A Critical Look at Flood Geology
The Earth's Sedimentary Record: Formed in One Year?
Flood geology can be defined as the thesis that all or most of the earth's sedimentary and volcanic deposits were formed by depositional processes operating during the months of Noah's flood, about 4500 years ago.
In the following we will compare the flood model with the geologic evidence, and see how well it explains the basic data of geology. Before looking at flood geology theories, however, we should briefly describe the general types of rocks and their minerological, textural, and chemical characteristics, i.e., the data which flood geology purports to explain. We can divide sedimentary rocks into two broad categories, those formed by chemical processes, and those formed by the cementation of clastic particles.
Carbonates. These are composed primarily of the minerals calcite/arogonite (CaCO3) or dolomite (CaMg[CO3]2), or mixtures of the two, in the form of shelly material and/ or carbonate "mud" (i.e. micrite) matrix produced by a variety of organisms. The dominant producers of these tiny carbonate mud particles are Red and Green algae (Rhodophyta and Chlorophyta, respectively)Dunham's (1962) classification of carbonates is based on textural characteristics. The first order division is between those carbonates which are bound together during deposition ('boundstone'; 'biolithite' in Folk's classification), such as stromatolites and in situ reef growths, and those which are bound together after deposition. Carbonate rocks that are not bound together during deposition consist of verying ratios of a lime mud (micrite) matrix of very small (4µm) carbonate particles and larger clasts or grains. These large clasts may consist of oolites, shells fragments, or other material. Carbonates consisting of 90% or more matrix are called mudstones. Carbonates containing less than 90% matrix particles but which are still matrix supported are called wackestones. Carbonates which are grain or clast supported, and in which the matrix accounts for greater than 10%, are called packstones. Carbonates which are grain supported and contain less than 10% matrix are called grainstones.
Carbonate deposits acontain varying amounts of siliciclastic material, depending upon their proximity to siliciclastic source areas during deposition. Some carbonate rocks are virtually pure calcium carbonate, whereas others contain significant amounts of siliciclastic detritus. In some limestones which contain detrital grains, spherical concretions have formed around the grains forming millions of small (.25-2mm) carbonate pellets called oolites.
Evaporites. Evaporites are salt deposits. A salt is any crystalline substance composed of ions. When a body of water evaporates, the ions contained within it precipitate out from solution in the reverse order of soluability. As the graph below shows, seawater contains an average of about 35o/oo by volume, but varies from about 32-37 in different areas of the ocean, depending on the rate of evaporation in that area. The majority of dissolved ions in seawater, about 85%, are sodium and chloride ions. By weight, ions account for about 3.3% to 3.7% of seawater. That is, of every 100 grams of ocean water, about 3.5 of them are actually made up of dissolved ions, while 96.5 of them are water.
As stated above, when a body of water evaporates, the ions contained within it precipitate (actually, crystallize) out from solution in the reverse order of soluability. After evaporation of a few % of water mass, CaCO3 (Calcite) precipitates; after evaporation of 81%, CaSO4 (Gypsum) precipitates; after evaporation of about 90.5%, NaCl (Halite) is precipitates; at 96% evaporation, the K and Mg salts (w/ SO4 and Cl) drop out. Thus, in order for depostion of salts other than calcite to begin, and assuming present salinity values, over 80% of the original body of seawater must evaporate. This is so because water is a very effective solvent, and can hold, for instance, over 350g of halite per litre before reaching supersaturation, almost ten times the amount of salt found in ocean water today.
Clastic Sedimentary rocks. Siliciclastic rocks are derived from the weathering and erosion of pre-existing sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous rocks. The most common types of clastic sedimentary deposits are mudstones, shales, sandstones, and conglomerates.
Two Models of Earth's Sedimentary History
The Flood-Model: until about 4500 years ago (the creationist "precambrian"), there were no fossiliferous rock strata on the earth. All (or most; see below) fossiliferous strata --all the sandstones, shales, limestone, varves, etc., which contain fossils, as well as associated volcanic material -- were deposited in the space of one year or less, during Noah's flood, about 2500BCE. Since all of these strata were allegedly deposited in a single flood, it follows that all of the fossils contained in the strata must be the remains of animals living on earth in the immediate preflood period. Creationist John Baumgartner sums up some of the prodigious feats which flood geologists of necessity must attribute to Noah's flood:
"This catastrophe must involve, for example, deposition of more than a mile of sediment on the average on top of the normally high-standing continents, uplift and ersion of mountain belts like the Appalachians, uplift of all the young mountain belts like the Andes, Alps, and Himalayas, formation of all the coal and oil deposits, formation of all the present day ocean floor, and separation of continents by several thousands of kilometers. The time scale for the most intense phase of the catastrophe is constrained by the Biblical description to be months . . . " (Baumgardner, 1990, p. 35).
Oddly enough, there is extremely wide disagreement amongst creationists as to which strata are preflood deposits, which are flood deposits, and which are postflood deposits. For instance, flood geology traditionalists like Henry Morris argue that essentially all sedimentary strata were deposited during the flood, including much of the Protorozoic and all of the Phanerozoic. In this view, only recent, Pleistocene age deposits are considered post-flood. This view has increasingly been abandoned as a result of various geological criticisms from both flood geology critics and flood geologists themselves (for example, Steve Austin, Kurt Wise and John Baumgardner consider all Cenozoic deposits as post-flood, and much or all of Proterozoic as preflood). At the other extreme, some creationists consider only Paleozoic deposits as flood deposits (see Steven J. Robinson, "Can Flood Geology Explain the Fossil Record?" Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 10(1996):1:32-69), in which case all Mesozoic and Cenozoic deposits are post-flood.
The Conventional Model: the earth's rock strata have been deposited over a period of about 4 billion years, by a variety of processes, both aquatic and nonaquatic, both gradual and rapid, many of which have clear qualitative analogies in modern sedimentary environments such as desert sand seas, carbonate banks, flood plains, and so forth. Macrofossil-bearing rock strata range in age from about 600 million years old (Vendian or earlier) to "modern" times. Fossils are in fact found in earlier "precambrian" strata, including some of the oldest known sedimentary rocks, but these fossils are bacterial, protists, or colonial forms of both. Thus, on the conventional view, all the fossils contained in the sedimentary record were not contemporaneous.
As we will see, the flood models espoused by Baumgartner and other "scientific" creationists are patently incapable of accounting for even the basic facts of geology. As we look at the following criticisms of that model, we should keep some important points in mind. First, we are not discussing the age of the earth, but only the minimum amount of time needed to form all the world's sedimentary rock strata. These are entirely different questions. In order for the flood model to be correct, all of the evidence from geology must be consistent with the formation of these rock strata within one year. If the evidence cannot be accounted for within this amount of time, then the flood model is invalidated and disconfirmed. Second, we are not discussing whether or not the conventional time scale is correct. The invalidity of the flood model does not in itself confirm the validity of the conventional model, which is adequately established on independent grounds.
Radiometric Dating
The most direct way to show that fossiliferous rock strata are not the result of a single year flood is to obtain radiometric ages of the rocks themselves. Radiometric dating of stratigraphic rocks shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the earth's sedimentary strata were deposited over many millions of years, not in a one year flood.
The conventional geologic timescale accepted by geologists is broadly confirmed by thousands of samples and many different decay schemes. The table below demonstrates how radiometric ages rule out the creationist theory that all rock strata were deposited in one year, using the 14 'ages' of the Cenozoic as an example. In this experiment, datable samples were collected and labeled according to their conventional stratigraphic placement, and then this placement was tested against the results of K-Ar dating of the same samples. If the conventional model is correct, there should be a clear correlation of radiometric age with stratigraphic age. If the flood model is correct, radiometric ages should show no such correlation (Dalrymple, A response to creationist criticisms on radiometric dating, G. Brent Dalrymple, USGS Open-File Report #86-110, United States Geological Survey, 1986).
