The Paluxy Mantracks Story

The creationist book that jumpstarted the young-earth movement as Henry Morrisʼ, The Genesis Flood, published in the early 1960s. In that book he featured photographs of individual slabs of limestone that contained what looked like a giant human footprint in the middle of each slab. The slabs were allegedly dug up near the Paluxy river in Texas. The Paluxy river region soon became a Mecca (or holy pilgrimage site) for young-earth creationists (though some young-earthers like those at Loma Linda University, had cross-sectioned some of the original limestone slabs and wrote a report early on that said they were just carvings, not genuine human prints). By the mid-1980s the existence of “man tracks” in Paluxy was being questioned even by the two largest and most influential young-earth institutions, The Institute for Creation Research or ICR (that Henry Morris himself had founded), and Answers in Genesis or AiG. Recently, I digitized the color slides of Glen Kuban, who played a major role in convincing ICR that the Paluxy “mantracks” were not human. Glenʼs slides will soon be on the web.

John Morris Of ICR Speaking In 1986 On The Paluxy Data:

“It would now be improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution, in the light of these questions, there is still much that is not known about the tracks and continued research is in order.” (Jan. 1986)

AiGʼs Recent Comments On The Paluxy “Man Prints”:

“Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks have long since withdrawn their support. Some of the allegedly human tracks may be artefacts of erosion of dinosaur tracks obscuring the claw marks. There is a need for properly documented research on the tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.”

Snelling Of Aig Tried To Keep The Paluxy Data Alive Back In 1986:

“In order to discredit creationists, not long ago the evolutionists argued that many so-called human-like footprints were nothing but erosion marks, carvings, and “midnight chisel marks”. Ironically, these SAME footprints will probably now be claimed to be the footprints of an unknown dinosaur because of some perplexing stains! All of which is a sober reminder — none of us have ever seen dinosaurs make footprints.” (Creation (Ex Nihilo), Andrew Snelling, March, 1986, Vol. 8, No.2, p. 37)

E.T.B.ʼs Comment On Snellingʼs 1986 Remarks:

The “mantrack” discoveries were not all made at once. First, the well-defined carvings were found (being sold during the depression), one print per limestone slab, right in the middle of the slab. Thousands of loose limestone slabs of different sizes line the shores of the Paluxy. Anyone can one pick up and take it home to “work on.” Carl Baugh or Henry Morris or Burdick quoted an old-timer who said they “saw the print right in the rock,” but did they mean they saw such such prints in situ? A later interviewer went back to the same old-timer and asked them where they saw the rock, and the old-timer answered, “It was on the back of so-and-soʼs truck.” There are also confessions by carvers and their kin, how they used a loose limestone slab, a hammer and chisel, and acid on rags, to smooth out the carved human prints they created. The carvings were what the earliest tales of “man tracks” at Paluxy were based on, they also featured the most well-defined “prints” (though featuring amateurish anatomical errors). Several such limestone slabs featuring alleged human prints were purchased by Loma Linda (creationist 7th Day Adventist) University and cross-sectioned and declared to be nothing but carvings by YECs at Loma Linda who wrote a report on their findings and doubts.

But the carvings initiated more YEC interest, and soon some YECʼs visited Paluxy and made the film, “Footprints in Stone,” but for all of their searching and filming they never found any in situ man prints that resembled the carvings, they only found trails of indistinct oblong impressions that they claimed were made by humans and/or giant humans. (They also found isolated wearings in the rocks that were not part of any trail but that they claimed could be viewed as a “print” of a “human” sort.)

Glen Kuban pointed out in Origins Research (a creationist publication begun with ICR seed money), that there were nearby trackways in Paluxy that showed indistinct oblong track impressions, and in those trackways the oblong impressions were mixed with tridactyl impressions, and vice versa, as you followed the trackways along their full length. So, evolutionists have no trouble identifying the indistinct oblong trackways as dinosaurian in origin.

There are also many erosion features, shallow oblong holes, along both banks of the Paluxy river — these miniature potholes were carved out by water streaming in one direction down the river. They are of an extremely wide variety of sizes and shapes.

