Paleobotany Blog

In the abstract and surrealistic reasoning of the pagan world with respect to historic time, the fall-back position for evolutionists and historic geologists is paleontology and paleo-zoology. The record of the fossils is purported to establish historic time by a uniform system with respect to the burying of fossils in the sedimentary strata. There is supposed to be a uniform column consisting in a stack of different time layers in rocks which shows the progression of life up through the various ages of so-called geologic time.  A simple way of putting this is that paleontologists (those who study prior life forms by their fossil remains) believe that the rocks of this world are stacked in layers like a cake and that each layer belongs to a different geological age. Paleontologists claim that strata can be divided into a series of recognizable and predictable increments that correspond to the geologic-ages column. In other words, they argue that these layers are always the same and that therefore whatever layer of rock a fossil is found in, that is how long ago it lived on this earth. The last strata or layer where it occurs is supposed to be when it became extinct. This utter dependence by historic geology and evolution upon paleo-zoology, which is actually that division of paleontology that gives its whole attention to the study of fossils, is freely and openly admitted by historic geologists. 

Circular Reasoning

Here again we encounter the circular reasoning of evolutionists. The age of the strata of rocks and/or sediment is determined by the fossils; and the age of the fossils is determined by the geologic age of the strata. Evolutionists, both geologists and paleontologists, claim that these correlations always exist. But when looked at fairly, in the light of common sense and reality, this so-called science is neither science nor consistent. Many times such commonness does exist between rocks strata in different areas, but it is pure speculation and fantasy to take the position that this represents an evolutionary development. There is no evidence at all that fossils were caused in the way and over the time that evolutionists claim. The Genesis Flood is a much more logical explanation for these phenomena. Tiny creatures, that have little or no mobility, would naturally be found on the bottom of the sediment layers. Fish and other water creatures that could move and attempt to escape the onrushing, turbid currents would be expected to be higher up in the sedimentary layer. All land creatures would necessarily be higher still in the column. Of course reptiles would be lower than animals that could move more rapidly. Big strong animals would be the highest up in the strata columns since they could take to the high ground and escape their fate the longest.

Fatal exceptions tha tput the Lie to the Geolgic Time Columns

But that notwithstanding, there are many exceptions to this system which the paleontologists insist always occurs. These exceptions are proof positive that the system does not represent different ages. If it did, there could be no exceptions. This has not escaped the notice of scientists themselves in related fields. One of them, Robin S. Allen, in an article in the bulletin of the Geological Society of America published as Volume 59, January l948, wrote on page two: ”Because of the sterility of its concepts, historical geology, which includes paleontology and stratigraphy, has become static and unproductive. Current methods of delimiting intervals of time, which are the fundamental units of historical geology, and of establishing chronology are of dubious validity. Worse than that, the criteria of correlation–the attempt to equate in time, or synchronize, the geological history of one area with that of another–are logically vulnerable. The findings of historical geology are suspect because the principles upon which they are based are either inadequate, in which case they should be reformulated, or false, in which case they should be discarded. Most of us refuse to discard or reformulate, and the result is the present deplorable state of our discipline.” Here is a scientist who says that the historic geological ages column, as authorized by the paleontological fossils studies, is sterile, static, and in a deplorable state. It should either be entirely revamped or abandoned altogether. It is illogical, and unscientific in many instances. And yet it is stubbornly clung to by men who worship it as a religion instead of viewing it realistically as a scientific theory with flaws so serious as to make it logically and ethically irreverent in its present form. 

