Re: MOST IMPORTANT FOSSIL (A human skull as old as coal!)

Paul Myers (myers@netaxs.com)
Fri, 01 Nov 1996 18:19:38 -0500

In article <cgdH1AAXNkeyEwhg@dweinstein.demon.co.uk>, David Weinstein
<dave@dweinstein.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <5573ab$9st@news.ptd.net>, Ed Conrad <edconrad@prolog.net>
> writes
> >
> >The WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT FOSSIL, unquestionably, is
> >a petrified human skull embedded in a boulder which was discovered
> >between anthracite veins in Carboniferous strata near Shenandoah, Pa.
> >
> >It means man -- in almost our present form but considerably larger --
> >had existed on earth multi-million years before the initial emergence
> >of the earliest cat-size, monkey-like primate which science texbooks
> >have long proclaimed to be our most distant ancestor.
> >
> >A color photo of the skull, with one side protruding from the boulder,
> >can now be seen in all its intriguing magnificence at
> >> http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/conrad/skulla.jpg
> >
> >The photograph is a direct link from
> >> http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/conrad/conmain.htm
> >where photos of other Carboniferous fossils, also found between coal
> >veins, can be viewed.
> >
> >Meanwhile, another photo -- comparing the petrified human cranium
> >in the boulder with a modern human skull -- can be seen at
> >> http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/conrad/skullb.jpg
> >
> >
> >l
> >
> >
> How in the hell can this be possible? The most advanced life
> back then weren't even vertebrates. This is either a very stupid,
> pointless hoax, either for advancement or a joke, or else a case of
> seriously bad practise of science, with no regard to the proper
> scientific method. Surely thios cannot be true.
> --

Ed Conrad is an obsessed fruitcake who has dug up numerous concretions
from the coal tailings around his home, and on the basis of very vague,
dubious, and superficial resemblances (a cylindrical rock is a femur with
the condyles broken off, for instance) to bone, claims that he has
unearthed evidence that proves evolution is wrong. Apparently he has been
doing this for 10 or 15 years. He's always looking for somebody to
validate his stuff...he's been a plague on the talk.origins newsgroup
recently, where he conned several people into spending a fair amount
of time examining his precious "specimens". I was one, unfortunately,
but the fellow who did the most thorough investigation was Andrew
MacRae, who has documented the results on a web page,
<http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/t_origins/carbbones/carbbones.html>.

The end result? His rocks are junk. They don't have the slightest trace
of the preserved histological structure of bone, and the gross "anatomy"
is laughable. When told this, he has since lapsed into crackpot invective
and claims that the scientific establishment is conspiring against him.

Unfortunately, he tends to spam quite a few newsgroups with repetitive and
grandiose claims. It looks like he's found a few new newsgroups he thinks
are relevant (like sci.classics? another sign that he's a crackpot), and
you guys now have the pleasure of being recipients of his nonsense. I really
recommend that you ignore him, stick him in your killfiles, and hope he
goes away.

If you really are curious, check out MacRae's web page listed above, which
will give you the full story.

-- 

Paul Myers                               Department of Biology

myers@netaxs.com                         Temple University

http://fishnet.bio.temple.edu/           Philadelphia, PA 19122