A VISIT TO DINOSAUR VALLEY STATE PARK (by Richard A. Crowe, UH Hilo)
On Sunday, October 18, participants at the 1992 CSICOP conference had an opportunity to visit Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen Rose, Texas, eighty miles southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth. The two buses chartered for the trip left the Harvey Hotel at 8 a.m. and arrived at the park about 9:45 a.m. After about a l-hour stopover, the buses departed, returning to the hotel shortly before 1 p.m. Glen Rose is the site of many dinosaur tracks preserved in the limestone bed of the Paluxy River; they were first given scientific notoriety in the 1930s by Roland Bird. During the 1970s and 1980s, renewed interest in these tracks developed when creationists claimed that some of them were "man-tracks", apparently constituting "hard evidence" that humans lived contemporaneously with dinosaurs.
Our trip to Dinosaur Valley Park was guided by physicist Ron Hastings, who teaches physics and advanced math at Waxahachie High School and who is one of the co-founders of the North Texas Skeptics. Dr. Hastings has been the leading "local" critical investigator of creationist claims concerning the Paluxy River tracks since about 1982. Hastings became involved in creationist claims through their misuse of physics concepts and through the urgings of creationist friends (who he characterized as young-Earth, flood-geology, Biblical literalists). One of these friends showed him a film called FOOTPRINTS IN STONE that documented the discovery of the alleged "man-tracks" by Reverend Stanley Taylor in the early 1970s. As the buses headed toward Glen Rose, Hastings briefed CSICOP participants on the history surrounding the tracks and gave us some insights into what we would see at the site. The Paluxy River is one of the few places in the world where both three-toed theropod prints made by bipedal dinosaurs and round elephantine sauropod prints made by four-legged dinosaurs are evident in abundance. The prints were preserved in the river bed by means of a three-step process. First, the animal walked across soft, moist cohesive sediment. Second, the imprint filled with sediment of contrasting texture that did not distort the original print; both layers then hardened. Finally, differential erosion removed the softer rock type on top, leaving the imprint exposed. When we arrived at Dinosaur Valley State Park, we stopped to look at casts made from prints which had long since been extricated and taken to New York City for display. Typically such prints are spaced by 1.5 meters along a trail. Foreprints often appear to be distorted due to overlap by the rear feet. Claw extensions are usually always visible, and the direction of the middle claw is used to determine which foot made the imprint (left curves left, right curves right).
At the river bed itself, Hastings pointed out a number of theropod and sauropod prints clearly seen under six inches of water. We then crossed the river on a rock bridge and were shown a trail of sauropod prints; one of these was associated with a groove that Hastings stated could have been due to a "tail-drag". After an inspection of more theropod prints, we reached a ledge where Hastings showed us depressions that were alleged by Reverend Carl Baugh during the early 1980s to be a trail of "man-tracks". Hastings demonstrated how these depressions were filled in with a water-oil mixture by some creationist investigators so to as to resemble human prints. In fact, the tracks are spaced by 2 meters, and would have been Olympic leaps for "humans"! Hastings reminded us that creationists use the Biblical passage in Genesis 6:4, which says "There were giants in the earth in those days...", to explain away this spacing problem for the man-track hypothesis. Baugh and other creationists effectively used the fallacious argument "if it looks like a man-track, it must be a man-track" to justify their claims. There are in fact many other depressions along this ledge, described by Hastings as a "track-maker's Rorschach [ink-blot] test". Basically, one can find any kind of track one wants to find (like seeing faces in clouds). Richard Dawkins, who joined the tour, then reiterated that point standing beside the alleged "man-track" and quoting from Hamlet (as he did in the BBC production of his book THE BLIND WATCHMAKER).
During the 1980s, Hastings was a key member of an investigative team that examined on-site the claims of Carl Baugh and other creationists. This team dubbed themselves the "Raiders of the Lost Tracks". Together, the "Raiders" found that all of Baugh's "man-tracks" were either erosional features, trace fossil patterns conveniently interpreted, or genuine depressions associated with exposed dinosaur trails (ref. 13). The most controversial prints were found at the so-called Taylor site, now on private property. Hastings explained to the CSICOP group that due to lack of time (and lack of permission), we would not have the opportunity to see these prints first-hand. Along four of the dozen or so trails at this site are tracks which were claimed to be human by creationists. Some of these trails contain elongated prints which were not at first clearly recognizable as dinosaurian. It was only after investigation by Hastings and Glen Kuban, spurred by creationist "man-track" claims, that the nature of these tracks was revealed. When the elongated (but shallow) depressions were exposed to air, the tridactyl outline of the print was revealed by a strange discoloration; apparently, the outside anterior end of the depression "oxidized" due to the presence of some iron-rich compound and turned reddish-brown (ref. 14). Evidently, these tracks were made when the dinosaur's "heels" touched the mud (plantigrade) whereas most of the tridactyl prints were made by dinosaurs walking or running on their toes (digitigrade). Although there are plantigrade dinosaur tracks in other parts of the world, Hastings and Kuban had not initially realized this fact. As a result of the discovery, a delegation of creationists from the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) in San Diego was invited to visit Glen Rose and inspect the tracks. By 1986, the official position of the ICR was that it is "improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution". The ICR has now screened off the Paluxy "man-track" section of its San Diego museum from the public, and has dissociated itself from any "man-track" claims. Furthermore, the film FOOTPRINTS IN STONE has been removed from circulation. Hastings reiterated that "no self-respecting creationist now asserts that any Paluxy dinosaur prints are of human origin, although the "man-track" claims are apparently still being taught to local school-children. Moreover, Baugh's "Creation Evidences Museum", established in 1983, is still in operation near the entrance to Dinosaur Valley State Park. Here, Baugh has on display "man-track evidence" (imitative carvings), as well as "out-of-order" fossils such as a "hammer in Ordovician stone" (a l9th-century miner's mallet), human bones in "Cretaceous rock" (apparently due to a Utah "cave-in" 250 years ago), a "fossilized Cretaceous human tooth" (a fish incisor), and a "fossilized female finger" (an iron oxide nodule) (ref. 15). Unfortunately, the CSICOP group did not have the opportunity to visit this "museum" (imagine a group of skeptics showing up there unannounced!); the reason was somehow appropriate: it is closed on Sunday morning.
