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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
b) FLOOD PROVIDED IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR FOSSIL FORMATION
[pp. 154]
"The great deposits of fossils of all kinds, and especially the vast coal and oil beds of the world have proved exceedingly difficult to explain on the basis of uniformity. And yet these very organic deposits, especially the so-called 'index fossils,' have been made the basis for the standard geologic time-scale, and this in turn has been the pillar of the structure of evolutionary theory!!
[pp. 154-169]
...[Let's examine] what conditions must be present in order for fossils to form and be preserved. We shall consider this situation by noting the six ways listed by Miller in which fossil remains can be preserved, adding a few comments of our own about each...
[Quotation of six points from Miller in italics follows: William J. Miller: Introduction to Historical Geology (New York, Van Nostrand, 1952), pp. 12-16]:
ii) FOSSILS WHICH ARE THE PRESERVATION OF THE ENTIRE ORGANISM BY FREEZING
"It is unnecessary to point out that very few, if any, animals are now being fossilized by this process. Yet it is well known that many extinct animals have been preserved in just this way, especially in Siberia. Numerous animals have been found preserved whole, with flesh and even hair intact. The fact that these cannot be explained as due to freak accidents, as often suggested, is obvious from the great numbers of bones interred with them in the same strata. Estimates have run as high as 5,000,000 mammoths, whose remains are buried all along the coast line of northern Siberia and into Alaska. Abundant remains of many other animals (only rarely the entire organism of course) have been found in these northern lands, especially of the rhinoceros, bear, horse and other mammals.
iii) FOSSILS WHICH ARE THE PRESERVATION OF JUST THE HARD PARTS OF THE ORGANISM
[Note that the soft parts have also often been found preserved]
"This is the most common type of fossil found, especially bones and shells. At first one would suppose that fossil deposits of shells or bones would be easily formed and that such deposits are commonly being formed now. However it is very difficult to point to specific present-day deposition areas which are analogous to those found in the rocks. Bones of land animals, or of amphibians or even of fishes, may occasionally be trapped in some sediment and buried, but this is not the normal or frequent situation. Usually, the bones remain on the surface until gradually disintegrated. Never does one find, in the present era, great 'graveyards' of organisms buried together and waiting fossilization. But this is exactly the sort of thing that is encountered in fossil deposits in many, many places around the world...
It is not easy to imagine any kind of 'uniform' process by which this conglomeration of modern and extinct fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals, insects and plants could have been piled together and preserved for posterity. Fish, no less than other creatures, do not naturally become entombed like this but are usually quickly devoured by other fish after dying.
'When a fish dies its body floats on the surface or sinks to the bottom and is devoured rather quickly, actually in a matter of hours, by other fish. However, the fossil fish found in sedimentary rocks is very often preserved with all its bones intact. Entire shoals of fish over large areas, numbering billions of specimens, are found in a state of agony, but with no mark of a scavenger's attack.'...
[I. Velikovsky: Earth in Upheaval, (New York, Doubleday and Co., 1955), p. 222]
...M. Brogersma-Sanders says: 'The life of most animals in the sea is terminated by their capture by other animals; those that die in other ways are sooner or later eaten by scavengers'...
[Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology, Vol. I, Geological Society of American Memoir 67, 1957, p. 972]
...An entirely different type of deposit, but one also containing a wealth of fossils, is that near Florissant, Colorado, where myriads of a wide variety of insect fossils are preserved in rocks of volcanic shale, with a minute perfection of detail that is truly remarkable, interspersed with layers of other types of fossils. Dr. R. D. Manwell, Professor of Zoology at Syracuse University, a specialist in the study of fossil insects, says in describing these deposits:
'Although insect remains are by far the most numerous of the animal fossils preserved at Florissant, other groups are also represented. The shells of tiny fresh-water mollusks are not difficult to find entombed in the rock and occasionally even the skeletons of fish and birds are seen. Several hundred species of plants have been identified from these shales, usually from leaves, but fruits (that is, nuts) and even blossoms have also been found... Insect life around and above Lake Florissant must have been abundant, for it is not unusual to find on a single piece of shale from one of the richer fossiliferous layers several individuals within 2 to 3 inches of each other. This life was also extremely varied, with the total number of species running into the hundreds.'...