Stratigraphic K-Ar Date # Samples
Position Name of Age (millions) Dated
======== ============ ========= ==========
1 Irvingtonian 1.36 1
2 Blancan 1.5 - 3.5 7
3 Hemphillian 4.1 -10.0 8
4 Claredonian 8.9 -11.7 16
5 Barstovian 12.3-15.6 9
6 Hemingfordian 17.1 1
7 Arikareean 21.3-25.6 4
8 Orellian --- 0
9 Chadronian 31.6-37.5 9
10 Duchesnean 37.5 3
11 Uintan 42.7-45.0 2
12 Bridgerian 45.4-49.0 2
13 Wasatchian 49.2 1
14 Puercan 64.8 1
As the table shows, K-Ar dates do in fact get progressively older in relation to the stratigraphic assigment. Why do strata which, according to flood geology, were deposited in a single year have any age progression at all? Even more strangely, why is there a demonstrable correlation between a stratum's radiometric age and its fossil content? Creationist critics of radiometric dating have essentially hand-waved away the whole problem without ever explaining, or even attempting to explain in any systematic way the actual results of radiometric dating. Both of these facts --that deeper is older in undisturbed strata, and that fossil content is predictive of K-Ar ages, and vice versa-- is to date only explained on the theory that fossil-bearing strata were deposited over many years, and that life on earth has changed throughout that time. For a further look at radiometric dating, and why it demolishes creationist flood theories, see Creationism, Science and the Age of the Earth: Part II.
Fossilized Surface Structures
Aside from fossils themselves, the strata also contain numerous surface structures, structures that leave clues about surface conditions at the time they were formed. Examples include various types of footprints and trackways, raindrop prints, burrows, dried mudcracks (!), glacial striations, meteor craters, and shallow-water ripple patterns. In the case of the flood theory, these structures remain mysterious: how do global floods, for example, "deposit" layers of sun-cracked, dessicated mud, exactly like those we find in arid regions on earth today?
1. Fossil Mudcracks: On the left is a slab of sun-cracked mud from the Triassic period. On the right is modern sun-cracked mud from a quarry in Maryland. From Pamela Gore's Sedimentary Structures page.
Some creationists have suggested the possibility that these structures are actually subaqeous shrinkage cracks, or synaersis cracks. Indeed, in order for their theory to avoid falsification, nearly all supposed dessication cracks must be subaqeous in origin. However, this assertion can be simply refuted. First, subaqeous shrinkage cracks occur only in hypersaline water. Second, they do not occur in all lithologies (for instance carbonate mud). Third, synaersis cracks can be distinguished from dessication cracks by observable criteria (Fouch & Dean, 1982, AAPG Mem. 31, p. 87-114; Shinn, 1983, AAPG Mem. 33, p. 171-210).
"Such subaqueous shrinkage cracks differ from subaerial desiccation cracks in that they are not so well-developed, the cracks are rather narrow, and they do not possess well-developed V-shapes in transverse sections. In general, subaqueous shrinkage cracks are less regular in form and often incomplete. Sometimes, cracks are developed as open, straight to curved cracks occurring singly or in sets, having a preferred orientation. The cracks are 2-8 cm in length and known as linear-shrinkage cracks. According to Picard and High (1973) linear shrinkage cracks develop when relatively thick water-saturated thixotropic muds dehydrate usually under standing water" (Depositional Sedimentary Environments. Second Edition. Springer-Verlag, New York. 1980 p.60).
Nichols (1999) notes:
"Under subarial conditions a polygonal pattern of cracks develops when muddy sediments dry out completely: these are dessication cracks. . . in cross section dessication cracks taper downwards and the upper edges may roll up if all of the moisture in the mud is driven off . . . the presence of dessication cracks is a very reliable indicator of the exposure of the sediment to subarial conditions . . . In contrast to dessication cracks, synaersis cracks are not polygonal but are simple, straight or slightly curved, tapering cracks" (Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, Blackwell Science, p. 58).
Fourth, there is no evidence that synaersis cracks could develop within the time allotted for the flood, or in the conditions proposed for the flood. For instance, in order for synaersis cracks to form, a sediment layer must remain at the sediment-water interface for some period of time, long enough for the cracks to form.
Fossil Tracks
While the creationists argue that the entirety of earth's strata were formed in one giant aquatic catastrophe, the evidence from animal tracks shows that many land animals were alive and active, often moving in large coordinated herds of dozens of individuals (see Lockley and Hunt, 1995), at the very same time that creationists assert the entire world was covered several km deep in water! In the Colorado Plateau region, for example, we find 3-400 tetrapod tracksites in at least 13 successive strata, spanning 5 geologic periods from the Pennsylvanian to the Cretaceous. Thousands of Mesozoic and Cenozoic tracksites are known worldwide, including many "megatracksites" contained thousands of individual tracks. The Cretaceous Jingdong formation in South Korea contains approximately 160 footprint horizons in about 300m of shales and siltstone. See Seong-Kyu Lim, Seong-Young Yang and Martin G. Lockley, Large Dinosaur Footprint Assemblages from the Cretaceous Jindong Formation of Southern Korea, in D. D. Gillette and M. G. Lockley(eds), Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 333-336, p. 333). Other data which flood geology must contend with is the fact that ornithopod and sauropod trackways are often in groups of parallel, evenly spaced trackways showing simultaneous changes in direction, all of which is strongly suggestive of dinosaur "herding."
Like fossils themselves, track types are sorted nonrandomly in the sedimentary record. Tetrapod trackways, for instance, are absent altogether from Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian formations, and appear in a globally consistent sequence in Devonian and younger strata. The earliest trackways, made by short-legged, long-bodied, tail-dragging amphibians, appear in Devonian strata, the same system in which the earliest amphibian fossils are found. Tracks in Devonian strata are however very rare; none are known in western North America (ibid., p.33). Tracks of terrestrial vertebrates first become abundant in the Carboniferous period. In North America, Carboniferous age tracks are found in Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona (p. 34). Trackways are dominated by similar amphibians, some very large (>10ft long), through late Carboniferous time. Trackways of mammal-like reptiles first appear in Permian strata, and are the dominant large vertebrate track type. The earliest dinosaur tracks appear in Triassic time, and become predominant towards the end of the Triassic. In western North America, these faunal changes are documented by the changes in footprint fauna in Triassic deposits. Lockley and Hunt (1995) note:
"Toward the end of the Triassic, in youngest Chinle Group sediments, small-sized Grallator tracks appear in association with a diverse assemblage of other archosaur tracks. Then in some of the very youngest Chinle layers (for example, the Sheep Pen Sandstone) these Grallator tracks become the dominanat track type to the virtual exclusion of all other footprint types. We get the impression that the small dinosaurs were taking over. This impression if confirmed by the track record in the overlying strata of the Wingate Formation, where we find more medium-sized Grallator tracks, and very few other track types" (p. 103).
Larger dinosaur tracks appear in the Jurassic, and remain dominant for the rest of the mesozoic. The first bird tracks appear towards the end of the Jurassic. Large ornithopod dinosaurs are abundant only in Cretaceous deposits. Past the K/T boundary, dinosaur tracks disappear. Tracks of modern mammal genera appear only in Miocene and later strata.
What set of conditions accounts for this distribution? According to the Noah's Flood model, the preflood world was literally packed full of all types of organisms. For example, the preflood world must have been chock full of huge 60+ ton sauropod dinosaurs, for we find many thousands of their skeletons in supposed flood deposits. Yet, their massive footprints are found only in Jurassic and Cretaceous age deposits, which on the flood models of Austin, Baumgardner and others were deposited towards the end of the flood.
