Most of the fossils are different. Planktonic foraminifera look essentially identical across the globe at any one time.
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This is a question from a YEC professor??? My o’my.
The Himalayas are the world’s tallest mountains because they are the youngest and have not eroded to the extent of other ranges. They are still rising at an easily measurable rate of over 1cm/yr. The fossil bearing rock is all sedimentary, including shale, limestone, and dolomite. To have such formations reach such rarefied altitudes involves processes which take much longer than a kitchen renovation. First, the sediment must accumulate. Igneous rocks such as basalt and granites erode and water flow under gravity pools material in basins and estuaries. Plankton lives and dies and their remains fall to the ocean floor along with other ocean creatures. Time passes. Then, these deposits are driven by tectonic movement to depths where pressure, temperature, and time process them to the familiar types of rock presented. Time passes. Finally, over tens of millions of years the collision of plates leaves this material with nowhere to go but either under or up and over. Marine fossils are found in the Himalayas because that is entirely what would be expected.
All that is a very general overview. Geologists have a much more detailed picture, with traceable histories of various individual formations within the mountain range, and none of which involves a global flood. The timescales involved in the accumulation of sedimentary material alone is contrary to YEC. Even ignoring the required durations involved, it is incoherent to claim that it is possible to simultaneously disrupt and accumulate biogenic sediments, and bury and process rock while at the same time pushing into the sky.
David R. Montgomery is an actual geology professor who has worked in the Himalayas, and has written a worthwhile book countering YEC claims - The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood .
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I’m glad he’s asking questions. Thank you for interacting with him.
That’s such a good point. As a kid/teen I just took it at face value when a YEC speaker said that was proof of a global Noah’s flood. I never really considered how exactly giant flood waves would pick up a bunch of shells, drop them on top of a mountain, and then retreat while leaving all the fossils there. I made the mistake of thinking that all people who were given a microphone in a church were well versed in their subject matter.
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If I recall correctly, fossils on top of mountains were one of the first things that early geologists picked up on that told them that wherever, whenever and however extensive Noah’s Flood was, it couldn’t have created the fossil record. It’s one of the oldest arguments against a young earth that there is.
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The fact that the fossil and geologic record could not have been produced by one event is yet another piece of evidence that argued against the type of Noachian flood promoted by YEC’s. This is a speech given by Adam Sedgwick as he stepped down as chair of the Royal Society in 1831.
So even by the early 1800’s it was obvious to even the those who once supported the YEC version of Noah’s flood that the evidence just wasn’t there. Notably, this was even before Darwin.
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Yes of course.
I did not mean that all the fossils are different. I mean the overall mix of fossils does vary with the region. A great many (perhaps even most) are indeed the same or similar. Fossils tend to represent the most populous species and these tend to be rather widespread, especially those which travel far and those which existed over longer periods of time. But the point I was making is that there are differences in the fossils showing fossils are not the result of a single worldwide flood. And as you mention above, even when they appear to be the same, a more detailed look at them is far more consistent with changes over vast spans of time rather than a single catastrophic event.
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hmm im not so sure that is an accurate statement. there are many examples of fossils found in such circumstances that are the same! There are also rock layers that are similar in different regions of the earth…how could these have been deposited at different times by different events? Its not so simple as what you claim.
To be honest, i dont think that the real answer the O.P should be seeking answers in the scientific debate…that is simply a “he said, she said” argument from different sides of the courtroom. It descends into a “i have more scientists on my side than you do” slanging match that gets nowhere.
The real area of study here is a theological one…if you are to be a Christian, you are forming a new philosophical view of your existence.
An individual must reconcile their theology such that it remains consistent across its pages and aligns with the entire theme of the writings that are that philosophy.
The failure of many individuals on this forum is that they think that science explains their philosophy…it does not. Science is nothing more than a tool of trade…and from experience in the trades, their are many ways in which the same tools may be used to construct the same object with different methods and interpretations. We see things through different eyes, it is up to the individual to reconcile their faith with the world around them.
An atheist sees the world currently as improving…even though neither environmentally nor socially is that the case. The Christian knows that the world is getting worse…and that is because despite the flare of advertising from lying politicians, the Bible prophecies that things will not get better but far worse “man will do evil continually as in the days of Noah” (paraphrahsed biblical theme).
