Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Howard F tries twice again ...

Three Meanings of Chronological Labels

In detail:1) How do Fossils Superpose?, 2) Searching for the Cretaceous Fauna (with appendix on Karoo, Beaufort), 3) What I think I have refuted, 4) Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children

In debate or otherwise on Assorted Retorts: 1) ... on How Fossils Matter , 2) ... on Steno and Lifespan and Fossil Finds, 3) Geological Column NOT Palaeontolical [Censored by CMI-Creation-Station? Or just by the Library I am in?], 4) Same Debate Uncensored, One Step Further, 5) Continuing debate with Howard F on Geology / Palaeontology, 6) Howard F tries twice again ... , 7) Is Howard F getting tired? Because up to now, he has failed., 8) Resuming Debate with Howard F

On Correspondence blog: Contacting Karoo about superposition of layers and fossils

Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You said " never ever did I find Permian holotypes under Triassic or Lower Jurassic ones.

Now, I did write the South African Geological association to ask them if I got anything wrong, but have so far got no answer."


There are very few holotypes. Each species has one, but there may be many more thousands of fossils of that species, so searching for holotype examples is not very useful. And writing anyone is a waste of their time since all the data you want is in the journals. Just pay the $25 to download the article (or whatever it costs) or pay the subscription, or find a university library with a subscription.

The Karoo is, indeed, a very large area, but the contact between the Perm and Triassic occurs over a small area. I don't know why 45 degrees is important to you. Even the Grand Canyon is less steep (on average) than that. There are very few places on earth where that angle is maintained for any more than about 500 ft vertical. The Karoo is a fine example of where Dinos are stratigraphically and vertically above Pelycosaurs.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"Just pay the $25 to download the article (or whatever it costs) or pay the subscription, or find a university library with a subscription."

Sorry, broke and homeless.

"The Karoo is, indeed, a very large area, but the contact between the Perm and Triassic occurs over a small area."

Wonderful.

THEN it should be a piece of cake for you to tell me exactly what if not holotype at least referred specimen of a pelycosaur (ideally as distinctive as Dimetrodon, I think I found only Varanops there, and I haven't yet been able to check whether Varanops could feasably be - with Six Day Creation and Flood Geology as opposed to evolutionary scenario - simply a Varan) directly under if not a holotype at least a referred specimen of a dinosaur.

[Underlined because he will answer the sentence in a truncated form which disfigures its grammatical structure. The both pieces will be underlined below as well.]

So far you have not done so.

"I don't know why 45 degrees is important to you. Even the Grand Canyon is less steep (on average) than that. There are very few places on earth where that angle is maintained for any more than about 500 ft vertical."

Because for me two places below and above near surface of a very steep hill do NOT count.

What counts is same hole dug deeper.

If both finds are near surface and the "verticality" refers to the vertical dimension of the rock's steepness, rather than to a vertical only - or perhaps slightly displaced (hence 45°) - relation, then the relation is topologically speaking horizontal and could go back to a horizontal relation between them at Flood event.

"The Karoo is a fine example of where Dinos are stratigraphically and vertically above Pelycosaurs."

As you describe it, sounds too little vertical for me.

But if this were so, and the area where Permian and Triassic overlap - Beaufort, right? - is small, why not show an example where same assemblage zone and same hole in it yielded a Triassic but not Permian animal on top and a Permian but not Triassic animal further down?

Thing as, these assemblage zones are even smaller areas than Beaufort. Now, I have found NO assemblage zone which was BOTH Permian AND Triassic.

If you mean that there is a local place where one of the Permian assemblage zones goes down under one of the Triassic ones, so that two actual palaeontological assemblage zones of fossils rather than just two rock layers are physically overlapping - where?

And what two critters?

Take a look at the pelycosaur of Karoo:

Palaeocritti : Heleosaurus scholtzi
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/eupelycosauria/heleosaurus


"Synapsida Eupelycosauria Varanopseidae"

Eupelycosaur, should be very clear it's a pelycosaur and nothing else, right?

Well, take another look at how obvious this is:

"Originally thought to be a diapsid reptile."

Oh?

When was reclassification made?

"Reisz, R. R. & Modesto, S. P. 2007. Heleosaurus scholtzi from the Permian of South Africa: a varanopid synapsid, not a diapsid reptile. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27 (3): 734-739."

Oh, as late as 2007? Maybe need to find pelycosaurs under dinos or sth?

But of course the fossil should remain every doubt, shouldn't it?

"Remains Partial skeleton missing tail and most of the limbs."

NOTE, this is NOT about JUST the Heleosaurus of Karoo, it mean this Heleosaurus of Karoo is the ONLY Heleosaurus (at least at present so classified right now) in the world. It's the holotype, if you can have a holotype without referred specimens.

Because, in the case when there are more than one skeleton palaeocritti says so.

Palaeocritti : Antetonitrus ingenipes
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/dinosauria/sauropoda/antetonitrus


Antetonitrus ingenipes has TWO skeletons. One holotype and one referred specimen:

"Holotype (BP/1/4952): partially articulated skeleton (vertebrae, ribs, partial forelimbs and hindlimbs) Referred specimens: BP/1/4952b (some isolated bones)."

And neither of these is from above the Heleosaurus, which, as you will have seen was from Abrahamskraal. Instead they are from:

"Locality: farms Welbedacht-Edelweiss, Ladybrand district, Free State, South Africa."

Now, I go back to Abrahamskraal by doing a search on palaeocritti.

I find five items, five pages listing it, two of which are South Africa (where some critters come from Abrahamskraal) and Capitanian, which is Mid Permian.

The other three are: Heleosaurus scholtzi, Hipposaurus boonstrai, Styracocephalus platyrhynchus.

The first was already mentioned and linked to.

The other two are not exactly pelycosaurs, but have a look:

Palaeocritti : Hipposaurus boonstrai
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/biarmosuchia/hipposaurus


Hipposaurus is a small primitive biarmosuchian therapsid from the Middle Permian of South Africa which was originally thought to be a gorgonopsid.

This one has THREE specimens:

Holotype (SAM 8950): Complete skeleton.
Referred materials: SAM 9081 (distorted skull and postcranial elements, type of H. major); CGP/1/66 (Skull).


And yes, this is Horizon: Tapinocephalus zone, Abrahamskraal Fm, Beaufort Group, Middle Permian (Capitanian). Type locality: Klein-Koedoeskops in the Beaufort West district, South Africa.

How many Triassic fossils have you come across in Klein-Koedoeskops? I'll search palaeocritti: 1 hit, ONLY hipposaurus is mentioned. But OK, to give you some leeway, there might just theoretically be a layer of Triassic fossils in Klein-Koedoeskops above the Permian ones or Permian one, just that all specimens there are referred specimens. Palaeocritti only lists locality of holotype, so called type locality.

Now, there was another little fellow from Abrahamskraal too. Also no pelycosaur, but ...

Palaeocritti : Styracocephalus platyrhynchus
http://www.palaeocritti.com/styracocephalus


"Originally described based on a badly preserved skull, the exact affinities of this South African therapsid was unclear until new materials were found. It is now thought to be an unusual primitive tapinocephalian."

Hence perhaps Tapinocaphalus assemblage zone, right?

Now, the Styracocephalus has a few more specimens. Not all from Abrahamskraal.

But none of them a complete skeleton, by the way.

Holotype (SAM 8936): dorsoventrally compressed skull with greater portion of left ramus of lower jaw.

Referred specimens: SAM K8071 (occiput with portions of skull roof and basicranium); SAM 9346 (Posterior portion of skull roof and separate portion with heeled incisor teeth); SAM K364 (Posterior portion of skull roof); SAM 12201 (Portion of skull roof); SAM 12187 (Posterior portion of skull roof); SAM 12181 (Posterior portion of skull roof with right ‘horn’); SAM 12215 (skull roof with horns preserved, and other skull fragments); BP/1/5433 (Posterior portion of skull roof with left ‘horn’); BP/1/5428 (Fragmentary pieces of skull roof); BP/1/5485 (Portion of skull roof).


11 witnesses to the skull form. Everything below neck reconstructed by comparison with better preserved critters of similar but not identical skull shape. What are the localities?

Horizon: Tapinocephalus assemblage zone, Middle Permian (Capitanian). Type locality: Beaufort West, Fraserburg, Laingsburg, Murraysburg, and Abrahamskraal, Prince Albert, South Africa.

Abrahamskraal was already taken account of.

1 result for Fraserburg, 2 results for Laingsburg ... yes, there is another fossil in Laingsburg:

Palaeocritti : Bullacephalus jacksoni
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/biarmosuchia/bullacephalus


How much will you bet before looking its an overlying Triassic one?

You have lost whatever you were betting!

Holotype (BP/1/5387): Nearly complete skull and lower jaw. (Yes, these very well defined kinds, we can all be so reassured that each species and genus is a welldefined kind, can't we?)

Horizon: Lowermost Tapinocephalus assemblage zone, beaufort Group, Middle Permian (Capitanian). Type locality: Middlevlei farm, Laingsburg, Western Cape Province, South Africa.

Permian again!

Do you start to see my point?

A bonus for me : I found again the creature where the remains are so close to the sculptured woodheads of the drakkar of the Vikings. Or perhaps there was another one which was even closer. Wonder if there were any Bullacephalus jacksoni around after flood and if they were classified as dragons by Beowulf or Sigurd? If so, they seem mercifully extinct by now.