Accounting for Sedimentary Formations
The large-scale distribution of sediments makes no sense on the flood theory. As Morton points out, the continents are covered with an average of 2.7km, whereas the ocean floor has an average of only .6km sediment, under which we find basalt. Since the ocean basins are on average 5km lower than the continents, it strains common sense that a flood would selectively dump its sediments at a ratio of about 4.5:1 on high ground rather than in the ocean basins. This is exactly the opposite of what a global flood should do -- one would expect water rushing from the higher land area to the lower sea basin to deposit the majority of sediments in the sea basins. Once again, this is a basic geological observation that flood theories fail to explain, but wich is explained quite easily in terms of an old earth undergoing tectonic processes which result in the subduction of sediment-rich ocean floor. This also makes sense of the radiometric data, which shows that the ocean floor has been recycled over time, and is much younger than most of the continental crust.
Fossil Desert Deposits
If mudcracks and footprints are damaging for the flood theory of sedimentation, then the thousands of square miles of "fossilized" desert plains, complete with cross-bedded, pure-quartz sand dunes, playas, salt flats and other characteristics found only in modern deserts, are truly devastating. Good examples of these formations include the massive Coconino and Navajo Sandstones of the western US. Chris Weber observes:
"Hundreds of square miles of fossil sand dunes in these deposits contain cross-bedding and sand-blasted pebble (ventifacts) of the sort found in modern desert sand dunes, and in no other kind of modern sediment. These different independent lines of evidence converge to show that the Old Red Sandstones almost certainly formed over thousands of years in a dry climate, not in any kind of flood catastrophe" (p 26).
What sort of evidence could more clearly rule out the notion that the entire geologic record was layed down in a one-year global flood? It is truly a unique flood which can lay down not only dessicated mudcracks and long vertebrate trackways, but also large, fully-formed pure quartz desert sand dunes!
Yellowstone Fossil Forests
Another clear disconfirmation of the flood model comes from Yellowstone's Specimen Ridge, an Eocene (60-40mya) deposit described by Earling Dorf (1964). The deposit shows that, at least 27 times in the past, a forest reached maturity and was then buried, root systems and soil included (Weber, 28), by volcanic ash and debris flows originating from nearby volcanic eruptions. These debris flows would have included numerous transported trees, as indicated by the abundance of unrooted and current-oriented logs. Nevertheless, Retallack states in agreement with Fritz and Ritland that many of the trees are "unquestionably in place," and are rooted in "surprisingly well-differentiated" paleosols, complete with A, B, and C horizons (G. Retallack, 1981, pp. 52-54). Since the oldest trees in each layer are on average about 500 years old, and because it takes about 200 years for volcanic ash to weather into forest-growing soil, it follows that each layer required a minimum of 700 years to form. Multiplying by 27, we find that this Eocene formation alone requires at least 19,000 years of earth history, or 19,000 times the amount of time that the flood model allows for the formation of all rock strata.
Henry Morris and other creationists have argued that the fossil forests were actually deposited by Noah's flood. They assert that all of the trees, even those preserved in upright position with large roots extending 2+ feet into underlying paleosols, were transported and deposited in layers, and that none of the trees in the fossil forests are preserved in situ. This is in contrast to the conventional view that both transported and in situ trees are present in most levels.
As Ritland notes, "The transport theory for the origin of the fossil forests . . . as suggested by Whitcomb and Morris is not in harmony with the facts" (Hayward, p. 130). He notes:
1. Floods carrying trees create 'log=jams,' with a tangled mess of tree trunks pointed in all directions. But the trees in the Yellowstone forests are either upright, in growth position, or lying flat like trees that have fallen on the forest floor.
2. The spacing of the in situ trunks is similar to that of trees in living firests.
3. Some of the layers contain trees of all ages, while others contain only saplings.
"An explorer of the fossil forest can hardly fail to be impressed by the changing scene from level to level. If one starts near the crest of the Ramshorn with the magnificent 10-foot Sequoia (called King of the Forest) and continues along the side of the mountain on this same level, a whole series of naturally spaced giant sequoias of similar size are encountered, as if one were in an old-growth forest along the California coast. By contrast, levels 11 and 12 (on the slope we have designated Plot 1-B north of Specimen Creek) are composed of what woodmen often refer to as second-growth forests, most of the upright trees ranging from 10 to 18 inches in diameter. On Level 18, nearly all of the upright stumps are saplings of no more than 5 inches. Other levels average 30, 48, 72 inches, etc. Although the size may vary from 1 inch to 12 feet or more on the same level, as in most present- day naturally occurring forests, the prevalence of a given size class tends to be the rule" Richard M. Ritland, Stephen L. Ritland, "The Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone Region," Spectrum, No. 1/2, 1974, p. 40.
4. The fossil leaves on the forest floor are not flattened like leaves that have been buried while wet. In addition, preservation of delicate features of the leaves in the angular volcanic matrix of some of the layers argues against transport.
"Often the most delicate features in the leaf imprints, including fine veins and margin patterns, are well-preserved in an angular volcanic matrix. If extended transport in a mud flow had occurred, such fine features would have been obliterated by the sharp edges of the rock particles" Richard M. Ritland, Stephen L. Ritland, "The Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone Region," Spectrum, No. 1/2, 1974, p. 40.
5. Some creationists have pointed to the floating and sunken logs at Spirit Lake near Mt. St. Helens as an analogue for flood depositon of the Yellowstone fossil forests. These logs were uprooted and transported to Spirit Lake by debris flows generated by the 1980 eruption. Many of them have floated to the bottom of the lake in an upright position. Could a similar process have formed the Yellowstone fossil forests? Creationist Steve Robinson disputes this interpretation of Morris et al., as well as similar interpretations offered for Paleozoic coal seams:
"The Mt St Helens catastrophe is an inadequate analogy, not least because freshly uprooted trees float, and as those on the surface of Spirit Lake demonstrated, it takes years for floating trees to become so saturated that they sink to the bottom. Consequently, if ones' Flood model requires that mats of ripped-up vegetation were deposited in the middle of the Flood year, an explanation has to be found for why they sank within months, before even the carcasses of reptiles, birds and mammals. The problem is particularly acute in relation to the evidence that much of the vegetation in the Permo-Carboniferous seams was originally aquatic rather than terrestrial. As scheven has noted, the aerated structures and radial arrangement around the main stems indicate that the plants were designed to float. Far from being less buoyant than the vegetation of Tertiary coal seams, they were more buoyant" (Can Flood Geology Explain the Fossil Record? Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 10(1996):1:32-69, p. 46. emphasis mine.
Evaporites
How do flood waters concentrate huge amounts of crystal salt? At various places around the world, we find salt deposits in the geologic column which are apparently the remains of evaporated sea-water. As sea-water evaporates, the minerals it contains are precipitated out of the solution in a specific sequence of calcite, gypsum, and then halite. Weber (1980) discusses the example of the Mediterranean sea deposits:
"Several times at the end of the Miocene (six to eight million years ago), the Mediterranean sea dried up, leaving extensive desert deposits on the sea bottom (Hsu, 1972) . . . Each time the Mediterranean slowly dried up, first calcite precipitated around the rim of the basin of the Balearic abyssal plain, then anhydrites and gypsum further in, and finally rock salt in the center at the deepest point. This is just the order that these salts would precipitate if you set out a large saucer of sea-water to dry" (p 27).
The dessication of the Mediterranean basin includes is suggested not only the precense and distribution of salts, but also by numerous other sedimentological evidences, including the precense of alluvial fans (Hsu, 1983, p. 149), desiccation cracks filled with salt (Hsu et al, 1974, p. 139), chicken-wire dolomites, and stromatolites (Hsu, 1983, p. 14-17).
There are many such salt deposits. Many of which are over hundreds of meters in thickness, and some are over a km thick. These deposits represent a major problem for flood advocates. First of all, sea water of normal salinity will nor precipitate salt. Salinity must increase by about 10 times the normal value of sea water before precipitation even begins. This can only happen in basins with little or no water input and an arid environment, such as the Dead Sea basin. If the waters of Noah's flood were supersaturated with salt, it would have killed most if not all sea life. But that's just the problem -- you can't concentrate salt at all in a global flood. To the contrary, a global flood with its turbid waters would dissolve salt and keep it in solution.
