CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)

II) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)

B) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FROM EARTH WHICH TESTIFY TO A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)

5) PERIOD OF A WORLDWIDE FLOOD, (cont.)

c) PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A WORLDWIDE FLOOD, (cont.)

5) PALEONTOLOGY = A STUDY OF FOSSILS RELATIVE TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE POINTS TO A WORLDWIDE FLOOD

d) EARLY BURIAL OF MARINE CREATURES

[p. 273]

"Of course, in localities where more than one system is found exposed or revealed by well-logging or other means, it is frequently found that the lowermost strata are those containing the simpler (and therefore supposedly more ancient) organisms, usually marine organisms. This, however, does not at all evidence evolution, as commonly claimed, but rather testifies quite plainly that these marine creatures were, as would be expected, deposited first and deepest in the Deluge sediments. Two factors combine to make this a general, though by no means inviolable, rule. The sea-bottoms, both deep and shallow seas, would have been first affected by the breaking-up of the foundations of the great deep. This inference is corroborated by the fact that those strata found usually lowest in the column are marine strata, containing marine organisms. With reference to the Cambrian strata, supposedly the oldest fossiliferous strata:

'At least 1500 species of invertebrates are known in the Cambrian, all marine, of which 60% are trilobites and 30% brachiopods.'

[Maurice Gignoux: Stratigraphic Geology, Translated from the 4th French Edition by Gwendolyn G. Woodford, (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1955), p. 46]

...The same could largely be said of the Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian periods, as far as their fauna [animal life] are concerned, although there are evidences of continental-type flora [plant life] in the latter. It is not until the Permo-Carboniferous is reached, well up in the geologic column, that the first land animals are encountered."

e) LATER BURIAL OF LAND ANIMALS AND PLANTS

i) INTRODUCTION

[pp. 275-277]

"In other localities, and perhaps somewhat later in the period of the rising waters of the Flood, in general, land animals and plants would be expected to be caught in the sediments and buried; and this, of course, is exactly what the strata show. Of course, this would be only a general rule and there would be many exceptions, as currents would be intermingling from all directions, particularly as the lands became increasingly submerged and more and more amphibians, reptiles and mammals were overtaken by the waters. One would certainly not expect to find, in any one locality, a continuous series of all the possible types of strata; the actual deposits would depend on the local circumstances of current direction and sediment source areas and the manner in which these changed during the course of the Flood period.

In general though, as a statistical average, beds would tend to be deposited in just the order that has been ascribed to them in terms of the standard geologic column. That is, on top of the beds of marine vertebrates would be found amphibians, then reptiles and finally birds and mammals. This is in the order:

(1) of increasing mobility and therefore increasing ability to postpone inundation; [and ultimate drowning]

(2) of decreasing density and other hydrodynamic factors tending to promote earlier and deeper sedimentation, and

(3) of increasing elevation of habitat and therefore time required for the Flood to attain stages sufficient to overtake them.

The order is exactly what is to be expected in light of the Flood account and, therefore, gives further circumstantial evidence of the truthfulness of that account; in no sense is it necessary to say that this order is evidence of organic evolution from one stage into the next. And the fact that, although this order is generally to be expected, it is found to have many exceptions, both in terms of omissions and inversions, is also certainly to be expected in terms of evolution and uniformity.

It is in the [so called] Permian and Carboniferous ['periods'], near the top of the 'Paleozoic' strata, that remains of land animals are first encountered. This, therefore, marks an important stage in the onset of the Deluge waters, when the smaller and less agile of the amphibians and reptiles were overtaken and swept into the Deluge sediments."

[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2, cont.]:

"But how do we account for the fact that we find segregated plants and animals?

We do find in that lowest layer plants and animals that we don't find in the upper layer, the Mississippian. Well, I think the explanation is presented for us in the book PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY by GILLULY, WALTERS and WOODFORD [p. 101]. They say, 'In correlating rock strata by comparison of fossils, it is important to keep in mind the limitations to the spread of organisms imposed by their natural habitats. Many different depositional environments exist... Each environment has its characteristic group of animals and plants, that live contemporaneously...

[In other words these groups are different and they're separate - not because they lived millions of years apart from each other but because they lived in different places. And so they got buried in different places. If we have a catastrophic flood burying the world that then was, the waters [would] begin to rise, and we [would] see [that] those buried [the] lowest [would] be those that lived [the] lowest, and then the next ones would be those that lived higher. He says]

For example, we do not expect to find the bones of antelopes in a coral reef, nor coral in a desert sand dune... ...we would not expect to find the same fossils entombed in all the varied deposits formed.'

They're different, even though they are contemporaneous... The flood would bury those [organisms] that lived lowest first and [the] general order [of burial] would be reflected due to natural habitat. You don't find this anywhere in its complete form but you do find the general order.... You don't expect to find human footprints at the bottom of the ocean. But if you ever find things [which are] supposed to be millions of years apart in each others' footprints... you know [that] their explanation [of being millions of years apart] won't work...

