From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Dinosaurs and man co-existed at one time?
Date: 14 Oct 92 01:57:00 GMT
Distribution: usa,local
Organization: University of Arizona
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Oct13.212404.29017@cbnewsm.cb.att.com>, jeffj@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (jeffrey.n.jones) writes...
>A friend of mine and his wife came over to dinner the other night. We got
>into a intense discussion on politics and I said to her, that's like saying
>that the world was created in 7 days. To which she responded with dead 
>serious "Oh but it was!". I said how do you explain dinosaurs. She said 
>that there were numerous cases of where dinosaurs co-existed with man and 
>mentioned the famous footprint with dinosaur tracks. I told her that has since
>been disproven which she shrugged off. Now the obvious question, has there
>been any new evidence that could possibly show that we had dinosaurs as
>roommates at one time? Always been totally mystified by the creationalists.

The most famous such footprints are the ones at the Paluxy River in Glen
Rose, Texas (which skeptics attending the CSICOP conference this weekend
will have the option of visiting on Sunday).  There are no human footprints
at this site, though there are dinosaur tracks and erosional features which
have been mistaken for human footprints.  These are almost certainly the
ones your friend's wife was referring to.
   There are some other "contemporary human and dinosaur footprint" claims
that have been made, most recently regarding tracks near Tuba City, Arizona.
These have been examined and found to be more of the same--no human footprints.
Claims have also been made about tracks in Russia.  Creationists cite an
article in a Moscow newspaper as their only evidence.  I'm not sure that
an actual site has even been identified by creationists for this claim.
   Rev. Carl Baugh, one of the biggest promoters of the Paluxy tracks, has
also claimed to have found a human tooth in Glen Rose.  This proved to be
a fossil fish tooth.

   Some creationists have claimed that radiocarbon dating has shown that
dinosaurs lived only thousands, not millions of years ago.  They obtained
dinosaur fossil fragments from various sources by various means (some by
misrepresentation), then sent them to various radiocarbon labs, including
the University of Arizona in one case.  In the UofA case, the lab reported
that collagen tests seemed to show no organic material, and that any date
given would be highly suspect.  The creationists (who did not identify
themselves as such, nor indicate what the substance was that was being
dated) asked for a date anyway.  The result appears to be due to various
contaminants on the fossil--the UofA fragments were shavings from dinosaur
bones at a museum, which had been coated with shellac.  The "date" returned
by their tests is essentially meaningless.  (This is all covered in a couple
of articles in the most recent issue of _Creation/Evolution_, and has been
discussed in the recent past on talk.origins.  The Paluxy river footprints
have also been covered in great detail by C/E.)

That's pretty much all the alleged evidence of dinosaurs and humans as
contemporaries that I'm aware of that's been reported recently.  (There's
also the creationist claim that "behemoth" of the Book of Job is a
dinosaur, but that's not recent evidence.)

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721