Titans 118 critters a glow-glow & dusting off Slusher & Morris

Описание: Evolution Hour 400 S&T’s chapter to disconnect birds from dinos tries an end run, playing up the “mosaic” platypus as if that made its monotreme evolutionary taxonomy go away, citing Anich et al 2020 https://www.degruyterbrill.com/docume... on their biofluoresent hair, which may be an adaptive trait for low-light environments. S&T certainly didn’t address their concluding question: “Is biofluoresecnce an ancestral mammalian trait?”

The Anich paper didn’t allude to the details of underlying biochemistry or specific evolutionary aspects, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a literature. Ugalde et al 2004 https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... recreated the pathway to green form found in corals, small incremental steps all the way, & a coauthor Mikhail Matz contributed to Chudakov et al. 2010 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/f... on the molecules in that & variant colors, & where those variants show up in organisms.

Researchers (none YEC take note) kept at it, focusing on possible adaptive utility of it in nocturnal environments, eg Olson et al. 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159.... Its part in camouflage still unclear for Sobral & Souza-Gudinho 2022 https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159... on rodents, or Travouillon et al 2023 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do... covering 125 species across mammalia.

But two Carr et al. 2025 papers https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146... & https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... on repeated appearance/loss in marine fishes & likely adaptive role in reef environments caught the ire of Sarah Buckland-Reynolds 2025 https://crev.info/2025/06/biofluoresc... at David Coppedge’s website.

Her argument was a litany of generic complaints (systems too complex to evolve, or strawman that evolution precludes convergence or loss of characters, especially over the millions of years YEC doesn’t allow). She carped about a taxonomy study Carr drew on, Ravosky et al. 2018 https://researchmgt.monash.edu/ws/por... & bioarxiv preprint of Whitcher et al. 2025 (published as https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146...) on biofluorescence in frogs.

Part 2. Writing the lunar dust myth segment of Rocks2, a reminder how improving source access is great. Harold Slusher 1971 https://crsq.creationresearch.org/id/... & several Henry Morris books fielded it, silly 1972 book (the one thinking some lunar craters might have come from Satan battling St. Michael) claiming “There is no measurable accumulation of meteoric dust on the earth’s surface, but present rates of influx of such dust from space would produce a layer 1/8 inch thick all over the earth in a million years and a layer 54 feet thick in 5 billion years.”

Slusher & Morris 1974/1985 Scientific Creationism played already dated Hans Pettersson 1960 from Scientific American, for 14 million tons influx per year, which Morris took to mean “there should have accumulated during the 5-billion-year age of the earth, a layer of meteoric dust approximately 182 feet thick all over the world!”

So layer inflated 54 feet to 182 in just 2 yrs, despite Morris 1974 contending opposite: “Influx of meteoritic dust from space too small to calculate!” As 182 feet ~55 meters, maybe Morris confusing English & metric!

Morris doubled down by jump to 200 million tons, citing “Hawkins 1976” https://repository.si.edu/items/9fe55... for it. A 1985 letter by Slusher made identical claim, & current availability of the book finally allowed me to fact check that 200.

Morris/Slusher bungled it, one copying from the other, as Hawkins was 1967 re a 1965 symposium (transposing numbers again?) & NONE of content supported the 200 (1 gave 2.2-2.8 million tons, another lower 300,000); by 1996 still lower 20,000 tons.

Thanks to all your help, I’m doing my part on the science defense front, having written THE coverage of how antievolutionists ignore the reptile-mammal transition macroevolution evidence https://www.amazon.com/dp/1540736296/... which paleontologist Christine Janis described in her Amazon review as “an incredible tour de force”

And now the new https://www.amazon.com/Rocks-Were-The... with Jackson Wheat puts the Source Methods scalpel to use carving YEC to pieces. We’ll have Volume 2 out in due course.

Source Methods works as a debate approach too. For example, catch my 2018 debate with Kent Hovind    • Is Young Earth Creationism True? Kent Hovi...   Draw freely on all the work assembled at TIP “Troubles in Paradise: The Methodology of Creationism” www.tortucan.wordpress.com share the pdfs freely.

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