In some cases like the famous “Von Daniken print” (a single “human-foot shaped” feature in Paluxy that was featured in Von Danikenʼs film, “Chariots of the Gods,” and in creationist publications, including Weston-Smithʼs book, Manʼs Origin and Manʼs Destiny), both Von Daniken and later creationists left the gravel on one side of the feature, and even wetted it in, to make it look like the printʼs right side was as well defined as its left side, but in fact the “printʼs” right side does not exist at all, but is flush with the rock, and it only exists when you leave gravel there or “wet the print” to create a “right side of the foot” in your mindʼs imagination. (You can see how this works when you view photos taken from different angles with the print clean of gravel and not wetted.) Even John Morris noted his own doubts concerning the Von Daniken print. Morris admitted when it was first photographed it had only four “toes” (the first two being equal-sized in an anatomically abnormal fashion), but years later a fifth “toe” began appearing in photos, and even Morris suggests that the “fifth toe” was not originally in evidence, but probably resulted from later tampering.

The story of the Paluxy “manprints” debacle appeared in Creation/Evolution Journal in which Ronnie Hastingʼs published his daily journal of interactions with ICR researchers who came to look at what Kuban had found, and their reactions, at first, dismissal, then taking their own more careful second and third looks, and finally admitting they couldnʼt really see the “human-ness” of the trackways any more than Kuban could:

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists
  by R.J. Hastings

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists- The Trail Continues
  by Ronnie J. Hastings

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists-The Trail Goes On
  by Ronnie J. Hastings

• Tracking Those Incredible Creationists
  by William Thwaites

Kubanʼs photos and detailed site diagrams were also published in black and white in Origins Research, a creationist journal that originated with seed money from ICR. Copies of past issues of Origins Research are still available at the ARN website, for a price:

Origins Research Volume 9, Number 1 - Spring/Summer 1986
The Taylor Site “Man Tracks” Glen J Kuban
A Review of ICR Impact Article 151 Glen J Kuban
A Follow up on the Paluxy Mystery John Morris
A Footprints in Stone: The Current Situation Films for Christ Assoc.

---

Snellingʼs 1986 remarks on the “strange red-brown stains on the rocks”

“The unknown significance of hithertofore unexposed strange red-brown stains on the rocks in and around the footprints renders the need for caution until further research explains this occurrence.” (Creation (Ex Nihilo), Andrew Snelling, March, 1986, Vol. 8, No.2, p. 37)

E.T.B.ʼs Comment: The reddish “stain” revealing the tridactyl nature of the alleged “man tracks” can be seen even in the early YEC film, “Footprints in Stone,” long before Kuban ever arrived on the scene. Also, the “stains” are not superficial: Drill core samples taken at the edges of the stained surface showed that the reddish sediments curved with the impression of the dinosaurʼs foot beneath the surface, as Kuban showed via his drill core samples that he photographed.

---

AiGʼs Latest Claim: “Human and Dino Prints” Found Together in Russia

E.T.Bʼs Comment: AiG admits that it is best to remain skeptical of “magic bullet” stories that can allegedly overthrow an old-earth or evolution in one shot, especially if such stories are not thoroughly researched.

AiGʼs latest report of “human and dino prints” found together in Russia has not been researched, no photos, just a newspaper article. So by their own definition they ought to be skeptical about this new evidence, no?

Snelling at AiG has admitted that perhaps there will never be found any indisputably genuine pre-flood human fossils or pre-flood human artifacts or evidence of pre-flood dwellings (such as a series of small walls found in Cretaceous or earlier strata). Instead, Snelling has suggested that perhaps no evidence of pre-Flood human beings may ever be found: “When God pronounced judgment on the world, He said, ‘I will destroy [blot out] man whom I have created from the face of the earth’ (Gen. 6:7). Perhaps the lack of pre-flood human fossils is part of the fulfillment of this judgment?”

