Fossil Fish

[RightWingGirl]

By the by, I was just looking at the link you sent. The crock was fully swallowed by the snake before he was killed by his greed. The fish were still swallowing.
Fish have no legs to stick in the throat, and it would be very hard for a fish to be stuck in another fish's mouth. It did look as though the fish "caught in the act" had most of them already swallowed the other fish most of the way, that is, past the biggest part. (Although some fish hardly have a widest point)

 

[RightWingGirl]

Dear RWG,

You may find this link useful to obtain info about the flood and young earth.

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p82.htm

The flood in The Bible was local and not global.


As.

THen did God set a rainbow in the sky as a sign that he would never make another local flood?

 

[RightWingGirl]

Another fossil.

And---

 

[nvxplorer]

If you are interested in this, please read http://www.trueorigin.org/geocolumn.asp

Thanks for the link. It’s not that I’m uninterested, but I’m not in the mood for a long technical article right now. How is the article relevant to my question? Perhaps you would copy the salient points into a reply?

Again, where are the rapidly fossilized biblical kinds? Do we find fossilized modern cattle and birds alongside these fish?

 

[RightWingGirl]

I've go to go now, thank you all for your insight and comments!
See you all soon.

 

[Dr.GH]

The sum of these objections is this; These remains were fossilized quickly, not during millions of years, but by a world-wide flood.

Well, there are two problems with your sumation; they need not have fossilzed quickly, and whether they fossilized quick or slow is not evidence of a local flood, let alone a global flood.

Now, based just on the photo you posted and modern comparisons, this was a deepwater predator. Why would a deep water predator be distressed by rain? Underwater events such as landslides can happen, and these can cause some organisms to become burried. A good paleontologist can determine if this were the case. Actually the most common way that fish are first introduced into the fossil record is drought and not flood. The first good study on this was in 1927 by Johannes Weigelt, (translated) "Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and their Paleontological Implicaitons."

The careful analysis of the bones of animals as they pass from biological to geological specimens is called taphonomy. The taphonomy of fish is something that I have studied, and I am in fact thought to be an expert on taphonomy in general. My articles on fish are the following:

1996 "Digestive Modification of Bone by Fish.”
Southern California Academy of Science, Annual meeting, May.

1998 "Fish Bone Deposition by Coyote" Karl Allwerdt, Gary S. Hurd.
Society for Californian Archaeology, March.

1998 "Digestive Modification of Bone by Fish.”
Society for Californian Archaeology.

(I thought there were a few more. I should get back to "real" work.) ??

 

[Electric Sceptic]

Also, and this may be the strongest point, when a fish dies it floats, not sinks

You're right, it's not the strongest point, because it's false. Fish often sink a very short time after dying, as anyone who has an aquarium can attest.

 

[Jet Black]

The photo below is the fossil of a fish that died recently after having eaten another fish. This fish must have been fossilized rapidly after swallowing the smaller fish. And I say recently, because of the speed of digestion and the speed of decay.

no, it does not need to be rapidly fossilized, merely rapidly covered. but yes, it must have been killed shortly after eating the other fish.

There are also many fossils of fish that died in the act of swallowing another fish and were so fossilized. Now some say that these died because they attempted to swallow a fish larger than they were able, but this is a bit odd. It argues to a very stupid fish with an amazing amount of cupidity.

not that odd, things often eat things too big for them. I have done it a couple of times and nearly choked. anyway, it doesn't nescessarily have to have died because it choked, it could have been killed just after it ate the other fish.

Also, and this may be the strongest point, when a fish dies it floats, not sinks,

no, only some fish float, not all fish.

and would not be slowly buried, but what with other fish feeding off of it, currents and such, the body would not remain in one piece for a neat fossil.

wrong. often fish die and then descend into anoxic environments. often large lakes or bodies of water have oxygen at the top but not at the bottom. But even this is not nescessary.

The sum of these objections is this; These remains were fossilized quickly, not during millions of years, but by a world-wide flood.

nobody says that it took "millions of years" for the fish to fossilize. This is a mistruth spread by creationists. The burial and fossilization of organisms can take place rapidly, indeed we know this sort of thing often happens. see Pompeii for an example.

Unfortunately you have been sucked in by a number of typical errors there. Your conclusion that a global flood is responsible for this completely ignores local events: Burial of fossils, and hence protection from decay can occur very rapidly, examples of this sort of thing are flash floods, rapid deposition of sediment in river deltas, fallout of volcanic ash, burial due to landslides, burial due to sand dunes. all of these things will protect an organism from decay and allow it to fossilize, depending of course on the conditions and whether the sediment is stable or not. The implicit claim in your post that deposition of individual layers/regions takes place over millions of years is utter nonsense. Certainly some may be deposited very slowly, but local catastrophes are also par for the course. There are a number of environments in which decay does not occur as I have already outlined. so sadly your thesis contains alot of false information.