[R. D. Manwell: "An Insect Pompeii," Scientific Monthly, Vol. 80, June 1955, p. 357-358]
...This kind of thing does not lend itself well to uniformitarian interpretation but strongly suggests some sort of very unusual catastrophe(s). Other caves in the same region, within three miles of Cumberland, are barren of fossils.
This mixing of organisms from entirely different habitats and even different climatic regimes in one great mass is characteristic of many of the most important fossil deposits. Perhaps the only place in the world more important for the study of fossil insects than the Florissant shales already mentioned is in the famous Baltic amber deposits, where multitudes of insects and other organisms are preserved with an unsurpassed exquisiteness of detail. Dr. Heribert-Nilsson, late Director of the Swedish Botanical Institute and as familiar as anyone with these deposits, says concerning them:
'In the pieces of amber, which may reach a size of 5 kilos or more, especially insects and parts of flowers are preserved, even the most fragile structures. The insects are of modern types and their geographical distribution can be ascertained. It is then quite astounding to find that they belong to all regions of the earth, not only to the Paleoarctic region, as was to be expected.... The geological and paleobiological facts concerning the layers of amber are impossible to understand unless the explanation is accepted that they are the final result of an allochthonous process, including the whole earth.'...
[N. Heribert-Nilsson: Sunthetisch Artbildung, pp. 1194-1195]
...An allochthonous process is one which transports the materials to their final deposition locality, probably by flooding waters. Nilsson thus is saying that these deposits could not have been formed in the region where the organisms lived but must have been transported there from great distances in a violent cataclysm of some sort and that no other explanation can account for the facts as they are observed. He further describes the lignite beds of Geiseltal, Germany, as follows:
'Exactly the same picture as the one just given is offered by the well known studies of certain fossil-carrying strata of the lignite in Geiseltal. Here, too, there is a complete mixture of plants and insects from all climatic zones and all recognized regions of the geography of plants or animals.
It is further astonishing that in certain cases the leaves have been deposited and preserved in a fully fresh condition. The chlorophyll is so well preserved that it has been possible to recognize the alpha and beta types...
An extravagant fact, comparable to the preservation of the chlorophyll, was the occurrence of preserved soft parts of the insects: muscles, corium, epidermis, keratin, colour stuffs as melanin and lopochrome, glands, and the contents of the intestines. Just as in the case of the chlorophyll we are dealing with things that are easily destroyed, disintegrating in but a few days or hours. The incrustation must therefore have been very rapid.'...
[N. Heribert-Nilsson, op. cit., p. 1195-1196]
...Dr. N. O. Newell, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History, has recently discussed these same deposits in even more remarkable detail, as follows:
'One of the most remarkable examples of preservation of organic tissues in antiseptic swamp waters is a 'fossil graveyard' in Eocene lignite deposits of the Geiseltal in central Germany... More than six thousand remains of vertebrate animals and a great number of insects, molluscs, and plants were found in these deposits. The compressed remains of soft tissues of many of these animals showed details of cellular structure and some of the specimens had undergone but little chemical modification... Well-preserved bits of hair, feathers and scales probably are among the oldest known examples of essentially unmodified preservation of these structures. The stomach contents of beetles, amphibia, fishes, birds and mammals provided direct evidence about eating habits. Bacteria of two kinds were found in the excrement of crocodiles and another was found on the trachea of a beetle. Fungi were identified on leaves and the original plant pigments, chlorophyll and coproporphyrin, were found preserved in some of the leaves.'...
[N. O. Newell: "Adequacy of the Fossil Record," Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 33, May 1959, p. 496]
...That these, though striking, are not unique instances of fossil preservation is substantiated also by Newell.
'There are innumerable well-documented records of preservation of tissues of animals and plants in [the so-called] pre-Quaternary rocks.'...
[Ibid., p. 495]
....It is inconceivable that deposits of this sort could be really due to normal, slow, autochthonous processes. [autochthonous = growing in place] Unusual transportation and rapid burial mechanisms are plainly indicated.
The great numbers of fossils entombed in the rocks are stressed repeatedly by Newell; for example:
'Robert Broom, the South African paleontologist, estimated that there are eight hundred thousand million skeletons of vertebrate animals in the Karroo formation.'...
