Carcarodon Megalodon
Next, pages 10-13 talks about Carcarodon Megalodon, the 50 foot long giant shark that lived roughly 25 to 2 million years ago. Just when did Megalodon became extinct is much hotly debated. Although it is classified as an animal that became extinct 2 million years ago, some cryptozoologists believe that these animals are still alive in remote areas of the world or have become extinct at a recent time, claiming that they have found giant shark teeth said to be of Megalodon dated back between 10,000 to 15,000 to years ago. On page 12, there is a story about a group of lobster fishermen from Port Stevens, Australia who claims to have been attacked by a massive shark that stole their catch and swam away leaving the sailors greatly shaken in 1918. What Wieland left out in the story is that the shark is exaggerated to be the same length as the fishermen's lobster boat, which is estimated to be about about 115 feet long. Another version of the tale the shark is measured to be an exaggerating 300 feet long. And no shark has ever been that long! Ben S. Roesch, a shark expert, have carefully examined the alleged megalodon sightings like this one along with the alleged findings of many thousands of years old Megalodon teeth and came to the conclusion that it is unlikely that Megalodon exists today. Especially since the story about the 1918 sighting took place out in the deeper part of the ocean while sharks, like Megalodon, spends all their lives swimming in the shallow areas of the ocean where there are plenty of fish and other forms of mammalian prey to eat. The alleged sightings must have been simply exaggerated stories made up by sailors who mistaken another large shark for the famous Megalodon shark.
Then pages 14-17 features Kronosaurus, a pliosaur that lived 120 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. On page 18, note how Wieland is giving a weak example of how life could never evolve from some ancestor, but are the product of the same Designer by claiming that although plesiosaurs and pliosaurs different, they all share the same features and have one designer behind them. He then shows off 2 examples of a VW Beetle and a Porsche sports car and how they are different but have the same features inside that make them both run smoothly; both cars come from the same car designer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) just as the plesiosaurs and the pliosaurs came from the same Designer (God), also.
But just because they are from the same designer doesn't mean they are the exact carbon copies of each other. The designers who have made those cars and creatures, took great steps to modify each and everyone of their creations over a period of time to make them more stylish, better adapted to work, and perform better than before. Why render them as copy-cat cloning machines when they can make plenty of improvements and changes to their styles and boost their appearance with different types of modifications that can make them move and operate more better on the road as well as in the water. You may say that the designers both created and modify (evolve) their work over a period of time. Unfortunately Wieland stupidly doesn't get it. If you want a good example of what creationists like Wieland is teaching you, think cloning machines. If life were just created the way they are and never change over a period of time, everything on earth would be nothing more than just cloning machines that can nothing but produce an exact carbon copy of themselves with no modifications on them whatsoever if the young earth is true and no evolution did occurred.
Xiphactinus
Next pages 18-21 talks about Xiphactinus, a prehistoric fish that lived during the last days of the dinosaur era, between 87-65 million years ago. Note the claim on pages 19 and 20 made by Wieland who claims that it has to be the Flood that quickly and allegedly "buried" the "billions of dead things," including these 2 fishes without giving Xiphactinus a chance to swallow and digest its fishy prey. "Billions of dead things" is simply an ad hoc phrase made up to explain how the fossils are made, but was done out of ignorance of the many problems associated with this annoying, broken record claim. (i.e. global overcrowding if all billions of living things live at the same time, dead things being laid down by circumstances that have nothing to do with the Flood, and the rarity of the fossils.). Not to mention the fact that the creationists' version of the turbidity currents and other forms of the ad hoc "fountains of the deep" would've destroyed all. Even the most delicate of plant and marine life, including the coral reefs, and decimate every piece of land if what creationists say it's true. Instead of moving the continents at a rapid pace, the Flood's turbidity currents would shatter the continents apart without a trace. Never mind the concept of Plate Tectonics that gradually splits the continents apart about one inch per year, even to this day. Wieland cites this fossil, in which scientists have found many other fish specimens showing them similarly having their prey inside its stomach cavity or stuck inside its throat when it died, as evidence of Noah's Flood by claiming that if the fossil is formed gradually over a period of millions of years, the contents inside the fossil would either have been fully digested or rotted away by the time sediment would start covering the bodies and fossilize it.
