Three of the Worlds Best-Known Evolutionary Theorists of the Twentieth Century Are Confronted With Human Footprints in the Same Sedimentary Layer of Cretaceous Limestone that Preserved Dinosaur Tracks.

Richard Dawkins, Jay Gould, and James Farlow

“if anyone could convincingly demonstrate human and dinosaur coexistence—if such evidence could be validated academically—it would, “blow evolution out of the water.”

In 1984, an unexpected event unfolded at a small, dusty creationist museum tucked away in Texas—an event that would later become one of the most remarkable anecdotes in the early history of the Creation Evidence Museum. At that time, the museum’s presence was barely noticeable, and its physical structure was far from impressive. It consisted of nothing more than a single-room log cabin, humble in appearance and secured by a latch so fragile that, as its founder remarked, any determined individual could have broken it. Yet despite its simplicity and vulnerability, the museum housed artifacts its curator believed to be powerful challenges to evolutionary theory. Entrusting his materials to divine protection, he often left the museum unattended while traveling to lecture around the country.

During one such weekend absence, three of the world’s most prominent evolutionary and atheistic scientists arrived unannounced at the little museum. Their names were striking: Richard Dawkins of Oxford, Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, and James Farlow of Indiana University–Purdue University. These were not merely scholars of modest reputation; they were among the best-known evolutionary theorists of the twentieth century, shaping public discourse through both academic publications and popular works. What would motivate such figures to make an out-of-the-way stop at an unassuming creationist institution? According to the account, the three had previously published in both technical and popular literature that if anyone could convincingly demonstrate human and dinosaur coexistence—if such evidence could be validated academically—it would, in their own phrasing, “blow evolution out of the water.” Intrigued or perhaps compelled by reports that the museum possessed artifacts suggesting exactly such coexistence, they arrived seeking firsthand examination.

But the director, Dr. Carl Baugh (referred to in the transcript as “Dr. Kobb”), was away lecturing. Instead, the only available host was Bob Somes, a friend of the museum, who possessed a key. Unable to be there himself, he delegated the task to his seventeen-year-old son, Temple. It is a poignant detail: the most celebrated evolutionary minds of the era, men who would never have agreed to participate in a creationist lecture or read creationist literature, suddenly found themselves listening to a teenage boy explain the museum’s controversial exhibits. Yet this unlikely arrangement set the scene for an encounter that has been recounted with fascination ever since.

Temple began by showing them one of the museum’s most discussed objects: what the institution claimed to be a human-made hammer encased in Early Cretaceous sandstone from central Texas. According to the museum, the geological matrix surrounding the hammer had been identified as far older than human civilization, suggesting—at least to the museum’s interpretation—that the object must itself have an ancient origin incompatible with standard evolutionary timelines. When confronted with the artifact, Dawkins, Gould, and Farlow reportedly responded immediately: “Impossible.”

Undeterred, Temple then presented another object: a fossilized human finger. The museum maintained that it had been recovered from a sedimentary limestone layer assigned to approximately 110 million years in age. Again, the visitors dismissed the claim. Regardless of what the fossil resembled, they insisted such a thing could not be what the creationists believed it to be.

The third exhibit elicited the strongest reaction. Temple revealed a human footprint, complete with all five toes and detailed arch structure—the hallux, lateral toes, medial and lateral arches, even what the museum described as the cuboid-calcaneal relationships of the foot anatomy. According to the museum’s account, the print appeared in the same layer of Cretaceous limestone that preserved dinosaur tracks. When first confronted with the slab, the evolutionary scholars allegedly attempted to deny its geological context. But James Farlow, whose field of specialization included such formations, examined it closely. His response, as remembered by the museum’s account, was strikingly candid: “I don’t know how to explain it, but it is Cretaceous limestone.”

This admission set the stage for the most dramatic exchange. Richard Dawkins, faced with what was claimed to be a human footprint embedded in the same stratum as dinosaur tracks, declared, “A human footprint in the same layer with dinosaur footprints? Impossible.” Temple, maintaining composure, responded simply: “It’s possible. I helped to excavate it.”

According to the narrative, that moment effectively ended the visit. The three scientists left the little museum and never returned. The museum’s founder later expressed disappointment that the opportunity for further discussion abruptly closed. He believed the scholars faced an academic dilemma: having publicly stated that such evidence, if verified, would force them to reconsider evolution, they nevertheless refused to accept or engage it when presented with the museum’s claims. Whether they regarded the materials as misinterpreted, fraudulent, or simply irrelevant, they did not pursue further examination, and their departure marked the end of the encounter.

For the creationist side, the event has been remembered as an illustration of what they perceive as the inflexibility of the evolutionary establishment. From their perspective, the scholars could not permit themselves to acknowledge even the possibility of anomalous evidence because doing so might require them to revise foundational assumptions about natural history. Dr. Baugh later reflected that the men’s academic “profile of admission” was at stake. They had publicly stated that coexistence of humans and dinosaurs, if demonstrated, would overturn evolutionary theory, yet—according to this story—when confronted with claimed evidence, they could not accept it because it conflicted with what he termed “their own paradigm.”