We're warned by David Raup about this when he says, 'One of the ironies of the creation-evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed orderly progression. And they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' into their Flood Geology.'

[DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, NEW SCIENTIST, Vol. 90, p. 832, 1981]

He of course points out that there is no such thing. And you don't have to have an explanation for a detailed orderly progression [because] it does not exist.... He readily acknowledges that... It is a mistaken notion as he tells us...

[Compare the rest of this quotation from Dr. Patton's notes]:

'A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...'

[DAVID M. RAUP, Ibid]

What we see when we look at the fossil record is billions and billions of dead things in rocks laid down all over the world. We're living on a veritable graveyard... billions of dead things in rocks laid down by water, all over the world... is eloquent testimony to the fact that there was a great catastrophe."

[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #3]:

"The millions of fossils that we see in the museums around the world and [in] the rocks provide convincing proof for creation, certainly evidence that would sustain that concept.... Let's begin with a... statement made by S. M. Stanley, paleontologist from Johns Hopkins University. He says, 'Its doubtful whether, in the absence of fossils, the idea of evolution would represent anything more than an outrageous hypothesis. ..The fossil record and only the fossil record provides direct evidence of major sequential changes in the Earth's biota.'

[S. M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins Univ., NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981, p. 72]

ii) HIGHER MOBILITY OF THE VERTEBRATES

[p. 275]

"It is reasonable also, in the light of the Flood record, to expect that vertebrates would be found higher in the geologic column than the first invertebrates. Vertebrates in general possess much greater mobility, and this factor, together with their pelagic habitats, would normally prevent their being entrapped and deposited in the deepest sediments. The simplest vertebrates, the ostracoderms, [primitive armored type fish] are first found, and only sparingly then, in the [supposed] Ordovician strata.

Fishes are found in profusion in the Devonian, often in great sedimentary 'graveyards,' indicating violent deposition, and often in fresh-water deposits. It is obvious that fish do not normally die and become fossilized in such conditions as these but usually are either destroyed by scavengers or float on the surface until decomposed. The whole aspect of the fossil fish beds bespeaks violent burial in rapidly moving deltaic sediments.

The source of these masses of sediments in which the marine vertebrates were entombed is largely continental in nature. This, for example, is true of the most famous of the Devonian fish beds, those of the Old Red Sandstone of Great Britain and the corresponding Catskill Mountain formations in the United States. The character of these deposits seems explicable only in terms of torrential streams carrying vast quantities of sediment entering the ancient lakes or seas of the areas and overwhelming and burying fish and other aquatic creatures by the hundreds of thousands. All of this is easily understood in light of the Biblical Deluge but is hard to account for in any other fashion!"

iii) FORMATION OF COAL BEDS: A PRODUCT OF MASSIVE SHORT TERM SEDIMENTARY ACTIVITY

[pp. 277-278]

"[There are]...tremendous numbers of coal beds that exist all around the world and in most parts of the geologic column, implying unimaginably great accumulations of metamorphosed vegetable matter, and we have pointed out the utter inadequacy of the uniformitarian subsidence theory to account for these beds. The physical evidence plainly and emphatically demonstrates the fact that the coal seams are water-laid deposits, in which great agglomerations of plants were rafted down on the surface of the Deluge rivers, then conveyed back and forth on the shifting currents until finally brought to rest in some basin of deposition, to be followed by a reacting current from another direction bearing non-organic materials perhaps, then another current with a load of plant debris, and so on. The only evidences cited in favor of the [so called] peat-bog theory of coal formation, such as the upright trunks, the stigmaria, etc., can, as we have seen, equally well or better be interpreted as resulting from the nature of the rafts of vegetation being floated into their final place of deposition by flood waters. Dr. Heribert-Nilsson, after an extensive discussion of the physical and biological aspects of the coal seams and the two theories for their formation, the autochthonous (growth in place) theory and the allochthonous (water-transported) theory, concurs:

'A steady autochthonous formation of the coal seams is just as improbable as was an autochthonous formation of the strata with mixed faunas and floras. This difficult situation makes it necessary to look for allochthonous processes of immense magnitude and world-wide effects.'

[N. Heribert-Nilsson: Sunthetische Artbildung, p. 1198]

...This conclusion is doubly significant in that Dr. Heribert-Nilsson, who is a botanist and paleobotanist of wide ability and long experience, was not attempting to defend or expound a Flood theory of geology in coming to his conclusions but was literally driven to such a conclusion by the weight of the evidence. He has attempted to explain some of these things in terms of repeated cataclysms after the manner of Cuvier, but it is obvious that his conclusion as to the manner of coal formation fits in perfectly with the Biblical Deluge.

The question may be raised as to whether the plant remains, even if water-laid in the manner supposed in the allochthonous [water transported] theory, could have been metamorphosed into coal in the relatively brief period of time since the Flood. Somehow, the impression prevails that immense ages would be necessary for coal to form, even after the materials had been deposited...

