Dating methods get the third degree

 Fossil Friday: Alleged Precambrian Fossil Unmasked as Rotten Beehive

Gunter Bechly

When the Covid pandemic struck in 2020 a scientific conference in India was cancelled, and some stranded scientists used their unexpected free time as an opportunity for a field trip to the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters in central India, a famous UNESCO World Heritage site of ancient rock art. One of these scientists was paleontologist Gregory Retallack, a retired professor from the University of Oregon and expert on Ediacaran fossils. The Maihar Sandstone rocks of the cave have been attributed to the Upper Vindhyan strata, which are of contentious Precambrian age between 1,600 to 541 million years old (Nature 2021, Kwafo et al. 2023). Retallack noticed strange impressions high up on the walls of the cave, which he identified as three specimens of the fossil Ediacaran organism Dickinsonia. Retallack found that “the fossils are identical with Dickinsonia tenuis from the Ediacara Member of the Rawnsley Quartzite in South Australia.”

This would have represented not just the first record of Dickinsonia in India, but would have also confirmed the younger Ediacaran age of the Bhimbetka rocks and rewritten our understanding of the plate tectonic history of the Indian subcontinent. Retallack published his remarkble discovery with a team of five co-authors in the high-impact journal Gondwana Research (Retallack et al. 2021). The prestigious

       journal Nature commented that the “fossil from dawn of animal life found in India’s famous caves … offers insights into the range of emerging complex life” (Nature 2021). Of course, the sensational discovery attracted worldwide media coverage from the New York Times to the Weather Channel.

                 

Isn’t Science Cool?!

Well, earlier this year a new study by a team of scientists from the University of Florida and from India turned the cool science into a real bummer. The scientists revisited the site and discovered that the assumed Ediacaran fossils are neither of Ediacaran age nor represent fossils at all, but are just the recent remains of decayed and fallen beehives. The patterns of remaining wax, where the beehives were attached to the cave wall and fell off, just accidently happened to resemble the shape of Dickinsonia fossils at first glance. That’s a big oopsie. The debunking evidence was so overwhelming (Meert et al. 2023, also see Kwafo et al. 2023 and Pandey et al. 2023) that even the original authors publicly admitted their mistaken identification (Retallack et al. 2023), for which they have even been praised as a kind of heroes of science (University of Florida 2023). Of course, this retraction renders all the grandiose conclusions about the age of the rocks and the paleogeography of India moot as well (University of Florida 2023, Kwafo et al. 2023).

There is another point I would like to mention: It is a common creationist meme often repeated on social media that paleontologists engage in circular reasoning because they date the rocks with fossils and the fossils with the rocks they are found in. This is simply not true in many cases, where different dating techniques like radiometric datings and paleomagnetography supplement biostratigraphic evidence. But the present case also illustrates that the trope is not totally off. Here is what the scientists commented (University of Florida 2023): “Correcting the fossil record puts the age of the rocks back into contention. Because the rock formation doesn’t have any fossils from a known time period, dating it can be difficult.” Read the last sentence again and let it sink in.

Hard Rocks, Soft Science

It is also interesting to note that an old dating of 900 million years and a younger dating of 550 million years are both supported by the same radiometric U-Pb dating technique of Upper Vindhyan zircon crystals (Lan et al. 2020, Nature 2021). So, radiometric methods clearly are not as reliable and precise as many scientists love to think. This does not mean that the consensus geological timeline is totally wrong, but it at least shows that questioning such datings is not irrational either. That renowned scientists can engage in Rorschach play with accidental patterns on rock walls and produce peer-reviewed scientific papers with far-reaching evolutionary conclusions from such pseudoscientific endeavours will likely raise further justified doubts in paleontological evidence for evolution in general. Even though the fossil rocks are hard, the interpreting science often seems to be very soft!

References

Kwafo S, Singha A, Pandit M & Meert J 2023. Reply to the comment by Retallack et al. (2023) on “Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz”. Gondwana Research 118, 160–162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.02.016

Lan Z, Zhang S, Li X-H, Pandey SK, Sharma M, Shukla Y, Ahmad S, Sarkar S & Zhai M 2020. Towards resolving the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ and age-fossil inconsistency within East Gondwana. Precambrian Research 345:105775. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precamres.2020.105775

Meert JG, Pandit MK, Kwafo S & Singha A 2023. Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz. Gondwana Research 117, 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.01.003

Nature 2021. Fossil from dawn of animal life found in India’s famous cave. Nature India February 17, 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/nindia.2021.30

Pandey SK, Ahmad S & Sharma M 2023. Dickinsonia tenuis reported by Retallack et al. 2021 is not a fossil, instead an impression of an extant ‘fallen beehive’. Journal of the Geological Society of India 99, 311–316. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12594-023-2312-2

Retallack GJ, Matthews NA, Master S, Khangar RG & Khan M 2021. Dickinsonia discovered in India and late Ediacaran biogeography. Gondwana Research 90, 165–170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2

Retallack GJ, Master S, Khangar RG & Khan M 2023. Discussion on “Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz” by Meert, et al. (2023). Gondwana Research 118, 163–164. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.02.006

University of Florida 2023. Mistaken fossil rewrites history of Indian subcontinent for second time. ScienceDaily February 1, 2023. https://www.sciencedaily.co

Michael Denton on why there must first be light.

