Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Horses

Wade E. Miller is a retired BYU Professor of Geology and Paleontology. He received his PhD in Paleontology from UC Berkeley. He has done fieldwork and presented at academic conferences in more than a dozen countries. He spent a number of years working with faunal remains from the famed La Brea tar pits under the auspices of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museums. He has a long-standing close working relationship with the Museo del Desierto in Coahuila, Mexico. Miller's ResearchGate profile shows a productive scholar whose work gets cited by others in his field. His personal statement of faith in the Mormon Scholars Testify collection shows his firm belief in the Book of Mormon.

Miller has personally reconciled his deep knowledge of earth sciences with his understanding of the scriptures. He wrote a book in 2010 entitled Science and the Book of Mormon.  My overview of it is in the article entitled "BMAF 2014." Miller teamed up with Book of Mormon Central Research Associate Matt Roper for an article on animals in the Book of Mormon published in Interpreter in 2014. That article was updated and expanded into an even better piece entitled "Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives" published in BYU Studies Quarterly Vol. 56 No. 4 (2017). The BYU Studies article includes blockbuster information about horse (Equus) remains from the state of Coahuila in Mexico that date to ca. 520 BC.

In other words, a qualified paleontologist has documented the presence of horses in Mexico in Book of Mormon times. Passages such as Enos 1:21 now have additional credible external corroboration.
State of Coahuila in Mexico
See also the very good article by Daniel Johnson entitled "Hard Evidence of Ancient American Horses" in BYU Studies 54:3 (2015) and the January 29, 2018 Book of Mormon Central blog post entitled "New Evidence for Horses in America."
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Wade Miller lives just a few minutes from my house. We visited recently. Additional research is underway.

February 21, 2018 Wade brought Rosario Gomez to visit me. The two of them just returned from St. George where they presented research papers at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Western Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists. Gomez is Director of Paleontology for the State of Coahuila, Mexico. Coahuila has more fossils than any other state in the country and its license plates now carry the tagline "Tierra de los Dinosaurios."
National Geographic Article on Coahuila Dinosaurs
We discussed their upcoming trip to the state of Mexico where Miller and Gomez will do fieldwork at sites near Mexico City.