Often these salts are sorted in inverse order of solubility, meaning that the least soluable salts precipitate first (lowest) and the least soluable salts last (highest). This is exactly what you get when you allow a bowl of seawater to evaporate, only in the case of the geologic record the bowls (or basins) are vastly larger. Sometime salts are arranged in a 'bullseye' pattern, such that the most soluable salts occur in the center of the evaporating basin.
Evaporites require several conditions to form, the most obvious being time (much longer than 1 year), a restricted marine environment, and an arid climate where evaporation exceeds precipitation. Halite deposits are forming today in arid, restricted marine environments such as the Dead Sea, Salar de Atacama in northern Chile, and elsewhere. Moreover, when we examine evaporite deposits in the geologic record, we typically find them associated with restricted marine environments too. Without a restricted marine environment, the salt could presumably never get concentrated or deposited in the first place, because it would simply remain in solution and diffuse thoughout the turbulent deluge ocean.
Some flood geologists have proposed a hydrothermal origin for evaporite deposits (for instance, E. Williams, Origin of bedded salt deposits, Creation Research Society Quarterly 26[1]:1516,1989; Nutting, D. 1. 1984. Origin of bedded salt deposits: a critique of evaporative models and defense of a by hypothermal model. Masters Thesis. Institute for Creation Research). Tas Walker writes:
"One explanation says the deposits were formed when the sun evaporated seawater - hence the term 'evaporite deposits'. Naturally, to make such large deposits in this way would take a long time. However, the high chemical purity of the deposits shows they were not exposed to a dry, dusty climate for thousands of years. Rather, it is more likely that they formed rapidly from the interaction between hot and cold seawater during undersea volcanic activity - a hydrothermal deposit"
Hydrothermal systems consist of geothermally heated water flowing through fissures in rocks, and dissolving various minerals out of the rock. When the water cools rapidly, such as when it exits a fissure into seawater, the hydrothermal solution can no longer hold the material in suspension and thus deposits what it cannot hold. Can such a process explain large salt deposits in the geologic record more parsimoniously than the simple mechanism of evaporation?
1) Most large evaporite deposits found in the geologic record, for example those in intracratonic basins like the km thick Paradox salts, the 11 seperate salt beds in the Williston Basin (Morton, The Entire Geologic Column in North Dakota) or the 800-2500m thick deposits in the Medditeranean Basin, are not associated with typical hydrothermal deposits of iron, manganese and so on, or with hydrothermally altered rocks, or with stockworks, ore veins, or any other evidence of contemporaneous magmatic activity. That such evidence has not been found in telling, since any event which could deposit large salts in a period of mere weeks or months would be a very high energy event.
2.) Hydrothermal systems operating today in the sea at mid-ocean ridges, or on the continents (for instance in the Yellowstone National Park) do not seem to be depositing any sodium chloride, much less thick, laterally extensive sheets of salts such as those found in the sedimentary record, although hydrothermal systems in the ocean are depositing iron, manganese, copper and zinc sulfates, oxides and silicates. Anhydrite (CaSO4) is present in hydrothermal chimneys, but not as deposits surrounding the chimneys. This is not suprising, given that the mantle does not seem to contain significant source amounts of sodium of other volatile elements for hydrothermal systems to extract in the first place. In fact, hydrothermal solutions appear to contain smaller amounts of Cl and Na (17,300 and 9931 ppm) than normal seawater (19,500 and 10,500 ppm) (The Ocean Basins: Their Structure and Evolution, Open University, 1988, p. 100).
3) Sea floor basalt is often hydrothermally altered to significant depths, but as far as I know, no halite deposits are found in association with sea-floor basalts or in ophiolites. On the other hand, hydrothermal deposits of iron and manganese are almost always found overlying oceanic basalt where cores have been taken through oceanic sediments into the underlying basalt. Hydrothermal deposits are found all over the ocean floor -- they just don't contain any evaporite deposits!
4.) Finally, evaporites are often found in association with other sedimentary structures, such as vertebrate footprints, dessication cracks and occasional raindrop impressions, which are expected in a subarial depositional environments such as playas and sabkhas, but not in a subaqueous environment.
In fact., evaporites are often found not as bedded sheets, but as nodules formed by the displacive growth of large individual crystals within a fine grained matrix, such as can be observed in modern inland and coastal Sabkha environments. These crystals or nodules form not from the evaporation of a body of water in a basin, but rather grow _within_ supratidal sediments as saline groundwater is 'drawn upwards' from underlying sediments by evaporation. As the water evaporates at the sediment surface, the salt nodules (usually gypsum and anhydrite) grow, often forming a chicken-wire structure (Nichols, p. 177). In some cases, the evaporites grow into huge crystals resembling flowers (gypsum rosettes, 'desert roses'). All of these features are known from both modern sedimentary environments and ancient evaporite deposits. The Toroweap Formation in the Grand Canyon regions contains evaporites of this type, and here we find that the evaporites laterally grade into mud-cracked carbonate facies, which could not form either in a subaqeous environment, nor within the time constraints of the Noah's flood theory. Above the Toroweap, the Kaibab contains these evaporite nodules as well. Other well-known examples include the Devonian Muskeg Formation in Alberta, which is buried under 6000ft of additional "flood" sediments.
Enterolithic veins of Gypsum in Lower Cretaceous Purbeck Formation at Worbarrow Tout, Dorset, UK.
Enterolithic veins forming at the present day in a sabkha of desert loess (blown wind-blown silt) between El-Alamein and Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. (See - West, Ali and Hilmy, 1979. Primary gypsum nodules in a modern sabkha on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. Geology, 7, 354-358)
Modern gypsum rosettes from Saudia Arabia.
Gypsum rosette fabrics, Permian Seven Rivers Formation.
Again, the same structures can be observed to form in many modern coastal sabkha environments, and form by a distinctive process. How do hydrothermal systems deposit evaporite nodules within a bed of preexisting sediments? Flood geology needs to explain not only the fact of evaporite deposits, ignoring the actual geologic contexts in which they are found, but also the fact that evaporite deposits are typically found in sedimentary formation strongly resembling those forming evaporites in modern environments.
Gypsum nodules forming in Saudia Arabian Sabkha.
Nodular gypsum. Miocene Solfifera Series, Sicily.
Nodular gypsum in Permian Seven Rivers Formation.
5.) Walker's statement that the "high chemical purity of the deposits shows they were not exposed to a dry, dusty climate for thousands of years" is dubious. This claim can be traced back to Sozansky (1973), who claimed that the (alleged) absence of pollen and/or planktonic tests in evaporite deposits argues against an evporation model. However, it is now known, and has been known for decades, that many evaporite deposits do in fact contain "impurities" such as pollen, plankton, algae, fungi spores, volcanic ash layers, and so forth, which we would expect on the restricted-marine, basin-evaporation theory, but not what we would expect if these salts were rapidly extruded underwater in a global flood.
For instance, the 2km+ thick Sedom Formation evaporites in the Dead Sea Basin are about 80% pure halite, with 20% gypsum, marl, chalk, dolomite and shale (Niemi et al., The Dead Sea: The Lake and its Setting, Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics No. 36, p. 46). Significant amounts of pollen are also present in these evaporites as well. See also Ulrich Jux, The Palynologic Age of Diapiric and Bedded Salt, Department of Conservation, Louisiana Geological Survey, Geological Bulletin 38, October, 1961, and Wilhelm Klaus, Utilization of Spores in Evaporite Studies, in Jon L. Rau and Louis F. Dellwig, editors, Third Symposium on Salt, Cleveland: The Northern Ohio Geological Society, Inc., 1970. The Paradox Basin evaporites, mentioned earlier, in fact have many thin interbedded shale layers containing brachiopods, condonts, and plant remains (Duff et al., Cyclic Sedimentation, Developments in Sedimentology, no. 10: Elsevier Publishing, 1967, p. 204). Of course, we should question the logic of requiring such material in the first place, since hypersaline basins are not typically full of living organisms.
