Creation Moment 3/6/2024 - Who Painted It Black?

The wicked worketh a deceitful work: Proverbs 11:18

"The case reviewed in this paper involves “a famous 280-million-year-old fossil found to be a fake.” This fake is of the extinct reptile Tridentinosaurus antiquus, a 20 cm (8 in.)-long, lizard-like reptile with a slender body, relatively long neck, and pentadactyl (five-toed) limbs. It was first discovered in 1931 in the Italian Alps.

This fossil’s main claim to fame was being one of the oldest fossils of a backboned lizard found buried in Italy. The excitement was also due to the claim that the fossil, dated by evolutionists to be 280 million years old, was an important evidence for early-reptile evolution. Even more important was the fact that the fossil displayed evidence of soft tissue.

The evidence for soft tissues was that its body outline was darker, especially when framed against the surrounding light-colored rock. Unlike hard bones and teeth, soft tissues disintegrate comparatively rapidly over time. Consequently, specimens uncovered with evidence of intact skin as Tridentinosaurus antiquus are considered major finds. This fossil has also baffled paleontologists for almost a century for several reasons. One reason is because the “study of the evolution of reptiles is a prominent research field in paleontology…. the diversity of early reptile-like animals is still poorly understood.”

The fossil had never been analyzed in detail using modern analytical techniques. Its taphonomy (the study of how an organism becomes preserved as a fossil) and phyloposition in the fossil record were all unknown. Due to its importance for evolution, Rossi et al. rigorously

analyzed the fossil to determine the origin of the black body outline.

The conclusion of the analyses was “the material forming the body outline is not fossilized soft tissues but a manufactured pigment indicating that the body outline is a forgery.” Specifically, they determined that the “manufactured pigment” was common black paint that was painted on the small, 20 cm-long reptile.

It was obviously painted after it was carefully cleaned as part of the

presentation procedure completed for all fossils. One headline stressed the impact of the analyses that found the fraud was no trivial matter. The headline read, “Archaeologists stunned by truth behind 280-million-year-old fossil.”

The availability of a large assortment of tools to evaluate fossils leads to the question, 

Q: How many well-known fossils that support evolution likewise are, in part, or whole, fraudulent?”
CEH