same age; on the other hand, he should have obtained dates close to those obtained with the radiocarbon technique. In this case, the ancient technique aged the same samples by 26.21% and 53.61% respectively.

Miller wanted to verify his results by dating the bones of different dinosaurs preserved at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg (Pennsylvania); he obtained dates of the same order and others even younger, up to 9,890 B.P.! He then estimated that the dinosaurs could not have been a hundred million years old, and that the dating obtained made them contemporary with prehistoric men - which was confirmed by the presence of traces of human feet - even if the value of the dating with radiocarbon appeared doubtful.

However, Miller's dating and conclusions greatly embarrassed the world of paleontologists who judged it easier to consider them as "unscientific".

Rather than examine the results of this research to verify the validity of the discoveries, they preferred to avoid making any allusion to them, thus paralyzing the debate which was once again closed.

From the beginning, scientists understood the danger. Accepting the possibility of a contradictory debate with an argument supported by such a serious assessment of the site and the facts, was already to glimpse that their geological scale was unreliable. The very thought seemed intolerable to them and they firmly refused it.

On the other hand, comparing paleontological dating with one of the current isotopic dating techniques (K/Ar, U/Th and also C-14) was also entering into a debate that could shake our knowledge to the ground. This comparison between the dating of a paleontological element and all the existing isotopic measurements would have committed the radiodating method to a test of truth which it had always refused, knowing the errors and inconsistencies of the measurements released by the different methods, something that the H. Miller's results only reiterated^[7].

From this retreat, neither the paleontologists nor the paleontological science, nor the method of radiodating, emerged enhanced.

Were dinosaurs able to coexist with humans?

To address the controversy on the possible coexistence of dinosaurs and humans posed by these paleontological discoveries - which according to the accepted chronology is scientifically incorrect and impossible - it is best to first examine the reliability of the dating of the dinosaurs and the geological eras.

1 - Determining the age of dinosaurs

To establish a calendar of appearance of the different species, it was necessary to admit, despite the absence of scientific confirmation, a certain number of postulates:

• 1-1 ) The estimated age of the fossils assumes that the progressive evolution of the species has been demonstrated.
• 1-2 ) This progressive evolution occurs on a very large time scale: in hundreds of millions, and even billions of years, from the first appearance of life on Earth^[8].
• 1-3 ) This progressive evolution is carried out according to a rhythm set by the "Evolution clock", a sort of chrono-biology of evolution which will allow us to establish a calendar of Evolution.
• 1-4 ) The hierarchization of the species, classified according to their complexity, going from simple to complex, is transposed onto a "time-calendar scale" according to an approximate placement evaluated according to all the previous elements.
• 1-5 ) The dinosaurs, according to their internal classification, were located at an age ranging from 225 to 70 million years. This estimate of an era for dinosaurs does not correspond to any direct scientific measurement (K/Ar radiodating, for example), but results from a set of hypotheses based on actualist theory.

It is the result of a series of deductions whose dating references remain obscure and which ultimately rest on faith in the progressive evolution of species.

As a result, there is no element that allows us to state that these paleontological ages have been determined in an objective and scientific manner.

2 - The determination of geological ages

• 2-1 ) The determination of the age of geological layers is not carried out starting from a dating of the layer itself, as one might think^[9]. It is carried out starting from the age of the "characteristic fossil". It is the fossil that dates the layer in which it is found, and not the other way around. Thus, from groping to groping, as fossils were discovered, the stratigraphic scale was developed. This is how the Reptiles are located in the Secondary, called the Reptile era. Since the Dinosaur is a giant reptile, it therefore dates from the Secondary. If a fossil or dinosaur footprint is found in a layer, for example, we conclude that the layer is Secondary.
• 2-2 ) This logic presupposes that the components of the layer in which the fossil is located were formed at the time the dinosaur lived, and they can all have the same age. Thus, if the soil contains dinosaur footprints, this soil will be estimated to be approximately 200 million years old, the age of the dinosaur^[10].

It follows that the age of a fossil is estimated according to the stratigraphic scale, which in turn is constructed assuming the evolution of the species. The mere presence of a dinosaur in a geological formation will be enough to date that formation without a geological reference. This is the characteristic of circular reasoning which concludes from the hypothesis from which it started.