Another line of evidence constraining the rate of evaporite deposition comes from analyses of micrometeoric content and magnetic spherules, which also points to rates of deposition of salts in the geologic record which are similar in magnitude to salt deposition occuring in modern basins (which vary with temperature and salinity, but which are usually a few cm per year, for instance, about 3-6cm per year in the Dead Sea Basin as measured between 1982-1989. Levy, Y. 1991. Modern Sedimentation in the Dead Sea across from En Gedi (1982-1989): Jerusalem, Geological Survey of Israel Report TR-GSI/2/91). See James Matthew Barnett, Sedimentation Rate of Salt Determined by Micrometeorite Analysis, M. S. Thesis, Western Michigan University, 1983, p. i., and Thomas A. Mutch, "Abundances of Magnetic Spherules in Silurian and Permian Salt Samples", Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 1 1966 p. 325.
Flood geologists still need, and currently do not have, a viable physical mechanism for the extremely rapid formation of evaporites, in an open marine environment, which takes both the conditions of the flood and the geological and chemical details of actual evaporite deposits into account.
Buried River Channels
Buried flood channels provide yet another falsification of flood geology. A stunning example is found in Baylor Co. Texas, and is discussed by Glenn Morton (1998). The channel, carved out of limestone, is buried under almost 1700ft of supposed "flood" deposits, and an additional 5000ft of sediments exist below the channel itself. Morton notes that "[o]il wells drilled outside of the channel find limestone at this level, but wells drilled into the channel fail to find any limestone here but instead find the sands and shales deposited by the river." This buried channel, and others like it, show once again that much, much more than one year elapsed between the deposition of the limestone out of which the channel was carved and the layers which are above it.
River channel carved into limestone and buried under 1700ft of sediment; imaged by seismic data. AAPG Explorer, June 1993, p 14. Linked from Morton, 1998.
Subarially Extruded Lava Flows
Since water can cool molten lava much quicker than air, basaltextruded under water looks much different than basalt extruded above water. When lava flows underwater, it cools quickly and thus can not "flatten" out under gravity the way it does in the air. It pushes out in fits and starts, formed wrinkled structures called pillow basalts. If flood geology is correct, then lava flows found in the geologic column should all have been extruded subaqeously (underwater) during the flood, and hence should resemble pillow basalts known to have formed under the water.
On the contrary, however, there are massive lava flows in the geologic column -- with supposed "flood" deposits both above and below them -- which show every indication of having been extruded in air and not water. This is evidenced not only by the lack of pillow formation, but also the extremely large horizontal extant compared to depth. As we said above, lava extruded under water is cooled quickly and cannot be "flattened out" by gravity before they cool. Thus, subaqeous flows, such as those which comprise most of the Hawaiian archipeligo, tend to build upwards over time as lava is extruded, starts to flow over previously extruded lava, and then cools, forming another vertical layer and increading the depth of the formation. Subarial flows, on the other hand, cool much more slowly. They are molten long enough for gravity to flatten them out. As a rough generalization, then, the greater horizontal extent compared to vertical extent of a lava flow is indicative of a given flow's mode of extrusion. Discussing some large lava flows in the geologic column, creationist Steve Austin (aka Stuart Nevins) observes:
"One of the most perplexing difficulties presented by the Mesa basalt is its horizontal extent compared to thickness. As an illustration of the remarkable thinness of the Mesa compared to its widespread flow, imagine that the actual thickness of the flow were reduced in scale to this thickness of a page of this Quarterly. In order to represent to scale the maximum horizontal dimension of the flow, the page would have to be 20 feet long!" (Nevins, 1974, p. 225).
Austin further states (Nevins 1974, p. 225),
"It is the opinion of the author that the Mesa basalt as well as many other Cenozoic basalts flowed after the Noachian Flood. The Mesa basalt could not have flowed during the flood otherwise it would have been 'quenched' by the waters and could not have spread so broadly."
Tillites and Striated Bed-rock: Evidence of Paleozoic Ice Ages
When it comes to glacial events, creationists seem to have argued themselves into a corner. On the one hand, evidence for the most recent Plieocene glaciations, in the form of striated pavements, tillites, faceted boulders and so on, is so overwhelming that creationists have largely accepted it, claiming that it occured as a residual effect of Noah's flood and the collapse of the vapor canopy. On the other hand, however, the same lines of evidence that compel belief in the most recent glaciation also indicate that glaciations have occured repeatedly throughout geologic time, leaving evidence of their occurence in strata of many different relative ages. This presents a major problem for flood geology, since the time required to accumulate large ice sheets, plus the time required for them to grind against and striate large stretches of bedrock, far exceeds the one year available for the deposition of all fossiliferous strata posited by flood geology. Even more fundamental, of course, is the problem of how a glaciation could occur during a global flood at all. Since ice is less dense than water, it floats in water. If ice sheets were present before the flood, they would have been 'lifted' and broken into ice cubes by the rising floodwaters, which within a mere 40 days were high enough to cover even the highest mountains.
Strahler (1988, p263-5) and Van Andel (1994, p 132-3) discuss two compelling examples of phanerozoic glaciations, the Ordovician and Carboniferous glaciations of Gondawanaland (roughly speaking, the continental land mass which later split into Africa, South America, Antarctica, India, and Australia). In these two cases, glacial activity is indicated by an impressive range of geologic evidence, including the tillites, striated basement, faceted boulders, etc. which creationists accept as evidence in the case of their single post-flood ice age. "Moreover," Strahler observes of the late Carboniferous glacial formations, "when the fragments [of Gondawanaland] are reassembled and the orientation of their bedrock striations are plotted, they reveal an outwardly radial pattern suggesting the flow pattern of a large ice sheet centered on the Antarctic landmass" (p 263). Paleomagnetic data support this conclusion, indicating that the center of outward ice flow inferred from the geologic evidence, today South Africa, was in fact located at the north pole during the Carboniferous. All the evidence one could want for a phanerozoic glaciation is present. Van Andel speaks for the geological concensus when he asserts that "[t]he ice ages of the late precambrian and Paleozoic . . . are not in doubt; the wide distribution of their characteristic deposits permits no other conclusion" (p 88). Needless to say, this presents some problems for flood geologists.
Accounting for Fine-Grained Sedimentary Formations
In fact, a one year flood is incapable of accounting for distinct layers of fine-grained sediment at all. This is so because their is a direct relationship between a particle's size and the rate at which it settles out of a solution. One example discussed by Isaacs (1998) is chalk. Chalk is composed of particles between 700-1000 angstroms in diameter. Citing the work of Twenhofel, (1961), Isaacs observes that "[o]bjects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec," and concludes that "[i]n a year of the Flood, they could have settled about half a meter."
Another good example comes from varve formations, which likewise contain perfectly sorted, fine-grained sediment layers. In the Green River formation in Wyoming, there are about 20 million distinct varves, each including a dark layer of fine-grained shale and a lighter colored layer consisting of terriginous sediment. These very thin, discretely seperate layers are spread out over very large areas, many kilometers.
Since the formation of annual varves can be observed today there is excellent reason to believe that a one year flood cannot construct several million such laminations. For example, even if we made the ridiculous assumption that each of these fine-grained layers could have settled in only one hour, the flood year would still only give us less than 9000 varves. If we went further still and supposed that each varve --fine grained and undisturbed for dozens of square kilometers-- formed in only one second, it would still require a full 40 years to account for the twenty million varves layers in the Green River formation. And to top all this off, the varve layers at Green River are only one portion of the geologic column in that area, so even these estimates are much too conservative!
