Revival: The Kolbe Center and the Paluxy Human Footprint Claims

 

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

Last week's article briefly went over the history of the human footprint controversy in the Paluxy River of Glen Rose, Texas, and mentioned that Glen Rose and the Paluxy are both places of special interest in my life for personal and professional reasons. If you'd like a more detailed history of the controversy, check out Glen Kuban's summaries that flesh out the story from first-hand experience. (Kuban, 2022b, 2022c) The original argument was that human and dinosaur footprints had been found together in the riverbed - a belief held to by the townsfolk in the early 1900s based on misinterpreted elongated metatarsal dinosaur tracks. This view would be adopted by several prominent groups in the emerging contemporary young earth creationist movement as proof that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, bolstering their interpretation of the Biblical narrative. (Whitcomb & Morris, 1961, pp. 173-175) (Morris, 1980) (Morris, 1981, pp. 122-123) However, research by both young earth creationists and others had shown that the claimed human tracks were actually misinterpreted dinosaur tracks, erosion markings, other forms of trace fossils, and some known carvings from the Great Depression. These results were so concrete that, by the current day, mainstream creationist organizations like Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and the Institute for Creation Research all began to distance themselves from the Paluxy human footprint claims. They also began to distance themselves from Carl Baugh, the man most responsible for popularizing the human footprint narrative. Out of the most mainstream young earth creationist organizations, the Biblical Creation Trust and Geoscience Research Institute join AiG, CMI, and the ICR in rejecting the Paluxy tracks as genuinely human, while others like New Creation don't see them as important enough to acknowledge. Out of all the "main players" in the young earth creationist scene, the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation alone still pushes the human track interpretation. However, this isn't the rescuing of a solid interpretation - it's putting out poor-quality research that's more likely to lead people away from their message concerning the proper theology of creation and towards error.

The Kolbe Center

The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation is "...a Roman Catholic lay apostolate dedicated to glorifying the Most Holy Trinity by proclaiming the truth about the origins of man and science" that holds to geocentrism and young earth creationism. While not the most well-known among the general creationist population, they are arguably the most well-known Catholic young earth advocates and are unique in that they are nearly alone in their efforts to support the Paluxy human tracks as genuine. Most of their support has been tangential in the past, simply offering positive reviews of books friendly to the Paluxy human track interpretation like Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation by Dennis Petersen or Texas Tracks and Artifacts by Robert Helfinstine and Jerry Roth. However, one of the primary advisors to the Kolbe Center - Hugh Miller - had a more personal interest in the Paluxy, having organized expeditions with Carl Baugh's Creation Evidence Museum to document the tracks believed to be human and even being credited by Baugh as the discoverer of new human tracks in the river. (Baugh & Wilson, 1991, p. 50, 167) Miller has a minor reputation among those familiar with the Paluxy as someone who accepted everything that Baugh claimed without much critical thought, as well as some eccentricities, like sending a letter to the Vatican in the 1980s asking the pope to financially support Baugh's work. (Baugh, 1991, p. 49) (Glen Kuban, personal communication, January 25, 2024)

The Paluxy and the Kolbe Center's Quality of Research

After Miller passed away in 2021, the Kolbe Center would come out explicitly the next year to defend the Paluxy human tracks with the article Tracking Humans on the Cretaceous Rocks of Texas' Paluxy River by Ademar Rakowsky. It's a unique, comprehensive contemporary assessment of the human track interpretation. To those who are familiar with the Paluxy as a theme in the history of creationism, the article can come off feeling like there was very little research done for it, and that it was written in a sort of vacuum. For example, Rakowsky states that:

"If one is honest in one's science, one will accept the finding of the uniquely shaped human print at face value, and not allow philosophical presuppositions to lead one to the denial of the obvious."

What does the Kolbe Center think of the Geoscience Research Center, Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, or Creation Ministries International? Are all major creation science organizations (that usually have several graduate and doctoral level natural scientists on staff) inherently dishonest? It's easy to say your philosophical opponents don't see things the way you do because of their starting positions, but how do you address all of those who have the same presuppositions? Rakowsky doesn't address this apparent discrepancy.

