ABSTRACTS
An Initial Investigation into the Baraminology of Snakes: Order—Squamata, Suborder Serpentes
Tom Hennigan
Evolution theory predicts that the ancestry of organisms can be traced down a hypothetical evolutionary tree and eventually back to the first living cell. Creation theory postulates that ancestry can be traced back only a limited distance to a starting organism of that type. Instead of a “tree” the creation model has a “forest” of unrelated organisms with vast genetic potential. I hypothesize that the snake taxon originated from one or more originally created “trees” or “kinds” that have diversified into the snakes of today and that snakes are unrelated to any other group. In order to test this hypothesis, the snake taxon was analyzed using a discontinuity matrix and the data suggest that snakes can be considered a group unto themselves. Subsequently, a literature search was begun in order to determine additive evidence for relatedness. Three families were identified for their interspecific and intergeneric hybridization tendencies and within each family certain genera and species were classified into subgroups of related snakes. This initial investigation indicates that many snakes have the ability to hybridize, even when they are reproductively isolated over great distances, and are capable of a large degree of variation within a “species.” As more data are gathered and quantified, I predict that evolutionary hypotheses will continue to be frustrated because of faulty metaphysical assumptions and will strongly suggest that snakes began from one or a few originally created kinds, just a few thousand years ago.Origin and Significance of Sand-Filled Cracks and Other Features near the Base of the Coconino Sandstone, Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA
John H. Whitmore
Conventional geology proposes that the Coconino Sandstone formed when wind-blown desert sand migrated over the mud-cracked floodplains of the Hermit Formation. The contact between these two Permian formations was studied along ten trails in the Grand Canyon. Special attention was given to sand-filled cracks that occur at the base of the Coconino penetrating the Hermit, features usually interpreted as mud cracks. The most notable cracks are widest (up to 25 cm) and deepest (up to 10 m) along the Bright Angel Fault on the South Rim. Cracks are always present near major faults, but become narrower, shallower and are sometimes absent altogether as horizontal distance from faults increases and vertical displacement along faults decreases. Vertical laminations within the cracks, U-shaped cracks, cracks that dissipate upwards, slickensides not caused by faulting and other features make the mud crack theory suspect. They might be better explained as clastic dikes (or sand intrusions) which originated by injection during tectonic activity after the deposition of the Coconino Sandstone. Evidence near the base of the Coconino such as load casts, burrows and vertebrate trackways, suggests the Coconino was rapidly deposited in an aqueous environment. Cross-cutting relationships indicate the Bright Angel Fault was active during the Precambrian, then quiescent until the Cenozoic (Miocene to Pliocene). If the clastic dikes were caused by tectonic activity, either the Coconino was unlithified or only partially lithified in excess of 200 million years (unlikely, in a conventional scenario) or that only a short amount of time passed between deposition and faulting, greatly reducing the supposed duration of geologic time.
Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park, Nebraska: A Post-Flood/Ice Age Paleoenvironment
A. Jerry Akridge and Carl R. Froede, Jr.
Hundreds of skeletons of animals have been found in northeastern Nebraska, in an area known as Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park. The fossils are of various kinds of extinct and extant animals, including rhinoceroses, horses, camels, deer, birds, and turtles. The uniformitarian interpretation of the bone bed suggests that the animals were entombed by ash from a volcano that erupted in the region of Idaho approximately 1000 miles away during the Miocene Epoch. However, we interpret the bone bed and associated stratigraphy as a post-Flood/Ice Age paleoenvironment that was destroyed by volcanic ash and later covered by fluvially-deposited sediments no more than a few thousand years ago. We believe that the skeletal evidences found at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park reflect catastrophic conditions that occurred within the time frame of the young-Earth Flood model. (The names of various uniformitarian geological ages are used in this paper for reference, but we do not accept the presumed long ages and evolutionary assumptions.)
Of Cosmic Proportions
Christos Daskalakis
The weaknesses of the Standard Cosmological Model (the Big Bang) are discussed and a model based on a center oriented relativistic expansion (CORE) is introduced. By first reviewing the fundamentals of the Special and General Theories of Relativity the CORE model is shown to be perfectly compatible with Biblical creation. Unlike some earlier models, it rejects the notion of expanded space, and requires no dark energy. Hubble’s Law is discussed and the Hubble Constant derived theoretically is shown to be in agreement with the observed value.