2023 IN REVIEW
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 NIV
Photo: Mount Pilatus, Switzerland
The hills are alive with the sound of evidence. Yes, evidence for creation. It's another year and therefore another year-end newsletter. 2023 was a tough year to say the least with the passing of my wife Salome but joy also as I am dating a lovely gal, Laura. Enjoy the latest (very late and short) newsletter, in which I did manage to get in some fossil collecting and a few trips.
Martin and Marc
Martin and Marc
MUSEUM EVENTS
It's finally open house time again at the “Creation Research Museum of Ontario” at Goodwood Baptist Church in Goodwood, Ontario on Saturday, May the 25th, 2024 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Yes, we haven't had a public open house since the Creation Weekend in 2017!
Indoor fossil hunt
Day activities include...
-Fossil hunting. Learn about different types of fossils and the evidence for a quick burial.
-The “Rock Pile Dig” where you can collect a bucket of fossils and minerals to take home.
The beauty in minerals and crystals has always defied the theory of evolution.
-Tour the museum for free! Participate in the self tour quiz and get a chance to win
a fabulous local fossil in the draw.
-Creation resources, t-shirts, fossils and minerals available for purchase at the rock store.
-Free gift bag with creation materials while they last.
-Visit the hands-on activity tables.
-Fossil hunting. Learn about different types of fossils and the evidence for a quick burial.
-The “Rock Pile Dig” where you can collect a bucket of fossils and minerals to take home.
The beauty in minerals and crystals has always defied the theory of evolution.
-Tour the museum for free! Participate in the self tour quiz and get a chance to win
a fabulous local fossil in the draw.
-Creation resources, t-shirts, fossils and minerals available for purchase at the rock store.
-Free gift bag with creation materials while they last.
-Visit the hands-on activity tables.
For more info click button below.
Come on a Spring or Fall, 2024 public fossil trip to the Kawartha Lakes
with Martin Legemaate, Curator of The Creation Research Museum of Ontario
with Martin Legemaate, Curator of The Creation Research Museum of Ontario
Kawartha Lakes fossil dig
Spring trip: Saturday, June 15th 2024. Fall trip: Saturday, September 14th 2024
Contact Curator Martin Legemaate: [email protected]
Dates and times may change due to quarry operations.
2023 IN REVIEW
JUNE
JUNE
PORT COLBORNE RESEARCH
The Port Colborne area is dotted with quarries cutting through the Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian rocks. David and I were looking for a particular seam of rock called the Williamsville Member of the Bertie Formation* which contains eurypterids also called sea scorpions, an extinct group of arthropods.
(*A rock Formation is a seam of sedimentary rock that is distinct from seams above and below. A Member is a distinct rock seam within that Formation)
(*A rock Formation is a seam of sedimentary rock that is distinct from seams above and below. A Member is a distinct rock seam within that Formation)
With a Tim's coffee in hand, David is pointing to the Williamsville Member.
Heading on over to the seam we saw this mass mortality plate filled with horn coral. Glacial activity did a great job of revealing them. Mass mortality is evidence that creatures were washed in from a large area because of the great numbers of creatures.
Hammer resting on the Eurypterid seam.
We were starting to find some fossils. 2 Eurypterid heads!
A great find: an eurypterid abdomen with a lower 3D abdomen removable piece! How cool is that!
Martin pointing to the best find of the day.
A partial eurypterid showing the cool walking, balancing and swimming legs, plus paddle!
Video of some of the finds of the day!
The eurypterid after a clean up and a glue! Finding eurypterids is great evidence that things were buried quickly and the material they were buried in had good preserving properties. I.e. hypersaline (salt) and anoxic (lack of oxygen) conditions.
JUNE
KAWARTHA LAKES COLLECTORS' FOSSIL TRIP
This is an annual event now with seasoned collectors with one exception this year, far left, a novice collector, Maria.
Early in the day, scouring the talus for trilobites.
Marc looking through the blast piles for the dark blue rock, the trilobite-bearing seam.
Maria catching on fast of what to look for.
This year again we have an audience!
I get David to point a lot. Here he is pointing to the trilobite-bearing seam.
The Gull River Formation is well known for its Bathyurus trilobites.
The Gull River Formation is well known for its Bathyurus trilobites.
Maria pointing to a great find.
A negative and positive impression of a crinoid stalk and crown
Here's a close-up shot. Crinoids are considered living fossils because they still exist in the seas today.
No evolution here!
No evolution here!
Now the trilobite bits are coming in. Here is a trilobite tail (pygidium) from a Bathyurus trilobite.
A near-complete Bathyurus trilobite.
And Malcolm's find of the day ...
A buried and possibly complete Bathyurus trilobite. Only Malcolm's expert fossil prepping will reveal the answer!
JULY
SWITZERLAND
Back to Switzerland again this year to visit family and to see an old fossil site that I visited in 2012.
Near the town of Oberhallau in the Canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. An outcropping and near the surface are Jurassic rocks!
Big piles of rock left by the farmers usually can turn up some good fossils, but there were only a few fresh piles.
Not a bad partial ammonite shell.
If you don't like Canadian sized slugs you definitely won't like these monsters!
Well, the piles did not turn up much, but as I was walking back to the car, in pulled another car with a family in it. It pays to be friendly and ask questions to the locals and it turns out they were on their way to the other side of the road where there was a hidden field outcrop of rock that was just loaded with fossils!
There were these slabs laying all over the place, containing oyster shells. (Gryphaea)
Close-up of the oyster shells commonly called "devil's toenails".
I helped one of the boys extract another partial ammonite shell. Sadly, ammonites are extinct, with one remaining cousin, the living Nautilus. Extinction is no help to the theory of evolution as we should be gaining new species, not losing them.
Not a bad keepsake for a kid!
I came back with more than enough fossils, leaving most of them in Switzerland as garden rocks for friends and family.
AUGUST
NIAGARA GLEN AND WHIRLPOOL
After a successful Niagara field trip in 2022, I took Laura down to see the geological oddities of the Glen, particularly the naturally formed potholes.
Laura just off the beaten path down in the Niagara Glen. Any rockfalls here can leave you very de-pressed!
The Glen is a collapsed part of the Niagara Gorge where hundreds of these boulders lay strewn about.
Laura squeezing between 2 boulders.
Here is one of many potholes found in the Glen.
How long does it take to form a pothole? Visit the 7 ONTARIO GEOLOGICAL WONDERS page and find out!
OCTOBER
Marc's Mineral Meanderings
By Marc Kenyon
By Marc Kenyon
Marc and Maria
It was early October 2023 when Maria (a budding rock hound friend we took under our wing) and I decided to go rockhounding in some spots she had never been. Maria has been rockhounding on her own for a few years now and was always looking for new spots to go to. We settled on the CN Dump in Bancroft and possibly Tory Hill. The day was cold and overcast but thankfully it did not snow or rain. On the way to Tory Hill we stopped at a location on highway 503 in the little town of Gooderham. Right beside the highway there is a spot that someone has been filling in with hundreds of truck loads from mostly road widening work.
Off Highway 503 in Gooderham
We spent a couple of hours there and came away with a bucket full of nice samples. Some of the things we found were, various colors of quartz, small bits of pyrite attached to other rocks, many nice granite samples, plus a few undetermined samples. From there we drove to the road to Tory Hill but found it very muddy, so, not having my 4 wheel drive truck that day, we decided to skip Tory Hill until the spring time. So we drove on to Bancroft and the CN Dump.
A nice slab of biotite mica
I have been to this location so many times over the years that I now look just on the edges of the pile and always find some nice samples. We went to a spot I found last year and it did not disappoint. We spent a few hours digging out some great mica samples. After filling a bucket we headed over to the main pile. Maria came up with some nice samples with blue sodalite in them, along with some very nice white nepheline pieces.
Beautiful pieces of biotite mica and blue sodalite in white nepheline
Mica with calcite
Another huge mica piece found at the CN Dump in Bancroft
As it was very overcast and getting late, it was also getting dark. So I took out the UV flashlights and spent some time finding some very nice samples that really glowed brightly. Overall it was a very successful trip that garnered some wonderful samples for both of us. Maria is proving to be a great rock hound, as she looks in every nook and cranny and is not afraid to get dirty in search of that one great find.
Biotite mica in nepheline. Under a UV light the hackmanite lights up beautifully. One thing evolutionists can't explain is the presence of beauty in the world; how much more the hidden and discoverable beauty!
NOVEMBER
ARK ENCOUNTER AND CREATION MUSEUM
Although Laura had been to the Williamstown Kentucky Ark Encounter and the Petersburg Kentucky Creation Museum in 2022, I had never been, so she was good guide for the next 2 days.
If you're the person that doesn't believe that 2 of each kind of of animal (7 of each clean animal) was able to fit on the ark you will when you visit this ark! I'm 6' 4" but still dwarfed by this structure!
What the cages for smaller animals may have looked like.
Cages for some of the bigger animals.
Dinosaurs on the ark? Yes! The bible says 2 of every kind of land animal, (7 of every clean animal) bird and creeping thing went on the ark - which would have included the dinosaurs!
The door of the ark. All who entered the ark were saved. Now Christ calls Himself the door. If anyone enters by Him, they will be saved.
John 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
John 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
The ark by night. We came at the right time, close to Christmas and everything was lit up with Christmas lights!
The next day we drove back up to Petersburg, Kentucky to the Creation Museum. I was excited as Founder Ken Ham was speaking that morning and we had a chance to meet him after.
Ken Ham speaking.
Yes we did meet Ken after and were able to chat a bit!
Ken and Laura.
The museum took you through Genesis from creation to the fall and the flood. Here is a depiction of Adam naming the animals.
The animals there were very life-like.
Nice kitty kitty! Land animals were created on day 6, which of course included the dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs and people together you say? Must have been a blood bath!
Not so, because in the good world that God created, Man and Animals were vegetarians!
GENESIS 1:29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is [i]life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Dinosaurs and people together you say? Must have been a blood bath!
Not so, because in the good world that God created, Man and Animals were vegetarians!
GENESIS 1:29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is [i]life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Unfortunately, sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and now the best we can see dinosaurs, is as skeletons.
ROMANS 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned
ROMANS 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned
What's the good news then?
ROMANS 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
ROMANS 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
NOVEMBER
COLLINGWOOD MBR. OIL SHALES, CRAIGLEITH
Taking advantage of the very little snow this winter, I took Laura to see one of our old geological stomping grounds in Craigleith, to see the Collingwood Mbr. oil shale exposures along Georgian Bay.
Looking southeast along the Bay.
Laura is pointing to a very common find here.
A tail (Pygidium) of the trilobite Pseudogygites latimarginatus.
A mortality plate* consisting of trilobite bits.
(*a large concentration of usually one type of creature)
(*a large concentration of usually one type of creature)
Disarticulated trilobite, (bottom finger). Note the trilobite head (cephalon) and tail.
This entire part of the shoreline shale is one big mortality plate consisting of mostly trilobites, indicating they were washed in and dumped. The presence of oil in the rock indicates a quick burial. This particular oil shale, also known as part Whitby Formation, is also exposed in Bowmanville, Ottawa, Quebec and even *Baffin Island. This is starting to look like the result of a massive flood deposit, reminding us of the Great Flood of Noah's time.
(*Roy 1941 Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 1502 By Macauley, G OPEN FILE 7199 Ordovician stratigraphy and oil shale, southern Baffin Island,
Nunavut— preliminary field and post-field data S. Zhang Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office 2012)
(*Roy 1941 Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 1502 By Macauley, G OPEN FILE 7199 Ordovician stratigraphy and oil shale, southern Baffin Island,
Nunavut— preliminary field and post-field data S. Zhang Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office 2012)
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For public fossil trips, see museum events at the top of this newsletter.