Mexican horse manure - a new low for Mormon apologetics

[Philo Sofee]

That's a great response to you Markk!

[Markk]

That's a great response to you Markk!

He seems like a great person. He has some videos on you tube about mammoths and you can tell he is passionate about his work. He seems to be living the life.

His response to me certainly put a nail in the coffin to the paper the Book of Mormon Central hangs their horse hat on.

I wonder if he is LDS. I looked but could not find out, either way, but in one of his videos he is not wearing garments unless they make a V-neck version these days.

[Imwashingmypirate]

Good morning Markk, (edit name)

First of all, you can call me 'Jim' - I am retired and just doing my research - no longer as a university professor, but thanks.

And - thanks for the below.

So - you ready for a longggg answer??

As with any publication, the conclusions really only put out there information that is an opinion, more-or-less a target. A target for either the same researcher in the near future, or a target for other researchers. Some researchers like to profess that their conclusions are the final say ("I've done it - the true answer"), while others might indicate that the conclusions are the next step in a possibly lone line of hypothesis testing. We all want to be correct but more importantly, we want to be open in the discussion - or at least that is my approach.

My colleague Wade Miller (now deceased), senior author, wanted my help in working up the data that he and his Mexican colleagues had gathered from one locality. I gave him some suggestions as to how to approach the radiocarbon dating. I have not been to the fossil locality to 'see for myself' but had lots of questions. He created a manuscript that was not accepted for publication and having later read it, I understand why. So, he asked me to help write a new potential article ... my way.... but he had terminal cancer, was having issues, and his colleagues in Mexico could not work in English. So those are the 'rules of the game' presented to me for that project. Normally I would have just walked away but Wade was a very good colleague of mine.

The article we ended up publishing is definitely NOT proof of horses lasting through the terminal Ice Age extinction to the present or near present. It took me a fairly long time to get answers to my questions to Wade.

Yes - the biggest issue/problem with the data set is that we could not get radiocarbon dates from the younger horse fossils. But there is a logical and very plausible reason for this - just too much leaching of water through the bones and removing the collagen that is used for dating. This is actually a common issue with young, marsh deposits. But we do not 'win' by default. One argument from the many reviewers we had was that we likely had mixing of Ice Age horse up into the more recent time. One thing that kept impressing me was that why would horses be mixed from lower levels up but this did not happen with the other fossils of extinct mammoths, camels, carnivores etc. It did not make sense. And the obvious goat bones near the surface are not really mixed down into lower levels.

Take a close look at the animals that Wade and colleagues recovered and the radiocarbon dates. That one profile of the sedimentary layers. Although there is some mixing within each geological unit maybe, there does not seem to be mixing from the Ice Age up into the youngest, most recent levels.

My professional view is that there are many mammals (mega-mammals - mammoth, camel etc.) that became extinct by about 13,000-11,000 years ago. Some died out earlier but most, the last evidence was about that time. So, why the horses in this one remote region of northeastern Mexico. .... Hence my personal issues with the dataset and me being an author on the article. So - I wrote the article I hope in a way that basically states: 1) Here are the data as best as can be recovered and presented. 2) Here are all the details about the animals recovered and the radiocarbon dates presented stratigraphically. Originally Wade had the youngest dates at the top and the oldest at the bottom. This sort of worked ... but not. I obtained all the data and presented the dates on the profile based on what depth they were recovered - not by their age. This is more honest and least biased. 3) I hope that I have created the discussion and conclusions in a way that the reader will see that there are options to the conclusions. And that all options are testable - but it will take other localities to do this.

If horses were really lasting in the region the way this dataset implies, then there should be, must be, other localities with similar results. Very few localities in that region have been studied with the approach to do a detailed analysis. Many paleontologists and archaeologists approach a site with the idea to 'prove' some idea/concept that they may have. I ultimately do not really care what the result is - let's just see what the preserved data 'tells' us. But it often requires the researcher to be truly open and to do lots of different analyses. Approach the issue/problem/project from multiple views, using multiple analyses. I tried this as much as I could with Wade's data - again, my biggest issue was me not having been to the locality and seeing for myself. There are a number of Mexican paleontologists that apparently are at odds with some of the co-authors on this article. [i.e., I am swimming upstream] I do not know any of them other than Wade. One problem can be that other researchers may go to place purely to disprove what is being stated in our publication. That approach does not help really. We need researchers with open minds. Time will tell about what other publications say about our publication. I am fully ready to be targeted in a negative way. So be it, but so far, no issues.

I do a fair amount of work in Sonora, Mexico. Those publications are available to you if you want them. Just ask and I will send you pdfs. In no case have I found horses (or any now-extinct critter) lasting into the Holocene - the most recent 10,000 years. I have published about the Ice Age faunas from all over western USA - the same results about the extinct critters. I am currently working on plants and animals from 4 caves here in the Black Hills (SD) and 8 caves in the east-central Great Basin (Snake Range, NV). So far, same results........but I am having fun doing all of this. Oh, and one dry cave in the Trans-Pecos Texas region. I am not actively doing field work in Sonora anymore, but we are writing up lots about what we recovered from there.

I do not know where you live but if you ever make it out to the Black Hills, Hot Springs, SD (corner of SD, WY, and NE) come visit the Mammoth Site - a sinkhole with over 50 mammoths so far recovered from it, and we have a museum about other critters and cave faunas. If you do make it out here this summer or whenever, let me know and I can give you a tour of the site and show you our lab.

Let me know if you have other questions. All this is fun.

This is interesting.

[Markk]

This is interesting.

I find this really interesting...and adding to it that Simon wrote that the Journal is not exactly a five star publication...

"He (Wade Miller) created a manuscript that was not accepted for publication and having later read it, I understand why."

To me it shows that Miller was really forcing the issue, and as a whole per some of Jim's statements Jim knew it was not reliable data, he even said he would have never done it if it was not for his friendship. He stated he was swimming upstream and expected negative feedback.

Jim did however clean it up by stating clearly it was NOT proof of pre-Columbian or post-ice age horses, which ever is the correct term.

[tapirrider]

Thank you Markk.

[Imwashingmypirate]

This is interesting.

I find this really interesting...and adding to it that Simon wrote that the Journal is not exactly a five star publication...

"He (Wade Miller) created a manuscript that was not accepted for publication and having later read it, I understand why."

To me it shows that Miller was really forcing the issue, and as a whole per some of Jim's statements Jim knew it was not reliable data, he even said he would have never done it if it was not for his friendship. He stated he was swimming upstream and expected negative feedback.

Jim did however clean it up by stating clearly it was NOT proof of pre-Columbian or post-ice age horses, which ever is the correct term.

I imagine this sort of thing happens quite often in academia. It's good that he was able to make sure to present the data on as close to him terms as he could. I expect it could be quite damaging to publish works that don't sit right in your soul and to then face the consequences when the intended publication is debunked. It sounds like an awful position to be placed in when there is an expectation to "help" colleagues.