Problem with is logic is that bone can last a mighty long time before it is covered in sediment and fossilized. The Flood, with meteors, earthquakes, ash falls, and giant size turbidity currents would've battered and tore the bodies apart, bones and all, if what Wieland claims to be the case. But it's not. The real logical explanation behind the famous Xiphactinus fossil with a fish inside is that it died in an attempt to swallow its prey much larger and tougher than itself. Its prey, an ichthyodectid Gillicus arcuatus, put up a big struggle to avoid being eaten so much that it ruptured the innards of Xiphactinus, killing it. Other fish fossils with their prey inside their throat were the result of the fish trying to eat its prey that's much bigger than itself, only to be choke to death by it. And it's not just an incident occurring in ancient times. It also occur in modern times, too. One time, a striped bass found washed up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay with a large gizzard shard stuck in its throat. Its prey was too big to be swallowed whole and the bass wound up being chocked to death because of it.
The "Nebraska Man"
Page 22 is a claim heavily cited in nearly every creationist literature known. It's a claim involving a single tooth once thought to belong to "Nebraska Man" and how it was hailed as the ultimate link between apes and humans (thus, discrediting the Bible in Wieland's blind eyes) until it was found to be nothing more than a tooth of a pig or a peccary, an animal related to the pig. What Wieland leaves out in his claim is what TalkOrigins will tell you right here.
Shonisaurus and the "Buried Birth"
Pages 22-25 features a large potbelly Ichthyosaur named Shonisaurus, the largest Ichthyosaur to have ever swam the Late Triassic waters 210 million years ago. Here on page 24, Wieland mentions another well known fossil of an Ichthyosaur who have died while giving birth to live young and claims slow fossilization could not have form such an amazing fossil, but instead be formed by the rapid burial movements of the Flood (if it doesn't tear up the bodies first). Wieland claims,
"The general public still often associated fossil formation with slow and gradual burial by a gentle rain of sediment (like fine mud and sand particles) over a very long period of time. Obviously, even the most difficult labor would've last thousands of years while mother and baby were being lowly covered!"
Not when she and her baby's dead, Wieland! Apparently, Wieland made the whole thing up out of ignorance of how the animal really died without resorting to Noah's Flood to explain it. Paleontologist E.G. Kaufman have studied these Ichthyosaurid fossils found in Germany and what he found clearly debunks Wieland's tripe about rapid burial needed for preservation of fossils. The mother died at childbirth and sank down into the anoxic bottom waters full of hydrogen sulfide into anaerobic sediments.
Look how Wieland is in denial of how the fossils would have been preserved,
"The sediment would have had the right mix of minerals so as to harden very quickly. If not, oxygen, [stagnant] water, bacteria,and burrowing scavengers would have soon inflicted their damage on these animals' bodies."
They have but at a very minute rate. Bacteria, stagnant water, scavengers, and oxygen is what's really found among the Ichthyosaur fossils. Their bodies also clearly show various stages of disarticulation, decay, and scavenging, which is very inconsistent with Wieland's tripe about a rapid Noah's Flood being needed to preserve the fossils. The fossils show plenty of signs of scavenging, decay, and disarticulation (especially when exposed to normal oxygen rates) being done at a very slow pace over many long periods of time. What Wieland is doing here is making them as if they were quickly buried alive a few years ago, never to have such 3 things on them, while ignoring the truth about what really happened to them according to Kaufman.
