15 Million Year-Old Whale?

When scientists at a Maryland museum announced the discovery of a 1,000-pound fossil of a whale skull on the banks of the Potomac River in Virginia, they calculated the age to be approximately 15 million years old. The calculation was based on the geologic formation in which it was found, the Calvert Formation, an area along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in exposed cliffs up to 100 feet high between Chesapeake Beach and Drum Point, an area famously rich with fossils claimed to be from the Miocene era of 23 million to 5.3 million years ago.

The Calvert Formation of Virginia along the seashore where the large skull of a whale has  been found

The skull, dated at 15 million years old, scientists call this the relative method of dating, which assumes the fossils in a particular sedimentary layer are within the same geological epoch. After all, the Calvert Cliffs are considered the most complete section of Miocene deposits in the eastern United States.
    The question, which is seldom answered, is how do scientists know the age of the formation? Most believe various methods of radiometric dating, based on the rate of nuclear decay of radioactive elements, provide a reliable estimate. However, again that is an estimate of results based on a belief in the past that cannot otherwise be proven.
    As an example, Georgia Purdom, a researcher with Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, who earned a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Ohio State University, contends research by scientists has shown that the decay rate is variable, making radiometric dating an unreliable method.
    “All radiometric dating methods are based on unverifiable assumptions about the past,” said Purdom, whose scientific research focuses on the roles of natural selection and mutation in microbial populations.

The formations preserve more than 600 largely marine species have been found a the (top) Calvert Formation; more were found at the (bottom) St. Mary’s Formation, both in Virginia

  
On the other hand, not all skeptics of Darwinian theory agree on the age of the earth, however, and some don’t make it a point of emphasis. In any event, the whale skull, about six feet long and an estimated 1,000 pounds, was excavated July 20 at Stratford Hall, Va., on the grounds of the home of Virginia’s Lee family and the birthplace of Robert E. Lee.
    John Nance, the paleontology collections manager at the Calvert Marine Museum in Southern Maryland told the Washington Post the fossil’s age was based on its discovery in the Calvert Formation. The Post said scientists who have been studying the Calvert Formation for more than 100 years have dated the various layers of rock, dirt and sediment, making it possible to determine the age of a fossil in relation to where it is discovered.
    Purdom said that the consensus among her colleagues there is that the Earth is 6,000 years old, based on the Genesis account in the Bible and scientific experimentation she says is “consistent with the Earth being less than 4.5 billion years old.” Walt Brown, who holds a doctorate from MIT concludes that the global flood recorded in Genesis 7 is the mechanism that created the geologic astronomical and biological phenomena witnessed today. What appears to be millions or billions of years of strata, he contends, was a landscape that was dramatically changed in a short period of time by a global deluge.

Transporting the Whale skull from the site to the truck that will take it to a nearby museum

 

Purdom argues that any dating method is based on assumptions about the past. Hers, she acknowledges, is based on her reading of Genesis and her belief that the Bible is “the infallible word of God.” Evidence, she claimed, is always interpreted in light of your worldview, whatever one’s beliefs about God or convictions about how the Bible should be interpreted.
    “When you’re starting with nothing but your own ideas about the past, you can come up with whatever you want,” she said. Purdom added that creation scientists “have a starting point to calibrate some of these methods and figure out the times, whereas (other scientists) really don’t.”
    The driving question among these scientists is “Is it God and his word which is correct about the past, or is it man, who wasn’t there?”
    Many who believe in the authority of the Genesis account interpret it differently, however.  Evangelical Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross, founder of Reasons to Believe, concludes life didn’t develop through a purposeless, random process, but he also believes the earth is billions of years old. Ross earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from the University of British Columbia and a Masters of Science and Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Toronto. He was a postdoctoral research fellow for five years at Caltech, studying quasars and galaxies.
    Purdom, who concludes that the majority of fossils were formed as a result of the biblical flood approximately 4,500 years ago, has published papers in the Journal of Neuroscience (under her maiden name Hickman), the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. She is a member of the American Society for Microbiology and American Society for Cell Biology.
    Brown, a former atheist, is a West Point graduate and a National Science Foundation fellow. He served as a tenured associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and was chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College.

A Baleen whale

The specimen discovered in the Potomac, the Post reported, was identified as a baleen whale based on skull size and shape. Nance said it belongs to a family of whales that is extinct. However, its shape and appearance is comparable to a modern-day minke whale. He added that scientists won’t be able to conclusively determine the whale’s species until the entire fossil is excavated, cleaned and examined.
    Though mainstream science claims the whale is 15 million years old, Purcom challenges that according to “the evolutionary worldview,” a whale of that purported age should look different than whales today.
    “What we see in the fossil record is very similar to what we see today, and that’s consistent with the biblical worldview,” she said.