...Bacterial activity, pressure and temperature have been generally assumed as the agents for converting peat-bog residues into coals, recent studies have demonstrated their inadequacy. Apparently the most likely agent is the application of shearing forces, and these would have been quite high during the post-Deluge period of tectonic re-adjustment...

[Ref. Irving A. Breger: 'Geochemistry of Coal,' Economic Geology, Vol. 53, November 1958, p. 823]

...Nor would they require long ages to do the work. Stutzer has noted:

'Petzoldt (1882) describes very remarkable observations which he made during the construction of a railway bridge at Alt-Breisach, near Freiburg. The wooden piles which had been rammed into the ground were compressed by overriding blocks. An examination of these compressed piles showed that in the center of the compressed piles was a black, coal-like substance. In continuous succession from center to surface was blackened, dark-brown, light-brown and finally yellow-colored wood. The coal-like substance corresponded, in its chemical composition, to anthracite, and the blackened wood resembled brown coal.'

[Otto Stutzer: Geology of Coal, (Transl. from the German, by A. C. Noe, University of Chicago Press, 1940), pp. 105-106]

...Stutzer also described various experiments which had, with some degree of success, attempted to synthesize coal in the laboratory, through application of various stresses. For these and other reasons, Moore, the American coal geologist, says:

'From all available evidence it would appear that coal may form in a very short time, geologically speaking, if conditions are favorable.'

[E. S. Moore: Coal (2nd Ed., New York, Wiley, 1940), p. 143]

...And we submit that conditions for its formation have never been so favorable, before or since, as during the Deluge period!"

iv) THE 'MESOZOIC' STRATA-DINOSAUR FOSSILS

[pp. 279-281]

"Proceeding higher in the [supposed but falsely asserted] geologic column (though not always, or even usually, higher in actual formational superposition), we come to the extensive [so called] Mesozoic strata, including the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous systems....

...The 'index fossils' for these strata are again marine organisms, especially the ammonites. Again there are many different kinds of these and of the other characteristic marine creatures of the period, and apparently they fall into large numbers of more or less distinct 'horizons,' which have been used as a basis for inter-regional and even inter-continental correlation. It is probable that these zones of similar assemblages [of fossils in rock strata] can be explained on much the same basis as the zones of similar assemblages of trilobites and brachiopods in the Paleozoic strata [i.e., a worldwide Flood].

The supposedly equivalent continental strata of the Mesozoic contain probably the most interesting of all fossils, those of the great dinosaurs. The question of the sudden extinction of these powerful creatures that supposedly ruled the earth for so long is still one of the great mysteries of uniformitarian paleontology. Various theories have been suggested, such as destruction by volcanoes, changes in environments, eating of dinosaur eggs by increasing numbers of mammals, some sort of dinosaur disease, epidemic, etc.

'These are some of the theories that have been advanced to explain the sudden extinction of dinosaurs throughout the world. Each theory will explain the death of some dinosaurs in some places but attempts to apply any of them, or combinations of them, to worldwide extinction have failed. This dinosaur story is like a mystery thriller with the last pages torn out. A most important part is missing. That is true and the paleontologist knows it. He also knows the riddle will probably never be solved.'

[J. M. Good, T. E. White, and G. F. Stucker: 'The Dinosaur Quarry,' U. S. Government Printing Office, 1958, p. 26]

..Or at least it never will be solved as long as paleontologists insist on a uniformitarian explanation! The Biblical Deluge is a quite adequate solution... ..If representative dinosaurs were taken on the Ark (presumably young ones), then it is likely that their final extinction is accounted for by the sharp changes in climate after the Flood. On the other hand, some may have persisted for a long time, possible accounting for the universal occurrence of 'dragons' in ancient mythologies...

...Another mystery connected with the dinosaurs is the number of great dinosaur graveyards found in various parts of the world. The entombment of such numbers of such great creatures literally demands some form of catastrophic action. One such location, the Dinosaur National Monument, in Utah and Colorado, in the Morrison formation of the Jurassic, for example, has yielded remains of more than 300 dinosaurs of many different kinds.

'The quarry area is a dinosaur graveyard, not a place where they died. A majority of the remains probably floated down a westward flowing river until they were stranded on a shallow sandbar. Some of them, such as the stegosaurus, may have come from far-away dry-land areas to the west. Perhaps they drowned trying to ford a tributary stream or were washed away during floods. Some of the swamp dwellers may have mired down on the very sandbar that became their grave while others may have floated for miles before being stranded.'

[J. M. Good, T. E. White, and G. F. Stucker, op. cit., p. 20]

...One could hardly ask for a better description of the way in which these great reptiles were overwhelmed, drowned and buried by the Deluge waters. As far as changes within the dinosaur lines were concerned, the most conspicuous was the tendency for each group [of fossils found in successively higher located strata] to 'evolve' from small ancestors to large descendants...

[This result of smaller to the larger would follow from the hydrodynamic selectivity of water]

[On the other hand, evolutionist] ...Dr. Colbert, probably the chief authority on dinosaurs, says:

'It is interesting to note that giantism was achieved independently by various separate lines of dinosaurian evolution. Time and again in the collective history of these reptiles a phylogenetic line had its beginning with small animals and very quickly progressed to animals of large or even huge size.'