The deeper implication suggested by the museum’s founder goes beyond scientific debate. He believed the reluctance of Dawkins, Gould, and Farlow to engage further was not only intellectual but spiritual. In his view, their resistance stemmed from a refusal to “give an account to a Creator.” For him, this was not merely a matter of conflicting data or scientific interpretation; it was a question of personal accountability before God. The artifacts housed in that modest one-room log cabin symbolized, to his mind, evidence for a created world—evidence that should lead observers beyond scientific controversy to theological truth.

Whether one regards this 1984 encounter as a significant historical moment, a clash of worldviews, or simply an anecdote shaped by memory and interpretation, it remains an enduring story in creationist circles. A small museum with almost no visibility, staffed only by a seventeen-year-old for the day, suddenly received three of the most influential evolutionary theorists of the modern era. They came seeking evidence they themselves had said could falsify evolution, and they left unconvinced, unwilling, or unable to embrace what the museum presented. For the creationists who recount this story, it stands as a vivid illustration of how worldview commitments shape the interpretation of scientific data—and of how even the most prominent scholars can be challenged by what they do not expect to find.

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Footnotes

1. Carl E. Baugh, Creation Evidence Museum: Oral Historical Narrative, interview transcript, c. 1984–1995. The account of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and James O. Farlow visiting the Creation Evidence Museum originates from Dr. Baugh’s publicly circulated talks and museum interviews in which he recounts an unannounced visit by the three scholars to the museum’s original one-room cabin facility in Glen Rose, Texas.
2. Richard Dawkins (b. 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and former Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His writings, including The Blind Watchmaker (1986) and The God Delusion (2006), explicitly defend atheistic naturalism and critique creationism and intelligent design. For Dawkins’ views on falsification in evolutionary biology, see Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (New York: Free Press, 2009).
3. Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002), paleontologist and evolutionary theorist at Harvard University, is best known for developing the theory of punctuated equilibrium with Niles Eldredge. Gould identified philosophically as an agnostic and articulated the “NOMA” principle (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) in Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999).
4. James O. Farlow is a paleontologist and professor of geology at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, known for his research on dinosaur ichnology (trackways). Farlow has published extensively on dinosaur locomotion and Cretaceous track sites, including Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States, ed. M. G. Lockley and James O. Farlow (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
5. The claim that evolutionary theorists have stated that human and dinosaur coexistence would falsify evolution is grounded in the standard evolutionary chronology, which places humans at ~300,000 years BP and non-avian dinosaurs at >65 million years BP. A classical articulation of a catastrophic falsification scenario (“fossil rabbits in the Precambrian”) appears in J. B. S. Haldane, quoted in John Maynard Smith, The Theory of Evolution, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 83. Dawkins reiterates similar falsification tests in The Greatest Show on Earth (2009).
6. The alleged artifacts shown during the visit—such as the “London Hammer,” the fossilized human finger, and the Glen Rose human-like footprints—have been subjects of longstanding controversy in creationist literature. For a creationist description, see Carl E. Baugh, Panorama of Creation (Glen Rose, TX: Creation Evidence Museum Press, 1990). For critical geological assessments, see Glen J. Kuban, “Review of Alleged Human-Era Footprints in Dinosaur Beds,” Journal of Geological Education 36 (1988): 37–46.
7. Reports of human-like impressions in Cretaceous or Carboniferous strata have been historically rejected by mainstream geology because human presence in such layers would overturn established radiometric dating and stratigraphic frameworks. For an early scientific discussion of anomalous Carboniferous prints, see Albert G. Ingalls, “The Carboniferous Mystery,” Scientific American 162, no. 1 (January 1940): 14–15. Ingalls famously wrote that if humans (or their ancestors) existed in the Carboniferous, “the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving,” though he ultimately attributed the prints to non-human causes.
8. The Glen Rose Cretaceous tracksite (Paluxy River Basin) is a well-known dinosaur ichnofossil locality. Claims of human prints among dinosaur trackways have been evaluated repeatedly in peer-reviewed geology, with mainstream consensus attributing the human-like shapes to erosion, misinterpretation, or altered dinosaur tracks. A foundational scientific treatment is R. T. Bird, “A Remarkable Dinosaur Trackway,” Natural History 43 (1939): 254–261.
9. The interpretation of scientists’ reactions during the 1984 visit is based solely on Dr. Baugh’s recorded recounting; Dawkins, Gould, and Farlow have not published independent confirmations or descriptions of the event. The narrative’s apologetic significance lies in its contrast between perceived openness to falsifying evidence in principle versus reluctance to accept purported anomalous evidence in practice.
10. Albert G. Ingalls, “The Carboniferous Mystery,” Scientific American, Vol. 162, No. 1 (January 1940), 14. Ingalls discusses alleged human-like footprints in Carboniferous formations and acknowledges that if genuinely human, they would fundamentally overturn standard geology.
11. Ibid. Ingalls concludes that science “rejects the attractive explanation” that the prints were human and proposes non-human or unknown amphibian origins.
12. This narrative is adapted from an oral account attributed to Dr. Carl Baugh (Creation Evidence Museum), describing an alleged 1984 visit by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and James O. Farlow to the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas. The original story appears in circulated transcripts and recorded interviews in which Dr. Baugh recounts the event.

Categories: Robert Clifton Robinson