Fossil order was determined by the Flood
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Claim
The order of the fossil record was determined by the Flood.
Source
- Liquefaction: The Origin of Strata and Layered Fossils (see #14). In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood. Retrieved on 2008-06-29.
Responses
- If that was true, then we should expect dinosaurs to be on the very bottom, since they were the biggest, heaviest animals, and insects at the top. As it is, dinosars are found towards (but not at) the top, while insects occur all the way through.
- Flood 'geologists' assert that the order of fossils can be determined by "differential escape" (i.e., those creatures who avoided the Floodwaters longest should appear towards the top of the geological column), "hydrodynamic sorting" or "hydrologic sorting" (i.e., the remains of those creatures whose body shapes are more streamlined, would tend to be found towards the bottom of the geological column), and "ecological zonation" (i.e., ocean-dwelling creatures would tend to be found lower in the geological column than plains-dwelling cratures, which in turn would tend to be found below mountain-dwelling creatures). These three 'mechanisms' simply fail when it comes to sea turtles. Sea turtles are oceanic, and preferencially rest on the sea bed, so ecological zonation says they should be at/near the bottom of the geological column; their body shapes are quite streamlined, so hydrodynamic sorting says they should be at/near the bottom; and they are notably slow and clumsy on land, so differential escape says they should be at/near the bottom. In reality, sea turtles are found in the middle to the top of the geological column than to its bottom.
- The three sorting 'mechanisms' proposed by Flood 'geologists' utterly fail to account for the observed order in which plants occur within the geological column. In particular, hydrodynamic sorting would demand that since pollen-grains sink through water extremely slowly, with the smaller fern and fungal spores sinking even more slowly, all fossilized pollen should be found in a relatively narrow band at or near the top of the column, and all fossilized pollen should be sorted on the basis of grain-size within that narrow band.
- Such order arising spontaneously from random actions of floodwater contradicts other creationist claims that Systems left to themselves invariably tend towards disorder and Instructions are necessary to produce order.
Fallacies contained in this claim
Related claims
- Fossils were deposited by the Flood
- Fossils sorted by ecological zonation
- Fossils sorted hydrologically
- Fossils sorted by ability to escape
- Fossils sorted by a combination of these factors