When Liars Have To Lie To Cover Up Lies

 

In some cases it is only individual specimens that are out of order. When this occurs, evolutionists try to explain it away. If it is older than the stratum bed it is found in, then the bed was eroded away and redeposited later. If it is younger than the stratum in which it occurs, then it was either reworked and mixed with an older stratum, or else the specie was older than first thought. At this point the Paleontologist is admitting that his age column means nothing. If he does not know when these species existed then the columns can have no meaning at all. This kind of gobbledygook and mealy-mouthing has been well identified by Allen as sterile, deplorable, and logically inconsistent. Many times entire stratum that are supposed to be in the column are missing completely. And then there are cases where the formations are in reverse order, or out of order. The missing strata are accounted for as having eroded away before the later strata were deposited. In the upside down case it is theorized that one side of the formation tilted and was thrust up and the other side slid across. You can get the picture if you think of shuffling a deck of cards.   Of course it is not so hard with a deck of cards but we are talking about slabs of rock miles thick, having surface areas of thousands of square miles and weighing hundreds of thousands of billions of tons.  

the Bible Has the Answers

The Genesis Flood removes all of these problems. The strata were deposited randomly as currents at the same level had different sediments having come from different parts of the earth, and there was no uniform manner in which animal life or plant life was buried. All of this was done at the same time (except in the case of local floods and volcanoes) about forty-three hundred years ago.

Examples of Inconsistencies

Again, we will not have space to be thorough in terms of numerical examples. But the ones that we will cover will be sufficient to establish very well the point we want to make, which is that fossil evidence does not support paleontological theory, and it is compatible with the Biblical account of the Great Flood. According to Whitcomb-Morris, in the Genesis Flood, at page 156, some evolutionists have taken the position that there are basically six ways for fossils to form. The point is arguable, but we will take that outline for now.  First is the preserving of the entire animal by freezing. Many specimens have been preserved in this way, especially in Siberia. Some Mammoths have been found whole, with flesh still intact, with undigested grass in their stomachs and, at least in one reported case, with grass in their mouths. This certainly does not represent a phasing out over millions of years. It demands a sudden, world wide catastrophe. For this reason, along with the fact that it also means that the ice age was a recent phenomenon in geologic history, scientists constantly underestimate, understate, and ignore this enormously significant paleontological evidence. Estimates, according to Morris -Whitcomb, run as high as 5,000,000 mammoths alone along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska. On page 289 of The Genesis Flood they say, “The richness of the Siberian mammoth deposits in the permafrosts defies description.” The entire skeletal remains of other animals, as bear, horse, camel, saber-toothed tiger, rhinoceros, have been found in other northern regions. In almost all cases they are much larger than modern counterparts of their specie–often gigantic. No wonder scientists ignore as best they can get away with, these fossil beds. Their testimony is most significant. In addition to catastrophe by water, they witness of devolution as a common occurrence. That is to say, animals getting smaller and less sophisticated with the passing of time. And of course they also tell of a recent ice age. Then there is the most usual type of fossil which is the one where only the hard parts remain, as bones, shells, and the like. But these fossils too reveal information which is out of harmony with the evolutionary scheme. For one thing there is no evidence, except in that case of catastrophes such as floods and volcanoes, where fossils are being formed today. This is a very telling blow to historic paleontology and evolution. Without getting technical it tells us that fossils have not been forming as a common occurrence down through the ages, but that they only form in certain, highly definable, and particular situations. By far the most ordinary and recognizable of those phenomena are floods. This argues well for the Biblical story of the Genesis Flood and the mass burial of man and beast under the slimes and soils of the earth-covering, turbid waters, slides, earthquakes, upheavals and volcanoes. Bones of animals usually remain on the surface and disintegrate through oxidation and other processes. But fossils of great magnitude, in just the way they occur now, are what we would naturally expect to find as a result of the Genesis Flood. They must be buried by sediment and sealed off from the air. 

Another contradiction between the physical record on the one hand and the theories of paleontology and organic evolution between the species is found in the fossil deposits in Lincoln County, Wyoming.  That deposit contains some of the most perfect specimens of fossilized fish and plants in existence. These, too, were huge. There are Gar-Pike seven feet long and palm leaves 6 to 8 feet in length and 3 to 4 feet wide. This shows that these cold, snowy mountains were once tropical as the Genesis Flood tells us. In addition, there are snipes and plover about the size of chickens (these are quite small birds today), deep sea bass, turtles, mammals and masses of insects. Here we have fossils from species supposedly having become extinct millions upon millions of years ago, buried with creatures which are modern. 

