Re: What if?

It's safe to say that animal migrations over periods of a million years or more are likely to have little impact on the fossil record. Except in certain marine environments such as reefs, fossilization is a rare event. That's why you expect gaps in the record for land animals. But such things as annual land migrations would, as you suggest, have a negligible effect. In many environments--for example, in Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park during the Mesozoic or in South Dakota's Badlands National Park during the Oligocene--you can still get large quantities of fossilized land animal remains. The erratic nature of fossilization, however, is a major thing that can (and usually does) complicate your suggested experiment.

Your experiment could be more easily done in sediments from marine environments, provided the remains aren't cemented tightly in hard rock. I suspect David Campbell ("bivalve") may have done some of these himself.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Charles Carrigan<mailto:CCarriga@olivet.edu>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu> ; dickfischer@earthlink.net<mailto:dickfischer@earthlink.net>
  Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 1:54 PM
  Subject: RE: What if?

  Dick-

  Like I said in the part you cut out from below, this is a simplified example for illustration purposes and there are all kinds of complications and exceptions that may arise. Migration might be one of them. But that doesn't invalidate the concept in general. Not all species migrate, obviously. Besides, migration is typically a seasonal variation only. You rarely have that level of detail in the ancient fossil record.

  Charles

  <><<><<><<><<><<><<><<><<><<><<><<><
  Charles W. Carrigan
  Olivet Nazarene University
  Dept. of Geology
  One University Ave.
  Bourbonnais, IL 60914
  PH: (815) 939-5346
  FX: (815) 939-5071

>>> Dick Fischer <dickfischer@earthlink.net> 12/8/2004 12:17:46 PM >>>

  Charles W. Carrigan wrote:

    Suppose there are three stratigraphic layers A,B, and C, in chronological order, with A the lowest in the pile and the oldest in age. There are no significant breaks in the pile that would suggest long periods of time in between them. Suppose we find a fossil animal in layer A, and a somewhat different one (but yet clearly related) fossil in C. Evolution predicts that there would be an intermediate fossil in layer B, if preserved. That prediction could be tested, could it not?

  What about migration? Animals don't stay in the same place. Of course, on island populations this is true. The island of Madagascar has archaic animals beneath layers of their descendants. But proving a linear line of descent is the problem. You can only make assumptions which would be accepted by the scientific community and rejected by creationists, just like they reject everything else.

  Dick Fischer - Genesis Proclaimed Association
  Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
  www.genesisproclaimed.org
  <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/>
Received on Sat Dec 11 05:39:08 2004