 

[troodon]

Thanks for the link. It’s not that I’m uninterested, but I’m not in the mood for a long technical article right now. How is the article relevant to my question? Perhaps you would copy the salient points into a reply?

Again, where are the rapidly fossilized biblical kinds? Do we find fossilized modern cattle and birds alongside these fish?

It was an attack on the concept of the geologic column. The typical drivel about how if the earth were really 4 billion years old then there should be some place on earth with 4 billion years worth of sediment in a great big column. It in no way addressed your question.

 

[Jet Black]

oh, please could you post sources for the pictures. True a picture is a thousand words and all that, but it really helps if you can let us know more about it, so we can do some research on it if possible. THere is an awful lot more information in the fossil than "oh look a fish eating another fish" such as the type of sediment that it was found in, the species of fish, the environment the fish lived in and so on.

 

[notto]

nobody says that it took "millions of years" for the fish to fossilize. This is a mistruth spread by creationists. The burial and fossilization of organisms can take place rapidly, indeed we know this sort of thing often happens.

Quoted for truth.

The whole argument presented in the OP is nothing but a strawman.

 

[Asimis]

THen did God set a rainbow in the sky as a sign that he would never make another local flood?

The rainbow is not strictly linked to the flood. It is a symbol of God's promise.


As.

 

[Silent Bob]

The rainbow is not strictly linked to the flood. It is a symbol of God's promise.


As.

And later it became the banner of homosexuality... Who said that God doesnt do irony?

 

[Elduran]

LOOK!!! A dinosaur eating a human!!

Link

Another relevant link showing that certain people believe these things at face value

 

[BananaSlug]

LOOK!!! A dinosaur eating a human!!

Link

Another relevant link showing that certain people believe these things at face value

Wow! I've never seen fossils that are that black! I guess this must be one of those rare dinosaurs that can live without a body! Amazing!

 

[BananaSlug]

Also, and this may be the strongest point, when a fish dies it floats, not sinks, and would not be slowly buried, but what with other fish feeding off of it, currents and such, the body would not remain in one piece for a neat fossil. The sum of these objections is this; These remains were fossilized quickly, not during millions of years, but by a world-wide flood.

A world wide flood would not result in a standing body of water, but would have fast currents, volcanoes, and disturbances in the plates, bringing huge amounts of dirt and debris and laying down layers in a matter of hours

If dead fish float, how could they be buried by sediment if a matter of hours? Watch out how you present your arguments.

 

[Dr.GH]

With Microsatan IE, right click on the image; select "properties;" a window pops up with the address of the image. In this case it is Walt Brown's website. Brown is particularly interested in "flood geology." His ideas are quite thoroughly debunked by Mark Isaak in Problems with a Global Flood, Second Edition.

 

[ushishir]

The photo below is the fossil of a fish that died recently after having eaten another fish. This fish must have been fossilized rapidly after swallowing the smaller fish. And I say recently, because of the speed of digestion and the speed of decay.

Looking at the fossil the rock matrix in which the fish is contained is uniformly fine grained. In a violent global flood you might expect the material deposited to be poorly sorted containing large lumps and angular pebbles transported over a long distance. It seems more likely that this was a relatively small amount of local material that did cover the fish rapidly, but the evidence is inconsitant with a large global flood - this fossil seems if anything to falsify a global flood (as do literally thousands of uncontested geological observations).

 

[futzman]

Can a scientific hypothesis be destroyed with one piece of evidence?

All of the evidence as pertains to these fossil fish point to rapid burial by swift-moving water.

Like maybe a river? I hunt for Pleistocene mammal bones on the Arkansas River quite frequently. I can attest to the rapid burial and shifting of the sediments (massive shifting) that occurs all the time. I've seen the river move entire mile portions of sand and sediment in a single localized flood or two. I see no need for a global flood to be the cause of this fossil.

Futz

 

[ChrisPelletier]

Can a scientific hypothesis be destroyed with one piece of evidence?

With one peice of evidence? Never has a theory been destroyed with one peice, but several theories have been refuted with small findings. I can equate this to trafficing of proteins in the Golgi apparatus. The classic view is that proteins are moved through the Golgi (cis to trans) and modified to be used in, on, & outside the cell. It a couple of years ago some scientists found that very large proteins cannot be transported between Golgi compartments. Instead a new theory of Golgi maturation has arisen to explain how proteins are modified. If your really interested look it up.

The point? Does this new theory destroy the previous? No, they biuld of one another & new evidences found give us a higher reolution of what is really happening.