Desert whales testify to global flood
The desert whales of Chile’s Atacama Desert pose an embarrassing riddle for paleontologists: they testify directly to a global flood.
The Atacama Desert
These desert whales turned up in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. It is a narrow strip of land, about 600-700 miles long. It lies between 16 and 24 degrees south latitude. The Atacama is the driest place in the world, by all accounts. It also contains the highest desert region in the world. The Atacama Plateau, its highest elevation, near Bolivia, rises 13,000 feet above sea level. (If you were in an airliner open to the air at that altitude, the captain would drop the oxygen masks.)
The Desert Whales
Generalized, modern vegetation zones in the region of Quebrada del Chaco. Source: United States Geological Survey
The Associated Press released this report on the desert whales of Atacama this morning at 12:08 a.m. EST. (See also this blog entry from Nature.com, and other articles here and here.) Paleontologists have found at least 80 whale skeletons, which the sedimentary rock and desert sands have preserved almost perfectly. The find is at least half a mile inland.
Tellingly, the AP article does not mention the elevation of the site. It does, however, name the nearest town. This is Copiapó, Chile. (Last year, 33 miners waited for 69 straight days, trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft near that town until rescuers could drill down to them and lift them out.) Elevation: 391 meters, or 1,283 feet. Not as high as the Atacama Plateau, but definitely not at sea level, either.
The favorite theories about how the desert whales came to rest in this spot are:
- They beached themselves over a period of thousands of years, 7 million years ago.
- They swam into a lagoon, and later an earthquake or storm cut the lagoon off from the ocean.
Ironically, a road-building crew, building the Pan-American Highway, found the first signs of the desert whales. The Chilean government plans to build a museum to house the remains where they lie. It would be an extension of the Paleontological Museum in Caldera.
Problems with conventional theories
The obvious problem is: How did eighty whales wash ashore, half a mile inland, and at an elevation greater even than the height of the Empire State Building? The project scientists talk hopefully of scour marks or deposits of gypsum or crystallized salt. But they cannot explain finding so many whales, all in one spot, more than 100 building stories above the beach. That could be why the Associated Press neglected to report an elementary fact like the elevation of the site of the desert whales. (They named the town, but tried to imply that the site is much lower than the town actually is.)
The real answer
The most likely solution is the obvious one: the Atacama Desert region, including Copiapó, was once underwater.The Atacama Plateau rose up when the Andes Mountains formed and then sank into the earth’s crust. (Every mountain chain has a plateau next to it, on either side. The Andes are no exception.) The future site of Copiapó rose also, though not as high as the plateau.
And when was the Atacama Desert underwater? During the Global Flood, of course. The Andes are in fact part of a much longer chain of mountains that stretches from the Yukon Territory to the tip of South America. Those mountains formed when the continental plate holding the Americas crashed and buckled. (That in turn happened after the event that formed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge shoved the Americas westward—hard.) When such high mountains form, they sink. As they sink, the land around them rises. The rise of the Colorado Plateau trapped two great lakes, which later spilled their contents and carved the Grand Canyon. The rise of the Atacama Plateau and other lands downslope and to the west, we now know, trapped the desert whales. Large amounts of sediment buried them, and the dry winds preserved their remains for thousands of years after that. (For details, see this excellent description of the Hydroplate Theory of the Global Flood.)
This is some of the most striking evidence yet for a global flood. How paleontologists will avoid that explanation should interest any student of logic.
Featured image: Digital Elevation Model of the Atacama Desert and Pacific slope of the central Andes, showing boundary (also referred to as Arid Diagonal) between tropical easterlies/summer precipitation that originates in the lowlands of the Amazon Basin and Gran Chaco. Since 1997, Desert Laboratory scientists have been collaborating with Chilean scientists to reconstruct the climatic, hydrological, and ecological history of this fascinating area, using plant assemblages from fossil rodent middens and the stratigraphy of wetlands. Our initial studies concentrated on the area around Salar de Atacama, but we continue to fill in with new sites along a 1200-km latitudinal transect, including Quebrada del Chaco. Source: United States Geological Survey.
87 Responses to Desert whales testify to global flood
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
First of all, the Atacama is not 13000 feet high. Maybe the highest point is, but the desert itself touches the sea. That’s just elementary geography. Second, the whale fossils are not at 1390 feet. That city name was used for reference. It’d be as if something happened in central California and the media described it as near San Francisco. If you were a real journalist you’d have taken the five minutes to look at the actual paper, which gives the precise location. Just admit you made a mistake.
Now you’re asking for a miracle.
[...] Desert whales clarified November 23, 2011 Terry A. Hurlbut No comments The pod of 80 ancient baleen whales in the Atacama Desert has excited paleontologists everywhere — and caused much controversy here. Herewith a clarification of the desert whales story. [...]
Austin’s “experiment” was laughable. He submitted a sample which was less than 10 years old to be tested by a method which isn’t accurate on samples less than 2 MILLION years old. The lab also reported that the sample was heavily contaminated with glass and xenoliths.
The lab reported no such thing, and you know it. That lie has circulated long enough. I read the original paper. If you really think that Austin has committed that kind of fraud, then swear out a warrant for his arrest.
The lab did not say, until after Austin published his findings, that they had the slightest difficulty dating the samples. They reported five dates, varying from half a million to two point eight million years. Then he revealed that the specimens were ten years old. Of course he meant to show those guys up for the frauds that they are: that they can’t tell the difference between old rock and young. Why, they couldn’t even date the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, did they not have Pliny the Younger’s account of the destruction of Pompeii to work with.
