Robert has sent in the links below, one of which as already appeared on the News. However, his sources are not mainstream and are a little different, if you like. He has a propensity for looking at Creationist web sites which are otherwise ignored by most commentators. However, many of the posts at these sites are written up by scientists – with a Creationist slant. Sometimes that slant is so far over they are virtually toppling to one side. The purpose of such sites is to counter mainstream uniformitarian ideas and provide religious people with a divergent view of the evidence. Bearing that in mind one can glean information that others ignore. With that in mind go to https://crev.info/2020/12/early-man-monthly-oops/ … which is about Toumai Man. Never heard of him? You are probably not alone. He was said to be the earliest fossil in the transition between ape and hominids. This is an obsession with some anthropologists. Evolution by gradual stages is true so there must be evidence in the fossil record for that transition. Hence, they search for such transitional fossils in various parts of the world, mainly in dry regions where bone is preserved longer than in damp environments. The site chosen is dry in the modern world, the area around Lake Chad in Africa. However, in the past it has been wet and the lake itself was much bigger. This is a tale of scientists that have spent a large part of their career in search of the elusive evidence to support evolution of humans from apes, but in the end it has been another false trail to nowhere. Back in 2002 Nature journal published an article with 38 co authors added to the lead author, 'New Hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad'. It was presented as a significant paper on the history of human origins, pushing back the evolution of hominids by a long period of time. It was taken up as ground breaking, as these sort of things always are, by the popular press. Time magazine and Newsweek ran stories, and later, National Geographic and New Scientist. The point is made that all these people wanted it to be true and assumed the evidence was infallible. However, some anthropologists were not convinced. The age of the fossil bones led to a bit of suspicion creeping in, and a couple of scientists with an alternative view sort out the bones for another look. Incredibly, some of the bones had gone missing and were said to be lost. Naturally, the level of suspicion was raised further.Toumai Man, in spite of the original article and research, did not and could not walk on two legs. He was not bipedal. The fact that the bones that could prove that one way or the other went missing is why they beavered away for several years to come up with the facts. Toumai Man was an ape with ape like legs. He was not a hominid. Now we have a situation where 38 scientists have attached their names to a piece of fantasy. The new research has been published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Robert also sent in the link to www.icr.org/article/flood-buried-dinosaurs-with-a-bang/ … which is a more dogmatic web site than the one above. It is a comment on a paper at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.201195 … which concerns the K/T boundary event [now known as the K/Pg event, from Paleogene]. The paper claims that dinosaurs show no sign of a crisis prior to the actual asteroid strike. However, this piece comes straight out and says the dinosaurs were not killed by a puny asteroid – at 65 million years ago. It was Noah's Flood it would seem. First, they do not accept an asteroid was capable of causing mayhem to the earth system, and secondly, they are young earthers who accept the Biblical time scale rather than the uniformitarian geochronological time scale. They take this position with a straight face, without acknowledging the symbolical value of Biblical numbers, or the impossibility of such a short life on earth. The Royal Society article is misquoted it would seem. It does not mention a watery grave in which some of the dinosaurs were found, is one bone of contention. The article is simply making the point that dinosaurs thrived right up to the last moments prior to the asteroid impact. One can argue over whether it was a comet or an asteroid, or a giant thunderbolt from the gods, which may be the same thing, but to say it was puny is extreme. How could such a puny impact create the Deccan Traps on the opposite side of the world? This sort of article does not do the Creationist side a lot of use. Even the Bible alludes to a cometary component in the Noachian flood event. It is all about interpretation.