[Ibid., p. 492]
...Harry S. Ladd, of the U. S. Geological Survey, describing beds of herring fossils in the 'Miocene' shales of California says that 'more than a billion fish, averaging 6 to 8 inches in length, died on 4 square miles of bay bottom'...
["Ecology, Paleontology, and Stratigraphy," Science, Vol. 129, January 9, 1959, p. 72]
...The examples cited are merely random samplings of phenomena which are found in great numbers of places all around the world. They are not by any means the most spectacular or impressive examples but merely typical illustrations of what is quite commonly encountered in the fossiliferous deposits of the world. One might, for example, discuss at length such marvels as the La Brea Pits in Los Angeles, which have yielded tens of thousands of specimens of all kinds of living and extinct animals (each of which, by the unbelievable uniformitarian explanation, fell into this sticky graveyard by accident - one at a time!); the Sicilian hippopotamus beds, the fossils of which are so extensive that they have actually been mined as a source of commercial charcoal; the great mammal beds of the Rockies; the dinosaur beds of the Black Hills and the Rockies, as well as in the Gobi Desert; the astounding fish beds of the Scottish Devonian strata, and on and on.
To attempt to account for these vast graveyards in terms of present-day processes and events, except via the most extreme and unscientific extrapolation, is absolutely impossible! And yet it is in deposits such as these that most of the fossils are found on which is based much of the generally accepted uniformitarian scheme of historical geology..."
iv) FOSSILS WHICH ARE THE PRESERVATION OF JUST THE CARBON ('CARBONIZATION' = COAL)
[pp. 162-165]
"This is the third way listed by Professor Miller whereby fossil remains can be preserved, having reference to the formation especially of coal, in which the hydrogen and oxygen largely disappear from the organic remains, leaving only the carbon but often also leaving the original structure beautifully preserved. The coal deposits of the world are of course tremendous in magnitude, with the exact amount quite uncertain, but somewhere around 7 trillion tons.
'About all we really know about coal reserves is that there appears to be lots of coal in the world... Instead of 7 trillion tons, there may be double that. On the other hand, there may be less than half that.'...
[Eugene Ayres and Charles A. Scarlott: Energy Sources: the Wealth of the World (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1952), p. 53]
...Coal is the end product of the metamorphism of tremendous quantities of plant remains under the action of temperature, pressure and [evolutionists' claim: ages of] time. Coal has been found throughout the geologic column and in all parts of the world, even in Antartica. Many coal fields contain great numbers of coal-bearing strata, interbedded with strata of other materials, each coal seam having a thickness which may vary from a few inches to several feet. And each foot of coal must represent many feet - just how many, no one knows - of plant remains, so that the coal measures testify of the former existence of almost unimaginably massive accumulations of buried plants.
Coal geologists have long been divided into two camps, those favoring the autochthonous (growth-in-place) theory of coal origin and those favoring the allochthonous (transportation and deposition) theory [which is consistent with the Noahic Flood]. Consistent uniformitarianism, of course, tends to favor the former and attempts to picture the coal-forming [growth in place theory] process in terms of modern peat deposits forming under swamplands, such as in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia. The great thickness of the coal beds is accounted for on this theory by assuming a continuous subsidence [= a subsiding: a sinking of vegetation to the 'bottom'] of the land more or less keeping up with the slow accumulation of plant remains. The interbedded strata of non-carbonaceous deposits [= inorganic material] are [again] explained by [assuming] alternating marine transgressions [i.e., periodic local flooding] and resulting periods of sediment deposition...
[But it has been well established that interbedding of this sort with many undisturbed and uniform demarcation seams cannot be attributed to sequential and long periods of time which would erode and break up those seams but rather - to one short period of time]
...A wide variety of types of these intervening sediments have been noted and attempts made to explain them in terms of 'cyclothems' or recurring cycles of deposition of different kinds of materials corresponding to the different stages of marine transgression and regression....
If the autochthonous [growth in place] theory of coal bed is correct, it is testimony to quite a marvelous sequence of circumstances. One or two or three coal seams formed by alternate stages of swamp growth, peat accumulation, marine transgression and emergence, etc., might be believable, but the assertion that this cycle was repeated scores of times in the same spot, over a period of perhaps millions of years, is not so easy to accept....
