Intermezzo Sahni 3: Misinformatie

Ik had nog iets bewaard bij de bespreking van paragraaf 22.5 van het boek van Van den Dikkenberg. Van den Dikkenberg schrijft op blz 213:

“Ook in Indiase aardlagen (uit het Cambrium) zijn restanten van bloeiende planten aangetroffen⁵⁰”

In Noot 50 wordt verwezen naar Sahni, B., 1944. Age of the Saline Series in the Salt Range of the Punjab. Nature 153, 462–463ⁱ.

Figuur 1 Salt Range

Waar zou Van den Dikkenberg zijn informatie vandaan hebben? Een mogelijkheid is:

The Salt Range saga: The “Precambrian rabbit” challenge revisited

by Paul Price, 2020

https://creation.com/salt-range

Dit geeft de verwijzing naar Sahni’s 1944 artikel. Het is ook mogelijk dat Van den Dikkenberg de WEET Magazine redactie heeft geraadpleegd.

Price schrijft over het artikel van Hughesⁱⁱ (2017) en citeert daaruit:

This naturally leads us to wonder: how does Dr. Hughes address the issue of these astounding finds, attested by more than one qualified professional at the time? I’m sorry for the let-down, but the answer is just as predictable as it is disappointing. Hughes simply dismisses the evidence altogether with essentially no reasons given (other than the assumption of evolution, of course).

“Knowledge of the fossil record … is now significantly better than at the time of this controversy, and the possibility of these groups extending back to the Cambrian, as seemed plausible to Ghosh, Jacob and associates (although also contested at the time) is no longer defensible. The organic–walled material recovered from the Salt Range Formation and associated units is therefore clearly a modern contaminant…  the most likely source is modern organic dust particles introduced from the ambient environment, despite the efforts made by Sahni’s group to sterilize the samples.”8 [Emphasis added by Price]

Noot 8 van Price verwijst naar Hughes (2017).

Price geeft aan dat hij twee keer woorden heeft weggelaten; die woorden heeft Price vervangen door ‘…’, De suggestie van Price is dat dit weglaten er niet toe doet: hij acht immers ‘…’ voldoende.

Hughes schrijft echter:

Knowledge of the fossil record of organic–walled fossils in the Proterozoic and Palaeozoic is now significantly better than at the time of this controversy, and the possibility of these groups extending back to the Cambrian, as seemed plausible to Ghosh, Jacob and associates (although also contested at the time) is no longer defensible. The organic–walled material recovered from the Salt Range Formation and associated units is therefore clearly a modern contaminant. Given that similar material was found in several different rock types and that there is no compelling evidence that this material was ever fossilized, the most likely source is modern organic dust particles introduced from the ambient environment, despite the efforts made by Sahni’s group to sterilize the samples.

Wat hier rood is ontbreekt bij Price. Zodat duidelijk is dat Price het niet nodig heeft geacht Hughes’ argumentatie weer te geven. De suggestie van Price is nu dat Hughes geen argumenten heeft gegeven: “Hughes simply dismisses the evidence altogether with essentially no reasons given”. Gemakkelijk gezegd voor Price, nu hij de argumentatie van Hughes weglaat.

Hier hebben we misleiding door Price.

Meer Price

Yes, Hughes goes so far as to accuse Dr. Sahni, Dr. Lahiri, and others at the time, of being incapable of distinguishing between modern contaminants and original fossil material, and being so sloppy as to allow pieces of wood and even a flying insect to get mixed in with their samples.

‘Pieces of wood’ suggereert iets van meer formaat dan ‘shreds of angiosperm wood’en ‘gymnosperm tracheids’. Het insect is later gedetermineerd als een Chironomus – dat zijn kleine dansmugjes. Vergelijk de retoriek van Price met wat Hughes schrijft:

The recognition of original organic–walled microfossils within Precambrian rocks only became established as a discipline in the later decades of the last century, and much has been learned since that time both in palynological sample processing and in how to distinguish material original to ancient rocks from modern contaminants (A.H. Knoll & Shuhai Xiao, pers com. 2016). Indeed, recognising recent plant cuticle contaminants is now a standard part of organic–walled microfossil processing (e.g. Butterfield & Grotzinger, 2012, p. 254). The situation with the Salt Range Formation organic contamination is thus analogous to the early days of the search for ancient DNA, in which modern contaminants were initially mistaken for ancient nucleic acids by some of the pioneers of this important new approach (see Hedges & Schweitzer, 1995; Woodward et al., 1994).

Dus niets ‘accused’: men wist in 1944 niet genoeg, niet over hoe fossielen uit het Cambrium er uit zouden zien en niet over hoe steriel alles moest. Dat ligt voor de hand bij een eerste en in feite baanbrekende studie.

Price gaat verder met:

Nobody at the time provided any proof of this, however, and naturally Hughes, writing nearly a century after the fact, cannot prove it himself.

‘Nobody at the time’: misschien Bhardwajⁱⁱⁱ (1950), die alle mogelijke voorzorgen nam om steriel te werken en geen microfossielen vond? En de twee studies die Bhardwaj (1950) aanhaalt, maar hier niet te krijgen zijn:

Careful researches by Hsü on the purple sandstone, and by Sahni, Lakhanpal and Bhardwaj on beds of salt pseudomorphs, have revealed a complete absence of any tertiary fossils in them

Hsü J., (1947) Search for microfossils in the Purple Sandstone, Khewra Gorge. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. Ind., 16, 92-94 (1946).

Sahni, B., Lakhanpal, R. N., and Bhardwaj. D . C., "Are the Salt Pseudomorph Beds in the Salt Range of Tertiary Age?" (in the press).

Of Sitholey, Varma & Srivastava (1952) die microfossielen toeschreven aan de ‘dust laden atmosphere, prevalent in most parts of India’ (citaat in Schindewolf^iv (1955))

Al met al, misinformatie van de kant van Price.

Paul Price (2020) schrijft op creation.com. De website creation.com en het Journal of Creation behoren beide bij Creation Ministries International. In het Journal of Creation schreef Johns (2022):

“For readers of this journal, the lesson to be learned in this study is that the finding of angiosperms in the lower echelons of the fossil record, especially in Precambrian and Cambrian strata, is an argument that creationists should no longer use.”

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i Sahni, B., 1944. Age of the Saline Series in the Salt Range of the Punjab. Nature 153, 462–463. Zie Intermezzo Sahni 1. https://creationismeweersproken.blogspot.com/2024/07/intermezzo-sahni-1-de-geologie-van-de.html

ii Hughes, N., 2017. Biostratigraphical dating conundrums in the Cambrian and earlier stratigraphy of the Indian subcontinent, The Palaeobotanist 66:1-15, 14 April 2017; Journal of Palaeosciences 66((1-2)):1-15; December 2017; DOI: 10.54991/jop.2017.275.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363571515_Biostratigraphical_dating_conundrums_in_the_Cambrian_and_earlier_stratigraphy_of_the_Indian_subcontinent

iii Bardwhaj, D.C., 1950. Examination of the magnesian sandstone beds of the punjab salt range for plant micro-fossils. Nature 165:821. Zie Intermezzo Sahni 1 voor de tekst. https://creationismeweersproken.blogspot.com/2024/07/intermezzo-sahni-1-de-geologie-van-de.html

iv Schindewolf, O.H., 1955, Über die Altersstellung der Salzformation. Pp 400-438, in: Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Kambriums in der Salt Range (Pakistan), O.H. Schindewolf und A. Seilacher. Abhandlungen der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaflichen Klasse 10: 261–446. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz (gebonden UB Utrecht; monografie eigen bezit).