“ANCIENT” FOOTPRINTS PROVOKE DEBATE

Alvis Delk’sfootprint fossil

Humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time. Their existence, in fact, was separated by millions of years. Such is the conventional theory offered in standard texts on evolution and is not questioned by the scientific community, For fundamentalist Christians, however, the issue is far from settled. Believing, as they do, that the earth is just a few thousand years old, they’re convinced that man and dinosaurs must have roamed the earth at the same time, and some of them think they have the evidence to prove it.

In Stephenville, Texas, Alvis Delk, a 72-year-old pentecostal preacher, and his ex-con friend James Bishop, say they have a fossil which shows the footprint of a man superimposed over the footprint of a dinosaur. They have sold the footprint to the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, which exists to display evidence supporting the creationist view of history. A number of similar artifacts from the area, some found almost a century ago, are also in the museum.

But before anyone can get too excited, Zana Douglas of Glen Rose says the artifacts are probably all fakes carved by her grandfather George Adams in the 1930s as an easy way to turn a buck. He was a good sculptor, she says.

Once again the arguments over “creationism vs. evolution” has diverted attention from what some say should be the real debate, “gradualism vs. catastrophism.” For so-called catastrophists, the evidence shows that our history, while perhaps extending back for aeons, has been punctuated by many sudden and immense catastrophes which have accounted for much that is unexplained in the fossil record and thus brought about fundamental changes in life on earth, playing an important part in our evolution. Such arguments remain unsatisfactorily answered by mainstream science which prefers to change the subject.