need help on Precambrian pollen question
Shuan Rose
announcing that tree pollen had been found in a Precambrian shale bed in
the Grand Canyon.See
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Magazines/docs/v12n1_pollen.asp
I reeled back in shock, and decided to check things out with t.o.
before climbing back into the ring.
Does anyone know anything about this? Folks, don't fail me now.
John Monrad
attn...@hotmail.com posted
Here's something to start with:
<http://www.grisda.org/origins/08007.htm>
Jon Fleming
wrote:
The pollen was collected by Clifford Burdick. Burdick also
discovered the Paluxy "man tracks" and made claims that led a lot of
creationists into thinking that they had the "smoking gun" .. claims
that were later retracted by all but a few (see
<http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/paluxy.htm> and
<http://members.aol.com/paluxy2/paluxy.htm>). Ronald Numbers
discusses Burdick in "The Creationists", and provides plenty of
evidence that Burdick is not capable or knowledgable.
The pollen was a mix of ancient and modern pollen. There would be no
problem if it was all ancient; a problem would arise if it were modern
form but deposited with the ancient rocks. The modern pollen was
contamination; its spectrum matched the present-day spectrum of Grand
Canyon pollen. Burdick's technique was terrible, and he couldn't take
an uncontaminated sample. His assistant pretty much demolished the
claims: see <http://www.grisda.org/origins/08007.htm>. Some still
hold on to the hope: see
<http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/36/36_3/plantfossils.html>.
See also <http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0101.html> and
<http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0122.html>.
Jon Fleming
wrote:
>On the Bapist message board , someone threw me a real haymaker by
I found a large extract from "The Creationists" in re Burdick:
<http://www.pdox.net/~glk/Unsorted_files/A77-Burdick.txt>.
Another reference: <http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0319.html>
(discusses Howe's replication of Burdick's results)
Robert Carroll
"Shuan Rose" <attn...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.164a57625...@supernews.charm.net...
Go to ncseweb.org. click on resources. many good articles, pamphlets etc.
One I remember (but couldn't find just now was-- how to debate creationists.
(They advise you to not do it)
Good luck
Bob
Jon Fleming
wrote:
>On the Bapist message board , someone threw me a real haymaker by
More: <http://asa.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199604/0403.html>
<http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0172.html>
<http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0178.html>
<http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0326.html>
Andrew Glasgow
Shuan Rose <attn...@hotmail.com> wrote:
It's probably pollen that fell into the cracks of the rock. Ask for a
reputable source.
--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical |
| reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat |
| to your SCSI chain now and then. -- John Woods |
Henry Barwood
Brazil were dated as Cretaceous using pollen analysis. It seems the
highly fractured quartzites contained trapped pollen that filtered down
into the cracks in Cretaceous times and were trapped by subsequent
cementation of the cracks. Pollen analysis depends on excruciatingly
careful sample collection and preparation. An friend once had to retract
a paper because he used a saw contaminated with coal dust to prepare
some Devonian samples and subsequently got the age wrong!
Barwood
mvp54609
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0101.html
From Glenn Mortin I quote
I quote Chadwick at length,
"In 1971 I obtained a collecting permit from the National Park
Service and accompanied C. L. Burdick to the Grand Canyon. His
previous sample localities were relocated and new samples were
collected, returned to my laboratory at Loma Linda University and
processed by C. L. Burdick using techniques similar to those he had
employed in his earlier work at the University of Arizona. On the
basis of results from these samples, Burdick (1972) published a
second paper claiming substantiation of his earlier paper. It is
unfortunate that Burdick chose to publish the results of this work
without waiting for independent confirmation. In this second
article, as in the first, he figures several objects which are not
identifiable and several pollen grains which are either modern or
of modern affinities. However, he made the claim {challenged in a
subsequent cautiously worded report (Chadwick, Debord and Fisk,
1973)} that these data supported his previous findings. In a sense
they do, in that both papers figure grains which are clearly modern
in aspect and indistinguisable from grains abundant in the present
pollen spectrum of the Grand Canyon region. However, the
conclusion that these findings support the concept of Precambrian
higher plants is a non sequitur until all cause for concern
regarding modern contamination has been eliminated. It was with
this goal in mind that the work reported herein was
undertaken."~Arthur V. Chadwick, "Precambrian Pollen in the Grand
Canyon - A Reexamination," Origins, 8:1, 1981, pp 7-8 (7-12)
**
"A total of fifty samples from the same strata which Burdick
had studied were processed. All slides were completely scanned.