The above paragraph could be seen as a dilemma for TEism, evolution used to say we are evolving into something more advanced, i do not personally think TEism has an adequate explanation for that conflict with the bible prophecy and observations of what is really going on around us in the world right now. Clearly, the traditional evolutionary model has been intentionally changed over time when it became obvious it was deeply flawed. When i look at Christianity, i do not see the fundamental beliefs as having changed at all…they have remained the same among those who follow the Bible closely.
There are some world wide distributed geological features. Sea level, which is global, has cycled higher and lower several times over millions of years in response to climate changes such as the ice ages, and these changes can be geologically tracked. The asteroid impact KT boundary can be found in locations such as widely flung as New Zealand, Italy, and throughout the USA, and no dinosaurs have ever existed in the time represented above this line. There are no deposits at all, however, which are consistent with a global flood.
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The type of global flood promoted by flood geopseudology. Some are compatible with a very-long past global flood, but they are also compatible with that not being the case.
Yep. YEC geologists would wonder that too. That is not how they believe that fossils got on the top of the Himalayas either.
Nice try. “Time passes.” But of course, organisms do not sit on the ocean floor waiting to be fossilized as sediments slowly accumulate. They would rapidly decompose, even the bones, and never become fossils. Fossilization requires rapid burial–burial deep enough to exclude oxygen and the microbes that would cause decay and also exclude the scavengers. Slow accumulation of sediments just doesn’t work for fossilization.
Imagine the jumble of dinosaur fossil graveyards. How did all the dinos die together at the same time and in the same area? Are they then buried by slowly accumulating sediments carried by the wind? Or water? Either way, how are these bones, soft tissues, and even sometimes their last meals and skin preserved when buried slowly?
Dead animal carcasses can’t just sit on the ground or the floor of an ocean or lake and slowly wait for sediment to cover them so they will fossilize. They need to be buried rapidly.
Nautiloid shells are exposed in the walls of Grand Canyon in a 2-meter layer of rock called the Whitmore Nautiloid Bed. It’s a huge bed that extends over 300 km (200 miles), as far west as Las Vegas, Nevada. Most of them are facing in the same general direction.
How could that event, and many others like it, have happened with slowly accumulating sediments?
A “long past” global flood? Yes, there is evidence for a global flood. But if each water deposited layer was laid down in one global or continent wide flood, one after another a long time ago, were there several global or continent wide floods?
For things that aren’t of much interest as nutrient stores (like aragonite), it can be pretty slow (decades), and they don’t look any different than if it had been minutes. The matrix does look different, however. Getting 40 mm long Lithophaga in a shell entering from the inside takes a while after the animal died, thus the shells with such had to be exposed for a while.
Not for intact vertebrates, or other things that have multiple pieces not held together by something tougher than muscle tissue. It does work for “here is a worn bone” or “here is a layer of shells”, which are vastly more common than intact dinosaur skeletons.
They lived in a group, and something happened to the group, like getting stuck in mud, or components of a volcanic eruption burying them, or a river flooding.
Well, I haven’t studied it myself, but consistent current directions would probably do that, given that those shells were floating before death.
This is somewhat different from what I was referring to, but since sea level goes up and down globally, there are equivalent transgressive/regressive pulses across the globe. There are dozens of “short-term” (~40 ky) ones that went up and down by a few tens of meters up to about 100 meters, fewer longer-term shifts, and then very-long scale changes, like the Eocene Climatic Optimum, where sea levels stayed ~300 m ±100 m above current levels through most of the Paleocene and Eocene.
What I was referencing was the fact that once one gets back to the Archean, it gets very difficult to tell whether there was any land above sea level or not. Anything since then, yes there was some.
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More likely vertical tectonics rather than plate tectonics, or perhaps both
Perhaps, but if they are marine fossil bearing, they couldn’t form slowly.
Assumes today’s oceanic current speeds. But the speeds would be much faster in a catastrophic global flood.
Can sedimentary rock be easily dated by radiometric dating? I don’t think so. And the “index” fossils. Their age is determined how? And then that age is assumed for other fossils in the same layers.
An assumption of geological uniformitarianism–the past is the key to the present. Of course, catastrophic geological processes can occur much more rapidly. And on a small scale, the catastrophic geological events after the Mount St Helens eruption demonstrate that finely layered sediments more than 100 feet deep can be laid down in a matter of hours.
Of course.
If there was a recent global flood, we would find all kinds and sizes of animals mixed together, which we do. And sometimes we might find both marine and land animals and plants together, which we do.
