Evidence of Dinosaurs and Man
Together in South Carolina

The primary source for this information is an outstanding little book (only 31 pages) by John Allen Watson, titled, "Man, Dinosaurs, and Mammals Together, Phosphate Rocks / Bone Phosphates of South Carolina: An Analysis of their Occurrence, Origin, Importance and Instruction for the Creation / Evolution Controversy". This report was published by the Mt. Blanco Publishing Co., Crosbyton TX, in 2001. This neat little book offers compelling evidence for the contemporaneousness of humans and dinosaurs and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this issue.

Location:

The area under consideration is in South Carolina, centering on the Charleston vicinity, known locally as "The Ashley Beds". Here is an enormous cache of bones roughly 6,000 square miles in extent. The maximum vertical thickness reaches only 18 inches, yet this cache contains a mixture of fossil life, which according to the "geologic column", represents hundreds of millions of years. Their being found together poses a problem for those committed to the evolution story, but fits the creation / flood scenario very well.

Chemistry:

The phosphate rocks / nodular masses of phosphate beds contain 60% or more of calcium phosphate. It was almost undoubtedly derived from phosphoric acid in the bones of the countless organisms that came to rest there. This opinion was shared by the many fertilizer companies who mined these valuable deposits.

Note that ash from the average bone is 87% calcium phosphate. Some have suggested that the high phosphate composition of the rocks in that region is from an oceanic source via upwelling currents. This however yields only about 1 x 10^-5 percent (see Watson p. 26). At least one estimate of the bone fraction of the South Carolina phosphate rock is 65%.

According to Professor Joseph Leidy M.D. 1874 - 1881 (Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. 8 , Second Series, pp. 210, referenced by Watson p. 27):

"[The rocks are reported to contain] as high as 60 or even more per centum of calcium phosphate…"

Fossil Fauna:

Within this formation (with a maximum vertical thickness of 18 inches) are found numerous fossil remains of animals, both marine and land, reptiles and mammals (including human remains). There is no evidence of any sort of "geological column" here at all. Taken at face value, this formation indicates that all these animal forms existed contemporaneously.

From Watson (p. 16) the fossil remains found in the Ashley Phosphate beds include (among other things; Watson provides a complete list):

Land Mammals: Mastodon, Elephant, Deer, Horse, Tapir, Monkey, Camel, Elk, Megatherium, Hippotherium, Muskrat, Rabbit, Beaver

Marine Animals: Whale, Walrus, Dolphin, Porpoise

Reptiles: Iguanodon, Hadrosaurus (Duck-billed dinosaurs), Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurs, Crocodilians, Alligator, Turtle

Fish and Marine: Various sharks, swordfish, stingray, clam shells, oysters, shrimp

Human: Indian (Jaws, teeth, bones, pottery, arrowheads)

Sources:

This information was originally gathered by Geologist F.S. Homes. According to his biographer Lester D. Stephens ("The Story of Francis Simmons Holmes, Paleontologist and Curator of the Charleston Museum", Contributions from the Charleston Museum, No. XVII, February 1988, p. 15, referenced in Watson, p. 29):

"[Holmes was] the leading paleontologist of his time."

Note that Holmes was in close contact with Joseph Leidy, and Louis Agazzi. Leidy was a professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Pennnsylvania. It was he who named and described the first duck-billed dinosaur (Hadrosaurus Foulkii) in 1858. Holmes' book "The Phosphate Rocks of South Carolina and the Great Carolina Marl Bed" featured an illustration of this animal's skeleton on the cover. A photo is provided in Watson's book fig 7, p. 27.

From Holmes' book ("The Phosphate Rock of South Carolina and the Great Carolina Marl Bed", 1870, p. 31, cited in Watson pp 20-21):

"It was in this Post Pleiocene age, the period when the American Elephant, or Mammoth, the Mastodon, Rhinoceros, Megatherium, Hadrosaurus, and other gigantic quadrupeds roamed the Carolina forests, and repaired periodically to these Salt-lakes of Lagoons…and during a series of indefinite ages, engaged as they were first sipping, then licking salt, and depositing their fecal remains, and ultimately their bones and teeth, in fact their dead bodies, in these great open "crawls" or pens…"

From Holmes pp. 62-63, cited in Watson p. 21: "Not long after finding the above named reics of human workmanship, and engaged in our usual visits to the Ashley Bed, a bone was found projecting from the bluff, immediately in contact with the surface of the stony stratum (the Phosphate-rocks); we pulled it out, and behold a human bone! Without hesitation it was condemned as an "accidental occupant" of quarters to which it had no right - geologically - and so we threw it into the river. Alas! we have lived to regret our temerity and rashness. A year after, a lower jaw bone with teeth was taken from the same bed, and now we have it in the cabinet…Subsequent events and discoveries show, conclusively, that the first human bone was "in place", and that the beds of the Post-Pleiocene, not only on the Ashley, but in France Switzerland and other European countries, contain human bones associated with the remains of extinct animals and relics of human workmanship, proving most conclusively that the Carolina specimens were found " in place", and as the European discoveries were made in 1854 and ours in 1844, South Carolina should be awarded the honor of the first discovery, and the determination of the Paleontological age of the Post-Pleiocene Beds. It "stamps it", as the Pre-Historic age of man, the connecting link between the Tertiary and the recent age, the true Quaternary period in its geological history."

A letter from Dr. John T. Wightman dated January 11, 1892 was published in J.C. Keener's book "The Garden of Eden and the Flood", 1900, (Publishing House of the M.E. Church, South) p. 57 (cited in Watson p. 21). This letter reads:

"Professor Holmes showed me at the museum a gigantic human thigh bone, three inches longer than the average bone of the same kind. It was…taken from these same beds…It was a remarkable fossil."

In as recent a 1996, further evidence was reported, this time in a purely secular journal. David B. Weishampel and Luther Young state ("Dinosaurs of the East Coast", Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 139):

"In addition, two hadrosaurid teeth came from the Kingstree in Williamsburg County, although they were mixed with Paleocene and Pleistocene fossils and their stratigraphic source is uncertain."

Conclusions

According to the evolution story, the Pleistocene epoch began about 2 million years ago, and lasted until the beginning of the Holocene, about 10,000 years ago. Finding the remains of Hadrosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, and Plesiosaurs - all said to have gone extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period (65 million years ago) - in Pleistocene-age rocks, must cause us to seriously question the evolutionary view of earth's history. In light of these (and many other) findings, it is certainly reasonable to suspect that the millions of years which supposedly separate humans from dinosaurs are illusionary, and that these giant reptiles have always co-existed with human-kind.

The book by State Geologist F.S. Holmes published in 1870. Notice the cover shows the coexistence of man and Hadrosaur.