No, seriously, I think the one I saw as similar to dragon heads on drakkar was some other more menacing Biarmosuchian.

So, back to the Rhynchus (Styracorhynchus, wasn't it?):

Murraysburg was also a place where it had been found. There are actually two hits for Murraysburg, AND the other one is not Capitanian. You might be having it.

Palaeocritti : Cyonosaurus
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/gorgonopsia/cyonosaurus


Well, there is just one little problem, if you look at the text.

Locality: Toverwater farm and few miles southeast of Murraysburg, South Africa.

So, the Cyanosaurus which is Upper Permian was not found on top of Styrachorhynchus, but a few miles away. See what I mean by horizontal versus vertical relation?

Holotype (WMUC 1515): skull of an immature individual Referred specimens: RC 75, BPI 254, BPI 254, BPI 294.

How luxurious, by the way! A full FOUR referred specimens. And holotype is a skull.

Now, shall we see if Toverwater farm - other locality mentioned for Cyanosaurus - has other periods than Upper Permian Wuchiapingian?

1 result for Toverwater farm. It spells Cyonosaurus.

So, has Capitanian been overlaid or underlaid by another epoch in Prince Albert?

Yes. Prince Albert ALSO shows hits with Wordian - which is also counted as Middle Permian.

The other four creatures are:

Palaeocritti : Tapinocaninus pamelae
http://www.palaeocritti.com/tapinocaninus


Modderdrift farm, prince Albert, South Africa.

Palaeocritti : Patranomodon nyaphulii
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/anomodontia/patranomodon


Type locality: Combrinkskraal farm, Prince Albert district, South Africa.

Oh, Prince Albert is a whole district? Perhaps that means Abrahamskraal locality, where we started our survey, is one locality on Prince Albert. And distinct from these two Wordian ones!

Palaeocritti : Australosyodon nyaphuli
http://www.palaeocritti.com/australosyodon


Type locality: Tuinkraal farm, Prince Albert Road, South Africa.

Palaeocritti : Glanosuchus macrops
http://www.palaeocritti.com/glanosuchus


Type locality: Knoflok's Fontein, near Van der Byl's Kraal, and farm Modderdrift, near Prince Albert, western Cape Province, South Africa.

"Farm Modderdrift" already mentioned as "Modderdrift Farm." The best place for a South African Dr Dino Adventureland. They even have TWO fossil critters found on their locality!

Let's look at the documentation of each of these Wordian and Capitanian critters:

"Holotype (NMQR 2987): Skull and mandible. Paratypes: NMQR 2985 (skull and mandible); NMQR 2986 (skull and mandible), ROZ K95 (skull and mandible)."

Tapinocaninus pamelae, all four specimens, make a bow with the three meters of body which have never been found.

"Holotype (NMQR 3000): Skull with lower jaw and postcranial elements"

Patranomodon nyaphulii bows as courteously as Ripicheep with the 30 cm body lenth that was only reconstructed from the 5 cm skull length.

"Holotype (NMQR 3152): Skull and mandible, left side well preserved, right side crushed."

Australosyodon nyaphuli takes a bow with the ? [thanks for that!] 1.8 meter body length reconstructed either from the 26 cm skull length or from the Russian (Perm district!) cousins that are called Syodon, without the Australo.

"Holotype (GS M 796): partial skull
Referred specimen: NM QR 2908 (snout)"


Both specimens curtsey in a wolfish manner, like Maugrim, if you know what novel I refer to, with the 1.8 m body length which has also never been found.

If Walt Disney wanted to make another Fantasia, he could choose worse places than Karoo for inspiration. Especially Karoo as seen by palaeontological artists. But to this, he might take other music than Pastoral Symphony. Like Danse Macabre? Camille Saint-Saëns goes spooky enough for some of these shapes and if Satan is considered to have led the dance in that symphony, his demons might have done some dancing of destruction over God's creatures (and perhaps a few transgenics products as well, Permian gives me that impression at times) during Flood.

Oh, the music could ALSO be the other Danse macabre, by Liszt, where the theme is Dies Irae.

Because, the Flood WAS a "day of wrath", precisely as the judgement day.

Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You said: "THEN it should be a piece of cake for you to tell me exactly what if not holotype at least referred specimen of a pelycosaur (ideally as distinctive as Dimetrodon,"

There are lots of synapsids from the Karoo area, and I found one basal synapsid (pelycosaur) with the holotype from that area. Not sure why you think this is important, since there is only one holotype per species, but Elliotsmithia longiceps should do for now. If you want there are many papers that detail the stratigraphic zonation of the fossil vertebrates across the Permian/Triassic boundary, ending with dinosaurs.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Why exactly did you cut off the sentence?

It continues: ... I think I found only Varanops there, and I haven't yet been able to check whether Varanops could feasably be - with Six Day Creation and Flood Geology as opposed to evolutionary scenario - simply a Varan) directly under if not a holotype at least a referred specimen of a dinosaur.

I am in the habit of finishing my sentences, even if I take some time, and if you had read it to the end you would have known what I was talking about and why I thought it important.

And no, I was NOT limiting myself to only holotypes, referred specimens would do as well. Not that there are all that many in the fauna mostly concerned with Karoo.

Palaeocritti has no special page for Eliotsmithia, but it is enumerated among eupelycosauria.

The important thing is WHERE was Elliotsmithia found, and was any Jurassic creature found straight above it?

If you do hand me the locality for Elliotsmithia, I can search on palaeocritti if same locality also has something from Jurassic.

By the way, "many papers" is not an answer, especially not so to a homeless guy who cannot afford to buy them.

And "stratigraphic zonation" is still not exactly what I am looking for. Have you still not grasped it?

I mean lower down vs high up in the same hole dug down into the ground.

That would be something which could not possibly be two neighbouring biotopes that had been classified only this lately as being different eras.

That is what you still have not proven.

Besides, since Elliotsmithia is under Varanodontinae, I would like to know the details (apart from Evolutionist ideiology that Varanes developed millions of years later) why it cannot be simply a Varane of some sort.

It's not as if it were a very distinctly well marked creature like the dimetrodon (which perhaps may have been how Medieval dragons really looked like, the one sail mistaken for two batwings).

Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals
By Group‎ > ‎Eupelycosauria
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/eupelycosauria


"Not sure why you think this is important, since there is only one holotype per species"

For many species in Karoo there is exactly one holotype and no referred specimens.

For others there are one or two referred specimens. In the above search, which you perhaps did not even read due to your eagerness to answer an unfinished sentence, there was, very luxuriously as per my experience with Karoo, one where there were a full eleven specimens, the holotype and ten more. None of them containing post-cranial material.

As as geologist, you may be thinking of marine invertebrate holotypes where one holotype for such and such an Ammonite is peanuts compared with the millions of ammonites found. For land vertebrate fossils, the story is very different.

In palaeocritti site, the finding place of the holotype is invariably mentioned, whereas with referred specimens, it is more fickle.

And if you are a geologist and have read lots of papers about "that detail the stratigraphic zonation of the fossil vertebrates across the Permian/Triassic boundary, ending with dinosaurs." why do you not tell me which exact place (and remember Karoo is not a place) you find clearly Triassic creatures like dinosaurs straight under clearly Permian ones, like Pelycosaurs.

Schliemann could not have made a relative dating of his Troys, if the different layers with distinctive cultural material had been on different hills instead of straight above and straight below.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Geo/Helio, Franco, Sor Eusebia and St Joseph of Cupertino - with Ebony Manta

EbonyManta
+Hans-Georg Lundahl I once heard that, in Russia for instance, a good portion of people believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Until now, I believed that all such people were merely uneducated and didn't know the truth. This is the first time I've seen someone who has heard the details of the heliocentric theory and... denies it.

I suppose you could concoct this big system where spirits are responsible for moving objects around far smaller objects for some reason... but I really don't know why you would. The heliocentric view is far simpler, corresponds to what we know about how the universe works, and doesn't require God and his subordinates to constantly micromanage everything. Heliocentrism... well, as far as I can simplify it, it comes down to the fact that objects with more mass cause objects with lesser mass to move around them, simple as that.

Most of your arguments seem to come down to saying that the evidence for heliocentrism is meaningless or could go either way, and then choosing to believe in geocentrism instead.

I also really want to add, concerning the belief that will can move objects - I have tried, on various occasions, to move inanimate objects with thought and will alone. They have all failed. Furthermore, I have just willed my fingers to move, and did nothing else. They did not move. Then I actually moved them the way they're suppose to be moved, by my brain sending signals to them to move, and they obeyed. To further prove that point, at one time my leg had fallen asleep to the point where it was completely numb. When I tried to stand, I actually collapsed because my ankle was unresponsive and didn't properly stabilize me. No amount of willpower would move my foot then. Willpower alone does not move objects. Willpower can do a lot of things within the human mind, but only within it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"The heliocentric view is far simpler, corresponds to what we know about how the universe works, and doesn't require God and his subordinates to constantly micromanage everything."

Corresponds with what you think you know about how the universe works, and I think quite a lot is micromanaged either by God or by angels, good or bad ones, not just on extraordinary occasions which strike us as miraculous, but everyday.