---

Answers in Genesisʼ Recent Comments on Carl Baughʼs Research

(Carl Baugh, Kent Hovind, and Ron Wyatt (deceased) are among the last remaining supporters of the Paluxy “manprints”):
“[We suggest creationists do not use…] many of Carl Baughʼs creation ‘evidences.’ Sorry to say, AiG thinks that heʼs well meaning but that he unfortunately uses a lot of material that is not sound scientifically. So we advise against relying on any ‘evidence’ he provides, unless supported by creationist organisations with reputations for Biblical and scientific rigor. Unfortunately, there are talented creationist speakers with reasonably orthodox understandings of Genesis (e.g. Kent Hovind) who continue to promote some of the Wyatt and Baugh ‘evidences’ despite being approached on the matter (Ed. note: see our Maintaining Creationist Integrity, our response to Hovindʼs reply to this article).”

Giant Animals in past and Giant Human Being over ten feet tall

John Adolfi writes:
Hi Ed,
Thank you for considering us for your site. The Giants we are interested in are any and all. The fact that they were more than week legged tall fellas throughout the ages interests me. Giants with the strength of 5 men. And I believe Genesis promotes the idea that we were originally created as giants, like the animals were and through time we shrunk, like the animals.

Edward: What do you mean “like the animals were, and through time we shrunk, like the animals?” Itʼs true that some parts of the geological record contain fossils of enormously tall cattails and dragonflies with huge wingspans, but there arenʼt any dinosaurs or mammals buried alongside those species, and other smaller species of plants and insects also existed alongside those giant ones.

And when you dig up dinosaurs, you find some species of dinosaurs were merely the size of chickens. And you also dig up right alongside those huge dinosaurs almost mouse-sized mammal-like reptiles that lived right beside them.

Also, the biggest whales are alive today, for instance, the Blue Whale, hailed as the biggest animal that ever lived, isnʼt found in the older fossil record. The older fossil record does contain Cetaceans of considerably smaller sizes, thinner Cetaceans with tiny rear legs and long animal-like snouts. Likewise, Sequoias are the tallest plants ever, the tallest growing organisms ever, the most massive, and they only appeared in recent time.

If anything, the fossil record shows that the first amphibians that came on land were smaller than the ones that followed, and the earlier known species of dinosaurs were smaller than the ones that followed, and the earliest mammals were relatively small too, much smaller than the gigantic ones that followed. If anything, if you examine the relative order of the fossil deposits and begin with the ones on the bottom and work your way toward the top, the reptiles started out smaller and grew bigger then the biggest ones became extinct, and mammals started out small too and grew bigger but the biggest ones became extinct.

Also, on human giants “over ten feet tall,” not a bone exists as evidence. Iʼve contacted both Hovind and the creationist in Texas who made his own giant human bone out of plaster, a mere “model” as it says at his website, of what a giant human femur might look like.

Hereʼs the letter I sent him, that even includes the view of the Southern Baptist Convention on the matter of Goliathʼs height.

Dear Mt. Blanco Museum and Mr. Taylor,

Greetings,

I saw your website mentioned at EvC Forum in the section of exchanges regarding “Giants,” and I visited the Mt. Blanco [creationist] Museum website where I saw a photo of a “giant human femur.” But the Mt. Blanco webpage admits that the “femur” pictured on their site is a sculpture that Mr. Taylor molded in order to illustrate a story. The story came from a letter published in an unnamed publication by an unnamed person, neither does the story mention “femurs.” The letter states:
“In south-east Turkey in the Euphrates Valley and in Homs and at Uran-Zohra, tombs of about four meters long once existed, but now roads and other construction work has destroyed the spots. At two places, when unearthed because of construction work, the leg bones were measured about 120 cms [47" long]. It sounds unbelievable. I have lived with my family at Ain-Tell for more than 14 years at the very spot where King Nebuchadnezzar had his headquarters after the battle of Charcamish, where I dug the graves of kingsʼ officers and found their skeletons like sponge, and when you touch them they become like white ash, with spears and silex and obsidian tools and ammunition laying by.”

The author of the letter did not say “femur,” but, “leg bones.” Perhaps in the great state of Texas in the USA, where the Mr. Blanco [creationist] Museum resides, they refer to the “fermur” colloquially as the “leg bone” (singular), but the Middle Easterner who wrote the above letter referred to “leg bones” [plural] when he stated, “at two places… the leg bones [plural] were measured about 47" long.” So the word “femur” was not mentioned at all, and leaving aside Texas colloquialisms, the “leg bones” in this case probably refers to all the bones of the leg, the total “leg” length. I wear 34-36" long pants, so my “leg bones” measure about 36." The “leg bones” mentioned above were maybe 11" inches longer than mine. Such a skeleton might be a few feet taller than me, as Iʼm only 6'3" tall, but not “14-16 feet tall” as the Mt. Blanco Museum calculates, based on their assumption that “the leg bones” must mean “femurs” (plural).