This theory, which is purportedly uniformitarian in essence, is actually anything but that, as there is no modern parallel for any of its major features. The peat-bog theory constitutes a very weak attempt to identify a modern parallel, but it will hardly suffice....
...there is no actual evidence that peat is now being transformed into coal anywhere in the world....
As a matter of fact, except for uniformist preconceptions, it would seem that the actual physical evidence of the coal beds strongly favors the theory that the plant accumulations had been washed into place. The coal seams are almost universally found in stratified deposits. The non-carbonaceous sediments intervening between the coal seams are always said to have been water-borne and deposited. The great thickness of some seams and the great numbers of seams in a given locality also constitute prima facie evidence of rapid and cyclic currents carrying and depositing heavy burdens of organic material...
Space precludes further discussion or the question of coal formation, although many more evidences could be marshalled in favor of the allochthonous [transportation and deposition] theory, such as the frequent splitting of coal seams into two or more independent seams, the many fossil trunks that have been found extending through two or more seams, the 'coal balls' of matted and exceptionally well-preserved fossils, the great boulders often found in coal beds, the frequent grading of coal seams into stratified layers of shale or other sedimentary rock, etc....
Regardless of the exact manner in which coal was formed, it is quite certain that there is nothing corresponding to it taking place in the world today. This is one of the most important of all types of geologic formations and one on which much of our supposed geologic history been based. Nevertheless, the fundamental axiom of uniformity, that the present is the key to the past, completely fails to account for the phenomena..."
[pp. 175-176]
"Another amazing find was reported many years ago, that of a fossilized human skull in the coal measures. The outstanding authority on coal geology, Otto Stutzer, says concerning this mysterious fossil:
'In the coal collection in the Mining Academy in Freiberg [Stutzer was Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the School of Mines at Freiberg, in Saxony], there is a puzzling human skull composed of brown coal and manganiferous and phosphatic limonite, but its source is not known. This skull was described by Karsten and Dechen in 1842.
[Otto Stutzer: Geology of Coal (Transl. by A. C. Noe, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 271]
The coal was presumably Tertiary in age but at any rate is supposed to have far antedated the first appearance of man. The evidence again seems mostly to have been ignored, although it has been suggested that someone must have carved the skull!"
v) 'FOSSILS WHICH ARE THE PRESERVATION OF JUST THE ORIGINAL FORM IN CASTS OR MOLDS
[pp. 165-166]
"This is another means of fossil preservation, whereby the original organic substance entombed in the sediments dissolves away, either leaving a cavity having the form of the original organism, or else being replaced by some sort of mineral water which is then cast into the form of the original organism. Once again this sort of preservation requires sudden or catastrophic burial, followed by rather rapid cementation of the surrounding sediments, in order for the mold to be preserved. The remains at the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, entombed by volcanic materials, offer an excellent illustration of this type of fossilization. The principle of uniformity again fails to provide modern examples of this type of process except in terms of intense aqueous or volcanic action..."
"This process is similar to that of the formation of a mold and subsequent cast in that it consists of detailed replacement of the organic material by mineral water, usually brought about by the action of underground water. The famous petrified forests of the Yellowstone Park region and of Arizona are familiar examples of this process. The exact details of the process of petrifaction are not known, although the usual associations of petrified wood and other materials indicate that volcanic action has been a contributing factor. The petrified forest of Arizona, as well as other regions, also shows action of subsequent flood waters as a probable agent of deposition of the materials in their present location. In any case, some sort of catastrophic agent is again necessary for at least the burial of the materials before the agencies of petrification can begin their work...."
vii) PRESERVATION OF ANIMAL AND HUMAN TRACKS
"This is Professor Miller's last category of means of fossil preservation. Many thousands of tracks of animals of all kinds have been found preserved in stone, including many tracks of dinosaurs and other creatures now extinct. Says Professor Miller:
'Footprints of animals, made in moderately soft mud or sandy mud which soon harden and becomes covered with more sediment, are especially favorable for preservation. Thousands of examples of tracks of great extinct reptiles have been found in the red sandstone of the Connecticut River Valley alone.'