No single example of an authentic pollen grain was obtained from
any of these samples. In fact, the slides produced from the
Hakatai Formation were in most cases completely free from any
material of biologic origin, modern or fossil."~Arthur V. Chadwick,
"Precambrian Pollen in the Grand Canyon - A Reexamination,"
Origins, 8:1, 1981, pp 8 (pp.7-12)
1) No rigorous attempt was apparently made by Burdick to evaluate
personally the modern pollen rain in the Grand Canyon. A single
sample of soil from near one of the modern collecting sites could
have completely satisfied Burdick as to the source of most of the
grains he has reported. A typical analysis of a site near where
Burdick collected his Hakatai samples yielded the following
profile: bisaccate pollen (conifers) 30%; juniper 12%; ephedra
16%; various species of angiosperms (42%) (Siegels,1971). Although
the poor quality of the photographs in the plates of Burdick's
first paper makes definite assignments impossible, one can
approximate the composition of the flora he reports. Of the grains
identifiable as pollen or spores in the two papers by Burdick
(n=18), 7 or 37% are bisaccates, 2 or 11% are possibly juniper.
Ephedra pollen constitute 11% and angiosperms and unassignable
grains 34%. Thus even with this small sample size, Burdick's grains
approximate the modern pollen rain found in surface sample in the
area of the Grand Canyon where he collected his samples."~Arthur V.
Chadwick, "Precambrian Pollen in the Grand Canyon - A
Reexamination," Origins, 8:1, 1981, pp 9-11 (pp.7-12)
**
See also http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199709/0101.html
http://www.grisda.org/origins/08007.htm
PRECAMBRIAN POLLEN IN THE GRAND CANYON — A REEXAMINATION
Arthur V. Chadwick Associate Professor of Biology
Loma Linda University
Results
A total of fifty samples from the same strata which Burdick had
studied were processed. All slides were completely scanned. No single
example of an authentic pollen grain was obtained from any of these
samples. In fact, the slides produced from the Hakatai Formation were
in most cases completely free from any material of biologic origin,
modern or fossil.
http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/grand.htm
http://hometown.aol.com/ibss2/howoldisearth.html
http://www.pdox.net/~glk/Unsorted_files/A77-Burdick.txt
http://origins.swau.edu/papers/various/chadwick1/default.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/discrim.htm
"Alarmed by the possibility of a hoax, the CRS in 1969 asked two
independent scientists from Loma Linda University to accompany Burdick
back to the Grand Canyon to double-check his research. Although
shortly afterwards Burdick triumphantly reported to CRS that his
original discovery of pre-Cambrian pollen had been confirmed, both
scientists concluded that Burdick was simply too incompetent to take
an uncontaminated soil sample. No pre-Cambrian pollen grains were
found. (In 1981, creationist biologist Arthur Chadwick, who had once
been Burdick's assistant at the Grand Canyon, reported that he could
not find a trace of pollen of any sort in any of the fifty samples
taken from the same strata studied by Burdick.) The CRS concluded that
Burdick's "pollen" was the result of sloppy and incompetent research
methods, not a deliberate fraud."
Schimmrich had a page on rebutting the claims as well but these pages
seem to be off line right now.
He responds to claims on http://www.rae.org/pollen.html
I have archived his page and he addresses many what he considers
misrepresentations on the page.
He ends with
"Closing Comments
To be blunt, the study by Howe, et al., (1988) is garbage. They only
collected 9 samples. They were not especially careful in their sample
collection and preparation procedures. Only 3 of the samples were from
the Hakatai Shale. Only 1 or 2 of those samples had pollen. The pollen
found in these ancient rocks, thought by all geologists to be
deposited at a time when there were absolutely no land plants in
existence, was representative of modern plants growing in the area.
They proceed to publish this when they should have redone the study
and other young-earth creationists (e.g. Russell Humphreys) tout this
as "scientific" evidence for a young-earth.
Such claims may convince laypeople with no knowledge of science and
proper scientific protocols but will never convince anyone with more
than a passing knowledge of paleontology and geology.
I'm a Christian and I'm ashamed that this sloppy science and its
associated misrepresentations are propagated by other Christians. This
type of garbage will only hinder acceptance of the Gospel message
because in unnecessarily gives the impression that Christians are not
overly concerned with the truth."
Shuan Rose
I appreciate the quick response
In article <6b5bdb08.01110...@posting.google.com>,
mvp5...@qwest.net says...