(January 2014) Nature News item, written by senior reporter Ewen Callaway, as an example of this.2
Its headline reads: “Debate over which mammals roamed with the dinosaurs: Genetic tree challenges fossil-based conclusion that placental mammals emerged only after mass extinction.” So now the fossil record shows mammals with dinosaurs in the fossil beds–and modern birds with beaks and bird feathers. And if a primate was found, would that be widely publicized? Maybe, maybe not.
Fossils of no less than 432 mammal species in Mesozoic rock have been identified by evolutionists, and this included nearly 100 complete mammal skeletons. The mammal fossils so far discovered have been described as including the remains of creatures that “look like” squirrels, hedgehogs, shrews, beavers and primates—all of which are placentals"- Carl Werner
Here’s what Dr Donald Burge, curator of vertebrate paleontology, College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, admitted:
“We find mammals in almost all of our [dinosaur dig] sites. These were not noticed years ago … . We have about 20,000 pounds of bentonite clay that has mammal fossils that we are trying to give away to some researcher. It’s not that they are not important, it’s just that you only live once and I specialized in something other than mammals. I specialize in reptiles and dinosaurs.” Interview with Carl Werner.
That’s bizarre. Forming slowly is the definition of fossilization.
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My description is certainly a cartoonish oversimplification, but either way, I’m not aware of any geologist who posits a global flood on the basis of evidence.
Animal trackways, on the other hand, require a tranquil environment to fossilize. How one flood pulled off interlayering fossilized footprints with fossilized bones requiring a rapid burial is beyond me.
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First, Carl Werner is an ER doctor, not a paleontologist, and that article is from here: https://creation.com/werner-living-fossils. If anything, it supports evolution, because the “primate” it describes is this one” Primate ancestor of all humans likely roamed with the dinosaurs | Live Science
So, essentially a rat or squirrel like creature that became the ancestor of the primates and apes and us. Which is what evolution says happened. So, while correct in a sense, it really does not help the case of a young earth, but rather confirms that we (as in humanity) weren’t there. There is no argument that mammals on the other hand were, and were able to fill the voids that resulted when they survived what the non-avian dinosaurs could not.
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Sorry, a misstatement. They couldn’t have been buried slowly. And fossilization can occur rather rapidly under the right conditions, like those following a global flood.
So let me correct this.
- If there was a global flood, we would see a chaotic ordering of species of it was really fast. There would be no logic to the fossil record or geological layers. If it was a giant flood that lasted months and months , or a year and then slowly went back down, we would find organism by weight and mass.
But we find none of the above. What we find is a logical fossil record that is found in a way corresponding to a superimposed geological layer.
What we see is the evolutionary tree of life in the fossil record. We see basal forms developing divergent traits which then becomes a new basal form as new divergent traits develop. Then, all of this also lines up with the genetic tree of life and with chemistry.
Which is why we never see humans predating the earliest primates. We never see primates predating the earliest monkeys. We never see monkeys predating the earliest mammals. We never see mammals predating the earliest tetrapods. We never see the tetrapods predating the earliest bony lunged fish. We never see the bony lunged fish predating the earliest gill fish.
You posted something about mammals and dinosaurs and some dude saying you only live once and he works on reptiles and dinosaurs… ok… how is that a counter argument to we never see humans or primates in the dinosaur era.
We can also do that with plants. The earliest angiosperms don’t predate the earliest gymnosperms which don’t predate the earliest ferns ( seedless vascular plants ) and they don’t predate the earliest mosses which don’t predate the earliest algae.
Now when we look at those clades and examples I mentioned for fauna and how it relates to genetics.
So humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than to gorillas, but more closely related to gorillas than to spider monkeys and more closely related them to to rats, and more closely related to rats than to fish and so on. We also see anatomical and morphological similarities between these clades.
We look and act a lot more like chimps than monkeys and more like those than horses and more like horses than lizards and more similar to lizards than to sharks.
It’s all very solid.
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Or a local flood. We see localised mudflows, lahars and all the rest of it happening on a regular basis even today.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: to demonstrate that the earth is young, it is not sufficient to show that some processes can happen quickly. It is necessary to show that all processes could have happened quickly in such a way as to leave exactly the same evidence that we see in reality, right down to the individual measurements, their trends, and the cross-correlations between them.
Anything less is cherry-picking.
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