The BoneCave Mystery

Then there is the case of the Cumberland Bone Cave in Maryland. Remains of many species are in the cave together. There are reptiles, bats, rabbits, groundhogs, coyotes, peccaries, antelope, muskrats, beaver, and a mastodon. This is of course a denial of the paleontological time scale and is an affirmation of the catastrophe of the Great Flood.

The La Brae Tar Pits

In the La Brae Pits in the Los Angeles area tens of thousands of fossils have been recovered. There are species that were supposed to have been extinct for millions of years on top of species that are still running around today. Here the historic paleontologist’s time column is certainly all out of whack. Not only that, but can you imagine these multiple thousands of animals all having come along over hundreds of millions of years, one at a time, and having fallen in this same tar pit? 

Carbon Fossils

Another way that fossils form is by preserving only carbon. This is the so-called carbonization process. This is concerned with paleobotany, or the study of plant life from fossils. This has meaning mostly with respect to coal deposits.

Fossilized Evidence

Sometimes the fossil remains of animals amount to nothing more than fossilized tracks left in stone. Many thousands of such tracks have been unearthed all over the world. 

The Case of The Giant Five-Toed Man and the Giant Three-Toed Whatever

 

One such place where these tracks have been discovered is in the Pauluxy River Bed near Glen Rose, Texas. There were indeed three-toed foot prints in the so-called Cretaceous shales of the river bed. These prints were very sharp and perfectly preserved. So much so that it has caused many scientists, not all of them creationists, to doubt that these prints could be more than several thousands of years old. Millions of years would surely have eroded them to the point to where they were not nearly so sharp and distinct.  But that is not the most remarkable feature of the Pauluxy River Bed. The startling thing is that there are large human footprints in the same river bed very near the three-toed print. A geologist who was soon on the scene and studied the prints, Albert C. Ingalls, reported that the prints gave every indication of having been made by human feet at a time when the rocks were soft mud. According to Morris-Whitcomb this is by no means a unique occurrence. Other similar prints, some very huge indeed, have been found in a number of different places. Scientists of the evolutionary persuasion have done everything possible to come up with some other explanation but to no avail. 

The prints have been photographed and casts have been made of them. Yet historic geologists and historic paleontologists continue to deny this evidence to this day, putting out written material which attempts to make it appear that creationists have tried to invent something for their own purpose. But Morris-Whitcomb, in The Genesis Flood, pages 167, 174 and 175, have pictures of the river bed, the three-toed creature’s print side by side with the human print, and castings of the prints. They appear to be on the order of five times as large in terms of overall surface area as a normal modern man. Albert C. Ingall, in an article entitled “The Carboniferous Mystery,” (He apparently thought the prints were real enough to be a mystery), in Volume 162 of the Scientific American, said that if these were indeed human prints then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. At this point we must say that the good doctor may be a bit hasty and arbitrary. It takes a measure of common sense and the ability and honesty to know what you are looking at in order to drive a truck.

These footprints were photographed by Clifford L. Burdick, a practicing mining geologist. Roland T. Bird, a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History, carefully examined the footprints, as well as the rocks they were found in, and gave the following report: ”Yes,” said this historic, evolutionary paleontologist from the Museum of Natural History, “they apparently were real enough. Real as rock could be…the strangest things of their kind I had ever seen. On the surface of each was splayed the near likeness of a human foot, perfect in every detail. But each imprint was 15 inches long.” And so we see that the legitimate record of the fossils shows, in this instance, that the dinosaur (if indeed that is what it was), the cretaceous river bed, and the man were all there at the same time– not 55 million years ago, but forty-three hundred years ago at the time of the Flood. And yet for all of this, there is no historical record in the archives of the teamsters union that it has ever been flooded by geologists and paleontologists looking for work. That is one deluge that we can all be thankful, never took place. 

