Walking with dinosaurs

Tonight in Texas, the fate of a creationist museum hangs in the balance:

A Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder.

The internet auction site that offered the fossil for early bidding (no bids received) takes a cautious approach to the age of the skull:

Distinct also from its European cousin, the Mammut borsoni, the American mastodon lived throughout North America, from Alaska to Central Mexico, in the Pleistocene epoch, and is generally believed to have become extinct about 10,000 years ago.

Its vendor dissents:

The Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum is a scientific and educational institution dedicated to a correct interpretation of Earth history and fossil remains. We believe that the fossil record speaks of catastrophic events happening several thousand years ago rather than slow processes taking place over millions or billions of years as is held by the popular establishment.

And they have proof!

Footprints of a giant man walking with dinosaurs. OK, the footprints are a bit indistinct. But they did pass the authoritative "muddy water" test:

Baugh and Patton recently attempted to show that the "new" human prints (in the same dinosaur tracks) are each 11 1/2 inches long. This they did by partially filling each track with muddy water until a puddle about 11 1/2 inches long was achieved

Then they stopped pouring.

But most striking of all are the ICA burial stones, engraved by "the ancient people of ICA, Peru long before the modern discovery of dinosaur fossils. The ICA Stones provide demonstrable evidence, an eye witness account, that men and dinosaurs did indeed walk together and dinosaurs did not die out millions of years ago." I think the museum proprietors are reasonable to ignore the investigation that suggested:

the stones are a hoax. Among the proofs presented by this investigator were microphotographs of the stones that showed traces of modern paints and sandpaper. The strongest evidence of fraud as claimed is the crispness of the shallow engravings. Stones of great age should have substantial erosion of the surfaces.