On the other hand, we already know, on independent grounds, that many varves were deposited yearly, not by the second or by the hour. For example, C14 dating done on varve layers at Lake in Clouds Minnesota by Alan Craig show a very clear correlation between measured radiometric age and simple varve count (Morton, 1998). While this should settle the whole argument, there are a variety of other indications that many varves in the geologic column were formed by annual processes. For example, many varves show alternating abundances of pollens within their various laminae, producing a distribution strongly suggestive of the different months of bloom of various flowering plants. If these formations were formed quickly during one year, there is no reason at all to expect this pattern. Finally, their is good evidence that varves record the effects of orbital cyclicities such as the Milankovitch frequencies, which operate on time scales of tens of thousands of years. Again, if varves were formed quickly during one year, it is truly remarkable that they would display a cyclical pattern closely matching the predicted orbital cyclicities of the earth over the past several million years.
The Existence of Prediluvian Trees
According to the biblical chronology, the flood took place about 2400BCE. If this is the case, then tree-ring correlations should not be found between trees which date before and after this time. This is expected since a global deluge sufficient to deposit 654 10^6 km3 worth of sediment in one year would also be sufficient to uproot and ultimately kill all the earth's trees. In other words, tree ring sequences should not extend past 2400BCE. Yet, several ring chronologies extend well past 7000BCE (Becker et al.,1991)! To top it all off, these trees are found on the earth's surface, on top of the rock strata that creationists argue were formed in the flood!
Becker, B., Kromer, B. & Trimborn, P., 1991. A stable-isotope tree-ring timescale of the late glacial Holocene boundary. Nature 353 (6345): 647-649.
The Lack of Ice-Core Evidence
Ice caps form annual layers which can be counted back at least 160k years. By examining inclusions in these ice layers, and comparing them with other paleoclimatic data such as sediment cores from the ocean floor, inferences can be made about the atmosphere and climate during the years in which they were formed. As a result of concern over global warming, paleoclimatological reconstructions based on ice and sediment cores have become increasingly higher in resolution ( Taylor, 1999).
If a global flood occured in 2400BCE, this should be marked in the ice cores by increases in salinity and sediment (not to mention CO2, hydrogen sulfide, and other byproducts of large scale volcanism), as well as by other changes. These features are not found. In fact, since ice is less dense than water, the ice caps as a whole should have been lifted off the poles, and, if not fractured completely, deposited somewhere else when the flood waters subsided. Yet, all indications are that these ice caps have rested comfortably at the poles for at least 160k years. As pointed out above, if all the world's "fossil" lava was formed in this single year of flooding, then the ocean's temperature of about 2700C would be sufficient to vaporize both the caps and the oceans. Adding to this the tremendous amount of heat generated by calcite formation, non-stop meteor impacting, and other sources, it seems unlikely that any icecaps should have survived the flood.
Johnsen, S. J., H. B. Clausen, W. Dansgaard, K. Fuhrer, N. Gundestrap, C. U. Hammer, P. Iversen, J. Jouzel, B. Stauffer, & J. P. Steffensen, 1992. Irregular glacial interstadials recorded in a new Greenland ice core. Nature 359: 311-313.
The Biomass of the Prediluvian Earth
Since flood geology holds that all fossil-bearing strata were deposited in one year, it follows that all fossil animals were alive at the time of the flood. This is highly unlikely, considering the vast amount of fossils and fossilized organic matter. Whitcomb and Morris, for example, pointed to the vast numbers of fossils in the African Karoo formation as evidence for a global flood, estimating that this formation alone contained 800 billion fossil vertebrates. As Schadewald (1982) points out, if we assume that the Karoo formation alone represents only 1 percent of the preflood population (conservatively, I might add!), then the preflood earth must have contained some 2100 vertebrate animals per acre! If we assume that the Karoo formation represents 0.1% of the preflood population, the number rises to 21,000 vertabrates per acre, and so on.
When the vast amounts of coal, limestone and other organic desposits are taken into account, the prediluvian biomass grows to even more absurd proportions. For example, the earth's rock strata contain an estimated 1.16 x 1013 metric tons of coal reserves, about 45 times the estimated amount of carbon in the entire current biosphere (Morton, 1984). Of course, coal represents only a very small portion of remnant organic carbon, and at least an hundred times as much carbon lies buried in sedimentary form, such as the huge fossil-bearing limestone deposits, many of which are over a kilometer deep! Morton writes:
"There are 201 x 10^18 grams of carbon in all the world's hydrocarbons. Today's biosphere only contains .3 x 10^18 grams of carbon. The petroleum deposits of the world require about 670 biospheres. (See G.R. Morton, Foundation Fall and Flood, p. 62)
"This does not take into account the fact that nearly the entire northern hemisphere's land area is covered by many feet of dead crinoids, leaving no place for the tropical forest, Karoo animals or ruminants. (Morton, G. R. (1984). The Carbon Problem. Creation Research Society Quarterly. 20:212-219.)
Making a related argument, Isaacs points out that if one divides the total amount of "fossil" carbonate in limestone deposits by the current annual rate of deposition on the ocean floor, the amount of time necessary, many thousands of years, far exceeds the amount of time available, 1 year. In fact, a "deposition rate ten times as high for 5000 years before the Flood would still only account for less than 0.02% of limestone deposits" (Isaacs, 1998). Yet, flood geology requires that all, or at least most, of the world's limestone deposits were deposited in only one year.
Schadewald also points out the problems entailed simply by the thickness of fossil-rich strata. Consider that the averg\age sediment thickness on the continents is about 1.7km. Consider further that many strata, such as chalk and, to a lesser extent limestone, are composed almost completely of shells and other organic material. If only 0.1% of total average sediment thickness is attributed to fossil organic material, then the entire surface of the pre-flood earth must have been covered by a layer of marine animals 1.5ft thick. Actually, this number must be too low, for several reasons. First, the preflood earth, according to most creationist theories, was much smaller before the flood than they are today. Second, the continents today account for about 30% of the earth's surface area. Third, our thickness argument has not taken compaction into account; obviously, marine animals when alive, are not packed together. If the preflood ocean accounted for 50% of total surface area, and if organic deposits have been compacted by a mere factor of 2, then the depth of marine animals in the preflood ocean goes up to about 6ft.
The Existence of Fossils
The mineralization process, whereby the body of a dead organism becomes a fossil, is a slow process. Archaeological finds, such as bones buried 3500 years ago in Egypt, are only negligibly mineralized (Isaacs, 1998). Whereas the fossil remains of modern animals show varying degrees of mineralization, those of long-extinct animal fauna such as trilobites are almost always mineralized. If animal fossils were all produced in a single, one year flood, then why do buried remains dating from only eight hundred years after the flood still display very little mineralization? And what accounts for the differences in mineralization among different extinct species?
According to flood geology, the mineralization process must have happened very quickly to the flood animals, since fossils were already known and discussed in ancient times. Theophrastus (368-284 BC) wrote the first known book on fossils, which is lost, but in another book Peri lithon (On Stones) he referred to it and demonstrated that he had a modern view of what fossils represent. This would have been about 2000 years after the flood. In fact, the great pyramid, which must have been constructed very soon after the flood, is composed entirely of blocks of Eocene limestone containing abundant Nummulites fossils.
The Distribution of Fossils and Trace Fossils
According to creationist Henry Morris, the distribution of fossils with the geologic record can be attributed to differential mobility and hydrodynamic sorting. In other words, the faster the creature, the better able the creature would be to avoid the flood water by running for high ground; once the animal is killed by the flood waters, Morris suggests, the animals will sink and be sorted according to their hydrodynamic properties such as density cross-section. While many creationists are under the impression that such a notion provides a plausible alternate explanation, this theory is clearly inadequate to explain the observed geologic sorting:
Forensic considerations.