[Edwin H. Colbert: 'Evolutionary Growth Rates in the Dinosaurs,' Scientific Monthly, Vol. 69, August 1949, p. 71]

[However, the evidence points most strongly to a universal, worldwide flood acting in accordance with the laws of hydrodynamic selectivity of moving water]:

...It is not clear how much of this tendency has been inferred from actual fossil position in successive strata, but to the extent that it is based on objective field evidence, it would seem merely to result from the abilities of the larger and more mature animals to escape the floodwaters longer. This is exactly what one would expect to find, in general, in the dinosaurian sediments of the Deluge."

v) FINAL FLOOD DEPOSIT - MAMMMAL FOSSILS

[pp. 281-286]

"The [so called] Tertiary Period is popularly known as the age of mammals, because of the large numbers of mammalian fossils found in these strata. However, as with the [so called] Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras, the divisions of the Tertiary and its stratigraphy are based primarily on marine deposits and marine organisms. The basic method of subdivision was established in a rather remarkable manner:

'Sir Charles Lyell first divided the Tertiary into Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene on the basis of percentages of living species represented in each series, there being very few in the earliest and a very large percentage in the latest series. Later the Oligocene was added by combining some of the uppermost Eocene with some of the lowermost Miocene. The still later term 'Paleocene' is used by some geologists to represent a separate epoch of the Cenozoic, and by others to indicate the earliest part of the [so called] Eocene epoch.'

[W. J. Miller: An Introduction to Historical Geology (New York, Van Nostrand, 1952), p. 359]

...Thus the original divisions of the presumably most recent deposits were based squarely upon what amounts to the assumption of organic evolution. The chief index fossils of the Tertiary are the marine protozoa known as Foraminifera, which occur in almost innumerable species and have been found in strata all the way from the earliest Paleozoic and still exist in abundance in the present oceans.

Certain species of these small shelled animals are believed to have been rather universally distributed geographically in rather limited zones stratigraphically, which lends them an apparent validity as index fossils. Actual correlations, however, are usually made only within the range of a particular oil field or some such limited area.

In their discussion of index fossils, [evolutionists] von Engeln and Caster indicate the importance [to the evolution model which they have] attributed to Foraminifera for identification purposes in these rocks.

'In the more recent Mesozoic, especially, and Cenozoic rocks, great dependence [by evolutionists] is modernly placed on the Foraminiferal microscopic single-cell forms, in almost innumerable species, which like the graptolites [microscopic sized shelled animals] were freefloating and [evolutionists' maintained] experienced rapid evolutionary changes. Their minute shells, properly identified, serve accordingly as index fossils to beds of only limited thickness.'

[von Engeln and Caster, Geology (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1952, p. 436]

...Recent studies, however, have cast grave doubt upon the validity of foraminiferal dating, based as it is upon the different shell forms of the 'innumerable species' of these small animals. It seems now that the most gross differences in shell form can be produced by members of any one species and thus do not show either evolution or necessary differences in chronology at all. [Only the possibility of tremendous variation within each species]

Dr. Langenheim, of the Museum of Paleontology of the University of California, says:

'Inasmuch as fossil foraminifera are of preeminent economic importance, the work of Arnold (1953, 1954) with Allogramia laticollaris has special interest to paleontologists. Arnold has made a complete study of the life history of this living foraminifer and has discovered, among other things, great morphologic variation within laboratory cultures... Inasmuch as these forms mimic most of the basic plans of foraminiferan test morphology, it may be deduced that specific and generic concepts based on shell shape - which includes all fossil foraminifera - are based on insecure biologic criteria... [i.e., the evolutionists are wrong when they maintain that a different shell 'design' constitutes another new species rather than a variation of the same species] ... Any given body form of chamber arrangement apparently must be potentially derivative from almost any ancestral type [italics are ours]. This, of course, is of fundamental importance and indicates that a critical reevaluation of foraminiferan micropaleontology is in order.'

[R. L. Langenheim, Jr.: 'Recent Developments in Paleontology,' Journal of Geological Education, Volume 7, Spring 1959, p. 7]

...In other words, if we understand the implications of these studies correctly, any single species of foraminifer can yield tests essentially identical with those of any other species. Perhaps instead of the 'innumerable species' of foraminifera there is only one!

[Or in truth, only a few species with tremendous variation in characteristics such as shell types - as author Morris goes on to clarify:]

...Of course, this is an overstatement [of there being only one species, overstated in order to bring home the truth], but the general implication [of evolutionary variation within a species] seems valid.

But what about the apparently well-worked out and widely applicable techniques of micropaleontological dating based on foraminifera? It seems now that the well-defined faunal zones do not actually represent evolutionary changes, but nevertheless the zones are still there. The answer apparently is that these zones, as we have been contending all along, are due strictly to the hydrodynamic sorting action of the flood waters and sediments in which they were deposited.