This sort of thing has been found so frequently that it has been considered more or less normal. Dinosaur footprints [for example, were] ...discovered in Texas...
...These dinosaur tracks were supposedly made over 100,000,000 years ago, in a river bed now identified as formed in the [supposed] Cretaceous Periods. Aside from the remarkable and hardly believable claim that such ephemeral markings could have been preserved in such fine detail for such a long time, it is particularly significant that in this same bed have been found what appear to be human footprints! [Further investigation, which follows, proves that they are indeed human - fully human - homo sapien] Related to animal tracks that have been thus preserved are the many instances of preservation of ancient ripple marks or raindrop impressions. But that such ephemeral markings could have been preserved in such great numbers and in such perfection is truly a remarkable phenomenon and one for which there is little if any modern parallel. It is a matter of common experience that impressions of this sort in soft mud or sand are very quickly obliterated. It seems clear that the only way in which such prints could be preserved as fossils is by means of some chemical action permitting rapid burial. Some sudden and catastrophic action is again necessary for any reasonable explanation of the phenomena..."
[p. 172-176]
"For example, there is no case of the human footprints that have frequently been found in supposedly very ancient strata. Man, of course, is supposed to have evolved only in the [so called] late Tertiary, at the earliest, and therefore to be only about one million years old. But what appear to be human footprints have been found in rocks from as early as the [so called] Carboniferous Period, supposedly some 250,000,000 years old. Says Ingalls:
'On sites reaching from Virginia and Pennsylvania, through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and westward toward the Rocky Mountains, prints similar to those shown above [referring to several accompanying pictures], and from 5 to 10 inches long, have been found on the surface of exposed rocks, and more and more keep turning up as the years go by.'
[Albert C. Ingalls: 'The Carboniferous Mystery,' Vol. 162, Scientific American, January 1940, p. 14]
...These prints give every evidence of having been made by human feet, at a time when the rocks were soft mud. As indicated in the quotation, this sort of thing is not a rare occurrence but is found rather frequently. However, geologists refuse to accept the evidence at face value, because it would mean either that modern man lived in the earliest years of the postulated evolutionary history or that this history must be condensed to a duration measured by the history of man. Neither alternative is acceptable.
Ingalls says:
'If man, or even his ape ancestor, or even that ape ancestor's early mammalian ancestor, existed as far back as in the [so called] Carboniferous Period in any shape, then the whole science of geology is so completely worn that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence for the present at least, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made these mysterious prints in the mud of the Carboniferous Period with his feet.'... [Ingalls, op. cit., p. 14]
..Ingalls and others have tried to explain the prints as modern Indian carvings or as prints made of some as yet undiscovered Carboniferous amphibian. Such explanations illustrate the methods by which the uniformitarians can negate even the most plain and powerful evidence in opposition to their philosophy. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it is only the philosophy, and not the objective scientific evidence, that would prevent one from accepting these prints as of true human origin...
..Remarkable footprints [have been] found in a [so called] Cretaceous limestone formation near Glen Rose, Texas...
..Roland T. Bird, a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History, carefully examined the rocks.. ...and reported as follows:
'Yes, they apparently were real enough. Real as rock could be...the strangest things of their kind I had ever seen. On the surface of each was splayed the near-likeness of a human foot, perfect in every detail. But each imprint was 15 inches long!... [Roland T. Bird, 'Thunder In His Footsteps,' Natural History, May, 1939, p. 255]
...Bird personally investigated the river bed from which these footprints had reportedly been cut and was told by James Ryals, a property owner, that a whole trail of these 'man tracks' had been washed away recently. [Bird goes on to say in his article]:
'My surprise was partly overcome by Ryals' casual reference to them as human footprints. I smiled. No man had ever existed in the Age of Reptiles...'
[Ibid, p. 257]
...Ryals could only show him one such track, 15 inches long, [Bird goes on to say, Ibid. p. 257]: 'But the track lacked definition on which to base conclusions.' However, he insisted that dinosaur tracks could still be found in the river bed. To his utter amazement, Bird discovered not only the trails of large three-toed carnivorous dinosaurs, but also the footprints of a gigantic sauropod, 24x38 inches, twelve feet apart, and sunk very deeply in the mud! (See also, R. T. Bird, 'We captured a ''''live''' Brontosaur,' National Geographic Magazine, May, 1954, pp. 707-722). In spite of all this, Bird dismissed the large human footprints as clever carvings...