So, how do you disprove that kind of world view? Your example of man needing a body to impose its will on surroundings is clearly not a parallel to what we think of God or of angels.

I am not even saying the evidence on Helio- / Geo- is strictly equivocal and can go either way. Unless you start with a materialistic world view, the optic and inner ears evidence is more directly for earth being still and universe moving.

EbonyManta
+Hans-Georg Lundahl I shall rephrase. It corresponds with how the universe appears to work, by every method we can use to find out. We can't use methods to find out whether spirits are moving the celestial bodies or not, so obviously we go with the method which is more naturalistic.

BECAUSE that worldview cannot be disproven, it is not scientific or realistic. As for my example of humans needing their bodies to do things, it proves that in no instance have we ever observed willpower alone accomplishing things, and you assigning such a quality to angels and God is pure conjecture.

Under ideal circumstances science doesn't start with a view at all except for what we've observed, and what we've observed is a materialistic universe. As for the optic evidence, it would look exactly the same to us whether the earth is rotating or the sun is revolving around the earth, and there isn't any inner-ear evidence. I'm assuming you're referring to the ability of our balance mechanisms to detect motion, but that only applies when we're accelerating, decelerating, or changing direction, and the change in direction due to being on the surface of a slowly rotating planet would be so subtle and unnoticeable that we'd have tuned it out long ago and couldn't detect it even if we wanted to. It's rather like air pressure - air pressure is more intense than you'd think, but you'll never really notice it until it's taken away from you.

As for your worldview, it only makes sense if you start with a spiritualistic worldview (which to be honest, I do believe in spirits in a sense, but also that they operate according to natural laws). The motions of the planets don't make sense until you realize that they're orbiting the sun, and it's foolish to think that the Earth would be different, much less that the entire universe is somehow revolving around the spot on which we're standing.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"I shall rephrase. It corresponds with how the universe appears to work,"

No, it doesn't. The Universe appears to be Geocentric, which won't work on purely naturalistic causalities.

"by every method we can use to find out."

Again, no.

"We can't use methods to find out whether spirits are moving the celestial bodies or not, so obviously we go with the method which is more naturalistic."

If you can't use any method to find out whether spirits move celestial bodies or not, you can't use any method to find if something else is entirely responsible for moving it either.

The masses calculated for Sun or for Jupiter are calculated on the presumption that masses and gravitation are responsible for orbits, as in entirely responsible. For instance, mass of Moon is NOT calclulated on apparent material times its density times the volume of the Moon. It is calculated so that no angel shall be needed to have it in orbit around Earth once a Month (the daily orbit being reduced to an only apparent one), that is, it is calculated so that masses and gravitation shall explain the orbit in Newtonian-Laplacean celestial mechanics.

By now there is a method to find out if these work. They don't, at least not for more than 10 to 20 orbits, or sth.

I am, as you may imagine after watching the video here, a great fan of Don Petit:

[ISS] Don Petit, Science Off The Sphere - Water Droplets Orbiting Charged Knitting Needle
SpaceVids.tv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyRv8bNDvq4


"BECAUSE that worldview cannot be disproven, it is not scientific or realistic."

And therefore you MUST stick with the other one, and therefore you cannot disprove that one, and therefore that is also - on this principle - not scientific or realistic.

"As for my example of humans needing their bodies to do things, it proves that in no instance have we ever observed willpower alone accomplishing things, and you assigning such a quality to angels and God is pure conjecture."

Nope, it is also observed historic fact. By the way, in the case of pure spirits, it is not a question of "willpower" but of act of will over object within its power (all objects within power of God, material objects within power of angels present at location of them insofar as God orders or permits). Apart from this extrapolation from Geocentric astronomy, we also have recorded miracles and recorded demonic infestations.

In a monastery or convent in Spain, there was a poltergeist. How do I know that? Because, the poltergeist was twice not driven away by a priest, they couldn't get one quick, but by the prayers of a very simple and young nun or religious, Sor Eusebia Palomino Yenes. She died in 1935 and also predicted accurately which of two other sisters would and which wouldn't be martyred under the war of 1936-39, before Franco came around to save nuns from rapes and murders.

Human persons cannot levitate. If one does, it stands to reason angels or demons are carrying him. Simon Magus levitated due to demons in Rome - but the prayers of St Peter stopped them, he fell down and broke his bones. Two priests within the last centuries levitated during Holy Mass.

St Philip Neri and St Joseph Cupertino. Not once or twice, but again and again. Philip Romolo Neri, CO, (Italian: Filippo di Neri; 21 July 1515 – 25 May 1595)

Joseph of Cupertino, O.F.M. Conv. (Italian: Giuseppe da Copertino) (June 17, 1603 – September 18, 1663)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Cupertino#/media/File:San_Giuseppe_da_Copertino_si_eleva_in_volo_alla_vista_della_Basilica_di_Loreto.jpg


Obviously, the angelic spirits who helped St Joseph of Cupertino to levitate were NOT of same alignment as those levitating Simon Magus in Rome.

EbonyManta
+Hans-Georg Lundahl "And therefore you MUST stick with the other one, and therefore you cannot disprove that one, and therefore that is also - on this principle - not scientific or realistic."

Sure we can disprove it, it just hasn't been disproved.

[Note he didn't mention Don Petit's knitting needle and the water droplets ... maybe beyond his "scientific" paygrade?]

"[stuff about supernatural influences and people levitating]"

I can't confirm the tale of the Spanish nun, at least not through Wikipedia. I did a quick Google search, but most of the results were in Spanish or otherwise provided no details. Also, I think that's the first time I've heard anything positive said about Franco.

For Simon Magus, I find it amusing that you're citing an apocryphal text. As for the other saints you mention, I did a Google search on St. Joseph. For about 7 pages of results the only results I found were Catholic in nature, and most of the time were either irrelevant or contained little or no discussion as to the truth of assertions that he could levitate. I found no secular discussions of his ability to fly, so I can't really say for certain anything about him, either. Either way, I can't really find any "historical" information.

To be perfectly honest, as a scientist you have to accept that there are things we don't know about the universe. And there are philosophers who speculate that even the things we do know might be changed at any given time, though I don't particularly subscribe to that theory itself. But, going back to the scientist angle, we have to actually observe and measure things before we accept them as fact. A lot of strange things happen in the world - or are reported to happen - but they all seem rather elusive as far as science is concerned.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"Sure we can disprove it, it just hasn't been disproved."

Nope, you are making YOURSELF inaccessible for any disprovals there are.

"I can't confirm the tale of the Spanish nun, at least not through Wikipedia."

Try Spanish wikipedia, Sor Eusebia Palomino Yenes. I read the story in a Spanish booklet while in Spain.

"I did a quick Google search, but most of the results were in Spanish or otherwise provided no details."

Sure. Take some Spanish hit and get a Hispanophone friend of yours to translate it.

"Also, I think that's the first time I've heard anything positive said about Franco."

That says something of where you come from.

Reds killed nuns, priests into the thousands and bishops at a rate of 12 (there are not all that many bishops at a time in all Spain, maybe max 30 or sth).

"For Simon Magus, I find it amusing that you're citing an apocryphal text."

Do you? I am a Catholic, and to me, Acts of St Peter are not Canonic Scripture, but neither are they "apocrypha" in the bad sense, like "Gospel of St Thomas" (written by Gnostics) would be.

"For about 7 pages of results the only results I found were Catholic in nature"

And as a Franco hater you are obviously discounting all Catholic sources? So, says sth about your bias.

"and most of the time were either irrelevant or contained little or no discussion as to the truth of assertions that he could levitate."

Why should they DISCUSS what was perfectly obvious?

"I found no secular discussions of his ability to fly, so I can't really say for certain anything about him, either."

Means that Atheists have found no way to debunk the levitation and therefore prefer not to talk about it.

"Either way, I can't really find any "historical" information."

Except the one provided by Catholics? What kind of exreme Protestant are you, Atheist?!

"But, going back to the scientist angle, we have to actually observe and measure things before we accept them as fact."

Give me ONE plausible scenario how:

  • 1) NOONE observes either St Philip Neri or St Joseph of Cupertino levitate while they are alive

  • AND 2) EVERYONE starts saying they did after they died.


Just ONE plausible scenario. In other words, we are talking about OBSERVED fact, unless you have a really good surprise scenario.

[He preferred to change the topic after this one!]

Friday, May 15, 2015

Continuing debate with Howard F on Geology / Palaeontology (Updated through 21-V-2015)

Three Meanings of Chronological Labels

In detail:1) How do Fossils Superpose?, 2) Searching for the Cretaceous Fauna (with appendix on Karoo, Beaufort), 3) What I think I have refuted, 4) Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children

In debate or otherwise on Assorted Retorts: 1) ... on How Fossils Matter , 2) ... on Steno and Lifespan and Fossil Finds, 3) Geological Column NOT Palaeontolical [Censored by CMI-Creation-Station? Or just by the Library I am in?], 4) Same Debate Uncensored, One Step Further, 5) Continuing debate with Howard F on Geology / Palaeontology, 6) Howard F tries twice again ... , 7) Is Howard F getting tired? Because up to now, he has failed., 8) Resuming Debate with Howard F

On Correspondence blog: Contacting Karoo about superposition of layers and fossils

Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl "1) You dug that deep or only bored that deep?"