(13) See "The Rise and Fall of the Paluxy Mantracks", by Ron Hastings, in PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENCE and CHRISTIAN FAITH, Vol. 40, No. 3, 1988, pp. 144-155.
(14) See "New Observations on Paluxy Tracks Confirm their Dinosaurian Origin", by Ron Hastings, in JOURNAL of GEOLOGICAL EDUCATION, Vol. 35, 1987, pp. 4-15.
(15) See "For Your Information: A Creationist Blunder Table", by Ron Hastings, in the BULLETIN of the HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, June 1992, pp. 39-41.
CSICOP LUNCHEON
Sergei Kapitza recounted his visit to a museum in a church at the foot of the alleged Mount Ararat (Agri Dagi near the border of Turkey and Armenia). One of their most prized possessions was a piece of mast wood claimed to be from Noah's Ark. Kapitza remarked to the bishop giving him a museum tour that he would like to have a piece of the wood so that it could be tested with the carbon-14 method of radioactive dating. The bishop then replied "Certainly! It would be a great way of testing your method!"
CSICOP BANQUET
Three skeptics were honored by CSICOP on October 17 at the 1992 Awards Banquet. The IN PRAISE OF REASON Award went to Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, "in recognition of his distinguished contribution to the use of critical inquiry, scientific evidence and reason, in evaluating claims in knowledge". During his acceptance speech, Dawkins urged scientists to exploit the awe factor as a means of stimulating interest in science over religion. He mentioned how appalled he was to learn that 54% of U.S. charitable contributions go to religious institutions. The DISTINGUISHED SKEPTIC Award went to Toronto magician and columnist Henry Gordon, who shared with the audience his numerous frustrations and successes in establishing a regular skeptics column for the Toronto newspapers. According to Gordon, success or failure in this venture depends very much on whether the editor is a critical thinker or is sympathetic to the paranormal. Finally, the RESPONSIBILITY IN JOURNALISM Award went to Andrew Skolnick, associate editor for the Medical News and Perspectives Department of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Skolnick was the journalist who discovered that the authors of an article about Ayurveda (the traditional healing system of India), published in the May 22, 1991 issue of JAMA, had willfully deceived the journal's editors into believing that none of the article's authors were affiliated with any organization that could profit from its publication. In fact, this was not the case: Ayur-Veda is a trademark line of "alternative-health" products marketed by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, leader of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement well-known for its levitation claims. Skolnick wrote a six-page expose of this deception in the October 2, 1991 issue of JAMA. At the Awards Banquet, Skolnick announced that the TM movement, thanks to its "deep financial pockets", had filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit ("SLAPP") against himself and JAMA for damage to TM's reputation. Skolnick urged skeptics to band together and work towards establishing legal restrictions on "slapsuits"; otherwise such lawsuits will discourage open skeptical discussion and criticism. For this and the award, Skolnick received a standing ovation. The evening was capped with a convincing demonstration of spoon-bending and mentalist magic by Project Alpha alumnus Steve Shaw. Shaw was one of two teenage conjurors working for James Randi that were hired by investigators at the McDonnell Lab for Psychical Research (St. Louis) in 1979. Subsequently, the young conjurors, acting as research subjects, fooled McDonnell scientists into believing that they had genuine psychokinetic powers. The resulting expose by Randi (who dubbed his experiment with the McDonnell scientists Project Alpha) convinced parapsychologists that a conjuror should be present at all future tests of psychic abilities. Randi himself received an ovation at the CSICOP luncheon for his courageous legal battles with alleged psychic Uri Geller, who has filed a plethora of lawsuits against Randi and CSICOP for "malicious slander (meaning open skepticism). To date, Geller has not been successful, but like the TM movement, he draws from "deep pockets".