...These tracks [dinosaur and human] were [however] both cut from the Paluxy River Bed near Glen Rose, Texas, in supposedly Cretaceous strata, plainly disproving the evolutionists' contention that the dinosaurs were extinct some 70 million years before man 'evolved.' Geologists have rejected this evidence, however, preferring to believe that the human footprints were carved by some modern artist, while at the same time accepting the dinosaur prints as genuine. If anything, the dinosaur prints look more 'artificial' than the human, but the genuineness of neither would be questioned at all were it not for the geologically sacrosanct evolutionary time-scale..."
[p. 168-169]
" ...In summary, we have seen that the preservation of organic materials as fossils, by whatever means, requires some sort of catastrophic condition, some kind of quick burial by engulfing sediments, usually followed by some abnormal chemical means of rapid solidification. There is little wonder, then, that it is so difficult to find any remains of the modern era which could be said to be in the process of 'becoming' fossils. Those that are found are invariably so situated as to indicate that they, too, have been buried by some sudden flood or volcanic eruption or some other catastrophe... ...But even such modern deposits as these are few and lean in comparison with the great extent and prodigious richness of the world's fossiliferous rocks. And so again we have seen that the principle of uniformity is utterly inadequate to explain the geologic phenomena, even in its most important aspect - that of the fossil deposits on which the entire structure of evolutionary historical geology is built!"
[pp. 273-274]
"The other factor tending to insure the deposition of the simple marine organisms in the deepest strata is the hydrodynamic selectivity of moving water for particles of similar sizes and shapes, together with the effect of the specific gravity of the respective organisms.
"The settling velocity of large particles is independent of fluid viscosity; it is directly proportional to the square root of particle diameter, directly proportional to particle sphericity, and directly proportional to the difference between particle and fluid density divided by fluid density.'
[W. C. Krumbein and L. L. Sloss: Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman and Co., 1951), p. 156]
...These criteria are derived from consideration of hydrodynamic forces acting on immersed bodies and are well established. In other words, moving water (or moving particles in still water) exerts 'drag' forces on those bodies, which depend on the above factors. Particles which are in motion will tend to settle out in proportion mainly to their specific gravity (density) and sphericity. It is significant that the organisms found in the lowest strata, such as the trilobites, brachiopods, etc., are very 'streamlined' and are quite dense. The shells of these and most other marine organisms are largely composed of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate and similar minerals, which are quite heavy - heavier, for example, than quartz, the most common constituent of ordinary sands and gravels. These factors alone would exert a highly selective sorting action, not only tending to deposit the simpler (i.e., more nearly spherical and undifferentiated) organisms nearer the bottom of the sediments but also tending to segregate particles of similar sizes and shapes, forming distinct faunal stratigraphic 'horizons' with the complexity of structure of the deposited organism, even of similar kinds, increasing with increasing elevation in the sediments.
It is not unlikely that this is one of the main reasons why the strata give a superficial appearance of 'evolution' of similar organisms in successively higher strata...
...The appearance of evolution of even such an important index fossil as the trilobite [microscopic shell type marine lifeform with three segment body usually in a shell] ...is really only superficial is evident from the recent presidential address of C. J. Stubblefield before the Geological Society of London. Describing the origin of the various groups of trilobites as 'cryptogenetic,'... [=of obscure, unknown origin]
..he says: 'The classification of trilobites has attracted much attention, with far from conclusive results... A well-authenticated phylogeny [= evolutionary lifeform classification system] of the trilobite class is still elusive.' (Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 115, Dec. 1959, p. 146)...
..Local peculiarities of turbulence, habitat, sediment composition, etc., would be expected to cause local variations in organic assemblages, with even occasional heterogeneous agglomerations of sediments and organisms of a wide variety of shapes and sizes. But, on the average, the sorting action is quite efficient and would definitely have separated the shells and other fossils in just such fashion as they are found, with certain fossils predominant in certain horizons, the complexity of such 'index fossils' increasing with increasing elevation in the column, in at least a general way."