There are thousands of petroleum wells with cuttings and core. I can't teach you all of stratigraphy in a note, but there is no doubt the layers tracked from the surface to the subsurface are the same.

[Maybe for Kansas, have doubts about North Dakota]

"Pelycosaurs have NOT been found locally below Dinos. Which was my point."

I am sure I could find a place where they are directly above and below each other (and I will look), but the same argument works for microfossils, which are small enough they can be found in petroleum well cuttings. Marine conodonts are always found below marine coccoliths. Never mixed, never in reverse order. No chance of an ecological zonation to explain away the data.

"BECAUSE, if one and same sandstone layer had covered both a pelycosaur in one place and a dinosaur in one other place, they would have been diagnosed as different layers.

Tracing rock type is not that easy and unequivocal that you have no wiggling room for that."


No, there are many places around the world where rock strata can be traced hundreds of miles in continuous exposures. The Morrison Formation can be walked out for several hundred miles, and only has dinos. No ungulates and no pelycosaurs.

"somewhere on the globe, you would find trilobites locally under pelycosaurs,..."

[not quoting the OTHER criteria of stratification to find I had said, just two lowest layers ...]

Yes, there are many places where this occurs. Where trilobites are directly below pelycosaurs. Trilobites are small enough they are easily found in petroleum well cores. They have been widely found below and mixed in with pleycosaurs. Trilobites are widely found below, but never mixed in, with dinosaurs, and always below ungulates. It is easier to find the relationship you demand with small fossils that with large ones.

You mentioned the stratigraphy of Kansas:

"Ianthasaurus find Kansas (a pelycosaur, thus "Permian fauna"), Garnett : Garnett is a city in and the county seat of Anderson County, Kansas, United States.

And on map, Garnett in Anderson county is midway NS and very far E. So the two "indications of Permian" do not match as to locality."


I have excavated fossils at Garnett and know it well. The rock strata in Kansas are very continuous, and dip at a low angle to the west. The stratal zones of the Pennsylvanian and Permian are thick, and so cover a wide, north-south stripe in eastern Kansas. The rock units have been tracked physically in painstaking detail. No bait and switch. They can be matched exactly to well logs starting at the surface and extending as far west as Denver. Because the units do not change much, they are very easy to trace using physical evidence, not fossils. But the fossil zonation is consistent.

In the east are pelycosaurs and marine units with trilobites and conodonts (and other fossils). In the west are dinosaurs and marine units with no trilobites and lots of coccoliths. Wells that drill down in the west find trilobites and conodonts directly below. Of course it is very unlikely to find an identifiable pelycosaur bone in core, and never in cuttings because of the size.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Main points:

"I am sure I could find a place where they are directly above and below each other (and I will look)"

Do!

That is the main point of my argument.

"Marine conodonts are always found below marine coccoliths. Never mixed, never in reverse order. No chance of an ecological zonation to explain away the data."

Marine non-vertebrates have another relation to Flood geology than land vertebrates.

The interesting point would be, can you document such land vertebrates are always found with conodonts and never coccoliths? Can you document such other land animals are always found with coccoliths and never conodonts?

That would start looking like an indirect way of getting around my argument.

How different are conodonts and coccoliths to look at even?

Other point was main too:

"In the east are pelycosaurs and marine units with trilobites and conodonts (and other fossils). In the west are dinosaurs and marine units with no trilobites and lots of coccoliths."

OK.

What would this tell a Flood geologist about habitat of pelycosaurs?

I don't have a ready answer for that one yet.

But Pennsylvanian layer being traceable under Permian one where it overlays it (I am sorry I mistook Pelycosaurs for a Permian only creature type) and other layer of creatceous getting on top of the Permian one in the West would be the way deposit layers from different parts of flood overlay, and then the interaction with the different habitats of pre-Flood fauna gives a false impression of time zones rather than ecological ones.

My take on cretaceous (with land fauna) is, it was mainly coastal zones. Often covered with shrimps during flood, sometimes including ducks, plus some of the creatures being built to have part of weight supported by water, as it seems ... but the pelycosaur habitat with conodonts ... do not know.

Nearly missed:

"No, there are many places around the world where rock strata can be traced hundreds of miles in continuous exposures. The Morrison Formation can be walked out for several hundred miles, and only has dinos. No ungulates and no pelycosaurs."

I very definitely believe you, but here we talk about "continuous exposure".

I am sure Morrison Formation is what I could have called a "Cretaceous habitat".

No ungulates? What horses or cows in their five senses would get down to a beach with lots of HUGE dinos on it? If they went miles away from it, so much better were they off!

When I spoke about wiggling room, I meant while tracing multiple layers under surface.

Like the layers in North Dakota:

Creation vs. Evolution : Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2014/01/glenn-morton-caught-abusing-words-other.html


Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Somehow I though I was using italics and instead got crossed out words. Sorry.

"The interesting point would be, can you document such land vertebrates are always found with conodonts and never coccoliths? Can you document such other land animals are always found with coccoliths and never conodonts?"

Yes, absolutely yes. Pelycosaurs are never found with coccoliths, only between layers with conodonts and other marine fossils such as fusulinids. Dinosaurs are never found in between layers with conodonts and fusulinids, and, if there are marine layers, they always have coccoliths. The order is the same for marine fossils and terrestrial.

"I am sure Morrison Formation is what I could have called a "Cretaceous habitat"."

If there were really Cret habitats and Pennsylvanian habitats, it just happens that the Penn ones are always below the Cret ones? The Cret land animals always associated with coccoliths, and the Penn. ones with conodonts and never coccoliths?

"What horses or cows in their five senses would get down to a beach with lots of HUGE dinos on it? If they went miles away from it, so much better were they off!"

Still, we should somewhere find a layer of rock where the transition can be seen, but it never has. And there would have to be a parallel transition in marine life. But the marine life is stacked vertically exactly the same as we found in outcrops.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Excuse on strike accepted, I thought you were making a stylish difference, like italicising where you thought I had a point, but striking where you thought I was completely off. I was not offended.

"If there were really Cret habitats and Pennsylvanian habitats, it just happens that the Penn ones are always below the Cret ones?"

As to land animals, you have so far not shown ANY place where land vertebrate Penn fauna has been found below land vertabrate Cret fauna.

Coccoliths are not land fauna, remember.

//What horses or cows in their five senses would get down to a beach with lots of HUGE dinos on it? If they went miles away from it, so much better were they off!//

"Still, we should somewhere find a layer of rock where the transition can be seen, but it never has."

Because where you find dinos fifty feet east of a line and ungulates fifty feet west of it, you will try to say they are different layers, even if that is the only clue for them being so.

You have still not shown a place where (leaving out triolbites this time):

  • first you find an ungulate
  • then you dig on, not boring but digging and find a dino
  • then you dig even deeper, still not boring but digging, and you find pelycosaurs.


Just a wild hunch, what if pelycosaurs could swim and dive and really fancied a diet of conodonts and other marine fossils animals such as fusulinids? Found mixed with their favourite dinners? Or lived on fish who really liked a fusulinid diet?

What if, for instance, pelycosaur sails were good swim belts? What if they lived in an archipelago, whereas Cretaceous was more coastline?

Now, looked up coccoliths (a species known today), and conodonts and fusilinida.

Fusilinida could be some shell fish found today but with less thick shells, and which got their shells vastly misshapen during the Flood when they formed calcium rocks.

The factor which contributed to that may be the same which attracted a habitat of pelycosaurs.

Conodonts, we simply don't know what they were. If they were sth like reconstructed, they may have been a favourite food with pelycosaurs, they just had to make sure not getting hurt on the teeth.

Note well, these hints on a reconstruction of pelycosaur habitat or one version of Pennsylvanian habitat, are much more tentative than my reconstruction of how the Cretaceous one would have been like.

For the Cretaceous we have - as I know thanks to CMI - one modern animal confirming the also otherwise reasonable impression it was a coastline habitat.

As I am not a biologist, either marine or lizard zoologist, I am also appealing to experts: does this make any sense?

The experts in question need not be geologists of course, I am mainly appealing to the scientists who study modern parallels to what I take pelycosaur lifestyle to have been.

Sure conodonts weren't a variety if squid, btw?

"But the marine life is stacked vertically exactly the same as we found in outcrops."

That can be arranged with Flood geology.

Squid or whatever conodonts were drown and get to bottom, and are then covered with lots of water masses including algae, obviously also Coccoliths.

Added later:
Here is a link I was looking for in regards to "wiggle room":

Phenomena: Laelaps
Why I’m Not Tuning in to the Creation vs. Evolution “Debate”
February 4, 2014, by Brian Switek
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/04/why-im-not-tuning-in-to-the-creation-vs-evolution-debate/


"Standing in the Triassic and looking back in time towards the Permian at Dinosaur National Monument, Utah. Photo by Brian Switek."

How do YOU visually tell that where he is looking at and where he is standing are two different laters?

If he were to answer limit is below camera angle, that is cheating (as far as my question is concerned, which he may not be concerned with). If he says it is on the photo, I say the rocks look so alike (except perhaps angle and very slightly in colour) that it's time to say "wiggle room" and suspect he was classifying as two different layers what were simply one layer because of two fossilized habitats. A Triassic and a Permian one.

Update
through morning of 19-V-2015, feast of St Peter of Morono, or Pope Celestine V.

Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl

You asked if there was any place where dinosaurs can be found directly above pelycosaurs. An excellent example is the Karoo Basin of South Africa where the strata are well exposed in a desert setting and the section can be walked unambiguously upsection along steep outcrops from Permian beds with pelycosaurs to early dinos in the Triassic. Now it is not a vertical cliff, but close enough, and the outcrops are 3 dimensional so no chance of the animals living in different places. And this is the same succession of land animals that is found world wide. Nowhere is the order different. Here is one of good reference:

Smith, R. M. H. (1995). Changing fluvial environments across the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Karoo Basin, South Africa and possible causes of tetrapod extinctions. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 117(1), 81-104.

Regarding dinosaurs and ungulates, basically anyplace where there are fossil dinosuars in the ground and living ungulates works. Or dead ungulates laying on the surface. In the mid-west there are many examples of fossil ungulates, such as sabre tooth cats, camels, etc, preserved on top of beds with dino bones.

Of course, nowhere in the world are fossil ungulates mixed or below dinosaurs, and never are either group below pelycosaurs. As I keep saying the stratigraphic order is never violated.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl

Now you asked about a photo of the Triassic rocks looking “back in time” toward the Permian. Of course the photo does not offer evidence of this, but it is based on geologic mapping. There is a long history of using surface mapping to determine the structure in the subsurface. This is how we know the Permian beds in eastern Kansas are below the Cretaceous in western Kansas. And these results are used around the world and confirmed by millions of petroleum wells (yes millions). For example, the succession of fossils observed in petroleum wells in western Kansas is identical to the succession observed by walking the surface deposits from east to west. Not only are coccoliths above fusulinids, trilobites and conodonts, but the succession of fusulunid species (and trilobites and conodont species) is the same. Not only is the succession of coccolith species the same in the Kansas outcrops as in the wells, but it is the same succession as in Wyoming, or Utah, or England for that matter. And the order of species is the same independent of rock type (shale vs limestone for example).

Now you want to distinguish drilling a well from digging a hole, but the only difference is size. Wells are very deep, narrow holes. And the succession of fossils is identical to what is observed on the surface; the only limitation is that the fossil to be observed in a core must be smaller than the core.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
+Howard F, I went through Karoo myself.*

"Now it is not a vertical cliff, but close enough, and the outcrops are 3 dimensional so no chance of the animals living in different places."

You talk of it, as if it were a place about the size of Regent Park in London.

As far as I have gathered, it is more like Lake District**. Plenty of place for a Triassic biotope to graze beside a Permian one.

I spent at least a month on Karoo, and palaeocritti site is really excellent on Karoo fossils.

I never saw a Permian species found (as far as holotype is concerned at least) in same locality as a Triassic one.

Karoo is divided into assemblage zones and each of them is big enough to include more than one village.

"In the mid-west there are many examples of fossil ungulates, such as sabre tooth cats, camels, etc, preserved on top of beds with dino bones."

Where would you find a sabretoothed cat over a dino?

Are you sure you are not talking about either sabre toothed cats above creatceous rocks without dinos or, reverse, dinos below palaeocene rocks without Uintatherium in them?

By the way, unlike Uintatherium, a sabre toothed cat is not an ungulate. You meant "early extinct mammals, some of which are ungulates" I presume.

Now, show me one or two or three of the places in midwest where you not only get a palaeocene rock layer above a cretaceous or jurassic one, but actually a palaeocene land vertebrate fossil find above a createceous or jurassic or triassic land vertebrate fossil find.

"Fossils of U. anceps have been found in the Bridger and Wakashie rock formations, in the states of Wyoming and Utah near the Uinta Mountains, which are commemorated in the generic name."

Now, rock formations, unlike localities, are in certain ways geological abstractions, I presume.

But is there even a dino found near the Uinta mountains?

If so, how far from the Uintatherium?

"Of course, nowhere in the world are fossil ungulates mixed or below dinosaurs, and never are either group below pelycosaurs. As I keep saying the stratigraphic order is never violated."

So far, neither is it kept in any one place you have shown me.

"Many places in the Midwest" is too unspecific. Karoo is too big to be called a place. It's more like, unless I get it totally wrong, a large landscape like the Scanian Plain (Skåneslätten) in the South tip of Scandinavian Peninsula or by now, since 1660, of Sweden.

"And the succession of fossils is identical to what is observed on the surface; the only limitation is that the fossil to be observed in a core must be smaller than the core."

I have so far made no argument claiming to either explain or explode the succession of marine invertebrates.***

And the big difference between size of a drill core and size of a dug hole is that drill cores work better for entire fossils of marine invertebrates than for entire fossils of land vertebrates.

My point on where Brian Switek stands stands. The layers he is talking of would have been "mapped" rather by fossil content (i e essentially pre-Flood biotopes, unless I am mistaken) than by visual difference of rock type.

But suppose there was a genuine exceptionless layer superposition so that everywhere a layer with dinos superposes genuinely, rather than by wiggling layer definitions, with uintatherium and smilodon layers above and pelycosaur layers below : that could have been arranged by demons directing water currents during flood.

The Catholic Church exorcises water before using it for holy water or for baptismal water. When Christ stilled the storms and waves, He was angry at SOMEONE who was there doing the rocking of the boat. Demons enjoy deception as well as destruction.

* By internet, not in corpore.

** I was going to say Yellowstone, but that is too big.

*** Just starting one half explanation earlier, when it comes to conodonts and what were the other blighters?

Update
through 21-V-2015, St Valentine Bishop, martyred with three boys.

Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You said: "The layers he is talking of would have been "mapped" rather by fossil content "

No. the mapping is based on physical relationships. The order of the layers is determined by superposition, not fossils. The order of fossils is determined only after the stratigraphic order is proven. Only then, once the order of fossils is proven in many locations from physical relationships, can the fossils alone be used to determine the ages of rocks.

You said: "...smilodon layers above and pelycosaur layers below : that could have been arranged by demons directing water currents during flood."

Very unlikely since all the associated plants and marine fossils are in the same order. In other words you would need some sorting mechanism in the flood that would sort large and small pelycosaur bones below large and small dino bones. And the pelycosaurs always end up with the same microfossil marine organisms and large plant fossils. With absolutely no mixing. Not even a little bit.

You asked a couple times about finding even one place where the Pelycosaurs are physically below dinosaur fossils. I pointed out such a case earlier. What do you think? If this does not impress you, then why did you ask?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"You asked a couple times about finding even one place where the Pelycosaurs are physically below dinosaur fossils. I pointed out such a case earlier. What do you think? If this does not impress you, then why did you ask?"

Because the case you pointed out was just stratigraphically "below" not physically literally below.

I pointed that out a few times too.

"No. the mapping is based on physical relationships. The order of the layers is determined by superposition, not fossils. The order of fossils is determined only after the stratigraphic order is proven. Only then, once the order of fossils is proven in many locations from physical relationships, can the fossils alone be used to determine the ages of rocks."

To start with, yes.

There was even a time when chalk and slate was all from Cretaceous, I suppose.

But once fossils have been assigned, I think many layers have been considered as different from each other because of fossils with already assigned "ages".

As to your answer about the demons, you missed the point about an artistic deliberate activity. They knew how they could use such a thing and also waited these centuries in order to use it. IF you are correct about stratigraphy in every place being proven independently of fossils, which Switeks photo at least didn't show.

Added later:
If you are in any doubt as to what I mean, I mean that (novelistic reconstruction, not pretending to be prophecy):

  • God tells demons they had seduced humanity, except Noah, so far they deserved to get them, He was providing water, they should make sure no one outside Arc survived, and livestock too.

  • Demons respond with a "yeah" and grasp this gives some options for preparing further deceptions. And ask if they can pile animals according to a scale of perfection (there is such a scale, it's just not evolution based) so as to give an illusion of evolution.

  • God denies them (as far as I have seen so far) land vertebrates, pelycosaurs straight under dinos, dinos straight under Uintatheria but grants them (if I got you right on how EVERYWHERE layers are proven physically, if that is what you claim, no layer anywhere "proven" only by fossil content) using marine invertebrates surrounding land vertebrates.


If you wonder if I find this at all realistic, look at St Thomas:

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 4) that "all bodies are ruled by the rational spirit of life"; and Gregory says (Dial. iv, 6), that "in this visible world nothing takes place without the agency of the invisible creature."

I answer that, It is generally found both in human affairs and in natural things that every particular power is governed and ruled by the universal power; as, for example, the bailiff's power is governed by the power of the king. Among the angels also, as explained above (55, 3; 108, 1), the superior angels who preside over the inferior possess a more universal knowledge. Now it is manifest that the power of any individual body is more particular than the power of any spiritual substance; for every corporeal form is a form individualized by matter, and determined to the "here and now"; whereas immaterial forms are absolute and intelligible. Therefore, as the inferior angels who have the less universal forms, are ruled by the superior; so are all corporeal things ruled by the angels. This is not only laid down by the holy doctors, but also by all philosophers who admit the existence of incorporeal substances.


and a bit further on:

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 8,9) that the angels use corporeal seed to produce certain effects. But they cannot do this without causing local movement. Therefore bodies obey them in local motion.

