Ancient Human Skeletons
A few cases of human skeletal remains in ancient strata have been identified. Some have been compiled by William R. Corliss in Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts. None of these finds has been incontrovertibly established in the scientific establishment. It is to be expected that few such specimens would be found. Indeed the intelligence and mobility of antediluvian men would have caused them to be moving to higher ground in the initial weeks of the Flood. The result would be fewer bodies buried and fossilized and more floating and decaying. Moreover, the explicit purpose of the Flood was to destroy that wicked civilization (Genesis 6:5-7). (The lack of human fossils is actually more of a problem for evolutionists. If humans have lived on Earth for millions of years, there should be billions of human fossils, not just a handful.) Nonetheless, a few human fossil finds are reasonable candidates for pre-flood classification.
The controversial Guadeloupe skeletons are a good example. These specimens were first brought to the attention of the creationist community by Bill Cooper (“Human fossils from Noah’s Flood,” Creation Ex Nihilo, vol. 5, no. 3, 1983, pp. 6-9). The skeletons are currently being housed in the basement of the British Museum of Natural History (after having been on display for 50 years). According to the report of the excavators there are more skeletons remaining in the Miocene limestone strata east of the village of Moule on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Even though this limestone is as hard as marble, it formed around these skeletons as rapidly as cement, before they could fall apart.
In the coal collection in the Mining Academy in Freiberg, there is a puzzling human skull composed of brown coal and manganiferous and phosphatie limonite, but its source is not known. Prof. Dr. R. Vulpius, Professor of Coal Geology at the Freiberg Mining Academy, confirmed in more recent times that the skull is still in the archives. This skull was described by Karsten and Dechen in 1842. (Otto Stutzer, Geology of Coal, 1940, p.271. Stutzer was Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the School of Mines at Freiberg, in Saxony.)
In June of 1971 Lin Ottinger, an amateur geologist and archaeologist, made a fascinating discovery in a Moab, Utah copper mine. Ottinger found human remains in a Cretaceous age sandstone (supposedly more than 65 million years old). He carefully uncovered a portion of what later proved to be two fossilized human skeletons. Dr. Marwitt, J. P. Professor of Anthropology at Utah University, pronounced the discovery “highly interesting and unusual” for several reasons. The bones were still joined together naturally and stained green with copper carbonate. (Burdick, C.L., “Discovery of Human Skeletons in Cretaceous Formation,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 2, 1973, pp. 109-110.) “The bones were obviously human and ‘in situ,’ that is, in place and not washed or fallen into the stratum where they rested from higher, younger strata. The portions of the two skeletons that were exposed were still articulated indicating that the bodies were still intact when buried or covered. …In addition, the dark organic stains found around the bones indicated that the bones had been complete bodies when deposited in the ancient sandstone. …Mine metallurgist Keith Barrett of the Big Indian Copper Mine that owned the discovery site, recalled that the rock and sandy soil that had been removed by dozer from above the bones had been solid with no visible caves or crevices. He also remembered that at least 15 feet of material had been removed, including five or six feet of solid rock. This provided strong, but not conclusive, evidence that the remains were as old as the stratum in which they were found. And that stratum was at least 100 million years old.” (Barnes, F. A., “The Case of the Bones in Stone,” Desert, February 1975, pp. 36-39.)
Since the above articles were published, additional specimens have been found in the same area (between 50-100 ft away). The original mining ceased in the 1970s because the hardened sandstone was tearing up the bulldozers. The specimens found in the 1990s were even deeper into the hillside. They have been dubbed “Malachite Man” because of the green and turquoise colorations that have stained the bones. Some have theorized that it could be an Anasazi Indians burial site. But this would mean the Anasazi dug down 100 ft through very hard limestone to bury their dead! Others have postulated that the burial was the result of a mine caving in. But there is no evidence of a mining shaft (which would have to be quite long to arrive at the depth of 100 feet) or any mining tools. The fact that skeletons of women and an infant have been discovered pretty much rules out the mining accident theory. All of this is good evidence that these skeletons buried under Jurassic Dakota sandstone were pre-Flood.
A leading evolutionist has said, “We should be very surprised, for example, to find fossil humans appearing in the record before mammals are supposed to have evolved! If a single, well verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500 million year old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed. Incidentally, this is a sufficient answer to the canard, put about by creationist and their journalistic fellow travelers, that the whole theory of evolution is an ‘unfalsifiable’ tautology.” (Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p.225) But the methodology for dating rock layers largely protects evolution from such an embarrassment. Besides, when the evidence is too strong to deny, evolutionists will slide into “just so” stories and double-standards to explain away anomalous placement. That is exactly what they have done with Malachite Man.