< From JOANNA CATTANACH of the The Dallas Morning News,
jcattanach@... >



"Lone Star", the four-tusked mastodon skull found in a gravel pit in La
Grange, Texas, sold for $191,200 (which included a 19.5 percent cut for the
auction house).

The buyer bid by phone and was not identified.

The skull was sold by struggling fossil museum owner Joe Taylor, to try and
save his museum.

Mr. Taylor, director and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in the
West Texas town of Crosbyton, said he has been dogged for six years by a
number of creditors.

Mr. Taylor wore his best black boots and hat for the occasion, and hopes to
use the proceeds to help fund his struggling museum.

Mr. Taylor said it'll be hard to let Lone Star go.

He'd like to meet the buyer and deliver the mastodon himself. "It's like
seeing your daughter getting married off," Mr. Taylor said.

Although Mr. Taylor's Volkswagen-sized mastodon was the auction's premier
piece, several other items, including a foot-long golden nugget, also
fetched a handsome price.

The famed "Boot of Cortez", a 26-pound gold nugget discovered in Caborca,
Mexico, by a man with a handheld metal detector, sold for nearly $1.6
million, drawing a rousing round of applause.

A pallasite meteorite found near Fukang, China, sold for $155,350.

A 30-million-year-old, 3½ -inch fossilized lizard found in the Dominican
Republic and encased in perfectly preserved amber sold for $143,440.



~~~~~

Other refs:

Mt. Blanco - About Us - I’m Joe Taylor, the director and curator of the Mt.
Blanco Fossil Museum. If you like fossils, dinosaur digs and other old
things you have come to the right place. www.mtblanco.com/AboutUs.htm

"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."

An associate of the museum work, Mr James Taylor (Joe's nephew), graduated
from Texas A&M University, class of '93, with a BS in Biomedical Science.
He maintains the web site and has helped Joe on numerous digs dating back
to the famous mammoth find in Mt. Blanco canyon in 1984. James currently
serves as the co-pastor of the Crosbyton Primitive Baptist Church. He and
his wife, Julie, along with their four children moved back to Crosbyton in
November 2006 from Aberdeen, MS where he had been co-pastor of the Aberdeen
Primitive Baptist Church. James says about evolution vs. creationism as
follows:

"I can honestly say my reason for not believing in evolution certainly
wasn't because I was not taught it. We had weeks even months of
evolutionary teaching during my time at Texas A&M. Thankfully, I was
already involved in digging up fossils and seeing the real evidence for
myself. I knew from first hand experience that when all the facts are
known, evolution simply doesn't add up. My college professors, indeed all
evolutionists, only ever tell you half the story and it's the half that's
slanted to make evolution look true. I will have to tell you they made a
very convincing case. Were it not for my knowledge of all the facts and
especially my faith in Christ, it would have been easy to succumb to the
lie of evolution.
Ultimately, belief in evolution or creation is a matter of faith. Hebrews
11:1 describes faith as the "evidence of things not seen." Has anyone seen
where the dinosaurs or any fossils came from? Has anyone seen how they
were buried? Has anyone seen how the creatures originally came into
existence? Rhetorically the answer is of course, no. No matter whether
you believe in creation or evolution your belief about origins is based on
faith. Believing that the universe started with a big bang and that things
evolve from a state of lower order to a state of higher order (which is a
flagrant contradiction of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) can only be
believed by faith. In order to be scientific, it must be able to 1. be
observed and 2. be repeatable under carefully controlled experiments. The
"theory" of evolution regarding origins fails both these qualifications
miserably. You can't observe the origins of the universe, the earth, the
plant and animal life any more than you can repeat it. Therefore, what you
believe about origins, whether you are a creationist or evolutionist can
only ever be believed by faith. All the fossils that can be dug up can
only tell us that we found a fossil and it was in the dirt (or rock as the
case may be) and that’s it. Nothing more. It’s a dead animal or plant and
it can’t say one word about where it came from or how it got there.
Period. We can interpret, based on any number of factors, such as geology
and geography etc., how it got there but that is called interpretation
based on evidence. And interpretations are always subject to your
predisposition. That's not to say the evidence is unimportant or that we
can't learn anything from the evidence. The point is there is no
scientific mechanism to prove how it got there or why it is there. I think
it's funny, sad and ironic that the evolutionists expect us to believe that
everything evolved from nothing purely by chance with no intelligence and
then these same "brilliant” minds can't make one single little simple life
form either by chance or with their genius intellect. Frankly, they prove
the opposite of what they expect us to believe. Only a dummy (talking
about the scientists) believes it takes no intelligence to start life and
then they with all their supposed brilliance have not the first clue about
how to create a life using their 'intelligence'. If it can just happen by
chance without the catalyst of intelligence then it should be a simple
matter for their genius intellect to make one little itty bitty bacteria
shouldn't it? They make a laughing mockery of themselves. Of course
that's what the Lord said about them in the first place, Ps 2:4. Even if
our science advances to the point (I don’t think it will) that we can
create life then these same people who have been telling us for the last
100-150 years that it takes no intelligence to create life will have just
proved that it does take intelligence to create life. Ultimately their
fight isn't for the truth. They don't want the truth because they hate it
and suppress it as Paul said in Rom 1:18. They hate one person and
especially one person, Jesus Christ. They hate him pure and simple. If,
"In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth", then you owe God
your obedience but the nature of fallen man despises God and loves sin and
disobedience, Rom 3:10-18. If they acknowledge that God created the
universe (as Moses said that He did) then they will have to follow Moses'
command given in Duet 18:15, to hear the person who would come after Moses.
Moses went on to say you must not only hear but obey Him. That "Him" is
none other than Jesus Christ, Acts 3:22. My faith in Jesus and the
infallibility of the Bible were instrumental in keeping me from falling for
the lie of evolution. I read Genesis chapter 1 a lot in those days.
Second semester biology was almost entirely about evolution. In that
particular course I didn’t do very well grade wise and ended up just barely
passing with a C-. But when it comes to believing God’s word, however, I’m
thankful to believe that I have passed with an A+. Whether one just barely
passes their required evolutionary course work in college with a C or an A,
I hope that all will pass God’s examination of your belief in Him and His
creation with an A+. The evidence that we at Mt. Blanco dig up contradicts
evolution and 'proves' God’s special creation to be true. But, dear
reader, your faith ultimately stands or falls on 'Thus saith the Lord.' In
the end I hope we can all be like the Apostle Paul and simply say, 'I
believe God', Acts 27:25."

~~~~


"Boot of Cortez" - Desert Gold Diggers - The "Boot of Cortez" is the
largest natural gold nugget in existence from the Western Hemisphere. Its
weight is 389.4 troy oz. home.att.net/~desert-gold-diggers/gold/tgms04.htm

"The 'Boot of Cortez' is the largest natural gold nugget in existence from
the Western Hemisphere. Its weight is 389.4 troy oz. and was found in the
Sonora Desert with a metal detector in 1989. (Note that the owner corrected
me in that it is not the largest ever found in the Western Hemisphere but
the largest surviving nugget.)

( Note also on this webpage "Nice big nugget from Australia", but no
location given, and also the The Fricot crystallized gold mass - 201.40
troy oz. (approx. 13 lbs.) Discovered August, 1865 by William Russell Davis
at the Grit Claim, Spanish Dry Diggings, Middle Fork of American River, El
Dorado County, California .... I think that the Fricot specimen and others
like it have been dissolved from quartz probably with hydrofluoric acid
????? ~ John )