I answer that, As Dionysius says (Div. Nom. vii): "Divine wisdom has joined the ends of the first to the principles of the second." Hence it is clear that the inferior nature at its highest point is in conjunction with superior nature. Now corporeal nature is below the spiritual nature. But among all corporeal movements the most perfect is local motion, as the Philosopher proves (Phys. viii, 7). The reason of this is that what is moved locally is not as such in potentiality to anything intrinsic, but only to something extrinsic--that is, to place. Therefore the corporeal nature has a natural aptitude to be moved immediately by the spiritual nature as regards place. Hence also the philosophers asserted that the supreme bodies are moved locally by the spiritual substances; whence we see that the soul moves the body first and chiefly by a local motion.

Reply to Objection 1. There are in bodies other local movements besides those which result from the forms; for instance, the ebb and flow of the sea does not follow from the substantial form of the water, but from the influence of the moon; and much more can local movements result from the power of spiritual substances.

Reply to Objection 2. The angels, by causing local motion, as the first motion, can thereby cause other movements; that is, by employing corporeal agents to produce these effects, as a workman employs fire to soften iron.

Reply to Objection 3. The power of an angel is not so limited as is the power of the soul. Hence the motive power of the soul is limited to the body united to it, which is vivified by it, and by which it can move other things. But an angel's power is not limited to any body; hence it can move locally bodies not joined to it.


Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Q 110, A 1 sed contra and corpus, A 3 sed contra, corpus and answers to objections.

Howard F
+Hans-Georg Lundahl you said: case you pointed out was just stratigraphically "below" not physically literally below."

No. The reference I provided to the Karoo basin in South Africa is an example where they pely's are physically (and stratigraphically) below the dinos. Here is the reference again:

Smith, R. M. H. (1995). Changing fluvial environments across the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Karoo Basin, South Africa and possible causes of tetrapod extinctions. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 117(1), 81-104.

You said: "But once fossils have been assigned, I think many layers have been considered as different from each other because of fossils with already assigned "ages"."

Not really. The order of fossils is not circular, but determined by stratigraphic relationships. This always comes first, and the fossils come second. once the order has been firmly established, commonly using cliff exposures, they the fossils can be used as a guide.

You said: As to your answer about the demons,

I never asked about demons

Hans-Georg Lundahl
You asked about mechanism for stratification of marine invertebrate fossils.

You meant the South African example, not the Kansas one.

I have so far NOT been able to check this source on paper, but I DO know very well that as far as I checked Karoo precisely on Palaeocritti, never ever did I find Permian holotypes under Triassic or Lower Jurassic ones.

Now, I did write the South African Geological association to ask them if I got anything wrong, but have so far got no answer.

I am NOT quite sure you are aware of the size of Karoo. I thought you might have misunderstood the case by underestimating the size of "location" (something Karoo is far to big to be). So far, I have neither been able to verify your source on paper, nor heard from the people I checked with.

To make my criteria perfectly clear:

  • 1) below means in my book along a line from upper and through lower fossil down to the centre of earth, ideally;

  • 2) I am willing to accept a deviation of 45°;

  • 3) where a horizontal or mainly horizontal relationship has turned into a vertical one by folding, that does not quite fit my criteria either.


Suppose these criteria were met in Karoo, it would make Karoo rather unique on earth as far as I know.

There are not that many places on earth where either Palaeocene / Danian meets Cretaceous / Maastrichtian (three, I looked at each of them as best as I could) OR the line crossed is between Palaeozoic and Mesozoic.

In Yacoraite, to take the Danian / Maastrichtian meeting point, there was a question of snail fossils, as far as I recall, and on top of that I found no real indication (but I would hardly call different snail species a real one anyway, land vertebrate biassed as I am) that the reason fossils are ascribed to two eras is not simply there is a line ascribed to an event thought to have been boundary between Cretaceous and Tertiary.

So, I am awaiting an opportunity to verify a really LOCAL above and below of pelycosaurs and dinos in Karoo.

The reason I was not impressed is I feel I know Karoo - as far as one can know a locality from a distance and from a limited palaeontological perspective at all.

I tried my usual two library resources. And a third one.

If you like, feel free to send me a photo copy of the pages.

Will give you adress in a pm.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Someone Considered Me Psychotic, Because I Know Cultural History of Early XX C. Better than He

1) Creation vs. Evolution : How Smart Was Ancient Man? · 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Someone Considered Me Psychotic, Because I Know Cultural History of Early XX C. Better than He

And content of Tarzan novels too, by the way.

tredzwater
[quoting two of his four paragraphs, all were relevant to previous parts of debate, but the two to what came after]



Forget Mary's abusive adolescence and womanhood. Forget that she was almost never queen and had to fight for her throne. Mary's attitude toward Protestants, the EXACT SAME attitude that Protestant rulers had toward Catholics, was a direct result of the religious brainwashing of her childhood.

Had she, and all the other rulers engaged in religious war, not been warped by their childhood religious indoctrination; had they not lived in a society where religion was in the very air that people breathed, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation would never have happened. …

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Indeed, she did not think it was a mortal sin to burn heretics.

Nor did her husband King Philip of Spain - but he thought it was stupid to do it in England. However, she felt she had to obey the law of 1401 ... a legislation which had been very popular when patriots and artists were outraged at early Lollardry along with the Catholic motive for opposing it firmly, but which was no longer so.

Had she, and all the other rulers engaged in religious war, not been warped by their childhood religious indoctrination; had they not lived in a society where religion was in the very air that people breathed, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation would never have happened.

Indeed. To many of the early XXth C. Darwin was in the very air they breathed. And the XXth C was worse than the XVIth. Much worse.

tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - I disagree.

  • 1. Darwin wasn't "in the very air that people breathed". It is only since the 1980s that Darwinian evolution was taught in public schools. In the Deep South, where I live, it has only been taught in the last 20 years. Some school boards, like Austin TX, much of SC, NC, Mississippi, Alabama and rural Georgia, science teachers are STILL struggling to have evolution a viable part of the curriculum...against school boards that want to teach thinly-disguised creationism.

  • 2. The XX century wasn't worse than the XVI. The twentieth saw two world wars which, because of human military technology, NOT anything to do with Darwin, killed millions of people. But, outside of those wars, western civilization is far, far better for the average citizen.

    There was universal education in the twentieth, affordable health care, employment for anyone who cared to work (particularly in the post-war eras), good housing and a nearly doubled lifespan. No one had to worry that some lord of the manor would decide to put housing land to pasture and kick whole villages out of their homes. If conscripted for the military, twentieth century soldiers were well-paid, well-housed and well-fed. After service, they got paid to go to school. No one had to worry that some drunken knights would ride by and steal their belongings and rape their women. It became a tragedy when a child died before adulthood, instead of something expected for 50% of all children born. The twentieth century saw the rise of antibiotics, safe surgery, cancer treatments that worked, the triumph over polio, vaccines to fight measles (which blinded thousands of children yearly) and the total defeat of smallpox.

    People think that we have much more to worry about with drugs and crime but it is nowhere nearly as bad as it was in the 16th century. No drugs, but lots of alcohol and 94% of women below the poverty line had to prostitute themselves in order to survive. They have found the skeletons of 14-16-year old girls completely ridden with tertiary syphilis. They'd have had to contract it at age 8 or 9 for that to happen.

    The average working man's diet was bread and corn with meat or fish a few times a year. Orphans were sold to whoever was willing to pay to take them...and work them to death (a practice that continued well into the 19th century). Gangs of children, often as young as 5 and 6, roamed urban streets and stole whatever wasn't nailed down. The penalty was death in felony theft cases. In fact, in the sixteenth century, you could be hung, boiled in oil or have a hand cut off for stealing less than 3 ounces of meat. If you came to a town and had no money and no one to vouch for you, you would be beaten across the town line...even if you had done nothing wrong.

    In the 19th and early 20th century Native American children were stolen from their families, by government order, warehoused in "good Christian schools" where their language and their culture were beaten and starved out of them. This didn't end until 1936. It's since WWII that secular education has so improved lives that ghetto kids can become astrophysicists, if they work at it.

    If you volunteer to go back to the sixteenth century, make sure your contract says you'll be royal or noble.

    Otherwise, you're toast.


Hans-Georg Lundahl
  • 1) "Darwin wasn't "in the very air that people breathed". It is only since the 1980s that Darwinian evolution was taught in public schools. In the Deep South, where I live, it has only been taught in the last 20 years."

    The men who made XXth C. nighmarish were generally not from the Deep South.

    A proof that Darwinism was - over in Europe - in the air that men breathed is the success of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

    Or Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard.

    In fact, a theory can be in the air that men breathe without being taught in public schools - as in schools everyone has to attend to.

    Back in the day of Mary Tudor, there were no such things.

  • 2) "The twentieth saw two world wars which, because of human military technology, NOT anything to do with Darwin, killed millions of people."

    Camps for enslavement and at least occasionally killing were not technically impossible in the XVIth C., only morally so.

    Sterilisation of people due to their race (and yes some from South have contributed before Hitler, but they were into Darwin and Galton) went on in certain countries for decades.

  • "But, outside of those wars, western civilization is far, far better for the average citizen."

    Er, no. Killing of 100 or 300 heretics affected the average Englishman far less than the average European was affected 40 - 45 by deportations of 100.000's or even millions of Jews.