Living Fossils

One of the large, embarrassing, and truly devastating problems, to which Dr. Allen referred earlier, is the situation where living fossils are found. In New Zealand a strange creature know as the tuatara was found quite alive and well. It belongs to an order of reptiles known as the beakheads. The problem here is a very simple one for evolutionists. Paleontologists have relegated this creature to the early Cretaceous Period. It was supposed to have become extinct 135 million years ago.  But here it is, alive and well, and in all that time, while dinosaurs were coming and going and apes were evolving into men, it never evolved on iota! What a remarkable thing!

Yet Another Living Fossil

Another late find that has evolutionists scratching their heads is the coelecanth, a fish that was supposed to have phased out in the evolutionary ladder over 70 million years ago according to historic paleontologists. Says Dr. Charles M. Bogert, in the Scientific Monthly, March l953: “Typical crossopterygians have been extinct since the Paleozoic; the fossil record of the crossopterygians extends to the Cretaceous, some 70 million years ago. In consequence, I (like many another lecturer) used to tell my class, emphatically, that there are no living crossopterygians. And I can well remember my amazement, in the winter of 1939, at seeing in the London Illustrated News a photograph of a living–or recently living–coelecanth.” In other words this scientist, along with many other scientists, had been lying to your children and telling them that there was proof of something having become extinct 70 million years ago when it is still alive today. Nor can this be considered an innocent mistake. It is part and parcel of the evolutionary philosophy that is designed to blaspheme God, the Bible, and Creation. These men, with no proof, license, or authority, had made up a story about fossils found in rocks that was off by more than 70 million years. But now the good doctor does not admit to his students that the whole circular reasoning of the “ages” theory is completely false and that there is no proof of biological evolution or the geological ages. No, he laughs it off by saying, “Imagine my surprise.”

Paleobotany

In paleobotany, the record is no better. The conifer genus Metasequoia was supposed to have become extinct from the earth, according to fossilized leaves found in the so-called Eocene Age and in rocks of the Miocene age. Eocene is 60,000,000 years old, but Miocene is only about 30,000,000 old according to historic paleobotany, with no fossils occurring for more than 20,000,000 years. But Dr. Ralph W. Chaney, a paleobotanist from the University of California, in the American Scientist, Vol. 36, October 1948, in an article called, Metasequoia Discovery, tells about making an excursion to study trees and finding over 100 of these trees still living today; one of them over 100 feet tall. Another example is identified in an article that was found in the Science Digest of September 1959, p. 81, under the heading: Start Search for Living Fossils. It says: ”A specimen of a living fossil, perhaps the most primitive extant member of one of the major classes of animals, has been recently added to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. This is a crustacean that has certain characters of the long-extinct trilobites, the earth’s dominant animals of over a half billion years ago, fossils of which are among the earliest traces of a high order of life on the planet…presumably it is exclusively an inhabitant of the mud bottoms of shallow inshore waters and never comes to the surface or has a free-swimming existence. This may account for the fact that it has remained unknown for so long.” 

To Laugh or to Cry?

My, my, my! Live trilobites that have been extinct for 500 million years; living reptiles that have been extinct for 135 million years; living fish that have been extinct for 70 million years; and growing trees that have been extinct for 20 million years–Startling, is it not? Now this, remember, is the uniform, reliable, fully researched, and virtually infallible system of dating the strata from their fossil contents, that evolutionists use as the basis for their whole theory, and without which there is no theory. 

Professing Themselves To Be Wise, They Became Fools

These examples from the world of paleontology, paleo-zoology, and paleobotany prove that the geologic ages, as established by the historic paleontologists, mean absolutely nothing at all. The whole theory is an absolute farce and a hoax. Even those of their own, whom we have quoted over the last several generously, have admitted that there is no scientific, logical, rational reason to believe the theory of the geological ages, which is in a deplorable state of affairs insofar as ethics and credibility are concerned. And, from the true geological and the fossil witness, there is every reason to believe the Biblical account of the Genesis Flood.

© Earl Cripe, 2002
Earl Cripe, Phd

See Also : Astrapahl