The original method of subdivision of the Tertiary, that of percentages of living and extinct organisms, especially mollusks, as worked out by Lyell on the basis of the fossils found in the Paris basin, is of course no longer considered definitive, but the basic terminology and divisions still persist. The Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene strata are now identified mainly as associated with the large foraminifera known as nummulites are no longer so predominant.

It is significant that the Tertiary deposits are usually found in more or less isolated patches, rather than in great continuous sheets as so often is true of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic beds. There are notable exceptions, however, sometimes occurring in great geosynclines. It is likely that the Tertiary deposits represent in most cases the later stages of the Deluge activities, as they are usually found either on or near the surface and superimposed over Mesozoic beds. There are notable exceptions, however, sometimes occurring in great geosynclines. It is likely that the Tertiary deposits represent in most cases the later stages of the Deluge activities, as they are usually found either on or near the surface and superimposed over Mesozoic and/or Paleozoic strata. However, it must be recognized that in some instances Tertiary strata are found lying directly on basement rocks and sometimes found in as hard and crystalline a state as any of the presumably more ancient rock systems and even are found lying beneath these supposedly older rocks in the case of the so-called thrust faults. In these cases they are classified as Tertiary primarily because of the more 'modern' fossil assemblages found in them but more likely represent either areas where these particular groups of organisms happened to be deposited earlier in the Flood chronology than they were at other localities, or else were redeposited there after earlier deposits at the sites had been removed by some of the later periods of erosion during the Flood. In the more typical cases, the Tertiary rocks must represent some later stage in the Deluge phenomena, the details of which remain to be worked out...

...Fossil mammals, however, are now considered the chief indicators of the various stages of the Tertiary, despite frequent popular textbook claims as to the worldwide provenance of marine index fossils. This is noted by the expert stratigrapher, Gignoux:

'Mammals are much more independent of local conditions than marine animals. They are also valuable for establishing correlations between widely separated basins, for the species and even the genera succeed each other in rapid succession. In the Nummulitic, and elsewhere in the Tertiary, the mammalian faunas provide the only truly exact criterion for the distinction of stages.'

[Maurice Gignoux: Stratigraphic Geology, Translated from the 4th French Edition by Gwendolyn G. Woodford, (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1955), p. 471]

...Gignoux is primarily interested in European stratigraphy, but he points out the rather remarkable procedure by which the European and American Tertiary deposits have been correlated:

'All these [American central states] formations are sometimes extremely rich in mammalian bones, so that a scale of mammalian faunas can be established, absolutely independent of the American marine faunas. But this scale can be paralleled with the European mammalian faunas and, in that way, with our marine stages. The latter being correlated with the marine fauna of the New World, it is evident that American stratigraphers can thus correlate their continental faunas and their marine stages; a curious example of a singularly indirect method of correlation.'

[Ibid., p. 538]

...It must not be surmised from the above, however, that these mammalian deposits are precisely identified and correlated on this worldwide basis.

'Notice, moreover, that the chronology of mammalian faunas, like that based on marine faunas, is valuable only within certain geographic limits.'

[Ibid., p. 558]

...The foregoing recital of past and present criteria for subdividing the Tertiary era seems to illustrate quite clearly our contention that the orthodox concepts of historical geology are almost entirely subjective in character, based squarely on the assumption of the fact of organic evolution. The variously correlated stages and even epochs are not at all based on the evidence of physiographic superposition, but rather on the paleontologic contents of the deposits, interpreted almost entirely in terms of assumed evolutionary development.

It is significant that the most important paleontologic evidences of evolution are found in the Tertiary strata. One need only mention such famous phylogenetic series as those of the horse and the elephant to illustrate this fact. As in the case of the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic, so here the main feature of these presumed evolutionary series is that of an increase in size in the course of the ages. This phenomenon of evolutionary size increase has been considered to be so universal that it has been called 'Cope's Law.' Yet, as the paleontologist Simpson says:

'Increase in body size is very common, a stock example being the change from eohippus to the modern horse. The phenomenon is perhaps sufficiently usual to be a rule, but the rule has many exceptions. Even in the horse family, several evolving lines became smaller rather than larger. The apparent extent of this rule has been exaggerated by students who thought it absolute and who insisted that because an earlier animal was larger than a later relative therefore it was not ancestral to the latter.'

[George Gaylord Simpson: 'Evolutionary Determinism and the Fossil Record, Scientific Monthly, Vol. 71, October 1950, p. 265]

...Whatever may be the actual field evidences of increasing size with increasing elevation in the strata, they can once again be most easily explained in terms of greater mobility of the larger, stronger animals, and therefore their generally greater ability to retreat from the rising floodwaters and to escape being caught in the swollen streams rushing downward from the hills. There would be many exceptions to this, of course, and that is just what the strata tend to show according to Simpson...

More commonly, however, the various animals in the series (and even the classic horse series contains only a relatively small number of distinct forms, with little indication of any sort of gradual change between forms) are not found superposed in the strata at any one location or adjacent locations, but rather are found on the surface at scattered points around the world with the phylogenetic series then being constructed mainly on the basis of evolutionary presuppositions as to the possible relationships between these various creatures. The series thus constructed is thereupon submitted as proof positive for the evolution of the modern horse!"