All in all, a human whose legs were 11" longer than mine is large, but not beyond the known range of human variation. See for instance: E. Cobham Brewer 1810-1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898 , “Giants of Real Life.” Mr. Brewer collected a long list of “human giant” stories from throughout history and their alleged heights, and his conclusion, as stated at one point in his list, was that “…no recorded height of any human giant known has reached 10 feet… The nearest approach to it was Gabara, the Arabian giant (9 feet 9 inches) mentioned by Pliny, and Middleton of Lancashire (9 feet 3 inches) mentioned by Dr. Plott.”

By the way, the Middle East does contain some “long narrow graves” as even Mark Twain pointed out in his Innocents Abroad, and one such grave that Twain visited was “210 ft. long but only four feet high.” (Twain remarked that the person buried in that tomb must have been shaped as tall and thin as a lightning rod.)

Also, the largest Protestant denomination in America, The Southern Baptist Convention (that promote young-earth creationism) has argued for toning down the heights of “human giants” mentioned in the Bible. See the following paragraphs from “Giants in the Land” by Harold Mosley, an article that appeared in The Biblical Illustrator, 30:2 Winter 2003-04, a Sunday School publication put out by the Southern Baptist Convention:

Giants in the land

[with additional comments by me, E.T.B.]

The Bible mentioned the “nephilim” and “rephaim” in Genesis and Exodus. It was the King James translators who rendered those words “giants” while other translators simply transliterate the Hebrew word into English as “Nephilim.” Scholars argue over the exact meaning of the word. The context of Genesis 6 is not precise enough to determine anything about the Nephilim except that they appear as unusual individuals… Concerning Numbers 13:33, the comparison of the spies being like grasshoppers next to the Nephilim certainly must have been an exaggeration. Otherwise, if the comparison were taken literally, the Nephilim would be more than one hundred feet tall. [Oddly enough a few Christians in the past did take such a comparison literally and argued that the Nephilim were over a hundred feet tall. I mentioned such extravagant beliefs in my article on the web. The Book of Enoch, Cotton Matter and some unnamed Frenchman suggested fantastically large “giants in the earth.” — E.T.B.]…

If the Anakim were tall compared to the Hebrews, how tall were the Hebrews? Based on ancient Hebrew skeletons excavated at archeological digs, the average maleʼs height ranged from 5'5" to 5'7". Since the ancient Hebrews generally saw themselves as smaller than other peoples, the biblical writers often noted unusual height. (For instance Isaiah 18:2,7 described the Ethiopians as a people “tall and smooth.” Also, the fact that Saul stood taller than other Israelites was noted in 1 Sam. 10:23) … King Og of Moab, Deut. 3:11 had a bed measuring 9 cubits long and 4 cubits wide (13 ft by 6 ft) [but that does not mean King Og was the same size as his bed. — E.T.B.]… The record of the height of Goliath, as mentioned in 1 Sam. 17:4 is not consistent among all the ancient versions of 1 Samuel. The Hebrew records for Goliath say he was 6 cubits and a span (a cubit was roughly 18 inches, a span about 9 inches), so Goliath would be about 9'9" tall. Other ancient versions like the Septuagint lists Goliath at 4 cubits and a span, which would make Goliath closer to 6'9" in height. Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews says Goliath was about 6'8", which would still be considered a giant among the Hebrew people. However, the description of the weight of Goliathʼs armor suggests a much larger man than even a 7 foot tall individual to carry such weight. His bronze coat weighted “5,000 shekels,” an astounding 125 pounds. [Of course, speaking of the number “5,000” as in the afore mentioned weight of “5,000” shekels, it must be kept in mind that the Hebrew authors were prone to rounding off and probably exaggerating them, which was common in the ancient world regarding the numbers of people and booty captured during wars. It can also be seen the case of enemies killed by Hebrews in battle as mentioned in the book of Judges, featuring reports of “500” or “600” or even “1000” enemies all killed by one Hebrew in a single fight, the Hebrew only using either an ox goad, a spear, or even the jawbone of an ass. Elsewhere in the Bible, King David leaves his son a huge rounded off number of pounds of gold and silver in order to build a temple, but the number given in the Bible is so huge itʼs nearly enough to nearly fill a modern day Fort Knox, which seems unusual for a relatively small kingdom in the ancient world that didnʼt have modern mining techniques. So, the number “5000” for the weight of Goliathʼs armor is probably an exaggerated and rounded off estimate. See the two pieces at the end of my email on Samson and Solomon. — E.T.B.]
End of Excerpts, above, from “Giants in the Land”