Keith Littleton
> On the Bapist message board , someone threw me
> a real haymaker by announcing that tree pollen had
> been found in a Precambrian shale bed in the Grand
> Canyon.See
>
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Magazines/docs/v12n1_pollen.asp
> I reeled back in shock, and decided to check things
> out with t.o.before climbing back into the ring. Does
> anyone know anything about this? Folks, don't fail me now.
You might want to contact Andrew Macrae.
Go see: "Current Projects - Andrew MacRae"
at http://tabla.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/ for
contact information.
These and other posts can be found using
the Google search engine at:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
Search using a combination of "Andrew MacRae,"
"pollen," and "Precambrian."
Yours,
Keith
http://linguistlist.org/list-archives.html
Below are some answers that Andrew MacRae gave in
response to the claims about Precambrian pollen.
++++++ reposted material below this line +++++
From: mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca (Andrew MacRae)
Subject: Re: How many creationist geologists
Date: 1999/04/06
Message-ID: <7ed46r$t3k$1...@darwin.ediacara.org>#1/1
Approved: rob...@ediacara.org
References: <37065C...@waymark.net>
Organization: The University of Ediacara
Reply-To: mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca
Newsgroups: talk.origins
In article <37065C...@waymark.net>
"Glenn R. Morton" <grmo...@waymark.net> writes:
|David Johnston wrote of Art Chadwick:
|> Glenn R. Morton wrote:
|> If the Earth is old, then he's wrong about
|> geology being where the real battle is.
|
|Not from Art's point of view. He needs a
|global flood, and believes that there was a
|global flood. Thus the real battle for Art
|is geological because the data does not go
|his way in geology very often. What I find
|fascinating about Art is his forthrightness.
|He has no difficulty acknowledging things
|that contradict his personal belief system.
|He is honest about that. What I wish I could
|get him to do is realize what a dead-end a
|belief in the global flood is.
|
|I would also point out that Art was
|instrumental in debunking the claims
|of precambrian pollen being found in the
|Grand Canyon area.
His laboratory experiments on processing
techniques, and the very real potential for
modern contamination, were quite meticulous,
as was his documentation of the procedure he
used to test out the possibility. The careful
lab procedure was useful to show that when
sufficient caution was used to eliminate the
possibility of contamination, there was
essentially nothing there (other than
palynomorph remains expected of Precambrian
rocks). It did seem a bit of a waste of time
to me, though, given that the morphology and
preservational state of the pollen in question
already clearly indicated it was modern, rather
than in situ in the rocks, and I find such
positive evidence of contamination more
compelling than negative evidence. One
could always argue that Chadwick did not
find the right samples (or sub-samples),
or that something in his procedure destroyed
the palynomorphs in question (from his procedure,
this is very unlikely, but one could feebly try
to claim that). By contrast, explaining the
completely incongruous preservational state
of the pollen grains is an unavoidable problem
for anyone proposing the grains really were
in situ, regardless of the preparation technique
or sampling.
In practice, it is very difficult to eliminate
the possibility of a small amount of contamination
either in the field or in the lab when collecting
and preparing palynological samples, because
pollen grains are so durable, so it wouldn't
have surprised me if some rare pollen did turn
up despite Chadwick's careful work. Then what?
The positive clue that it was contamination
comes from the low thermal maturity of the
pollen (these rocks have been heated to high
enough temperature that an effect on the pollen
grains should be seen -- their colour should
be darker yellow or brown like the rest of
the palynomorphs found in these rocks), the
fully 3-dimensional morphology with preservation
of all the most delicate details of the structure
of the pollen grains (many of which degrade
quite easily, and would have for certain in
these rocks, plus the pollen grains should
have been flattened in the shale), and the
occurrence of modern species found in the
area today (it would be likely for at least
some extinct pollen grain species to be
present too -- if all plants were around
prior to the flood, where are the striate
bisaccate pollen grains typical only of the
Late Carboniferous and Permian, for example?).
The occasional modern pollen grains, especially
bisaccate pollen grains (e.g., produced by
pine or spruce) regularly turn up in just
about any palynological preparation made with
conventional techniques, but they don't cause
a problem most of the time because their
preservation is clearly distinct from the
rest of the assemblage unless dealing with
very young samples. On some occasions, the
protoplasm is still in the pollen grains,
which is a dead giveaway. Why anybody thought
this was an anomaly to be investigated in the
first place, and deserved such intensive and
time-consuming experimental study, is quite
puzzling to me. Any reasonably experienced
palynologist would have recognized these
problems as fatal to the claim the pollen
grains were in situ. They aren't preserved
in a way that is consistent with the roc
they were supposedly extracted from, regardless
of the age.
Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
+++++ reposted text No. 2 +++++++
From: mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca (Andrew MacRae)
Subject: Re: Creation/Evolution debate/Cambrianexplosion/fossil succession
Date: 1996/02/03
Message-ID: <4eug0h$m...@ds2.acs.ucalgary.ca>
references: <4eo7sp$1...@granite.sentex.net>
organization: The University of Calgary
reply-to: mac...@geo.ucalgary.ca
newsgroups: talk.origins
In article <4eo7sp$1...@granite.sentex.net>
t...@sentex.net (Douglas Cox) writes:
> On Sun Jan 28, 1996, mac...@geo.ucalgary.ca
>(Andrew MacRae) wrote:
>>In article <4e9chs$4...@granite.sentex.net>
>>t...@sentex.net (Douglas Cox) writes:
>>>In article <4e89u9$5...@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>,
>>>Glen J. Kuban
>>><pa...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
....text deleted...
>Could you provide references to the ones
>that are in dispute? I am curious about
>whether you are thinking of the same reports
>that are mentioned by Lubenow.
It is possible I am not. I am referring to:
Stainforth, R.M., 1966. Occurrence of pollen
and spores in the Roraima Formation of
Venezuela and British Guiana. Nature,
v.210, p.292-294.
These are in cordierite-biotite grade
metamorphic rocks (slates and hornfels).
The palynomorphs should be "cooked" to crispy,
charred, pitted, flattened husks if they were
in place. They obviously are not.
The ones from the Grand Canyon Hakatai Shale
(and nearby units of similar age) are those
in the documentation you kindly sent me a
while ago, and for which I am quite grateful.
The main paper with documentation is:
Howe, G.F.; Williams, E.L.; Matzko, G.T.; and
Lammerts, W.E., 1988 (March). Creation
Research Society Studies on Precambrian
pollen, Part III: A pollen analysis of Hakatai
Shale and other Grand Canyon Rocks.
Creation Research Quaterly, v.24, p.173-182.
Although there are a few others, all pre-dating
this one.
These specimens should not be as "cooked"
as the Venezuela examples, but they should
still be dark yellow to brown (hard to judge
in black-and-white photos, but these look
way too light in colour), some of the fine
structure should be partly corroded, and
they should be almost completely flattened.
Again, they are not compatible with the
expected preservation condition if they
were in place. Coupled with the fact it
is easy for small amounts of modern
contamination to get into palynological
rock samples and into the preparation process
-- no matter how careful preparation is --
and the evidence of the Cambrian occurrnece
of bisaccate (conifer) and angiosperm pollen
is highly suspect. Without the corresponding
plant megafossils anywhere even remotely close
to rocks that low in the stratigraphy, the
interpretation they are in place is pretty
tenuous, in my opinion.
>It would be quite devastating, of course,
>for evolutionism, if spores of conifers
>should occur in Cambrian sediments;
It would certainly be a significant problem.
>its a wonder the reports were published at
>all. It would probably be quite difficult to
>get such findings published today.
Not for the reason you are implying. The
evidence available on the preservation of
these occurrences is *inconsistent* with
their being in place. Frankly, I am amazed
that Stainforth, for example, got published,
because he describes evidence which
conclusively demonstrates they could not
be in place in the same paper. Palynomorphs
which miraculously survive, virtually unaltered,
in cordierite-biotite grade metamorphic rocks?
You may as well take a blowtorch to the slide
before looking at it -- that is what they
should look like they have been through if
they were preserved in those rocks.
>>In fact, some appear to be obviously
>>introduced, when sufficient information is
>>presented to make that determination (e.g.,
>>finding fully 3D and thermally unaltered
>>bisaccate pollen grains (from "pine" or
>>"spruce") in rocks which should cause them to
>>be highly compacted and thermally altered to
>>brown colour, if in place). A more telling
>>observation is the failure to discover other
>>plant remains (e.g., leaves, wood, needles,
>>cones, roots, etc.) in rocks of the
>>corresponding stratigraphic position.
>
>The lack of wood, cones, roots, and other
>plant remains in the rocks where the spores
>were found could be because the spores were
>blown out to sea, and deposited far away
>from land, in a marine environment.
