Recent 4631(including species which went extinct in historical times)
Pleistocene 256
Pliocene 69
Miocene 2
Lee had challenged me. I incorporated a book he suggested and eliminated a
couple of errors in my database and here is the current result:
Recent 4631(including species which went extinct in historical times)
Pleistocene 282
Pliocene 67
Miocene 2
Prior to the Miocene I know of NO living animal represented in fossil form.
This means that the animals alive today, which supposedly got off the ark
apparently didn't live prior to the Flood. What follows is the detailed
answer to Lee.
>Lee Spencer wrote:
>It is good that several other books were consulted because Savage and
>Russel's book was never intended or represented as complete. I seriously
>doubt that there are only 267 known species of living mammals found as
>Pleistocene fossils. In fact, for most of the world, the lists are only
>generated at the genus level. For example, see:
>
>Marshall, Larry G., et al. 1984. Mammals and stratigraphy: geochronology of
>the continental mammal-bearing Quaternary of South America..
>Paleovertebrata, Memoirs Extr. 1984:1-76.
>
>I did my own checking on the percentage of fossil and living Quaternary
>mammals, and found that the percentage of known Pleistocene fossils
>compared to living species is a direct function of the distance to the
>nearest university with a strong paleontology department. I studied the
>lists of known Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age(late Pleistocene) fossil
>mammals of California arranged by county and published by:
>
>Jefferson, George T. 1991. A catalogue of Late Quaternary vertebrates
>from California: part two, mammals. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
>County, Technical Reports, Number 7, p 1-127.
>I next compared the actual fossil species list with the list of living
>California mammals at:
>
>http://arnica.csustan.edu/esrpp/calilist.htm
>
>Surprisingly, 57% of living terrestrial mammals are also found as fossils
>(80 of 141, living volant and marine mammals excluded as were introduced
>species) in the late Pleistocene of California. Even more surprising, of
>the large mammals (carnivores, ungulates), 88% (28 of 32) of those living
>also had a fossil record.
I do not understand where you got your data. I got the Jefferson book you
used aand looked at the mammalian list in the book and compared it to the
calilist. In no way do I see the data you see. In Jefferson's book, he
lists 119 species (this ignores genera which were identified which were
indeterminant in species.) 31 of the species on the list were extinct. This
means that he listed only 88 species which were fossil representatives of
living species. The calilist by my count has 224 species. 88/224 is 39
percent of the calilist represented as fossils, not the 57% you said.
Now, when I added the Jefferson data to my data base it represented an
addition of only 15 species. All the others were represented previously in
my database. I have some doubts that I should have added some of these 15
because they very well might have been taxonomically incorporated in other
species already represented in the database. But even if they aren't, the
fact remains that very few species of living mammals are found as fossils
from the Pleistocene back
If you have other information to the contrary, I would be glad to look it up. B
>Unless there is something very different about fossil preservation in
>California compared to the rest of the world, there should be at least 50%
>representation of fossil to living or an order of magnitude difference
>between Glenn's report and what is predicted to be known. Therefore,
>Glenn's argument is more one of under-study than required evolution since
>the Flood.
California does have something very unique. It had Rancho la Brea! I stand
by my conclusions, with the slightly altered numbers. If you think that a
higher percentage of mammals should be found as fossils, please point me to
a source. I would be happy to be corrected.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm