The Moab Man (also called "
Malachite
Malachite is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral, with the formula Cu2CO3(OH)2. This opaque, green-banded mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses, in fractures ...
man") is a find of several human skeletons found after bulldozing in a mine whose rock dated to the Early
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...
period, about 140 million years ago. The original discovery of two individuals was made in 1971 by Lin Ottinger in the Keystone Azurite Mine near
Moab
Moab ''Mลรกb''; Assyrian: ๐ฌ๐ช๐๐๐ ''Mu'abรข'', ๐ ๐ช๐๐๐
''Ma'bรข'', ๐ ๐ช๐ ''Ma'ab''; Egyptian: ๐๐๐๐
ฑ๐ ''Mลซ'ฤซbลซ'', name=, group= () is the name of an ancient Levantine kingdom whose territo ...
,
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
, and has been used by
creationists as an argument for humans coexisting with
dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s. John Marwitt, an archaeologist and the field director for the Utah Archaeological Survey, examined the fossils and concluded that the fossils were probably only hundreds of years old, the result of burials of
Native Americans.
Debated fossil status and age
In the 1980s,
Paluxy Creationist
Carl Baugh
Carl Edward Baugh (born October 21, 1936) is an American young Earth creationist. Baugh has claimed to have discovered human footprints alongside dinosaur footprints near the Paluxy River in Texas. Baugh promoted creationism as the former host o ...
purchased a "Moab Man" skeleton from Ottinger; the skeleton was displayed in the
in
Glen Rose, Texas, as evidence of humans living at the same time as dinosaurs.
The Creation Evidence Museum also housed a collection of supposedly human fossil footprints, vertebrate and invertebrate fossils, and fossils attributed to various dinosaur
genera
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...
, including a mislabeled
pubis and
assigned to ''
Acrocanthosaurus'' and a solitary "Y-shaped" fossil assigned the name "
Unicerosaurus" (Armstrong, 1987, identified this fossil as belonging to a fish ''
Xiphactinus
''Xiphactinus'' (from Latin and Greek for " sword-ray") is an extinct genus of large (Shimada, Kenshu, and Michael J. Everhart. "Shark-bitten Xiphactinus audax (Teleostei: Ichthyodectiformes) from the Niobrara Chalk (Upper Cretaceous) of Kansas. ...
'').
[Armstrong, John R. (1987). ''Creation/Evolution Newsletter'' 7 5:21] Studies over the years had concluded that the fossil "human" footprints were actually "forms of elongate dinosaur tracks, while others were selectively highlighted erosional markings, and still others (on loose blocks) probable carvings."
Later examination of the "Moab Man" skeletons indicate that they are unfossilized remains that were subject to an intrusive burial, and have been carbon dated to between 210 and 1450 years old (Berger and Protsch, 1989; Coulam and Schroedl, 1995).
See also
*
Meister Print
The Meister Print (also known as the Meister Footprint) refers to two trilobites in slate that appeared to be crushed in a human shoe print. The print was cited by creationists and other pseudoscience advocates as an out-of-place artifact, but was ...
*
London Hammer
The London Hammer (also known as the "London Artifact") is a name given to a hammer made of iron and wood that was found in London, Texas in 1936. Part of the hammer is embedded in a limey rock concretion, leading to it being regarded by some as a ...
*
Out-of-place artifact
An out-of-place artifact (OOPArt or oopart) is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in an unusual context, which challenges conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Such artifac ...
References
*
* {{Cite book, title=Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States , author=Jim Brandon, page=221, year=1978
External links
"Moab Man" - "Malachite Man"The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy
Archaeology of the United States
1971 in science
Creationism
Geography of Grand County, Utah
Pseudoarchaeology
1971 in the United States
People from Moab, Utah
1971 archaeological discoveries