On January 21, 2005, Creationist, Ryan McClay wrote and published an article entitled Dino Dinner Hard to Swallow in response to an article written by Anne Weil, Paleontologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina for Nature (PDF version here.).
In it, he addresses the discovery of a large dog size mammal known as Repenomamus, a largest Cretaceous mammal discovered with remains of a young baby Psittacosaurus found inside its belly that lived around 120 million years ago in what is now China. According to McClay's article, it seems that McClay is wrongfully identifying this dog-size mammal as a large mammal that's supposed to be found in Cenozoic rock layers way above the Mesozoic layers the dinosaur fossils are found in.
"This is a real surprise for evolutionists because evolutionary assumptions say that mammals living during the so-called 'age of the dinosaurs' couldn’t possibly have been that big; rather, they had to be small to better avoid the huge reptiles. It has some evolutionary scientists quite concerned, for it challenges what they have believed for years."
Repenomamus is in fact a triconodont, a member of a group of early mammals with no modern descendants that lived during the time of the dinosaurs and are closely related to the ancestors that gave rise to modern mammals. They are distinguish by 3 cusped teeth found inside their jaws (hence their name meaning "three conical teeth"), a reptilian posture, hairy bodies, and a long tail. They're meat-eaters that ate small animals, insects, and in one case, baby dinosaurs, which Repenomamus is known to do thanks to the stomach remains of one eaten baby dinosaur found inside the fossil.
Here McClay pretends that evolutionists are so shocked at the discovery that they have to do some drastic changes to their model while the Creationists are not surprised one bit by this discovery because they embrace the idiotic dogmatic belief that man, mammals, and dinosaurs originally lived at the same time despite factual evidence against it. Everyone did in fact thought that all mammals were small during the Age of Dinosaurs but the discovery of this triconodont changed everything. But that doesn't mean they have to make "drastic changes" to their scenario to fit in with their "beliefs" like creationists do. What the discovery will do is only add more to their knowledge of finding out what the world of the dinosaurs was probably like based on valid evidence creationists like McClay would rather ignore. Besides, no scientist ever made such assumptions as "…mammals living during the so-called 'age of the dinosaurs' couldn’t possibly have been that big; rather, they had to be small to better avoid the huge reptiles" anyway.
He then says,
"The fossils of these mammals found in 'Lower Cretaceous' rock helps confirm the creationist assertion that even some mammals were buried quickly in lower depths of the fossil record; mammals are usually found higher in the fossil record (i.e. many mammals and humans would have retreated to higher ground during the beginning of the global catastrophe of Noah’s Flood…)."
Even to this day, creationists like McClay still embrace the old worn-out falsehood that says plants, animals, and people were being sorted as they were retreating to higher ground to escape the flood only to be rapidly buried in one spot by the flood through the process of hydrodynamic sorting, despite the fact that the hydrodynamic sorting claim has been completely debunked one too many times.
Next, McClay takes advantage of the fact that studies show that the fossil was found in volcanic rock, indicating that the creature must have died in a volcanic eruption and claims that this finding excites the creationists, (if they ever get excited at all while they distort new discoveries like this and fit them into their young earth dogma.) because this, to them, is what they expect to find that will help them confirm the concept of an overly-violent, overly-dramatic Great Noah's Flood to be true…or so they assumed. Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about volcanic eruptions occurring during the Flood, let alone earthquakes and meteor showers. The Flood was only a just massive rain storm that drown everyone save all those inside the ark. Nothing else.
Then McClay says,
"While it is encouraging to hear evolutionists admit discoveries like this which challenge their way of thinking, the photos of the fossils and the description given in articles raise a caution flag. The dinosaur bones may only appear to be in the stomach of the dog-like creature when they really may just illustrate how the Flood waters would have buried one on top of the other."
What caution flag? Here McClay insists that the fossil must be interpreted his way in order to fit in with his beliefs in a young earth and global flood and be in denial of the truth regardless of the factual evidence pointing to the opposite of what McClay believes.
In other words, this all translates to,
"Let's just say that the 2 animals were buried on top of each other during the Flood so that we won't have to read between the lines and be convinced that this mammal did in fact ate the baby dinosaur for food just before he was tragically killed in the volcanic eruption that choked out life around the volcano 121 million years ago because the article and the image greatly contradicts our beliefs in a young earth and a world wide flood."
And finally, McClain quote mines Anne Weil's article and says,
"Already, speculation is rampant that this find supports the dino-to-bird stories of animal evolution. The statement by Duke University paleontologist Anne Weil that 'Maybe small dinosaurs got larger, or got off the ground, to avoid rapacious mammals' shows how the evolutionary bias drives their interpretation of the evidence. So, expect a rash of articles both popular and scientific which hail this discovery as evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds because of hunting pressures from mammals."
Thus far, no so-called "rash of articles" which hail this discovery as evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds because of hunting pressures from mammals has ever been published and it's unlikely there ever will be.
Apparently, this is another one of those articles creationists made up from their heads to tell themselves and his followers to make up lies about evolutionists' reaction to new fossil discoveries, live in denial, and always interpret them as victims of the alleged worldwide flood regardless of the valid evidence against it.