Stephen Meyers has this to add to the above article: How tall was Goliath? The MT says, “six cubits and a span” while the Dead Sea Scroll 4QSama says, “four cubits and a span.” People donʼt usually grow to be over 9 foot tall, so the “four cubits” (7 feet) seems the most reasonable height of Goliath. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a thousand years older than the MT. So I am going with the Dead Sea Scroll reading. I think probably most of the large bones that people found in ancient times were of extinct animals. A mammoth tusk was thought to be the horn of a unicorn. A giant fossil giraffe skull could easily been mistaken for a dragon. Many giant fossil giraffe skulls from the Miocene Epoch are found around the Mediterranean (Mayor, 2000 p. 161). There is a very good book that goes into details about this entitled “The first Fossil Hunters” by Adrienne Mayor (To her web site Click Here).

For Steve Meyersʼ discussion of “giants” see this webpage.

Out of the “hundreds” of stories of “human giants over ten feet tall” that some creationists claim existed, I have yet to see a single genuine human bone. Instead, just stories. And Hovindʼs “photograph” of a “giant human skeleton” has since been found to be nothing more than an artistsʼ illustration of an unsubstantiated story in a book called, The Tongue of Time. I can email you the scanned pages of that artistʼs drawing.

Speaking of such bones, Big Foot “prints” donʼt count, they arenʼt bones. And how tall was Big Foot believed to be?

As for the bones we do have of the largest-known primate, Gigantopithecus (of the Middle Pleistocene of what is now northern Vietnam and southern China), that species featured males that stood an estimated 9 ft tall and weighed about 272 kg 600 lb. Please note that it is risky, in the case of Gigantopithecus to correlate tooth size and jaw depth of primates with their height and body weight, and Gigantopithecus may have had a disproportionately large head, jaws and teeth for his body size. So it could have been smaller than 9 ft. tall. And the only Gigantopithecus remains that have been discovered so far are three partial lower jaws and more than 1,000 teeth. So its actual height remains unknown.)

Paleontologists at least study actual bones, and in fact have enough of them to fill more than just “one coffin,” as creationists now admit. See the two quotations below:

Quotation #1: Michael Oard, a creationist writing in a creationist journal:
“I was surprised to find that instead of enough fossils barely to fit into a coffin, as one evolutionist once stated [in 1982], there were over 4,000 hominid fossils as of 1976. Over 200 specimens have been classified as Neanderthal and about one hundred as Homo erectus. More of these fossils have been found since 1976.”
[Review of the book, Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 30, March 1994, p. 222]

Quotation #2: Martin Lubenow, creationist and author of Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, also wrote in the same creationist journal:
”The current figures [circa 1994] are even more impressive: over 220 Homo erectus fossil individuals discovered to date, possibly as many as 80 archaic Homo sapiens fossil individuals discovered to date, and well over 300 Neanderthal fossil individuals discovered to date. [Letter to the editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 31, Sept. 1994, p. 70]
Please visit sometime to look at all the skulls and their cranial capacities, and tell me where exactly where the “creationist” gap lay. The cranial capacities of all the known hominid fossils lie along a spectrum. (The site also has a section on “anomalous fossils.”)

Cheers,
Edward T. Babinski
Getting the lies out of creationism: Unleashing the Storm; Answers in Genesis critique of Dennis Petersonʼs new book: Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation.
How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? A Close Look at Dr. Hovindʼs List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims by Dave E. Matson. This is a great point by point rebuttal of Hovindʼs arguments.