Why do I care about the Paluxy? My Involvement

Photo from G. Kuban's October 2022 Taylor Trail Excavation (c. Noah Edmonds)

Ever since I began to work seriously on the question of young earth creationism (or ever since it began working on me), I've been incredibly interested in the claims of human tracks, remains, and other anomalies that have reportedly been found in the Paluxy River, a tributary of the Brazos River that flows near the town of Glen Rose, Texas. Nearly all of the research I took part in while majoring in biology/paleontology took place in or concerned the Paluxy - it's a pristine site rich for study, holding innumerable theropod and sauropod trackways that were initially laid down during the mid-Cretaceous and hadn't seen the light of day until a massive flood of 1908 broke away the layers of rock that had protected them.

The townsfolk of the early 20th century believed that various unique, large elongated tracks found in the riverbed had been made by oversized human beings alive at the time of the dinosaurs. This was used by some young earth creationists to argue that humans and dinosaurs had co-existed in the past at some point. As early as 1975, Loma Linda University (a young-earth creationist-endorsing college) had demonstrated that these tracks were made by dinosaurs and that there was no good evidence that the Paluxy held any anomalous human tracks. (Neufeld, 1975) (Chadwick, 1987) The strangeness probably would have ended there if a man named Carl Baugh hadn't arrived in 1982, finding a human track or other anomalous artifacts in every corner of the river - and I don't say that facetiously, Baugh is the principle finder for the majority of the "paleo-anomalies" found in the Paluxy, including but not limited to out-of-place trilobites, sabertooth tiger tracks, stigmaria, mammalian jaws, human footprints, human handprints, human fingers, human teeth, and even prehistoric giants* all said to be preserved in the river's Cretaceous rock! Looking at it now, it seems incredulous that a single individual with no professional training or education could find so many revolutionary finds, one right after the other. It isn't surprising to me now that most of Baugh's claims have not only been proven wrong but are so wrong that professional creationist organizations like Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International steer clear of him. But I didn't know any of this when I started out.

I started my college experience as a committed young earth creationist and biology major wanting to study environmental science. Most of the classes I took dealt with evolution in some form, and the more I was introduced to evolution, the less intimidating it became. I started to realize that I'd only ever heard one side of the creation-evolution discussion and had never looked at the issue critically. Over the next year, I started to dive into the issue and found that I truly enjoyed it. I spent hours pouring over books and online resources that dealt with the history, theology, and science of young earth creationism. To make a long story short, by early 2016 I had heard enough sound arguments to accept evolution even though I wasn't entirely sure how to square it with my faith. Everyone in my family is still a committed young earth creationist to this day, and nobody was very happy with my decision. A few of my family members told me about the Creation Evidence Museum run by a man named Carl Baugh a few hours north of Houston and asked if I wanted to go with them. They told me that he was a doctoral-level scientist and that seeing what was on display there would change my mind about evolution. I excitedly agreed to go - I'd spent enough time doing armchair research and was ready for some in-person exposure and frankly wasn't too opposed to having my mind changed (I'm still not, but was probably more so early on). I can't describe how disappointed I was when I was greeted by a hodgepodge assemblage of unlabeled artifacts under cracked glass displays, a half-hour presentation that was created with 2006 PowerPoint (complete with sound effects that hadn't been balanced with the rest of the audio), and giant, carved human footprints so blatantly inauthentic they would make a Bigfoot enthusiast blush. The museum did have a cozy, campy and kitsch kind of atmosphere that I still find comforting to this day - it has all the trappings of a roadside Atlas Obscura mystery shack. But what it didn't have was any evidence that I could take seriously, and I was more than surprised by my family's insistence that all the artifacts were genuine. Later that day I would do some further reading on Baugh's work only to discover that he was not a scientist as I'd been told - he didn't have any accredited education past high school, despite claiming to hold multiple doctorates. I was flabbergasted, to say the least, that those around me who I respect and admire had accepted Baugh at face value when there seemed to be more going on in the background.

My family's credence in Baugh's work, the fact that he was apparently lying about his education, and the sheer number of claimed artifacts in the museum all struck me at once, and I felt the "focus" of my desire to research the broad history of creationism shift into wanting to understand the apparent controversy of the Paluxy. Later that summer I began to make regular field trips to Glen Rose - interviewing locals, studying the tracks in the river, cataloging as many of the reported anomalies as I could, putting together narratives, and doing my best to get a competent sense of exactly what was going on, and kept at it over the last six years. A lot has happened in that time - I've become close friends with people like Glen Kuban, who's been one of the most prominent Paluxy researchers in the last 40 years, and met similar figures and friends like Laurie Jasinski, Tom Vance, Philip Scoggins, and others. I've become close friends with longtime residents of the town like Morris Bussey, who owns the Stone Hut Fossil Shop. I've volunteered with the Dallas Paleontological Society and have conducted research, participated in excavations, and led field trips at Dinosaur Valley State Park. I've even met Carl Baugh himself on several occasions. My entire early adulthood is interspersed with events in Glen Rose, some casual and others synchronistic. I've spent a lot of time walking and talking with friends down the streets of the town center and along the lush riverbank under winsome sunsets. To me, Glen Rose is a significant location marked with memories and important events where I first learned how to become the person I wanted to be.

I just wanted to write a short piece to put out why I'm so passionate about Glen Rose and the Paluxy, and why several of the upcoming articles on this site are going to focus on them. I've since completely swapped majors, now studying psychology and clinical psychotherapy, which is a story all on its own. But I'm sitting on nearly a decade's worth of study of creationism's history in the Paluxy, and in bringing my study of the history of creationism into the unified work of Divergence and Dialogue, I want to make sure the Paluxy's impact gets its time in the light. It's also why the Kolbe Center's current attempts to revive the Paluxy claims and paint Baugh in a positive light make me more than a little concerned, but that's for next week.

* Several of the Glen Rose / Paluxy anomalies have yet to be formally looked into, like the out-of-place stigmaria, unfossilized wood with intrinsic carbon, or the prehistoric giant found in Panther Cave. Papers on them and other finds are currently in preparation for publication in The Occasional Papers of the Dallas Paleontological Society.

References

Chadwick, A. V. (1987) Of Dinosaurs and Men. Origins, 14(1), 33-40.

Neufeld, B. (1975) Dinosaur Tracks and Giant Men. Origins, 2(2), 64-75.