References:
Ichthyosaur Fossils (Google Groups)
Xiphactinus from Oceans of Kansas site
More Shonisaurus
Next Wieland talks about where Shonisaurus have been found which is The Shoshone Mountains in Nevada and explains in his own way of how a school of 36 Shonisaurus have died. Noticing that the 36 Shonisaurus fossils have been found together side by side at one spot, he speculates falsely that, instead of being beached along the shorelines like whales (According to one theory on how Shonisaurus died), powerful Flood currents must have lined them up as they were washed into place by the Great Flood that preserve them or so he thought. In reality, the currents would have simply scatter them apart and get lost as they are battered to bits by meteor showers and volcanic eruptions that creationists claimed to have prevailed during the alleged Flood.
Note also how Wieland is using Psalms 104:8 out of context to help justify his claim about mountains rising up after the Flood as the waters retreated, while lifting up the fossils to their present locations, over weeks, months, or perhaps a few years, which is their way of explaining why do we find fossils of marine life buried on mountaintops. The claim, however, is not without problems, flaws, and even contradictions to the mountain claim. There were mountains before the Flood despite what creationists claim about no mountains existing before the Flood (Genesis 7:19). When the Flood was ending, the water was going down to reveal the mountaintops still there as they were before the Flood began (Genesis 8:5). And when put into full context, we find that the Psalms 104:8 is a part of a passage that only discussed the Creation of the Earth, not the Flood.
Wieland's falsehood about the fossils clearly ignores the fact that most of the fossils were found incomplete and poorly preserved which leads scientists to debate on how Shonisaurus really died. The first one says that the Shonisaurs all died after they found themselves beached on the shores of a Triassic ocean while chasing prey on the shallow areas of the sea. However, the site was then looked at again years later and it was found that the fossils was found in where it was once a very deep part of the ocean, so now it is thought that the Shonisaurs all died of phytotoxin poisoning and sank down to where they lay to this day.
References:
http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Ichthyosaur.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-58243235.html
The "Kamikaze Ichthyosaur" Claim
Next, pages 26 and 27 discusses the alleged claim about an Ichthyosaur fossil found in Switzerland buried upright at a 90 degree angle and not lying flat like most fossils were. The claim is no different than the claim about a whale fossil that was also found buried upright with its head pointing downwards at a certain angle. In their eyes, this find is another rebuttal to the ad hoc "millions of years" and that it was the 4,500 year old, dirt-filled global Flood that have smothered the Ichthyosaur and buried it in an upright position. But like all creationist claims, this is not without flaws and problems creationists like Wieland does not want you to know about. Instead he wants you to know that it's not about facts that there are tensions made between the "Bible" and most scientists, but the way the fossils are interpreted — interpreted the way creationists wanted it to be while throwing away every detailed part of the fossil that debunks their idiot "presuppositions" of the upright fossil and pose their distortion of it as "facts".
See these sites that Wieland would rather have you ignore.
Answersincreation.org Ichthyosaur rebuttal
http://www.plesiosaur.com/creationism/swissichthyosaur/index.php
http://www.plesiosaur.com/creationism/swissichthyosaur/more.php
Opthalmosaurus
Then, pages 28-29 talks about Opthalmosaurus, an Ichthyosaur that lived 120 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous Period. Grudgingly, despite their constant worn-out claims about evolution being a myth, lie, a falsehood, Natural selection being a fluke, Darwin was wrong, etc, young earth creationists are beginning to accept the fact that life does change through natural selection and that everything evolve and modify over a period of time. Looks like this is what Wieland is speaking about on the 2 pages when he talked about how the first Ichthyosaur developed into a vast variety of ichthyosaur species over a period of time — indeed a direct contradiction to what Wieland has claimed on pages 14-17 about life never evolving from some ancestor. Also, what Wieland made up about life changing fast over a short period of time (Poke'mon and Punctuated Equilibrium style), all animal species developing from one animal, and no new life or species has ever appeared, are all shown in the links below to be nothing but blatant lies.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901_2.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB904.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html
http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/No_New_Species_Have_Been_Observed
http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Punctuated_Equilibrium
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB610.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901_1.html
Rapid Post Flood Speciation article from Reasons.org
Continued Next Post…