3 - Looking for confirmations

• 3-1 ) Other human feet are found in the Cretaceous. In their work, Whitcomb and Morris report^[11] numerous traces of human feet, some also discovered in Carboniferous formations, officially dated from 350 to 270 Ma. The American magazine "Scientific American" also reports discoveries of the same kind in Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois.

Other footprints, this time of giants, have been discovered in the United States, especially in Arizona, at Mount Whitney, California, as well as at White Sand in New Mexico.

• 3-2 ) An American scientist, Scott Woodward, of Brigham Young University (Utah), found in a bituminous coal formation two large bones from a dinosaur dated from the Upper Cretaceous, i.e. 80/85 millions of years^[12]. Their waxy appearance encouraged the researchers to carry out a histological section after fixation with the usual dyes (hematoxillin - eosin).

Upon microscopic examination, nuclei of still identifiable cells were found originating from the collagen of a conjunctive tissue. We therefore had good quality material, not destroyed and not contaminated, to attempt to carry out genetic research on the DNA. Woodward thought he would thus obtain information on the evolutionary parentage of dinosaurs, which paleontologists consider closer to birds than to reptiles and mammals.

The results showed that dinosaurs were an entire class apart, genetically distant from birds, reptiles and mammals.

Fig. 3 Human and dinosaur footprints side by side.

Meanwhile, the big problem raised by this analysis (outside that of the Reptile-dinosaur classification), and which paleontologists were careful not to point out, was found in the fact that genetic material degrades very rapidly after death. However, what is contained in the bones can last for a certain number of years, sometimes numerous centuries and sometimes millennia if the preservation conditions are exceptionally favourable. This is how it was possible to carry out genetic analyzes on some Egyptian mummies and, even more rarely, on prehistoric bone remains dated 10,000 years B.P. with C-14.

The fact that it was possible to carry out a genetic analysis on a dinosaur bone preserved in a favorable environment indicates that it dates back at most a few thousand years, and certainly not a hundred million years. This would be scientifically impossible!^[13]. It turns out that dinosaurs are much younger than previously thought.

• 3-3 ) A cutting-edge technique for isotope fractionation has been used on organic dinosaur remains. The measurements obtained are identical to those obtained on current animals!... when they should have been totally different if dinosaurs had lived one hundred million years ago^[14].

Fig. 4 Human and dinosaur footprints spaced 45 cm apart (McFall I site, excavations by Dr Carl E. Baugh)

• 3-4 ) All peoples have in their traditions and cultural myths many reminiscences of dinosaurs (dragons), a sign that ancient peoples certainly had contact with some surviving species. If these dinosaurs had lived 100 or 200 million years earlier, they could not be part of the cultural imagination, since men would have totally ignored their existence [15].
• 3-5 ) In Acambaro, Mexico, around 33,500 figurines have been found since 1944, the majority made of ceramic, the others made of stone, jade or obsidian, representing human beings, objects of everyday life (pipe, musical instruments, etc.), deities, reptiles, great apes, unknown animals and above all dinosaurs. Each example is a unique piece. The ceramic ones were fired with the open fire method, still used today in Africa, for example, to fire jars and other pottery.

It therefore took a large quantity of wood to burn in a region that is now almost desert where wood is rare and expensive. The study of the different styles showed that they came from different cultural groups. Dating was carried out in 1968 by the Isotopes Inc. laboratory of New Jersey, placing their manufacturing period between 4,530 and 1,110 years BC^[16], and, in 1972, the University of Pennsylvania obtained 2,500 years BC by thermoluminescence. Since this discovery was somewhat disturbing, the archeology community had then classified it as unscientific, therefore not admissible.

But what is most embarrassing about this incredible quantity of dinosaur figurines is that many species were not yet known to the public at the time of discovery, or were known only by a few specialists and in the state of more or less complete skeletal reconstructions.

Many species are represented, some of the best known as well as the rarest, including some still unknown species^[17].

It is certain that these 33,500 statuettes, measuring from a few centimeters to a meter, are ancient, and the precision of the sculpture is such that the species represented can be identified without risk of confusion; which implies that the patterns had been well observed by the artists who sculpted or modeled them. These figurines are exhibited at the Acambaro museum^[18].

