The following is from a prior post I made concerning macrofossils.
Let’s delve in to this!
The identifiable geological eras from the Cambrian forward are identifiable by geological characteristics but also by their fossil inclusions.
I want to say, right off the bat, I don’t dispute this. We are in agreement here.
The fossil record displays a general progression from more primitive organisms, extinction boundaries, and sorting of creatures into their associated epochs. This is precisely what would be expected given life evolving over a span of hundreds of millions of years.
What do we mean by more primitive organisms? I would say that’s an assumption you are making. Certainly, from my vantage point, there’s nothing primitive about a trilobite, radiodonts, or jellyfish (Cambrian).
But I can generally understand the underlying logic you are making, which I would say is perfectly coherent within your interpretive framework. So fair enough.
No humans and dinosaur fossils have ever been found together, but that is only the thinnest sliver of the problem. Bear in mind that YEC believes that pretty much every creature that ever lived was present in the days leading to the flood. So we should find not just people with dinosaurs, but trilobites with crabs, dimetrodons with velociraptors, plesiosaurs with whales, triceratops with elephants, pterosaurs with buzzards - one could go on all day.
This is not an issue that is a problem for a creationist catastrophist. I need to quickly outline a few of the assumptions being made on your part here. First, you seem to posit that all fossils remain in the ecological locations. Second, you assume that a flood would mix up fossils in an inconsistent/unsorted fashion. Third, you believe YECs think all creatures that ever lived existed pre-flood (since this is clearly hyperbolic, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and take you to mean that we believe all life present in the fossil record is pre-flood life). Then fourthly, you made many claims about possible explanations for how the sorting could have taken place (all of which being straw man, knocked down as easily as stated).
This is an important area of clash here and, if you want to understand a global flood, these are the right questions you’re asking. I will respond to each assumption and, if you put on my shoes, you will see why I suspect them to be non-issues.
- Fossils are buried in their ecologies in a flood.
Experimental studies have shown that soft-bodied organisms and fossils can undergo substantial transport in sediment-density flows without significant damage. Polychaetes remained intact over flow durations equivalent to distances up over 13 miles. (Bath Enright et al., 2017, 2021).
What this implies to me is that sediment in turbidity flows could have transported fossils across great distances without disturbing the content of those fossils. In that case, I see no reason to believe that what was buried together lived together. There may be some truth in that claim (I think there certainly is), but there are important exceptions that exclude that claim from being the rule.
- Fossils would not be sorted in a flood.
Forgive me, I think this claim is rather amusing, just because it is one of the most apparent observations that fossils are sorted and the implication is that this realization ought to de novo preclude creationism. But creationists have thought about this and recognized this since the 60s. Clearly they must have an answer to this, right? Otherwise what are we all doing here?
Forgive my facetiousness. Yes, hydrologic sorting has been known to us for quite some time. Fossils would by necessity be sorted in a flood. Not only is there the fluvial geomorphologic principles of high and low energy sorting course and fine materials, respectively, but there are flash floods that have been observed created suspended loads in turbidity flows. This is not new science (Malmon et al., 2004). In addition, shape affects sorting too. Flume experiments with shell models and valves demonstrated that most objects orient their longest axes across the current, with some exceptions (Brenchley & Newall, 1970). Objects were more easily transported on sand than mud substrates. Water abrasion experiments on bone fragments revealed characteristic differences based on sediment type and bone condition, providing evidence for identifying water transport in fossil associations (Fernández Jalvo, 2003).
All that to say, yes, water sorts fossils. That’s not controversial, I am explicitly using secular sources here for you. I recommend watching a few hydrologic experiments and you will see consistent sorting in real-time.
- All fossils are pre-flood life
To be generous, you might find a couple creationists (like Tim Clarey) that believe this. It has been a contentious issue in the past. I think it is mostly resolved now. We have (based on NLSSS above and a plethora of geological data which we can get into) established the K/Pg boundary as the correct marker for flood and post-flood sediments. A forum member, Kendel, kindly linked the paper: The Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism (2023) – Page 621
So arguably most of what we see as mammalian in the fossil record were originated from the preserved post-diluvian life.
This actually is relevant to your observation:
There has never been a solitary dinosaur found above the KT boundary, and never a modern mammal from below.
True enough.
The rest of your statement merely affirms those assumptions true, of which I have challenged. So I’ll await a response.