    Still 40 - 45 is a relatively short period. Soviet Union has had Gulags from soon after 1917 up to 1990. China still has Lao Gai. US has very many private prisons with very many prisoners - and judges are investing stock in private prisons. That is still or was till recently affecting far more people than the burning of 200 or 400 heretics. I don't know the exact number for Mary Tudor, but it is not greater than that.

  • "There was universal education in the twentieth"

    One of the Hell holes, yes I know, I have been through it. It has produced Columbine massacre and people have then tried to blame it on gun access.

  • "affordable health care"

    Before Reformation, monasteries provided poor sick people with shelter and nursing while they also paid doctros to see them - or in some cases doctors came for free, because it was good practise and an honour.

  • "employment for anyone who cared to work (particularly in the post-war eras)"

    There was obviously far less unemployment before industrialism. And the 60's are gone. The employment rate which XXth C. saw in 60's is probably lower than what Middle Ages and Renaissance saw throughout the period. And the unemployment rate obviously higher.

  • "good housing"

    When 10s or 100s of thousands in France have to repaint to get rid of mould and still have to throw away clothes (I just saw a news article about it) or if not that have other housing related problems, I think XVIth C. was superior in housing.

  • "and a nearly doubled lifespan."

    What exactly do you consider the lifespan was in XVIth C. and what do you base it on?

    Lots of people are deluded about this.

    If you didn't die as a baby or in teens, you lived perhaps ten years shorter in medium than you do now. 64 years instead of 74.

  • "No one had to worry that some lord of the manor would decide to put housing land to pasture and kick whole villages out of their homes."

    In England that may indeed have happened under the time we are talking about. Enclosures were a vile thing. In Palestine it is in the XXth C. it happened. You paid a customary rent to a landlord in Beiroot or Cairo, then he sold it to Zionist Jews to get a bit more tobacco in his water pipe and you found out the new landlord wanted not the rent but rather to provide land for immigrants. In both centuries these situations are marginal compared to the rest of the world.

    [In quantity, not in moral quality, I might be wise to add.]

  • "If conscripted for the military, twentieth century soldiers were well-paid, well-housed and well-fed."

    Even in trench wars? Tell that to the guys who fought at the Somme and at the Marne! If you don't know the story, read chapter "through the dead marshes" in Lord of the Rings - it is based in trench war trauma, and Tolkien was even not the worst suffering, since he was cavalry. And tell it to the guys who fought at Stalingrad too, both sides!

  • "After service, they got paid to go to school."

    Ah, that is where the school fanaticism comes from. First fanatics against Germans (not saying there was no criminality on German side, but US soldiers were fanatic about it), then returned home and came from school as fanatical about schooling - and starting it at the age they were after war, they were obviously not in a position to get real education from the education facilities.

  • "No one had to worry that some drunken knights would ride by and steal their belongings and rape their women."

    That is not the German experience with occupants after WW-II. They did have to worry.

  • "It became a tragedy when a child died before adulthood, instead of something expected for 50% of all children born."

    I think rather less than 50%, but I admit dying in childhood is rarer. However, dying before natural birth moment is very much more frequent since Roe vs Wade. Back in XVIth C abortion drugs were an offense for those taking them and for those providing them - in both cases punishable with death. As it should be.

  • "The twentieth century saw the rise of antibiotics,"

    And of antibiotics resistent bacteria.

  • "safe surgery,"

    And surgery for evil purposes, like lobotomy, sterilisation, and some of the abortions are also by surgery.

  • "cancer treatments that worked,"

    And a cancer inducing environment.

    [More than previously.]

  • "the triumph over polio, vaccines to fight measles (which blinded thousands of children yearly) and the total defeat of smallpox."

    I think these diseases had come to the foreground some time between XVIth and XXth C - and were, excepting smallpox, not very common in XVIth C. But I could be wrong, some blind and lame back then could be cases of measles or polio without its being identified.

  • "People think that we have much more to worry about with drugs and crime but it is nowhere nearly as bad as it was in the 16th century. No drugs, but lots of alcohol and 94% of women below the poverty line had to prostitute themselves in order to survive."

    94% of women below poverty line? Did you say XVIth of XIXth? And what is exactly poverty line? Sth concerning back then the rather few who were sent to poor houses?

    I would rather believe it of the XIXth than of the XVIth C. Honour was stronger before the Reformation, and even afterwards it took time to sap it that much.

    Lots of alcohol? No doubt lots of beer and cider, and in certain countries wine. But that is not sth which compares to living like an outcast and becoming agressive over taking illegal drugs, nor is alcohol comparable to cokaine or heroine, whatever might be the case with hashish.

  • "They have found the skeletons of 14-16-year old girls completely ridden with tertiary syphilis. They'd have had to contract it at age 8 or 9 for that to happen."

    Link to article appreciated.

    I very much doubt it was XVIth C. and if so I'd put it down to Elisabethan rather than Mary's reign. Or to Henry VIII - who seems to have had syphilis himself.

    [I was relying on Belloc, who may have been relying on a doctor making a post-mortem diagnosis, rather than as he should on contemporary evidence. I think I saw an article, and it was probably not acquired at age 8 or 9, but at birth by a syphilitic mother.]

  • "The average working man's diet was bread and corn with meat or fish a few times a year."

    That is a joke. For XVIth C. at least - whatever be the case for Manchester of XIXth C.

    If people were required to fast from meat but allowed to eat fish on Fridays, it would seem such a diet would have made complying with this Catholic rule so easy that Reformers would not have had an argument ad populum (in the worst sense) by allowing meat on Fridays and in Lent.

  • "Orphans were sold to whoever was willing to pay to take them...and work them to death (a practice that continued well into the 19th century). Gangs of children, often as young as 5 and 6, roamed urban streets and stole whatever wasn't nailed down."

    It is very possible this CONTINUED into the XIXth C. from the XVIIIth C. It is also very certain that in the XVIth C. it hadn't started yet. You are talking about conditions produced by the Industrial Revolution.

  • "In fact, in the sixteenth century, you could be hung, boiled in oil or have a hand cut off for stealing less than 3 ounces of meat."

    Don't overdo it.

    Tell me one case where anyone was boiled in oil in the XVIth C.

    I know one in the first, on personal orders of Domitian - St John. But that was not a customary penalty, it was inventiveness and creativity on part of persecutors of Christians.

    [I was wrong. In England - not everywhere in Europe, but in England - boiling (not sure if it was in oil or in water) was accepted as an execution method in 1531 - same year that Henry VIII broke with Rome. See below.**]

  • "If you came to a town and had no money and no one to vouch for you, you would be beaten across the town line...even if you had done nothing wrong."

    That would be one product of the Reformation or otherwise the Reformation of it. Catholicism usually goes with generous almsgiving. And the degree you describe, I think it took a century after the Reformation before it would be common - perhaps even the Poor Laws (1570's, under Elisabeth!) contributed, since they meant poor were vouched for by poor houses.

  • "In the 19th and early 20th century Native American children were stolen from their families, by government order, warehoused in "good Christian schools" where their language and their culture were beaten and starved out of them."

    Yes, in a culture that was imbued with not just budding Darwinism but also a few centuries of Protestantism. Mary Tudor would not have done such a thing. And seeing that Reformers or early Protestants soon after her started the "parens patriae" principle, you might start to get an idea that she was trying to protect England from sth which was really bad.

  • "This didn't end until 1936."

    That early? I thought such things went on till 1970's? Or do you mean by private initiative as opposed to government regulated ones?

    My sister was stolen from ma in 1988. Because a shrink from a Communist country considered my Christian mother "mentally ill".

    That kind of thing did NOT happen in the XVIth C.

  • "It's since WWII that secular education has so improved lives that ghetto kids can become astrophysicists, if they work at it."

    In the Catholic world previous to Reformation, poor men could become professors in Theology. By non-secular, by clerical edication. Rich men wnet out of their way to make themselves poor, to merit the honour - St Thomas Aquinas was born as a nobleman in Roccasecca and insisted, and insisted very much, to become a beggar, living in Sorbonne of what he could beg, while preaching, while teaching and earlier while studying.

    Sorbonne was founded by Robert de Sorbon. Now, "de Sorbon" does not mean he was a noble. He was a rich man, but "de Sorbon" means he came "FROM Sorbon" which is a few hundred miles or so away from Paris.

    Wiki : Sorbon
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbon


    "It was the birthplace of Robert de Sorbon, (1201–1274), who was a chaplain and Confessor to King Louis IX of France, as well as the founder of the Sorbonne, the University of Paris."

    Recap : he is born in the Middle of Nowhere. He becomes a priest and a holy King confesses his sins to him. He becomes rich enough to found the Collège de Sorbonne.

    Note, these days "Sorbonne" is often used as synonymous with "University of Paris" but back then in was one of several colleges at the University - same function at studies, but very different social background from Merton College, Magdalen College, etc at Oxford now. The latter are clearly with a privileged access for the rich. When Robert de Sorbon started the college, it was to spare students the hardship of begging.

    So, yes, XVIth C was in some ways inferior to XIIIth and XXth. To XIIIth C. before it and to XXth C. after it. And Protestantism was a byproduct of the Rich-Man-Ism, a k a Humanism.

    But in certain ways XXth C was still worse than XVIth even - since the full evil of Protestantism came with some delay


tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - You are using the popularity of a novel as evidence of widespread early knowledge of Darwinian evolution?