...To Whatever extent Cope's 'Law' may have applied during the formation of the fossiliferous strata, it appears that its trend is now reversed! Practically all modern plants and animals, including man, are represented [in the past] in the fossil record by LARGER specimens than are now living, (e.g., giant beaver, saber-tooth tiger, mammoth, cave bear, giant bison, etc. etc.)."

f) LIVING FOSSILS

[pp. 176-180]

"...Almost equally anomalous [to examples of fossils of man existing in ancient deposits before he was supposed to have existed] are the many instances of supposedly ancient and long extinct creatures which have suddenly and unexpectedly turned up living in the modern world. An example of this is the odd creature known as the tuatara, which now lives only in New Zealand.....It is the sole living representative of that order of reptiles known as the 'beakheads.'... ..The remarkable thing is that a creature which is so apparently out of place in the modern world and which has apparently little selection value in the struggle for existence could have survived the countless vicissitudes of the millions of years that are supposed to have elapsed since all its relatives perished. A few thousands of years of survival under adverse circumstances might be possible, but hardly millions!

'Despite the present-day existence of the tuatara, not one bone identifiable as that of a beakhead has been discovered in the rocks laid down since the [supposed] early Cretaceous Period, some 135 million years ago.'

[Charles M. Bogert: 'The Tuatara: Why Is It a Lone Survivor?' Scientific Monthly, Vol. 76, March 1953, p. 166]

...This is a true 'living fossil,' the sole survivor of the reptilian order of beakheads, which otherwise became extinct some 135 million years ago, according to the standard evolutionary time scale. Fossils of these creatures are found in [supposed] Cretaceous and older rocks, but none whatsoever in more recent strata. Yet they are still living in the modern world! And the tuatara is only one of numerous examples of such living fossils. It is strange that no remains of this creature have been found in the rocks representing this 135 million-year gap, if such a gap actually exists...

The skeleton of a reptile found in the Jurassic deposits of Europe is so nearly identical with that of the living tuatara that very little change in the bony structure must have taken place during a period of 150,000,000 years.'

[Bogert, op. cit., p. 167]

Another recent discovery, quite amazing to the evolutionists, was that of the coelecanth, a supposedly long-extinct fish whose fossils are abundant in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata. The Harvard paleontologist, Dr. A. S. Romer, remarks concerning this discovery:

'The coelecanths are a marine offshoot of the Crossopterygii, a group essentially ancestral to land vertebrates and, hence, of evolutionary importance. Typical crossopterygians have been extinct since the Paleozoic; the fossil record of the coelecanths extends to the Cretaceous, some 70 million years ago, and then stops. In consequence, I (like many another lecturer) used to tell my class, emphatically, that 'there are no living crossopterygians.' And I can well remember my amazement, in the winter of 1939, at seeing in the London Illustrated News a photograph of a living - or rather recently living - coelecanth.'

[A. S. Romer, review of 'The Search Beneath the Sea,' by J. L. B. Smith, Scientific Monthly, Vol. 84, February 1957, p. 101]

Even more remarkable than the discovery of the coelecanth was the recent dredging-up of several specimens of a living segmented mollusk (at a depth of 11,700 feet in the Acapulco Trench off Central America), representing a primitive type that supposedly became extinct in the Devonian period. The biologist Bentley Glass, reporting on this find, says:

'To zoologists the recently reported discovery by the Galathea Expedition of the extraordinary deep-sea mollusk Neopilina galatheae will seem even more incredible than the famous discovery in recent times of Latimeria, the living coelecanth, ... the new-found mollusk represents a class that existed in the Cambrian to Devonian periods of the Paleozoic, and was supposed to have become extinct about 280 million years ago.'

[Bentley Glass: 'New Missing Link Discovered,' Science, Vol. 126, July 26, 1957, p. 158]

280 million years is a ling time and one cannot help but wonder about its reality. Fossils of this class of mollusk were apparently plentiful in the early Paleozoic strata and it is amazing that none have been found in the marine strata of the Mesoaic or Tertiary, if indeed these actually represent the hundreds of millions of years following the Paleozoic that they are supposed to.

Harry S. Ladd, a paleoecologist with the U. S. Geological Survey, has called attention to a number of these 'loving fossils' recently discovered.

'In the same year that the first coelecanth was caught, in fairly deep water, a series of primitive crustaceans was found inhabiting the interstitial waters of beach sands in New England.... (It) was regarded as the most primitive living crustacean yet discovered. It held this significant position only until 1953, at which time a still more primitive crustacean was dredged from the mud beneath the shallow waters of Long Island Sound.... Its closest known relative, Lepidocaris, lived in Middle Devonian time, some 300 million years ago.'

