I don't understand the bit about knowing which "locality" to look in.
Around 12 minutes in, Shubin discusses the main factors needed to find or discover certain fossils. And they're pretty standard. Anyone can do what he is describing and I always recommend that if people doubt what is being described, try it for yourself.
He said #1 being finding rocks of the right age. We know fish were present in the Cambrian and Silurian, while tetrapods we're present in the late Devonian. And so if you want to find rocks that have a fish with legs, step one is to look for rocks between fish and between animals with legs. Because not all rock has terrestrial vertebrates. So, he identifies early to mid Devonian rock, in this case in central Pennsylvania.
His second consideration, is to find rocks of the right environment. Prehistoric environment. So if you find cooled magma, you probably won't find fossils in it. Nor metamorphic rocks. So he looks to sedimentary. But even further, there are marine sedimentary rocks like limestones, there are shallow marine shales, there are terrestrial shales, and there are sandstones. Typically in cyclothems you can identify the depth of an ocean, or in this case more specifically, Shubin describes Devonian prehistoric river deltas which were present off the west side of a prehistoric mountain chain called the Acadian mountains which migrated into central north America during the Devonian.
So he's looking to see, am I too far west in a prehistoric shallow water? Or am I too far east into and into dry land? Am I too far west that I'm pushing into the Silurian? Or am I too far east that I'm pushing into the carboniferous?
And if you look at a geologic map of Pennsylvania, it can make much more sense. Because in Pennsylvania, as you travel in different directions, because rocks are tilted, you basically travel through time. Go south and you're going to be going backwards in time to Cambrian marine rock. Go northeast and you'll push into ordovician then silurian then Devonian, then carboniferous rock, in that order (I'm not familiar with Permian layers in that region).
So he's navigating a geologic map, both in time and space and in the nature of the rock. And he finds ancient river beds, identified in lacustrine prehistoric river deposites. Rivers where presumably if fish evolved into land species, at a certain time in history, they presumably would live in a river not too far from the ocean.
And anyone can get a geologic map of the state they live in and can go out and look and see what's there. It's not anything particularly complicated. But in truth, such a plan and such logic is only possible given a very precise and well-known nature of a fossil succession.
So we have time/space, then we have lithology/environment. And the third thing he mentions is simply needing the rock to be present at the surface. So something that he doesn't need to invest in heavy drilling or excavating machinery to get to. Things present in road cuts on on eroding hills where fossils are falling out of the rock that are easy to get to.
And anyone can follow these steps, anyone can go on Google and just search geologic map of X state or Y country. Digital maps are available through USGS and on apps like the "ROCKD" app. Then all you really need is a study pair of boots and a rock hammer, and you can test any of these ideas, anyone can, quite easily.
And so, we backtrack a bit to Casey luskins article for analysis. Where he basically says that...X trace fossils we're found, Y team of scientists argues that they are tetrapod foot tracks. Those fossils exist roughly 10 million years earlier than tiktaalik, therefore evolution isn't true.
But, let's unwrap that. If tetrapods, land animals, were present in the Cambrian, It would be a huge blow to the theory of evolution, because as you know and as we all know, the Cambrian has things like worms and really basil fish, arthropods, soft-bodied animals, bizarre things. And so to say that a land animal existed in this time would be scientifically outrageous, and it would blow the whole theory up. In contrast, if tetrapods or fish-like tetrapodomorphs we're first identified, say, in the Cenozoic, it wouldn't logically make sense, Because animals like mammals and birds are very highly derived. For example, how could birds exist before land amphibians? If evolution were true?
And so, with Casey luskins argument, If these trace fossils were in the carboniferous through the late cenozoic to present day, Or if the fossils were in the Cambrian or ordovician, it would disprove the theory of evolution.
But what Casey luskin is saying, is that tetrapod tracks in the Devonian, in a time almost identical to what Neil Shubin is looking at, luskin is arguing that if this were true, it would disprove evolution.
But of course that doesn't make any sense because their time, the mid Devonian or so, is almost identical to the timing in which Shubin is looking. And Shubin of course is making his prediction on the pretext that evolution is true, based on ordovician fish and late Devonian tetrapods.
But it gets worst when you go further and see that even the trace fossils have no associated bone material. How many times have critics of evolution argued that scientists are doing a bad job because they are making claims based off of one tooth or one finger bone. Here, Casey luskin is making an argument without a single bone.
But it gets worse still, when we find that even those trace fossils are contested as fish feeding trace fossils.
But what does it all matter if the trace fossils are right where evolution suggests that they should be anyway?
And Casey luskin knows all this, but he's doing some kind of incredible mental gymnastics to pull it off. All the while, he will never talk about why these Devonian tetrapods are even Devonian to begin with, And why these aren't in the Cambrian where the Permian or in the Cenozoic etc.
He will do mental gymnastics to make this argument, but he won't address the real bread and butter, the real meat of the situation. He won't talk about how Neil shubin and the Polish researchers are making their predictions to begin with.
And so we end up in this situation where luskan is trying to argue that the fossil succession doesn't actually exist and that fossils are out of order with what evolution predicts, but he's using research involving discoveries that were made based on what the fossil succession ought to look like if evolution were true.
And, It's simply dishonest. If tetrapod bones were in the Cambrian, okay that's something worth writing about. If the fossils are in the Triassic, okay that's a huge argument. But trying to argue about other tetrapod fossils that are contested in the Devonian where they presumeably would be if evolution were true anyway? That's just dishonest.