Rakowsky does the same thing when he says that he thinks that the best flood geology model is Walter Brown's Hydroplate Model, which holds that "...only a few thousand years ago, the Earth's entire crust consisted of a granite slab...suspended over a large reservoir of highly pressurized water. According to Brown...the crust suddenly cracked and burst open, violently releasing the subterranean water and flooding the entire earth." (Kuban, 2020) Brown has no professional training in geology or Earth history - he is a retired mechanical engineer - and his model contains incongruities that have had to be revised over and over again, such as Noah's Flood launching enough debris from Earth into space to account for all comets, asteroids, and meteoroids of the Solar System, or his model generating so much heat that it would have completely incinerated the Earth. Much like the Paluxy tracks, numerous young earth creationists have refuted Brown's model as untenable. (Doyle, 2020) (Faulkner, 2013) (Isaacs, 2022) (Oard, 2013) He mentions that in looking for human tracks it's important to find ones that are in a trail, and then goes to cite "key" human footprint finds that were not only not excavated from trails but are known carvings, including the O. W. Willet track*, the Burdick print, and the Alvis Delk track. Additionally, while many tracks in the riverbed are mentioned, and many photos of the riverbed are provided, no in-situ photos of human tracks are provided. Human tracks are mentioned as occurring in various layers, but only the layers themselves are depicted and described. If the human tracks have been found in such a great quantity as to outright prove their presence (a claim that goes against nearly all theological and secular researcher into the Paluxy controversy), why not show them instead of describing them? This has been a problem for the man-track proponents since the 1980s when they first began to generate interest. (Hastings, 1985, 1986, 1987) Throughout the article, they also favorably refer to Carl Baugh as "Dr.", even though it has been known for several decades that Carl Baugh does not have any accredited education past the high school level and has misled others about his level of education. (Kuban, 2022a)

Rakowsky also discusses a new "paleo-anomaly" from 2021 - an out-of-place Stigmaria, specifically a Lepidodendron root, found in the Paluxy River during one of Carl Baugh's track cleaning expeditions. This claim has been critically examined and is the subject of an upcoming review to be submitted to the Occasional Papers of the Dallas Paleontological Society. In short, the claimed Lepidodendron root is actually a piece of Cretaceous driftwood that's been burrowed by Martesia bivalves.

What does this mean?

As a Catholic myself who holds a vested interest in natural theology and the theology of creation, I want to be 100% behind the Kolbe Center's message. I genuinely want to be able to get behind what they're doing. However, the responsibility of managing an apostolate dedicated to research requires that you employ standards that reflect that aim. By backing the Paluxy man-tracks, the Center not only stands to negatively impact the faithful by giving them false information under the guise of competent investigation but also stands to assist in bringing positive attention back to a question that has been settled since the late 20th century. If the Kolbe Center doesn't want to help lead people into known error and wants to make a solid case for young earth creationism as a sensible option for the faithful, then distancing themselves from the long disproven Paluxy human track claims would be their best option.

* While there aren't any concrete reviews of the Willet track currently available, its status as a carving is the subject of an upcoming paper titled Anomalistic Ichnology planned to be submitted to The Occasional Papers of the Dallas Paleontological Society.

References

Baugh, C., Wilson, A. (1991) Dinosaur: Scientific Evidence That Dinosaurs and Men Walked Together (2nd edition). Promise Publishing Co.

Doyle, S. (2020, August 22) Hydroplate theory: the strongest theory? Creation Ministries International.

Faulkner, D. R. (2013) An Analysis of Astronomical Aspects of the Hydroplate Theory. Creation Research Society Quarterly, 49(3), 197-210.

Hastings, R. J. (1985) Tracking Those Incredible Creationists. Creation/Evolution, 5(1), 5-16.

Hastings, R. J. (1986) Tracking Those Incredible Creationists - - The Trail Continues. Creation/Evolution, 6(1), 19-28.

Hastings, R. J. (1987) Tracking Those Incredible Creationists - - The Trail Goes On. Creation/Evolution, 7(2).

Isaacs, E. A. (2022) Ichnofossils Refute Hydroplate Theory's Liquefaction Submodel. Answers Research Journal, 15, 97-108.

Kuban, G. (2022) A Matter of Degree: An Examination of Carl Baugh's Alleged Credentials. paleo.cc.

Kuban, G. (2022) Man Tracks? A Topical Summary of the Paluxy "Man Track" Controversy. paleo.cc.

Kuban, G. (2022) On the Heels of Dinosaurs: A Brief History of the Paluxy "Man Track" Controversy. paleo.cc.

Kuban, G. (2020) Walter Brown's "Hydroplate" Flood Model Doesn't Hold Water. paleo.cc.

Morris, H. (1981) Scientific Creationism. Creation-Life Publishers.

Morris, J. D. (1980) Tracking Those Incredible Dinosaurs and the People Who Knew Them: The fascinating case for the co-existence of dinosaurs and human beings. CLP Publishers.

Oard, M. J. (2013, April 7) Analysis of Walt Brown's Flood model. Creation Ministries International.

Whitcomb, J. C., Morris, H. (1961) The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications. Baker Book House.