As forensic scientist Walter Rowe points out, the body density of most vertabrate animals is very close to that of pure water. As a result, animals do not simply drown and then sink in an orderly, sorted fashion to the bottom of the flood waters. Some will inhale as they die, becoming bouyant. Some will contain an excess of body fat, which can also make them bouyant. Freshwater fish will tend to float in the saline flood waters, which have a slightly higher density. Others will swallow water, making them less bouyant.
Furthermore, even if animals sink initially, gasses produced by putrefaction will often cause then to rise back to the surface. The end result of these forensic considerations is that the same animals should be found at random places in geologic column. As Rowe concludes his article, "[w]hen examined in the light of well-known and thoroughly researched scientific phenomena, creationist flood geology fails the most basic and simple test known to forensic science: bodies don't pile up the way creationists insist they must" (1990).
Hydrodynamic sorting?
Fossils are obviously *not* sorted according to hydrodynamic properties. As one obvious example, the very early fossil record is dominated by very small organims, which should sink the slowest. Many different types of trilobite fossils are found in the geologic record. Hydrodynamic considerations predict that large trilobites should sink quicker than small ones, since they have the same density and drag coefficients, but different weights. The observed pattern is just the opposite, however, with size decreasing with depth (Schadewald, 1982).
The Redwall Limestone of the Grand Canyon is divided into three seperate members. In each of these members is found a certain specific type of conodont teeth, but not the three others. Glenn Morton states: "A conodont named Gnathodes typicus is found in the Whitmore Wash member and not in the other layers. Scoliognathus anchoralis and Dolignathus latus are unique to the Thunder Springs member. Gnathodus texanus is found in the Mooney Falls member only and the conodont Taphrognathus variarus is limited to the Horseshoe Mesa member." Since these tiny teeth are all about the same size, and differ only in the most minute details, it is inplausible in the extreme that a flood could account for such precise sorting.
Ammonite species are likewise not sorted according to size or other hydrodynamic properties. Instead, ammonites of various sizes are sorted according to suture shape (Morton, 1997). The earliest/deepest ammonites in the Paleozoic have very simple sutures. In the triassic, these sutures become more complex, and throughout much of the Mesozoic they become increasingly more complex (Moore, p 484). What's more, throughout much of the Mesozoic these differently sutured ammonites are found in a globally consistent progression. Arkell 1956, p. 10-11 lists a sequence of about 62 ammonite species, of various sizes, which are found in a consistent progression throughout the Jurassic period alone. Flood geology cannot explain such "evolutionary" distribution of fossils by species or by suture complexity. Water is simply not capable of sorting objects in a manner consistent with the observed fossil record, by species for example.
Where are the Fossils of Modern Animals?
If all the species of animals alive today were alive during the flood, why are they almost completely absent from the fossil record? In terms of modern terrestial animals, in fact, none are found except in the most recent era of geologic time, the Cenozoic. Why do these rocks display a fauna so markedly different than modern fauna? Instead of finding "more of the same," we find a gallery of extinct animal forms. Morton observes (1997):
"Absolutely NO living species of terrestrial animal can be found in Mesozoic and Paleozoic rocks. Life HAS changed. If the animals found in the fossil record represent the remains of animals which lived prior to the Flood, and if the animals alive today are the descendants of animals which got off the ark, then why are there no living forms in the flood sediments?"
When it comes to marine fossils, the situation is not much better. Aside from a handful of so-called "living fossils" (such as the brachiopod Ligulella, coelacanths and horshoe crabs), almost no living marine genera is represented in Paleozoic strata. Why do we never find a dolphin next to a placoderm, a whale next to a trilobite, a sea lion next to a mosasaur?
Where are the Flowering Plants?
Flowering plants are not mobile, they occupy a wealth of ecological niches, and have similar hydrodynamic properties. This being the case, one would expect a global flood to deposit them everywhere homogeneously. Yet this is not at all what we find; what we find is that flowering plants are altogether absent from the Paleozoic era, and appear only at the close of the Mesozoic. Consider grass, for instance, which covers much of our planet. Grass is absent completely until the Cretaceous. Why do we find ferns and other terrestrial plants in the Mesozoic, but not a single blade of grass? If all flowering plants existed at the time of the flood, then why are modern-looking plants absent from the all but the newest portions of the geologic column? Biologist Kenneth Miller notes:
"Although our landscapes are dominated by these organisms, from the Amazon rain forest to the Great Plains, from the European steppes to the central African jungle, not a single fossil of an Anthophyte appears in the first 2 billion years of the geologic record . . . The great coal forests of the Carboniferous periods contain exquisitely preserved fossils of club mosses, giant ferns and horse tails. They do not include so much as a single flower. Not a dendelion, not a rose, not an acorn, not so much as a mustard seed" (p 61).
Not only are fossils of flowering plants absent from all pre-Cretaceous formations, but the distinct organo-chemical signature generated by flowering plants, such as enrichment in oleanane, are absent as well. Moldowan et al. write:
"The results of the oleanane analyses are broadly comparable with those found for fossil angiosperm occurrences. The relative concentrations of oleanane to hopane, excluding the unusual Middle Jurassic and Neocomian occurrences, begin low, near the detectable limit of 3% during the Early Cretaceous and steadily incrase to a plateau during the latest Cretaceous. Then, during the Tertiary there is a major increase" (J. Michael Moldowan et al, the Molecular Fossil Record of Oleanane and Its Relation to Angiosperms, Science 265[1994]:768-771, p. 769).
Why are Terrestrial Fossils Scarce Compared to Marine Fossils?
Isaacs raises a very interesting question in regard to the relative abundances of marine and terrestrial fossils. In order to account for the vast amount of water needed for a global flood, creationists have argued that the pre-flood oceans were much smaller than the current oceans, and that the present oceans therefore consist largely of remnant flood water. Presently, about 35% or so of the earth's surface is terrestrial. If oceans before the flood had only half their current amount of water, however, then terrestial areas should have predominated on earth before the flood, and hence terrestial fossils should predominate in the flood deposits. However, the vast majority of rock layers represent distinctly marine enviroments, and contain only marine fossils. According to Morton, there are enough crinoid fragments in the sedimentary record to cover the entire surface of the earth over a foot deep.
How Did the Flood Sort Microfossils?
The observed stratigraphic distribution of microfossils in the fossil record violates all known "Noah's Flood" explanations of the geologic record. Globally, from Precambrian to modern strata, microfossils are found in a consistent sequence. For instance, the tiny shells of organisms called foraminifera are found in the same sequence in sediment cores taken from the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, and the Phillipines. See more details on this page.
Diatoms are tiny organisms with siliceous shells. The shells of diatoms are first found in Triassic sediments, but become abundant in Cretaceous to modern sedimentary deposits. What's more, diatoms leave a chemical signature of their precense in hydrocarbon deposits, and this signature also first appear in the Triassic and become more pronounced in Cretaceous and later hydrocarbon deposits. Holba et al. note:
"Biomarkers, molecular fossils, are organic compounds in Holocene to Precambrian sedimentary deposits that can be related to specific chemical compounds produced in the biosphere . . . samples from more than 100 basins provide evidence that 24-norcholestanes show an initial increase above background in Jurassic oils, but they increase dramatically in Cretaceous oils, coincident with diatom evolution. The highest ratios are found in oils and rock extracts from Oligocene or younger marine siliceous source rocks in which the sources were deposited at paleolatitudes greater than 30[deg] N" ~ A. G. Holba et al, "24-norcholestanes as Age-sensitive Molecular Fossils," Geology 26(1998):783-786, p. 783
In this case, we find that the distribution of diatom biomarkers corroborates the diatom fossil record. How, in the context of a violent 1 year-long global flood, could diatoms evade deposition altogether in Precambrian and Paleozoic sediments, but then become abundant in late Mesozoic and Cenozoic deposits? Why are Cretaceous hydrocarbon source materials enriched in 24-norcholestanes, whereas those in older strata are not? On the conventional theory, the answer is simple: diatoms did not exist when Paleozoic strata were deposited. They first evolved in the Triassic, and first become abundant in Cretaceous time. On the flood theory, however, the preflood earth must have contained massive amounts of microfossils of all kinds, enough to account for the volume of microfossils found buried in supposed Cretaceous flood deposits.