• 3-6 ) In Vendée (France), numerous dinosaur footsteps were found on the Atlantic coast, in particular on a beach in Talmont (fig. 5), in a deposit of sandy marine sediments attributed to the Ettangian Cretaceous (estimated at 230 million years).

Fig. 5 Dinosaur footprint on the beach of Talmont (Vendée)

A short distance away, on the same coast, in Longeville, and on a similar geological site, there are footprints of cattle, sheep and goats. Since these traces came from a herd, and this small livestock had not yet appeared on the earth according to the chronological scale of appearance of the species, the geological reference that should have dated this livestock to the Ettangian Cretaceous era was discreetly erased, according to the usual method, to date the traces to 5,300 years BC, the estimated archaeological age of the remains of a Neolithic village located a few kilometers from there (fig. 6)^[19].

Hugh Miller's relapses

1) Recently, Hugh Millers' team discovered other traces of human feet in the state of Pennsylvania on the terrace of a small bay at about 500 meters above sea level, not far from one of the peaks of Mount Pennsylvania.

Fig. 6 Fossil footprints of livestock in Longeville (Vendée)

These so-called "Jacob's" traces^[20] are observed in a stoneware (stoneware is solidified sand) of Mississippian age officially dated to 300 million years. "These tracks have the usual dimensions and characteristics of human feet and present all the characteristics of authenticity," concludes Miller after an exhaustive study. You can see, right against your heel, the imprint of a very small foot, which makes you attribute them to a woman and a child who makes them designate under the name of "the Mother and the Son". All that can be said is that these footprints also deny the age of 300 million years.

Fig. 7 The banks of the Paluxy. The limestone banks can be distinguished.

2) In the summer of 2003 H. Miller, aided by a team of 60 people explored the Paluxy bed again and repeated his "uncomfortable" discoveries.

From June 30 to July 4, he makes a very important discovery by bringing to light 8 dinosaurs and a normal-sized human foot print of 23.3 cm in the same geological layer.

Wood from the same site has been C-14 dated to 10,800 years old.

Summary

It would certainly be illusory to think that the world of paleontology, like that of prehistory, both impregnated by the theory of evolutionism which remains the main filter and the only key to the interpretation of paleontological and prehistoric discoveries, can call into question the foundations on which they have long time built their sciences. It is easier to either deny the reality of the facts or eliminate them, but science will gain nothing from it.

There are numerous examples that illustrate this vision of a partial science ^[21].

Paleontologists are free to have beliefs, but it is their duty as scientists to agree to modify them when they contradict scientifically verified facts, and to seek new bases of interpretation. Here lies the true greatness of science.

But the reality is completely different, it masks the internal struggles for the race for fame, conflicts of interest and ideologies.

Fig. 8 A power shovel lifts the upper bench that protects the footprints (Photo Hugh Miller)

Hugh Miller's recent discoveries disturb and upset the quiet in which paleontology slumbered. They upset the paleontological "establishment" that wants to preserve his interests. So, under this influence, the State of Texas wants to buy the site's land. The State, having thus become the owner of the places, could totally control the excavations: they would be subject to taxes and selective authorizations with rights and perhaps even an eye on publications and excavations. With this tampering, it would be the end of independent research. We can continue to confidently state that 100 million years separate humans from dinosaurs.