 Denton Explains How Light Sustains Human Life

Michael Denton

On a classic episode of ID the Future, biochemist and medical doctor Michael Denton explores a “miraculous convergence of properties” for life. The topic is Denton’s book Children of Light: The Astonishing Properties of Sunlight That Make Us Possible, part of his Privileged Species book series that also includes The Miracle of Man, The Miracle of the Cell, The Wonder of Water, and Fire-Maker. Here, Denton lets his astonishment flow freely in an interview with host Sarah Chaffee, with topics ranging from the light of the sun to key chemicals here on Earth. “The atmosphere lets through just the light we need,” says Denton, “and the sun puts out just the light we need. It’s a remarkable coincidence…The atmosphere does just what is needed for life on Earth.” Taken together, it’s an astonishing array of evidence showing how finely tuned Earth is for human life. And the common-sense conclusion, Denton says, is that a designing intelligence is the most adequate explanation for the properties on our planet that make life like us possible. This is Part 1 of a two-part discussion. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

A big little house?

 

David Berlinski deconstructs scientism

 Ovid in His Exile

David Berlinski

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Science After Babel, the latest book from mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. This article is adapted from Chapter 14.

Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia University was the scene of many strange experiments. One day, a very young chimpanzee escaped from the building and, flushed with its freedom, began to gambol and frolic on the pathetic square of shabby and well-worn grass that served as a lawn in front of the building. A crowd quickly collected. The mathematician Lipman Bers joined me. A scruffy puppy noticed the commotion and scooted into the square where the chimpanzee was playing. The two animals promptly became friends, but the puppy, it soon became apparent, was less intelligent than the chimpanzee. Again and again he would find himself maneuvered into absurd and humiliating positions. “So stupid,” snorted Bers, referring to the dog. Pleased and flattered by the attention, the chimpanzee began to refine his act and play to the crowd, using gestures, and even facial expressions — the universal rictus of triumph, for example — that everyone recognized. After a while, the chimpanzee’s frantic owner, a rather dishy young woman, I recall, collared him in the courtyard and the game was over. As the chimpanzee was led away, he waved to the crowd, a true sportsman. The puppy sat on its haunches and panted assiduously.

The Incompetent and the Indifferent

I learned later from Bers that research biologists were trying to teach the chimpanzee American Sign Language. They had been working with an older animal, but evidently the beast, while learning some signs, grew unsurprisingly to detest his owners, who finally shipped him to a zoo in San Diego. There he occupied himself unprofitably in attempting to teach the other animals to sign, a splendid case of the incompetent endeavoring to instruct the indifferent.

“A vast tragedy,” Bers remarked sentimentally, “like Ovid in his exile.”

I mention this sad little story only to remark on its ironic conclusion. For a time during the 1970s, a number of biologists were actually convinced that they had taught chimpanzees and great apes to talk; many of them reported long conversations, chiefly about bananas (Me: More!), that they held with their charges. Their research was no sooner published than it was accepted and believed, largely, I think, because a crude Darwinian theory — there is no other — made it difficult to imagine that profound and ineradicable differences exist between human beings and the rest of the animal world. Penny Peterson at Stanford, Herbert Terrace at MIT, and David Premack at the University of Pennsylvania all convinced themselves that somehow the great apes had sat in stony silence throughout the vast reaches of biological time only because they lacked human conversational companionship.

Nothing to Say

The inevitable, skeptical reaction soon set in. Videotapes taken of chimpanzees revealed, when carefully analyzed, that what had passed for chimpanzee conversation was nothing more than prompted signings in the best of cases — a record of the beast’s pathetic endeavor to say whatever it was that his trainer wished him to say; in the worst of cases, the beast simply babbled (More Me More More!), his signs utterly devoid of meaning. Herbert Terrace, who had wasted years in browbeating the poor creatures, examined videotapes of his own encounters with his animals and came away shaken. Some work, of course, continues, but to little effect. Ever credulous, scientists now report that they have engaged the dolphin in stimulating conversation. Next year, no doubt, it will be the turkey.

Seventeenth-century Jesuits wondered why dogs do not talk. Their conclusion bears repeating. They have nothing to say.

Yet another clash of titans