Two Men From Cretaceous?

A little mystery which could be solved by carbon dating?

CMI : Where are all the human fossils?
by Andrew A. Snelling
http://creation.com/where-are-all-the-human-fossils

Perhaps the fossilized human skeletons that come closest to having been pre-Flood humans buried in Flood strata are those skeletons found at Moab, Utah (USA). In a copper mine there, two definitely human skeletons were found in Cretaceous ‘age’ sandstone (supposedly more than 65 million years old), the bones still joined together naturally and stained green with copper carbonate. While many regard these bones as recently buried, there still remains the remote possibility that they are pre-Flood human ‘fossils’.

Footnote

Burdick, C.L., ‘Discovery of human skeletons in Cretaceous Formation’, Creation Research Society Quarterly 10(2):109-110, September 1973.

So, why exactly is Moab, Utah, classified as Cretaceous?

Possibly, because any fossil bearing strata in Utah are Cretaceous, Jurassic or Carboniferous. Cretaceous being most common.

Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals
By Location‎ > ‎United States‎ > ‎Utah
https://sites.google.com/site/palaeocritti/by-location/united-states/utah

Let's see where the Cretaceous and other fossils are from in Utah, in case it has been noted on the site!

I

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah, U.S.A.

Items

• Diabloceratops eatoni (Type locality)
• Kosmoceratops richardsoni (locality for all four specimens?)
• Utahceratops gettyi
• Teratophoneus curriei (Kaiparowits Formation, and yes, th GSE NM is type locality)
• Talos sampsoni(Kaiparowits Formation, and yes, th GSE NM is type locality)

II

Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, Emery County, Utah

Items

• Stegosaurus stenops
• Ceratosaurus nasicornis
• Ceratosaurus dentisulcatus

III

Utah, unspecified location

Items

• Stegosaurus armatus (Morrison Formation also has a Utah part?)
• Stegosaurus longispinus ("Morrison Formation, ?Utah, Wyoming")
• Torosaurus latus (North Horn Formation)
• ? Torosaurus utahensis (North Horn Formation)
• Nasutuceratops titusi (Kaiparowits Formation : Kane County?)

IV

San Juan County

Items

• Tseajaia campi
• Seitaad ruessi (Comb Ridge)

V

Emery County when not marked Cleveland LLoyd Dinosaur Quarry

Items

• Othnielosaurus consors
• Camarasaurus supremus
• Falcarius utahensis (Crystal Geyser Quarry (CGQ) approximately 12 miles SE of Green River, Utah)
• Alamosaurus sanjuanensis

VI

Uintah County

Items

• Barosaurus lentus (Carnegie Quarry)
• Apatosaurus louisae (Dinosaur National Monument)
• Diplodocus longus
• Camarasaurus lentus
• Abydosaurus mcintoshi (Carnegie Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument)

VII

Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry (Cleveland LLoyd Dinosaur Quarry, Emery County, or other?)

Items

• Allosaurus fragilis

VIII

Grand County

Items

• Brontomerus mcintoshi (Hotel Mesa Quarry)
• Geminiraptor suarezarum (Cedar Mountain Formation)
• Utahraptor ostrommaysi (Cedar Mountain Formation)

IX

Kane County

Items

• Nothronychus graffami (Southern margin of Kaiparowits Basin)
• Wonder if this county includes Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, where some are said to belong to Kaiparowits Basin?

Meanwhile, Moab, Utah, is in Grand County.

So, this means that it is at least the same county as three fossils, see VIII, that the two skeletons were found.

Let's see what we can do with the original news story. Here:

The Moab Man (also called "Malachite man") is a find of several human skeletons found after bulldozing in a mine whose rock dated to the Early Cretaceous period, about 140 million years ago. The original discovery of two individuals was made in 1971 by Lin Ottinger in the Keystone Azurite Mine near Moab, Utah and has been used by creationists as an argument for humans coexisting with dinosaurs. John Marwitt, an archaeologist and the Field Director for the Utah Archaeological Survey, examined the fossils and concluded that the fossils were probably only hundreds of years old, the result of burials of Native Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moab_Man

The footnote links to this:

"Moab Man" - "Malachite Man"
(C) 2002-2016, Glen J. Kuban
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/moab-man.htm
Part of Kuban's Paluxy Website at http://paleo.cc/paluxy/

Here we find that the reasons of Marwitt are as follows:

In 1971 a rockhound named Lin Ottinger was leading a field trip in the Big Indian Copper Mine (more recently called the Keystone Azurite Mine) near Moab, Utah, when he discovered major portions of two human skeletons bearing an interesting greenish color. A bulldozer there had recently removed about 15 feet of overburden, revealing the bones and inadvertently damaging some of them. Within days the find was investigated by archaeologist John Marwitt, who at the time was serving as Field Director for the Utah Statewide Archaeological Survey.

Marwitt led the remainder of the excavation, describing the bones as resting in loose, poorly consolidated blowsand, in contrast to the consolidated, hard sandstone further from the bones, comprising the host formation at the site, which is Cretaceous in age. He also indicated that all the bones were unfossilized, that is, not heavily altered or replaced with secondary minerals, and looked essentially modern, other than the greenish staining due to contact with the copper bearing sediments immediately surrounding the bones. Marwitt concluded that the bones were unquestionably intrusive burials, probably only hundreds of years old, and thus unrelated to the age of the Cretaceous rocks around them.

Ah, they are NOT from the same quarry as "Brontomerus mcintoshi". The find place has been called Big Indian Copper Mine and more recently Keystone Azurite Mine, but not, as far as I can see, Hotel Mesa Quarry.

So, more important than any classification of cretaceous or not, neither this part of the text, nor the last part, indicated John Marwitt ever tried to carbon date the men.

If they are from Flood, their carbon date should be c. 35000 years old (varying between 50000 and 20000), corresponding to 3.9% of modern carbon being the carbon 14 proportion back then, in 2957 BC.

If they are from recent burials, they should be carbon dated accurately as 100 or 200 or whatever years old.

John Marwitt didn't think of carbon dating, since in his time dinosaurs hadn't yet been found unfossilised or partly unfossilised. Carl Baugh? He would not back then at least have found any interest in carbon dating, since the standard view was not just that carbon dating was giving too high ages, but that it was generally worthless - which I think is an exaggeration of the even back then (carbon 14 level still rising, and some have not given it up yet) standard Creationist view of why carbon dates are wrong.

I'll try to find out if anyone ever tried to carbon date it on either side.

Actually, I wrote all of above a couple of days back. I tried and got no anwer. So, I publish, and hope to get answers.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Fabian, Pope and Martyr
20.I.2017