In the Hakatai Shale (and similar units),
maybe. In other Cambrian strata, some of
which is nearshore or terrestrial, no, this
does not explain their absence. Furthermore,
in later rocks with other megafossil plant
remains, wood does occur in marine shales
and other marine deposits. It gets there
as driftwood, just like today. In fact,
in many Cretaceous and younger fossil wood
in marine sediment examples, _Teredolites_
borings are found in the wood. I.e. it got
bored by shipworm, just like today, before
the wood finally got waterlogged and sank
to the bottom. Where is the pine or spruce
driftwood and _Teredolites_ in the Cambrian?
I have seen plenty of conifer wood (bald
cypress) and _Teredolites_ in Cretaceous
rocks. I have specimens in the lab down
the hall and in the basement. I could image
some and put them on the WWW if you would like.
>In this case, the lack of other plant
>remains along with the spores makes sense.
No, it does not for all plant remains.
Cuticle (the waxy, durable coating on
many needles and leaves) gets out into
the marine environment with no problem, as
do small (100 micron or so) fragments of
wood and amber. I see them in palynological
preparations of the appropriate age from
marine sediments all the time. The
cuticle preserves the imprints of the cells
on the surfaces of the leaves, sometimes
including the stomata, and the wood
fragments often have the characteristic
tracheid pits found in a variety of vascular
plants. Terrestrial palynological material
(pollen, spores, cuticle, wood, amber, etc.)
usually gets transported into marine
environments. It is not an exaggeration to
say it is virtually ubiquitous, and sometimes
it dominates the assemblage, but the opposite --
marine palynomorphs into terrestrial rocks --
does not normally occur.
Howe et al., 1988, do report probable
microscopic wood fragments with unambiguous
tracheids (their figure 30), however, these
are extremely light in colour, and, again
from personal experience, it is not uncommon
to find modern wood fragments bearing
tracheids as contamination in samples.
Sounds strange, doesn't it? The reason for
this is rather funny -- they are usually
fibres from paper, often used to clean the
slides and cover slips prior to mounting,
and fibres are floating around practically
any building. It should come as no mystery
that these are often pine or spruce.
There are many serious problems with the
hypothesis conifer pollen is occurring in
the Cambrian, *long* before one gets to
the question of the evolutionary implications
if they really are in situ, and the information
presented in this in other papers does what
I consider to be a poor job of establishing
that these specimens can not be contamination.
It is interesting that the palynology samples
described by Howe et al. *do* contain
palynological material which could be in
place, because it has the expected flattening
and thermal maturity -- but these are simple
spheres. Simple spheroidal organic bodies
are common in the Cambrian (and even later
Precambrian), and are probably they cysts
of single-celled algae known as sphaeromorphic
acritarchs. The preservation condition of
the pollen is in stark contrast to this material.
One test of the hypothesis they *are*
contamination would be to prepare samples
of rocks from the same locality which clearly
could not contain pollen. For example,
igneous rocks with similar degrees of
fracturing to the Hakatai Shale (or at
least approaching that condition). If you
can also find pollen in gneisses from the
Grand Canyon, there would obviously be
something wrong. It amazes me that, as near
as I can tell, Howe et al. did not consider
running such a "blank" sample from the same
location as a control. From preparing samples
in the lab here, I *know* small amounts of
contamination are pretty normal in palynological
preparations. Finding two or three modern
bisaccate pollen grains and a few paper or
other fibres per slide is not unusual.
Andrew
mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca
home page: http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae
+++++ end of reposted text ++++++++++++
Famed scientist, Christian, and young-earth
creationist icon, Lord Kelvin (listed in Henry
Morris' book, Men of Science, Men of God) once argued...
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) in Robert Youngson,
"Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how
wrong scientists can sometimes be," Robinson,1998
"I have not the smallest molecule of faith in
aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of
the expectation of good results from any of the
trials we hear of."
- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), writing to Baden-Powell
in 1896 in Robert Youngson, "Scientific Blunders:
A brief history of how wrong scientists can
sometimes be," Robinson,1998
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin,1895. From (Morgan and Langford's
"Facts and Fallacies: a Book of Definitive
Mistakes and Misguided Predictions" - 1982)
"Radio has no future."
- Lord Kelvin, 1897, on Marconi's experiments
From "Facts and Fallacies: a Book of Definitive
Mistakes and Misguided Predictions" - 1982)