19 The Paluxy River ‘human’ footprints
The so-called ‘Taylor trail’
Since the 1930s, dinosaur tracks have been known from the bed of the Paluxy River, near Glen Rose, Texas. What makes these tracks so controversial are claims that as well as the footprints of dinosaurs, there are unmistakably human footprints, too. Even creationists admit that some of them are fakes. In some of the ‘man tracks’, it is possible to make out traces to toes to the side of the ‘foot’, which suggests that they are nothing more mysterious than highly eroded three-toed dinosaur tracks. Some also show claw marks at the ‘heel’ of the print, which is another feature typical of a dinosaur footprint but not of a human footprint. In at least one footprint sequence, there is the inexplicable coincidence that dinosaur tracks and ‘human footprints’ alternate.
Close-up of
the tracks
The Paluxy River ‘man prints’ may resemble human footprints superficially, but they lack the anatomy of real human footprints. Furthermore, dinosaurs and humans are of very different size and weight, but in the Paluxy River, tracks made by both dinosaurs and supposed humans are sunk to the same depth in the rock, which suggests that both types were made by creatures of the same general weight. In the same way, the distances between footfalls are spaced the same distance apart, showing that they were made by creatures with similar stride lengths.
The creationist explanation for how the two sets of tracks are found together does not quite match the scenario they propose. The creatures who made the tracks were supposed to have been running from the rising waters of the Great Flood. However, there are several thousand feet of water-deposited sedimentary rock beneath the footprints and several thousand feet on top of them, both of which ought, according to creationist geology, have been deposited by the waters of the same Flood the creatures were fleeing. To have produced this sequence, the base rock would have to be deposited by an early ‘high tide’ of the Flood, which then receded long enough for the dinosaurs and humans to run across the valley and leave their tracks, subsequently covering them with a tidal wave that sealed them with a layer of mud, without damaging them. This sequence would have been repeated on numerous occasions, as the dinosaur and ‘human’ tracks appear in a number of superimposed layers. The biggest problem with this, of course, is the question of where the creatures had remained hidden during the early stages of the universal flood if they were rushing to higher land later. But logic never got in the way of religious dogma…
The tracks were investigated by Glen Kuban in the 1980s, whose investigations showed that the tracks do not show human footprints. The TalkOrigins website has a very detailed sub-web dealing with the ‘manprints’.
20 A fossil ‘footprint’ from the Gobi Desert
The photograph from Smena
showing the supposed footprint
According to a story published in the Soviet newspaper Smena (1961, number 8), a group of Chinese and Soviet palaeontologists, directed by Dr Chow Ming Chen, found the impression of what resembled a ribbed sole in sandstone in 1959. The stratum was dated to two million years old. The size of the ‘footprint’ corresponds to European size 43 and it was said that grooves running the length of the ‘sole’ could be distinguished and there were even traces of the stitching.
This type of claim is very difficult to deal with, as the source for the story is a daily (and somewhat sensationalist) newspaper, not a scientific publication. The only evidence that can now be evaluated is the poor quality photograph published by Smena and subsequently reproduced by a number of fringe authors. It is scarcely impressive evidence: it does not really resemble the print of a shoe and its size can be guessed by comparison with the hand that is holding it to be no more than 200 mm and probably rather less. This enables us to dismiss the claim that it belonged to a size 43 shoe instantly! Moreover, the shape is hardly shoe-like and it does not live up to the enthusiastic descriptions of stitching.