Notes

1. Pseudonym of Marie Claire van Oosterwyck. Associate in higher education and university teacher. Three articles under this pseudonym were published in "Nouvelles du Ceshe": La préhistoire (1982); Le Déluge prouvé par la Géologie et la paléontologie (1983); A propos de la fiabilité des datingations C-14 (1984) taken up in the book by JM Clercq and D. Tassot, Le Linceul de Turin face au C1-4, ed. ŒIL, 1988; we underline that facts similar to those observed by H. Miller in America have already been described in Africa by Dr. van Oosterwyck.
2. Creationists consider that the Bible contains interesting scientific elements worth considering, especially in what concerns the catastrophic events linked to the Flood. They reject the theory of the evolution of the species.
3. The Cretaceous is a subdivision of the Secondary which goes from 135-140 Ma to at least 65-70 Ma
4. B.P.: Before present, i.e. before the year 1950, the time of the development of the Libby method.
5. The AMS technique is the one that was used to date the Shroud of Turin. Three laboratories participated in this analysis, Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, which found discordant dates for the same sample the size of three postage stamps, which makes the deduction of the medieval age impossible. This age is therefore false (for more details see the work of M. Cl. van Oosterwyck-Gastuche: Le radiocarbone face au Linceul de Turin, FX de Guibert, 1999).
6. Especially after it gave the Shroud of Turin its famous medieval age.
7. For more details, see the articles written by M. Cl. van Oosterwyck-Gastuche appeared in CEP n° 1, 2, 3, 20 (2002), K. Scripko: Erreur de la dating K/Ar due à l'enrichissement des roches volcanique en composant volatils, and E. Kolesnikov: Leslimites application of the K/Ar method for dating young men's sexual sex.
8. The question of the appearance of life on earth is crucial for our researchers. In fact, although they bring together all the elements essential to life in their test tubes, they have never managed to "create life". So they consider that life might perhaps have been brought "from elsewhere", by a meteorite for example. It is with the aim of knowing whether life could have existed elsewhere in the solar system, thanks to the presence of water, that probes and robots, of the "Mars explorer" type, have been sent to the planet Mars, or recently the European probe "Rosetta" which will arrive on a comet in 2014... The aim is to verify whether meteorites could have brought primitive elements of life by falling to the earth, which could have been a prelude to the first forms of terrestrial life...
9. The current dating methods are C-14, U/Th and K/Ar. They do not allow direct dating of the fossiliferous layers of the Secondary.
• C-14 can date what contains carbon: bones, wood, shells, recent lava, provided that their age is not greater than 30-40,000 years, since beyond that, the presence of C-14 is so weak that dating it no longer has any value. C-14 cannot date silica, sand, quartz, etc.
• U/Th: is used to date lavas.
• K/Ar: he can also date lavas. It should be noted that intercomparisons of dating of the same lavas have been tried, for example, with the help of the three methods. The results are surprising: there are discrepancies such that the dating obtained cannot be exploited.
10. For comparison, imagine leaving traces of footsteps in sand or mud that will harden under various circumstances. However, the age of your traces that could be found after a few centuries will not be that of the sand deposit.
11. Whitcomb JC and Morris HM (1980): The Genesis Flood, The Presbyterian and reformed Publ. Cy, 518 pp.
12. Woodward SR et al. Science 266, 1229. (1994).
13. See also in Le Cep n° 6 (1999), P- Fl. Hautvilliers, L'analyse génétique de l'Homme de Neandertal ou la cure de jouvence.
14. van Oosterwyck-Gastuche M. Cl. 1994: Une découverte russie: les dinosaures ont vécu à l´époque actuelle, Science & Foi n° 31, pag. 5-6pm.
15. van Oosterwyck-Gastuche M. Cl. 1994 - B. Cooper: Les dinosaures dans les chroniques anglo-saxonnes. Science & Foi n° 31, page. 14-16, and WJ Gibbons, A la recherche du dinosaure du Congo, Le Cepn° 22 (2003).
16. Measurements carried out by Charles Hapgood, professor of history and anthropology at the University of New Hampshire (USA).
17. In particular, the following were represented: the webbed-legged trachodon, the gorgosaur, the horned monoclinius, the ornitholeste, the tyrannosaurus, the triceratops, the stegosaurus, the diplodocus, the podokosaurus, the struthiominus, the plesiosaur, the leviathan, the maiasaurus, the ramporinckus, the Bernisar iguanodon, the branchiosaur, the pteranodon, the dimetrodon, the ichtjornis, the rhinocephalus, etc.
18. See, Le Cep n° 27 and 28.
19. Of course, comparisons between these different traces are avoided so as not to show evidence of a certain contemporaneity between the dinosaur and the herd.
20. According to the name of their discoverer, Jake Jacob.
21. This is the case of the sites of Regourdou or Glozel, already mentioned in the articles by P. Fl. Hautvilliers in Le Cep n° 4 (1998), n° 8 (1999) and n° 13 (2000).