[M.E. Clark and H. D. Voss of the Genesis Research Laboratory, Urbana, Il, state, (from the paper entitled, 'Fluid Mechanic Examination of the Tidal Mechanism for Producing Mega-Sedimentary Layering', a paper submitted for the Third International Conference on Creationism, July, 1994)]:
"The shallow-water tidal waves are perfect candidates for the role of sediment transport and deposition associated with the buildup of the layered sedimentary column. The global ocean in the tidal context is shown to be near resonance which would augment the load-carrying ability of the tidal waves...
The geometrics of the earth's sedimentary structures are characterized primarily by their tendency to lie in the horizontal position. While many of the structures are now tilted and folded, the great bulk of them still exhibit that incessant horizontal character. This dominant feature is definitely attributable to the manner in which they were formed. Since water was the medium that carried most of the sediments into their present locations and since the main geometric characteristic of free-surface water is its tendency to gravitate to the horizontal position, it follows that sedimentary structures should be dominated by horizontal tendencies. A secondary characteristic of the sedimentary structures of great importance is their conformal layering. Although many have sought to use this characteristic to give the structures excessive age, a careful consideration of the layers and their contents will show that each layer must have been laid down within hours of the preceding layer, resulting in their witness to a very short period of time for the construction of the whole series of layers...
Fluid bodies can be moved by one or a combination of three mechanisms: pressure gradients, gravitational attraction, and boundary movements. Of these three, gravitational attraction presents itself as the primary mover of a global ocean. Sir Isaac Newton's universal law of gravitational attraction (i.e., every body is attracted to every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them) requires that the water in that global ocean respond to the bodies neighboring the ocean. The closest and most dominant neighbor to the global body of water would have been planet earth beneath the ocean. This attraction is what would have caused the primary horizontal geometry of the water surface. The second closest and second most dominant neighbor would have been the moon (The sun, although larger but farther away, has less than half the lunar influence). The gravitational attraction of the earth-moon-sun system on today's oceans causes what are called the tides...
...the bulk of the sedimentary structures forming the so-called geologic column can be attributed to the wave action of the tides in the global flood of Genesis. The tidal waves that occur in the oceans of the earth today range from 1 or 2 meters to more than 15 meters, depending on many factors. It should be noted that today's oceans differ greatly from the global ocean associated with the Genesis Flood. Besides its different depth (on average about 2,400 meters compared to the 3,600 meter average depth of today's oceans), that ocean had no boundaries to interrupt the action of the tidal waves. Today's tidal waves operate in restricted basins of various sizes, some very large. But the tidal action is discontinuous, being stifled by the continental boundaries which form the basins. The continuity of the wave action in the global flood would have been especially beneficial in increasing the load-carrying capacity of the tidal waves by augmenting their amplitude. Large wave amplitude is desirable because the ability of the wave to envelop, transport, and deposit large sediment loads is enhanced by the associated larger velocity fields. A second, perhaps crucial, feature connected with the continuity of the wave action is the possibility that it would have been instrumental in developing resonance in the tidal action. Any cyclic system can develop the large amplitudes associated with resonance if certain criteria are met. In the global ocean context, equality of the free and forced wave speeds is necessary. The free wave speed associated with the speed with which a disturbance would propagate in the ocean is dependent on the ocean depth; the forced wave speed associated with the relative speed of the tidal bulge is dependent on the rate of rotation of the earth...
The sedimentary structures of the geologic column offer excellent evidences for the limitedness of time.. The conformal layering without erosion marks between layers, the entombed and preserved fossil skeletons and tracks, the extensive graveyards of intact plants and animals as well as extensive graveyards of dissolved plants and animals in the huge gas and oil deposits, the polystrate fossil plants and trees spanning many sedimentary layers, and the presence of meteorites only in the top layers of the column. All these push to the fore the demand for a short period of time for the development of the column...