And so after he caught them out, they did what came naturally. They cried, “FOUL!” Look here: the only thing the least bit ungentlemanly that Steven Austin did was to break the gentleman’s agreement against actually asking a laboratory to test a known young sample and see what would happen. But he never signed any such agreement, so it was never binding on him.
The fact that Austin submitted the samples for an inappropriate dating method is undeniable; K-Ar dating isn’t accurate below 2myo. As for the contamination of the samples, Austin repeatedly admitted it himself; “‘Although NOT a complete separation of non-mafic minerals, this concentrate included plagioclase phenocrysts (andesine composition with a density of about 2.7 g/cc) and the major quantity of glass (density assumed to be about 2.4 g/cc). NO ATTEMPT WAS MADE TO SEPARATE PLAGIOCLASE FROM GLASS”
or
‘ALTHOUGH THE MINERAL CONCENTRATES ARE NOT PURE, and all contain some glass, an argument can be made that both mafic and non-mafic minerals of the dacite contain significant 40Ar.’
or
“The microscopic examination of the ‘heavy-magnetic concentrate’ also revealed a trace quantity of iron fragments, obviously the magnetic contaminant unavoidably introduced from the milling of the dacite in the iron mortar. No attempt was made to separate the hornblende from the Fe-Ti oxides, but further finer milling and use of heavy liquids should be considered.”
Austin’s experiment was worthless.
So why didn’t Geochron Labs say at once that the age of the rocks was indeterminable and less than the range of the method? Why did they give those preposterous ages, and never once even hint that anything was untoward?
It won’t wash. Geochron didn’t cry “FOUL” until after the publication. If that method were even half as reliable as you say it was, they would have known immediately that something was up, and said so.
Geochron tested the samples in good faith; they didn’t know that they were outside the parameters. If AUSTIN was acting in good faith, why did he choose an inappropriate dating method?
To see how they would react. To see whether they would detect it. To see whether they could tell the difference between an old rock and a young rock. Had they been able to, they would have reported “Rock undatable; low or no argon present.” Or “Rock undatable: contaminated.” They did neither.
I’m going to ask a very obvious question here – how does one make 10-year-old rocks?
These rocks were part of the lava dome that formed when Mount Saint Helens erupted, ten years before Austin took his samples.
“To see whether they could tell the difference between an old rock and a young rock.”
But that’s exactly why he was acting in bad faith: K-AR dating CAN’T tell the difference between 2myo rock and 10 year old rock. Austin pulled a cheap publicity stunt, the scientific equivalent of saying that my citrus juicer doesn’t work because you can’t boil eggs in it.
As for contamination, that’s the responsibility of the person who submits the sample; the lab just test what they’re given. Austin failed to purify his samples and has admitted that failure repeatedly.
I come back to the same thing: Geochron could have reported, “Rock not datable: too young.” Instead they reported that some of those rocks were as much as 2.8 million years old.
As to what you say he admitted: I think you’re lying to me.
You think their equipment ever comes back and says “rock not dateable”? Nope; it gives a result based on what’s in the chamber, and that was a contaminated sample.
And yes, Austin admitted the contamination. You said you’ve read his paper? Well, the quotes I provided of him admitting the contamination are IN THAT PAPER.
The equipment would have said “Argon: zero.” Which really means undetectable. That’s what I would report, if were running a laboratory of that kind.
For your information, I’ve been a clinical laboratory administrator. And an inspector. I’ve taken custody of proficiency samples. I know that the College of American Pathologists uses every means, fair and unfair, to trip labs up, and expose their weaknesses. And if any, repeat any, hospital laboratory had ever made a mistake of the kind that Geochron made, it would be shut down for its pains.
You have neglected to tell the other people following this thread that Geochron abandoned the K-Ar method after this fiasco occurred. Ask yourself why.
Oh, I know why Geochron stopped doing K-Ar testing; their equipment was old, not as accurate as new systems and contaminated with Ar-40 from long use.
‘The equipment would have said “Argon: zero.”’
Uh, not if the sample was contaminated with xenoliths and volcanic glass. Which, as Austin admitted, it was.
Then why didn’t they protest the contamination in the first place, if it were as bad as that? And while the contamination (if everything is as you say, which I don’t for a moment concede) might explain the disparate ages, it could never explain dating something at 2.8 million years when it was only ten years old.
Here’s a little though experiment. Say a medical laboratory was given a sample to examine for DNA in a criminal trial, would they be expected to know if the police had given them a contaminated sample? All they could do would be provide results for the sample as given. Claiming that they should somehow know that the sample was contaminated is ludicrous. I see no difference with a dating laboratory.
Your analogy isn’t even close. Radiometric dating is not supposed to look for a matching pattern. It looks for a proportion of parent to daughter nuclide. And what do you now? They found argon way in excess of anything that their theories told them to expect.
If Geochron had been the least bit honest, they’d have asked Dr. Austin to send back some more samples. Their attitude would have been, “He might be on to the greatest thing since Marie Curie discovered radium.”
Instead, they cried, “FOUL!” And I repeat: the only “FOUL” was to test that which the gentleman’s agreement said that they must not test.
[...] 06, 2011 Terry A. Hurlbut No comments Regular readers of this site know that a recent article on the 80 whale fossils of the Atacama Desert set off a firestorm of controversy. The prime mover [...]