Addresses of All Authors
Department of Biological and Physical Sciences
The Master's University
21726 Placerita Canyon Road
Santa Clarita, CA 91321
Author's Biography
Alia Ahten is an undergraduate senior at The Master's University in Santa Clarita, CA, where she is majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies. Her emphases include Animal Science and Entrepreneurship.
Katherine Beebe is a junior at The Master's University, where she is currently pursuing her bachelor's degree in Biology with an emphasis in Paleontology. She has been conducting paleontological research.
Caroline Clausen is an undergraduate student at the Master's University studying Geoscience. She has done previous baraminological research on pterosaurs.
Thai Perez is an undergraduate student at The Master’s University studying Biology. She is researching antibiotic and anti-fungal properties found in different plants.
Matthew McLain is Associate Professor of Biology and Geology at The Master’s University in Santa Clarita, CA, where he teaches courses on paleontology, biology, and geology. He has a BS in Geology (Cedarville University) and a PhD in Earth Sciences (Loma Linda University). He is president of the Creation Biology Society and has published paleontology papers in both the conventional and creationist literature.
Presentation Type
Full Paper Presentation
Proposal
Archosauromorpha is a large grouping of reptiles including the Archosauria and other related taxa, such as phytosaurs, rhynchosaurs, and tanystropheids. Phylogenetically, Archosauria contains both crocodilians and birds, as well as several extinct groups (e.g., dinosaurs, pterosaurs, etc.). Crocodilians and their extinct relatives belong to the group Pseudosuchia, whereas birds, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and a few other animals lie within Avemetatarsalia. Creationists can agree or disagree with these taxonomic groupings, but all creationists would concur that these animals do not share a single common ancestor. Rather, Scripture clearly teaches that God created separate kinds of animals, including different kinds of birds, which indicates that both Archosauromorpha and Archosauria must consist of multiple created kinds. Both fossil and extant archosaurs have been the subject of several baraminological studies, with work on avemetatarsalians (e.g., Wood 2005; Doran et al. 2018) greatly outnumbering the number of studies on pseudosuchians (e.g., Frederico and McLain 2020). Although there is still much work to be done with archosaurs, the non-archosaur archosauromorph taxa pale in comparison with only one published baraminological study (Phytosauria: Grimes and McLain 2017). Although all extinct and less well-known than archosaurs, non-archosaur archosauromorphs vary greatly in morphology and ecology and are thus of great interest to creationists interested in earth history. Many of these groups are exclusively Triassic, suddenly appearing and disappearing in the fossil record. As such, creationists would predict that there are likely multiple created kinds of non-archosaur archosauromorphs.
To investigate the baraminic status of Archosauromorpha, we propose using BARCLAY v. 1.0 (developed by Todd Wood, https://coresci.org/barclay) to analyze a recently published dataset (Kellner et al. 2022) with statistical baraminology methods—baraminic distance correlation (BDC) with bootstrapping and 3D multidimensional scaling (MDS). Given the suspected large number of baramins included in the dataset, we anticipate splitting the dataset into smaller subsections reflective of taxonomic groups within Archosauromorpha (as in Wood 2005 and other studies). We anticipate that statistical baraminological analysis of these taxa will help us discern a preliminary estimate for the number of non-archosaur archosauromorph baramins, which probably represent the number of created kinds and ark kinds. We expect this study to provide the creationist scientific community with: 1) better numbers for estimating how many animals were on the ark, 2) a greater appreciation for the diversity and disparity in God’s creation, 3) increased knowledge of Triassic reptile groups that will aid creationists in understanding the pre-Flood world and its ecosystems and the depositional events of Noah’s Flood.
Disciplines
Geology
Keywords
Baraminology, Archosauromorpha, Archosauria, created kinds, Triassic, Rhynchosauria, Proterochampsia, Phytosauria
DOI
10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.27
Print Reference
487-539
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Recommended Citation
McLain, Matthew A.; Clausen, Caroline; Perez, Thai; Beebe, Katherine; and Ahten, Alia
(2023)
"A Preliminary Analysis of Archosauromorph Baraminology,"
Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 9, Article 20.
DOI: 10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.27
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol9/iss1/20
Submission Type
paper