Since the horizontal features of the sedimentary structures require, in most cases, water as the means of deposition, and since the sediments are present over all the globe (even on the tops of the major mountains), the thought vector points to the global ocean as the vehicle for their placement. This vector is consistent with the Bible and with other historical records of a global ocean. Prior to the Darwin revolution, the historical view of geology was based on catastrophism in conjunction with a universal deluge. The originators of these concepts were, for the most part, believers in the Biblical record, who were also aware of the field evidence, and who made the connection between the two types of evidence. It is noteworthy that, after a century of uniformitarian failures to explain the field evidence, catastrophism is coming back into vogue in geologic explanations...
Three fluid mechanisms are currently being used to explain the development of sedimentary structures: tidal waves, turbidity currents, and tsunamis. The tsunami is a wave action generated by a subaquatic subterranean earth movement that causes a large-scale disturbance in the ocean water; although a tsunami's effects may be felt halfway around the earth, it has nothing to do with actual tidal mechanisms. The tsunami is a unique non-cyclic event attributable to a single, unique non-cyclic cause. A turbidity current is also a unique non-cyclic event attributable to a single, unique non-cyclic cause: A gravity-driven mass of sediment plunges down an incline which entrains more sediment as it moves downward. At the bottom of the incline, the moving mass fans out as its momentum carries it over a possibly large areal deposition plain. Tsunamis and turbidity currents are important in explaining small-scale, localized depositions laid down in quasi-random fashion but are inadequate in explaining the mega-layering which dominates the earth's crust.
Neither of these mechanisms has the world-wide scope and tremendous power of the true tidal wave. The apellation 'persistent facies' is a geologic term attached to the large or mega-sedimentary structures that tells the story regarding their extensive lateral range (over whole continents in many cases). To attempt to explain the development of the layered column of mega-sedimentary structures without a body of dynamically active water as extensive as the persistent facies is illogical. The dynamism in that global body of water must have come from the omnipresent gravitational attraction causing the tides...
[The following question is the key to this study]:
'What will a no-boundary global ocean do when subjected to the force of attraction of the moon?'...
The greater the tidal action the greater would be the amount of work that could be done in laying down the sediments. From the huge volume of sedimentary rock extant on the earth, it must be postulated that the responsible mechanism was of broad scope and great power. The phenomenon of resonance has been put forth as one means of increasing the ability of the tides to do the work. In the calculation, the global ocean resonated only when the fluid friction was reduced....
Even though the interaction between the moon and a completely flooded planet earth is multifaceted and complex, this action follows the basic laws of mechanics...
Resonance would have augmented the tidal amplitudes which, in turn, would have augmented the velocity fields especially near the bottom where the sediment transport and deposition would have occurred."
FURTHER INVESTIGATIVE STUDY:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v8n1_sandstrat.asp
[Dr. Don R. Patton, op. cit., tape #1]:
"When we realize the sediment transport principle, we know that a new bedding plane is formed if it [the current of sediment bearing water] changes direction, if the water changes temperature, if it changes velocity - which can be caused by the texture of the bottom, by the rate of drop, [etc]. There are about 17 factors that have to remain absolutely constant in order to have one homogeneous bed formed. And you change any of it and you've got a new bedding plane. [So] How long can you maintain all of those factors perfectly uniform - seconds, maybe minutes? And that's what we see illustrated in the fossil record - rapid formation of the rocks, which is obvious to people that will look and will think. Understanding that, one of the more famous evolutionists in the world, Stephen Gould of Harvard, made a very interesting statement about the rocks in their formation. He says, 'Catastrophists...
[And of course these are the ones that oppose the uniformitarians which were the evolutionists. And talking about the situation of course years ago:]
'Catastrophists [who were the creationists, he said] were as committed to science as any graduate. In fact, they adopted the more objective that one should believe what one sees and not interpolate missing bits of gradual record into a literal tale of rapid change.'
[Stephen Gould, Harvard, University, NATURAL HISTORY, 86:5, p. 12]
Now what we actually see is rapidity. But they quote no, that this was deposited over billions of years and so they divide the time into the rocks and they say, 'This is at least the average time it was formed. But the actual time is, of course, in between the rocks because we see indications that they were all formed rapidly.' They're interpolating missing bits into a literal tale of rapid change. I think I'd just rather take it literally - just the facts as they are without imposing the philosophy upon it. And... [imposing such a philosophy is] what's necessary in order to come out old. That's not the literal story. That's the imagined scenario that's imposed on the actual facts."
