60-million-year-old fish fossil—give or take 59,994,000 years or so.
A Canadian man from Alberta discovered the fossils of five 60-million-year-old fish in a Calgary basement.
There's a twist to this important discovery:
You have to smile, when the greatest fossil discovery in recent Calgary history comes at the end of a backhoe operated by a man known as the greatest promoter of creationism in Alberta.
His name is Edgar Nernberg, and when he’s not sitting on the board of directors of Big Valley’s Creationist Museum or actively lobbying for the inclusion of creationism in Alberta’s school curriculum, Nernberg operates a backhoe in Calgary.
Interestingly enough, one of the reasons that Mr. Nernberg recognized the fossils as important in the first place is because of the work he puts into trying to prove that creationism is scientifically viable.
An avid collector of fossils and old specimens in his quest to bolster belief in a world said to be around 6,000 years old, Nernberg has donated time and exhibits to the Bible-promoting museum in Big Valley.
The museum, meant to counter the popular Royal Tyrrell in Drumheller, explains how dinosaurs and humans co-existed, and how stories like Noah’s Flood have geological backing.
Here's an exhibit from a creationist museum and here is the Big Valley Creationist Museum's
website where Edgar has created a genealogy of King Henry the 6th "back to Adam and Eve." Will this shake Mr. Nernberg's
confidence in creationism?
“No, it hasn’t changed my mind. We all have the same evidence, and it’s just a matter of how you interpret it,” says Nernberg.
[...]
“There’s no dates stamped on these things,” he says, sharing a good-humoured chuckle about a discovery that has him working alongside the ideological enemy, so to speak.
Knowing his discovery will help research at the Royal Tyrrell? Nernberg just laughs harder. “Yes, that’s right,” he says.
I will tell you this—Edgar Nernberg seems like a pretty amenable fellow. As long as creationism is kept in creationist museums and not in schools, I'm fine with having a laugh alongside him.