[Harry S. Ladd: 'Ecology, Paleontology and Stratigraphy,' Science, Vol. 129, January 9, 1959, p. 74]

In view of these and many similar discoveries, one also wonders whether or not many more of the supposedly extinct creatures of geologic history might not also be living in some unexplored region of the globe, especially in the deep oceans. It would not be surprising if even the famous trilobite, perhaps the most important 'index fossil' of the earliest period of the Paleozoic, the Cambrian, should turn up one of these days. A creature very similar to it has already been found.

'A specimen of a 'living fossil,' perhaps the most primitive extant member of one of the major classes of animals, has recently been added to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. This is a crustacean that has certain characters of the long-extinct trilobites, the earth's dominant animals of a half-billion years ago, fossils of which are among the earliest traces of a high order of life on this planet... Presumable it is exclusively an inhabitant of the mud bottoms of shallow inshore waters and never comes to the surface or has a free-swimming existence. This may account for the fact that it has remained unknown so long.'

["Living Fossil Resembles Long-Extinct Trilobite," Science Digest, Vol. 42, December 1957]

In the plant kingdom, it has not been many years since quite a sensation was created among paleobotantists by the discovery of living specimens of the tree Metasequoia, in a remote region of China.

'The conifer genus Metasequoia was widely distributed over the northern hemisphere in past ages. Its fossil remains have been found in Alaska, Greenland, Spitzbergen and northern Siberia, in rocks of Eocene age (60,000,000 years old); in rocks of Miocene age (30,000,000 years old) in Oregon and California, Germany and Switzerland, Manchuria and Japan. It was considered to have become extinct some 20 million years ago, since its fossil remains did not occur in rocks younger than Miocene.'

[Ralph W. Chaney: 'Metasequoia Discovery,' American Scientist, Vol. 36, October 1948, p. 490]

Chaney, who is paleobotantist at the University of California and who made an expedition to study the trees, proceeds to tell about one which was nearly 100 feet high and one stand of over 100 of the trees, still thriving. Evidently something must have been wrong with the geological record deduced from the Pliocene and Pleistocene strata, which failed to reveal the continued existence of the trees, in spite of their great abundance in the supposedly earlier strata."

g) SUMMARY RE: FOSSILS

[pp. 200-209]

"...The principle [of uniformitarianism] is utterly inadequate to account for by far the greater part of the geologic phenomena.

The most important geologic processes are those of erosion, deposition, glaciation, diastrophism [crust deformations such as caused by earth quakes and other earth movements forming continents, ocean basins, plateaus, mountains, etc.] and volcanism... ...Each of [these] important processes, without exception, must at some time or times in the geologic past, have acted with tremendously greater intensity than anything measured today. Present-day volcanic activity is not only quantitatively but qualitatively different from the volcanic phenomena of the geologic past that have produced the great dikes and sills, the batholiths [great subterranean mass of intruding igneous rock] and laccoliths [great masses of intruding igneous rock causing bulges in the earth's crust], as well as the great lava fields and plateaus of the world, one of which covers an area of 300,000 square miles in South America. Similarly, modern diastrophic activity such as the earthquake is of apparently an entirely different order of magnitude from the tremendous earth movements of the past. The origin of the great mountain chains, which apparently have been uplifted from the sea bottom in the most recent geologic periods, is still a mystery. No satisfactory and generally accepted theory of orogeny [mountain forming] has yet been devised, which fact in itself proves that modern diastrophic processes do not explain those of the earth's earlier history...

...Not only are present rates of glaciation immensely milder than in the past but also present processes have been quite unable to account for these past increases in glacial activity. This also is evidenced by the fact that no satisfactory glacial theory has yet been propounded, although numerous attempts have been made...

...The most important geologic process is sedimentation, including both erosion and deposition. The very basis of historical geology is the supposed sequence of the sedimentary rocks and their contained fossils. Erosion and deposition are of course very important present-day geomorphic processes. But once again, a study of the sedimentary rocks reveals that the sedimentary processes of the past must have been both quantitatively and qualitatively different from those of the present. The outstanding erosional feature of the past is the peneplain; the outstanding depositional feature is the geosyncline. Neither of these has any true modern counterpart, nor has any satisfactory theory of the development of either been devised. The same is true of most other sedimentary features.

Of special significance is the fact that modern sedimentary environments can rarely, if at all, be identified in the sedimentary rocks...

Only very rough classifications can be made, such as 'marine,' 'deltaic,' etc...

Fossil deposits are still harder to account for on the basis of uniformity.... ...some kind of catastrophic condition is nearly always necessary for the burial and preservation of fossils. Present-day processes are forming very few potential fossil deposits, and most of these are under conditions of rapid, sudden burial, which are abnormal. Nothing comparable to the tremendous fossiliferous beds of fish, mammals, reptiles, etc. that are found in many places around the world is being formed today.

And yet it is the fossils which are the basis of [so called] historical geology and the [supposed] geologic time scale! It is the fossils which are considered to be the one sure proof of organic evolution, regardless of how they came to be buried. Nevertheless uniformity - modern processes - cannot legitimately account for the fossil deposits...

