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Originally posted by filthy

Sandstone is actually quite a soft, sedimentary stone, but that's not important. They present exactly zero comfirming evidence, and after looking at a few of the other claims on the page, I think we can safely discount it as merely more apologetic blather.

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Creationists seem to believe that there is some sort of scientific conspiricy concerning evolution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Scientists are even more cut-throat than preachers, and if one found evidence to debunk the ToE, he'd shout it from the rooftops. And his fortune would be made. He'd not only get a Noble, but make a killing on the lecture circute, and sell out every book he writes even before they're written.

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One thing about the Fundie comment. I'm not one. So much not one ...

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You were half right. I did know about retro viruses but not their effect on Evolution. I know I know, I should have made the connection without your help... but it didn't happen. So, thanks for the help.

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The White Flag Has Been Waved.

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Originally posted by David Mc
The feeling of "conspiracy", just from my standpoint, comes with presentations like "Walking With Dinosaurs" where the characters and habits of the animals are presented as facts instead of the suppositions that they are.

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The other is the implication that one creature developed a long beak because it "needed" one when the truth would be that it survived because it had one. I kick and recoil from that leap of theory to fact.

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Originally posted by David Mc

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Originally posted by filthy

Sandstone is actually quite a soft, sedimentary stone, but that's not important. They present exactly zero comfirming evidence, and after looking at a few of the other claims on the page, I think we can safely discount it as merely more apologetic blather.

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Does that mean that all evidence found in "soft" stone are unreliable for dating a find? (I hope that's not a hive I just kicked)

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Creationists seem to believe that there is some sort of scientific conspiricy concerning evolution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Scientists are even more cut-throat than preachers, and if one found evidence to debunk the ToE, he'd shout it from the rooftops. And his fortune would be made. He'd not only get a Noble, but make a killing on the lecture circute, and sell out every book he writes even before they're written.

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The feeling of "conspiracy", just from my standpoint, comes with presentations like "Walking With Dinosaurs" where the characters and habits of the animals are presented as facts instead of the suppositions that they are. The other is the implication that one creature developed a long beak because it "needed" one when the truth would be that it survived because it had one. I kick and recoil from that leap of theory to fact.

I do NOT discount the study. As Beskeptigal pointed out, there's a "little" evidence to support the thought.

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Abstract
An iron and wooden hammer found by local hikers in a creek bed near London, Texas in 1936, has been promoted by Carl Baugh and other strict creationists as an out-of place artifact. They maintain that the hammer, which was partially embedded in a small rock concretion, originated in a Cretaceous rock formation (or an Ordovician or Silurian one, depending on the account), thus contradicting the standard geologic timetable. However, the hammer was not documented in situ, and has not been reliably associated with any specific host formation. It is more likely an antique than an ancient artifact, probably dropped or discarded by a local miner or craftsman within the last few hundred years, after which dissolved limy sediment hardened into a nodule around it. Although a brief rebuttal to Baugh's hammer claims was made by Cole (1985), Baugh and a few other creationists continue to promote it. This review provides further analysis of the hammer and creationist claims about it.

Fig. 1. Hammer with head exposed
after concretion was broken

Background
Mr. and Mrs. Max Hahn were hiking along the Red Creek near the small town of London Texas, in June 1936, when they happened upon a small rock nodule with a piece of wood protruding from it. According to Helfinstine and Roth (1994), Max Hahn's son George broke open the rock nodule in 1946 or 1947, revealing the rest of the hammer, including a metal hammer head. It is important to note that even some creationist accounts (Baugh 1997, Mackay, 1985) acknowledge that the hammer bearing nodule was not attached to the surrounding rocks of the creek. Mackay (1985) explicitly states "The rock was sitting loose on a ledge and was not part of the surrounding ledge." Evidently no photos or other reliable documentation exists to confirm the exact circumstances of the original discovery. However, the lack of sharp marks on the nodule seems to confirm the reports that it was found loose and not chiseled from a larger rock.

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Whatever the reasons for these inconsistencies in creationist reports, evidently the rock strata at the site are indeed Hensel Sand Member of the Travis Formation (Lower Cretaceous, upper Aptian stage), considered approximately 110-115 million years old by conventional geologists. Stratigraphicly the Hensel formation immediately underlies the Lower Cretaceous Glen Rose Formation, in which the Paluxy River tracks occur about 150 miles to the north. Although Mackay (1984) suggested (while calling the hammer Ordovician) that the artifact is somehow associated with those who made the supposed human footprints in Glen Rose, close examination of the Paluxy evidence does not support the presence of genuine human tracks, and no rigorous evidence has been presented by any creationists linking the hammer to the nearby strata in Red Creek, let alone those in Glen Rose.

It should be noted that although Baugh has strongly promoted the hammer as a dramatic "pre-Flood" artifact, as have a few individuals writing for the Bible-Science Association and the Creation Science Foundation, other creationists organizations, including ICR and CRSQ, have said little or nothing about it in their literature, perhaps realizing its dubious nature.

Although the hammer has been kept under close guard by Baugh and thus not readily available for detailed analysis by conventional scientists, in 1985 NCSE researcher John Cole briefly reviewed Baugh's hammer claims. Although Cole did not challenge Baugh's presumption at the time that the nearby rocks were Ordovician, Cole pointed out that minerals dissolved from ancient strata could harden around a recent object, stating:

The stone is real, and it looks impressive to someone unfamiliar with geological processes. How could a modern artifact be stuck in Ordovician rock? The answer is that the concretion itself is not Ordovician. Minerals in solution can harden around an intrusive object dropped in a crack or simply left on the ground if the source rock (in this case, reportedly Ordovician) is chemically soluble (Cole, 1985).

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