"Tarzan" was based on earlier writings, as Rudyard Kipling's "Mowgli" and even earlier folktales about feral children. The meme goes back before Romulus and Remus of Roman times.

You are insane.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"You are using the popularity of a novel as evidence of widespread early knowledge of Darwinian evolution?"

By 1900 UK was more Darwinian than Bible believing. That is a fact independently of that. I generally do not consider belief in the theory as synonymous with detailed knowledge of it. I have more detailed knowledge of it than many believers. But here we are talking not knowledge but popularity.

Popularity of Tarzan is not JUST Tarzan as raised by beasts, but :

  • fact that he identifies himself as Tar Man Gani (white tall ape) and negroes as Go Man Gani (black tall ape) and apes/gorillas (very tall chimps?) as Man Gani (tall apes);
  • fact that Opar and other countries with dinosaurs in Tarzan's time are portrayed as "a land that time forgot" (exact quote) or "at an earlier stage of evolution" (half remembered)
  • fact that Survival of the Fittest is as much or more preached in Tarzan as in Sherlock Holmes.


As said, the air was heavily polluted with Darwinism. And a Darwin believer back then would hardly have qualified himself as Dawkins once did as "morally an Antidarwinist" though that is too much of a self compliment [on Dawkins’ part].

If you are not aware that this was dominant in 1900 and the following decades, you are no good as a historian.

My maternal grandfather became an agnostic though his older brother was Salvation Army. His wife had turned atheist before meeting him, and was encouraged by her father, a blacksmith. Their birthyears are 1900 and 1911. Thus, both were born before the WW-I and before the Russian Revolution. And both wanted, despite their daughter (only child!) to raise me as a Darwinist and they succeeded my very early years. Age 6 to 10 I was a Darwinist, last of these years only trying to reconcile it with the Bible.

[Note, this is Sweden, Europe, not Deep South, US]

I will not give them blame for having been extremely precocious in apostasy. They floated with their times, simple as that.

I will in fact use popularity of other novels as evidence for other awarenesses.

Edith Nesbit could not have gotten popularity for Harding's Luck, unless there had been some nostalgia for Cavaliers - so England was not a Puritan country in 1908 and 1909.

Precisely as One flew over the Cuckoo's nest would not have been successful without a wide awareness by 1962 (novel) and even more by 1975 (film) that psychiatry was abusing its inmates. And Lord of the Rings presupposes an awareness that power corrupts (could not have been popular in old Babylon!) and its later success (after the first decade or two) is linked to environmental awareness also. It is therefore written later than people writing optimistic nonsense of what an Industrial world would bring.

Now, Tarzan had a popularity based not on a real awareness, but on a false one : Darwinism was popular.

tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - But, you are IGNORING the fact that the feral child meme existed long, long, long before the advent of Tarzan and has been found in many civilizations. Therefore, you cannot claim that "Darwinism" is the foundation for the book.

Tarzan is simply Mowgli set in Africa and rebranded for xx century readers.

You are not only insane, you cannot reason logically. I first learned formal debate when I entered high school, at age 11. I joined the NFL club at my school and had an awesome (and terrifying) Debate coach. By age 12, I could reason circles around you.

You fail...EPICALLY.

[This is what made me think he was somewhat boyish ... last two sentences here.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
You are ignoring the fact that feral child meme is not the Tarzan book.

In earlier manifestations of feral child meme, for instance Romulus and Remus, it is not the she wolf that teaches them speach or communication skills.

Therefore Darwinism is very clearly a huge part of foundation, of the book.

Just because two books or stories include same meme does not mean they are same story.

Try again.

tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - Bullshit.

In Tarzan, apes didn't teach him to speak. He learned English from humans...as Mowgli learned Hindi from humans. Burroughs presented Tarzan as the quintessential English gentleman who despises civilization while retaining all of the virtues we equate with civilization. There isn't a speck of Darwinism in the book. All Tarzan learns from the apes is what any juvenile ape would learn.

The same is true for Mowgli. He may have been raised by wolves but he learned to be human from humans.

"Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān", written by Ibn Tufail in the early 12th century, presents the exact, same meme but with a heavy emphasis on self-discovery. What Hayy learned about being human he got from humans...and this was many centuries before Darwinian evolution became public.

Even earlier, Atalanta was suckled and cared for by a bear sow and learned to hunt like a wild bear. It was only after being found by hunters that she learned the ways of humans.

Tarzan is just an Edwardian epic of the "noble savage" and feral child memes morphed into one hell of a good read. Borroughs stated, many times, that he started writing fiction for the money. He had no other agenda than to become rich...which he did...and more power to him. If Borroughs could see you presenting it as evidence for the universality of evolution, he'd fall out of his coffin...laughing hysterically.

Again, you fail. Time to take your meds.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Your debate team coach didn't teach you to check what you are talking about, did he?

Or did you check the Tarzan story via the Disney film?

"In Tarzan, apes didn't teach him to speak. He learned English from humans...as Mowgli learned Hindi from humans."

Sure, Tarzan learnt ENGLISH from humans. He also learned "language of the great apes" (a language Edgar Rice Burroughs spent some time on, in fact, though perhaps less than Tolkien spent on Quenya) from - the apes.

Wiki : Mangani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangani


"Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani (meaning "great-ape") is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied (with modifications) to humans. The Mangani are represented as the apes who foster and raise Tarzan."

The last sentence sets Tarzan very clearly apart from more traditional (and to my adult non-Darwinist mind more realistic) treatments of feral child meme. The she wolf nursed Romulus and Remus while they were very small babies, she did not raise them to live like wolves.

When feral children have really been raised to a certain age by wolves, they are when found incapable of living among men. It is absolutely a Darwinist dream to imagine that great apes could have sufficent mental capacities (because having evolved along with humans on same lineage of primates for so long) to not just nurse a human baby but actually raise a human to a somewhat functional adulthood, like very functional for djungle and just needing to reset the codes for speaking with Englishmen too.

"There isn't a speck of Darwinism in the book."

Oh dear God, how come you created such a simple mind without reserving it for you?

Listen, boy, your Darwinism detection kit is severely damaged. And I mean severely.

Also your debate team coach didn't teach you to check what you are arguing against.

"If Borroughs could see you presenting it as evidence for the universality of evolution"

I was not saying evolution was universally believed - I am saying it was universally felt to be the progressive and scientific option. That back when he wrote a man resisting evolution in the place where he lived would have been considered old show.

"It was in the air" does not mean "it was universally believed". Not necessarily. Sth which is universally believed can therefore also be universally in the air - or it can be universally neglected. But sth which is in the air need not be universally believed, it suffices if it is universally challenging.

tredzwater
Haldol. Definitely Haldol.

[Probably didn’t even bother to check the reference to Mangani … once I disagreed with him, I was in his eyes a nut case, whatever my arguments, and the more so the better I argued …]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Plus you evolutionists seem to be in league with shrinks .... I know one case at least when a creationist has been persecuted as precisely schizophrenic and as "needing haldol".

NOT a nice way to treat people. NOT an honest way to treat debating or what other people in society believe.

Can you get back to civil, if not civilised? Pretty please?

To give you a good example +tredzwater , I will ask you to forgive you for calling you "boy", I had simply forgotten you were 71.

[He did neither forgive, as in say he had done so, nor ask for forgiveness for his uncivil words. Btw, whereever he had put the info, it is there no longer. Perhaps a try at gaslighting* me? Or perhaps it's still there, but simply I didn't find it.]

ozzymandi
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Oh my goodness the creationist and I.D's get everywhere!!!??? They are just a disease cured by logic, if that does not work ignore them,They do not even Deserve a response

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Was that too me or about me?

I am a creationists and I think Tarzan and Mowgli were Evolutionist works. Not totally apparent to every US reader at the time, perhaps, but very clearly in Darwin precocious England, Scottland, Germany, Sweden ...

Btw, if we "get everywhere" we can hardly be considered a disease, can we? We represent the older consensus of the Western World. That is not a fringe position, whatever it may look like now.


* TvTropes : Gaslighting
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gaslighting


** A few clips on capital punishment, featuring post-Reformation England:

"Under the reign of Henry VIII, the numbers of those put to death are estimated as high as 72,000."

Probably in part because he considered loyalty to Catholicism and armed resistance on behalf of it, and in some cases even non-compliance with himself, as high treason.

"Boiling to death was another penalty approved in 1531, and there are records to show some people boiled for up to two hours before death took them."

1531 was the year in which Henry VIII broke with Rome. I knew it was going to the worse from then, but not that it was becoming THAT much worse and THAT quickly.

I skip here a sentence concerning burnings, which concerned people outside England an pre-Reformation too, and get on:

"In Britain, the number of capital offenses continually increased until the 1700's when two hundred and twenty-two crimes were punishable by death. These included stealing from a house in the amount of forty shillings, stealing from a shop the value of five shillings, robbing a rabbit warren, cutting down a tree, and counterfeiting tax stamps."

This would be the kind of anti-poor-men-legislation that Humanism and Reformation tended to.

"However, juries tended not to convict when the penalty was great and the crime was not."

That would be a bit before and up to abolishing of these penalties. Probably this was not the case when the legislations were being made and the jury was not lenient if it was made of Round Head Puritans under Cromwell.

Source : History of the Death Penalty
by michael h. reggio
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/history.html


Having a debate where this came up, will post article with comments on the Medieval parts of it.