Environmental Effects of
the Flood
Can the Geologic Record be Produced in one Year Without Killing
Everything?
1. Heat Problems
Buried in the various rock strata, there are millions of square kilometers worth of "fossil" lava flows. If flood geology is correct, these were all desposited in a single year. Of course, these lava flows can be dated radiometrically to different ages, but even if we disregard radiometric dating, these fossil lava flows cannot be fit into one flood year, at least not without boiling off the oceans and killing Noah. According to Robert A. Moore (p 10-11), if all the known "fossil" lava flows had been produced during a single year, as the flood model suggests, the 3.65 octillion calories of heat released would have raised the temperature of the oceans by more than 2700° C - nearly one-half the temperature of the surface of the sun, which is less than 6000° C! As Moore goes on to note, "nearly any concessions, any margins of error, can be granted to the creationists . . . and the flood water remains a churning, boiling inferno" (p 11).
Isaacs (1998) discusses several other heat sources which flood geology must contend with. One is the heat generated by the formation of limestone calcite, which releases approximately 11,290 joules per gram, and roughly 5 x 1023 grams of which exist in putative "flood" deposits. Even if we assume that only 10% of the earth's limestone was formed in the flood, "the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters." Another obvious heat problem faced by flood geology comes in the form of 140 or so known large impact craters found in the rock strata. One of these large craters, the 180km wide Chixlub crater, is estimated to have released about 10,000 times the energy of the global nuclear weapon stockpile at the height of the cold war. Yet if flood geology is true, all these impacts were produced in that single year of flooding! Since the land at this point was covered by water, there would have been nothing to brake the tremendous tsunamis such impacts would create.
The situation becomes much worse if we allow that the earth was subjected to the same degree of cratering as the moon. While erosion and crustal recycling have undoubtedly destroyed many impact craters on earth, it is highly unlikely that the earth has been subjected to a lesser amount of cratering than the moon, mercury, mars and other solid bodies in our solar system. The older crater and basins we find there, which later filled with lava and now form the lunar seas and basins, stretch well over 1000km wide, and one gargantuan basin on the lunar farside stretchs over 2000km!
In these examples we see once again the failure of a one-year flood to account for the observed features of the geologic column. The existence of a global flood is obviously in conflict with the existence of a surface temperature sufficient to vaporize the oceans and kill all life on the planet.
2. Environmental Effects of Catastrophic Volcanism
Former creationist Glenn Morton has pointed out two additional related problems with flood-geology volcanism, centered around the accumulation of hydrogen sulfide and CO2 in the deluvian oceans and atmosphere. In the following section, I will summarize Morton's arguments.
Using large modern eruptions as a model (Tambora, Pinatubo, Huaynaputina), Morton estimates that the amount of hydrogen sulfide released by a volcanic event is proportional to the amount of lava extruded during the same event, at a ratio of about 2.5 megatons of hydrogen sulfide per 1 km3 of extruded lava. Adding the estimated volumes of many large "flood" basalts, Morton estimates that at least 82 x 106 cubic kilometers of lava flows must be assigned by flood geologists to the flood year. Using these numbers, Morton concludes:
"Given a production of sulfuric acid of 2.5 megatons/cubic kilometer of extruded material gives 205 x 106 megatons or 2.05 x 1014 tons of sulfuric acid that must have come out of the earth during that single year. A ton is 1016 kg so this represents 2.08 x 1017 kg. This is 2.08 x 1017 kg of acid! The atmosphere has a mass of around 1018 kg. This means that 1/10th of the atmosphere would have been sulfuric acid at the end of the flood. This level of acidity would destroy Noah and the ark occupants"
Based on the same set of fossil flows, Morton offers a similar calculation for the amount of CO2 which must have accumulated during the flood. Citing the calculations of Terrence M. Gerlach of Sandia National Laboratory, who used the Kilauea volcanoe as a model, Morton estimates an average of 3.7 megatons of released CO2 for every cubic kilometer of extruded lava. Using this ratio, and applying it to the same lava flows in the previous calculation, Morton estimates that the atmosphere would contain a minimum of of 58,615 parts per million of CO2, or about 6% of the entire atmosphere. Our atmosphere, by way of comparison, is about 400 parts per million CO2 by volume. In addition to the obvious "greenhouse" problems such a rise in CO2 would cause for the surivivors of the flood, paleoclimatic reconstructions based on ocean and ice core data clearly show a concentration of atmospheric CO2 of between 2-300 parts per million by volume throughout the past 160k years, until the advent of the industrial revolution, at which point it quickly shoots up to about 400ppm. In other words, paleoclimatological data fail to show the large rise in CO2 which massive flood volcanism would generate. In fact, our predicted value of 58,615ppm is about 147 times larger than the largest levels recorded in any of the ice or sediment cores. Even if we attribute only one quarter of these large basalts to the flood year, and further assume a much lower CO2/extruded lava ration, we still end up with an impossibly large and completely uncorroborated rise in CO2.
Conclusion
Creationists often claim that their theories have just as much explanatory power as conventional geology, but are excluded from the classroom because of some anti-Christian bias. As we've seen, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Flood "geology" is not excluded from the classroom because of an anti-Christian bias, but because it cannot explain even the basic data of geology, and because it is in fact inconsistent with well-known data -- things like the distribution of sediments, the distribution of fossils within sediment layers, radiometric ages, and so forth. Geologists abandoned crude, "Noah's ark" type explanations of the geologic record well over a century ago for the simple reason that the sedimentary record revealed a completely different earth history.
Works Cited
Ammons R, Fritz WJ, Ammons RB, Ammons A. 1987. Cross-identification of ring signatures in Eocene trees (Sequoia magnifica) from the Specimen Ridge locality of the Yellowstone Fossil Forests. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 60:97-108.
Baumgardner, John. (1990). 3-D Finite Element Simulation of the Global Tectonic Changes Accompanying Noah's Flood. Proc. Second International Conference on Creationism, II. Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship, pp 35-45.
Gish, Duane T. (1989). More Creationist Research. Part IB: Geological Research. Creation Research Society Quarterly 25(4):161.
Hayward, Alan. (1985). Creation and Evolution. Bethany House.
Isaacs, Mark. (1998). Problems With a Global Flood. Available online at talkorigins.org.
Lockley, Martin, and Hunt, Adrian. (1995). Dinosaur Tracks. Columbia University Press, New York.
Miller, Kenneth. (1999). Finding Darwin's God. Harper Collins, New York.
Moore, Robert. (1983). The Impossible Journey of Noah's Ark. Creation/Evolution, XI (Winter 1983), pp 1-39.
Morton, Glenn. (1998). Carbon Dioxide and the Flood.
----------------(1998). The Global Flood Produces Acidic Flood Waters.
Nevins, Stuart. (1971). The Mesa Basalt of the Northwestern United States. Creation Research Society Quarterly, (March 1971), pp 222-226.
Retallack, Greg. (1981). Comment and Reply on "Reinterpetation of the Depositional Environment of Yellowstone Fossil Forests," Geology, IX, pp. 52-54
Rowe, Walter. (1990). Bobbing for Dinosaurs: A Forensic Scientists Looks at the Genesis flood. Creation/Evolution, XXVIII, p 16-20.
Schadewald, Robert. (1982). Six 'Flood' arguments Creationists can't answer. Creation/Evolution, 9. pp 12-17.
Taylor, S.R. (1979). Structure and Evolution of the Moon. Nature, vol 281, pp 105-110.
Weber, Chris. (1980). The Fatal Flaws of Flood Geology. Creation/Evolution. I (Summer, 1980), p 24-38.