...The fossils and their presumed [without evidence] evolutionary sequence, therefore provide the sole basis for [evolutionists' concept of the] division of the rocks into time units, which have no necessary correlation at all with the stratigraphic [relating to the geological study of the source and composition of rock strata] or physiographic units [relating to the study of physical geography]... [The false presuppositions pertaining to the order of fossils over an imaginary period of time, i.e., the so called 'Geologic Time Scale', even take precedence over radiometric methods which have been so highly touted but have often contradicted the 'established' geologic time table]

...And yet we have seen that not only must most of the fossiliferous rocks have been deposited under conditions inconsistent with the principle of uniformity but that the strata as dated by the fossils are filled with numerous anomalies and contradictions.

One receives the impression from geological textbooks that the strata are essentially harmonious everywhere, with the oldest on the bottom, each stratum succeeded in turn by one representing the next period. Of course this is not so, and everyone familiar with the facts recognizes that it is not so. The geologic time series is built up by a hypothetical superposition [positioned in layers one on top of another] of beds upon each other from all over the world.

'If a pile were to be made by using the greatest thickness of sedimentary beds of each geologic age, it would be at least 100 miles high...

It is, of course, impossible to have even a considerable fraction of this at one place. The Grand Canyon of Colorado, for example, is only one mile deep... By application of the principle of superposition, lithologic identification, recognition of unconformities, and reference to fossil successions, both the thick and the thin masses are correlated with other beds at other sites. Thus there is established, in detail, the stratigraphic succession for all the geologic ages.'

[O.D. von Engeln and Kenneth E. Caster: Geology, pp. 417-418]

This frank statement makes the method by which the geologic time scale was built up quite plain. Since we have already noted that lithologic identification is unimportant in establishing the age of a rock, it is clear the 'fossil successions' constitute the only real basis for the arrangement. And this means, in effect, that organic evolution has been implicitly assumed in assigning chronological pigeon-holes to particular rock systems and their fossils.

'The geologist utilizes [so called] knowledge of organic evolution as [they falsely maintain is] preserved in the fossil record, to identify and correlate the lithic [geologic rock strata] records of ancient time.' [Ibid., p. 423]

..This succession of fossil organisms as preserved in the rocks is considered as the one convincing proof that evolution has occurred!... ..But even this carefully erected system is found to have numerous contradictions in it. Numerous fossils have been found grossly out of place in the time scale, despite all its [self-fulfilling and rationalized safeguards]. Furthermore, many creatures supposedly primitive have persisted to the present day, including many which apparently skipped all the way from very early periods to the present without leaving any traces in the intervening periods.....

It is not at all uncommon for the smaller fossils on which rock identification is commonly based to be found out of place in the expected sequences. Such anomalies are usually explained as simple 'displacements.'

'Because of their small size they are easily transported by a variety of geologic and biologic agents and may be displaced either vertically or horizontally from their environments of life or from their place of entombment.

Reworking of microfossils has been known for a long time, and although the phenomenon is quite common, it need not impair or deter the widespread use of micropaleontological data in geological interpretations, provided the nature of the phenomenon is recognized and understood.'

[Daniel J. Jones: 'Displacement of Microfossils.' Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, Vol. 28, December 1958, p. 453]

Which, being interpreted, means that when fossils are not found in the stratum to which they have been previously assigned by evolutionary theory, it must be assumed that they have somehow been displaced subsequent to their original deposition. The indiscriminating manner in which such agencies of displacement are assumed to act is indicated by the following:

'Vertical displacement, either from older to younger, or from younger to older zones, may also involve environmental mixing.'

[Ibid. p. 455]

And the rock systems themselves are often found in anomalous relations in the field. It is extremely common to find so-called 'disconformities,' which are those unconformities (strata with missing ages, supposedly caused by erosion during those ages) which have parallel bedding between the early and recent strata, with no outward evidence that the two were not deposited successively...

But these anomalies are more or less trivial compared to the numerous cases in which 'old' formations are found resting conformable on 'young' formations. These phenomena are found almost everywhere in hilly or mountainous regions and have been attributed to 'thrust-faulting.' The concept is that great segments of rock strata have been somehow separated from their roots and made to slide far over adjacent regions. Subsequent erosion then modifies the transported 'nappe' [large mass of strata thrust over other strata] so that the young strata on top are removed, leaving only the older strata superposed on the stationary young rocks beneath. There are various modifications of this concept, but all are equally difficult to conceive mechanically.

As we have seen, many show little or no actual physical evidence of such tremendous and catastrophic movement.

In the light of such frequent flagrant contradictions to the established geologic time sequences, [an example of which follows below] in addition to the arbitrary methods and circular reasoning by which the scale itself has been established, and also in addition to the innumerable evidences of catastrophe, rather than uniformity, as the basic principle in the deposition and modification of the geologic strata, the writers feel warranted in contending that the data of geology do not provide valid evidence against the historicity of the universal Deluge as recorded in the book of Genesis. It is thus legitimate to attempt a new interpretation of these data which will be in harmony with the Biblical account of Creation and the Flood.....