Blog

In my last article we looked at some evidences that fit the model of a global flood as recorded in the book of Genesis.   I now want to present some additional evidences.

Long distance of Sediment Transport over Continents:

There is evidence that the sediment in the large rock layers we talked about in the last article came not from local sources in many cases, but was transported a very long distance, even across continents.  This finding would be consistent with a catastrophic watery event with large currents and rapid transport.

For example, the Coconino Sandstone in the Grand Canyon could not have been eroded from the underlying Hermit Shale Layer, but the sand grains had to have come from the Northern USA.  Geologists have found that the source of zircons and sand grains in the Navajo Sandstone in Utah came from the Appalachians of Pennsylvania and New York!  Water current indicators in the rock strata show that there was a unidirectional flow from the Northeast to Southwest USA, supposedly for millions of years.  How could a trans-continental river consistently go across the USA for that long?  Also, there is more evidence of rapid flow.   See article: Sand transported cross country.

Rapid or no erosion between strata:

If you look at a picture of Grand Canyon strata, you can notice that the contacts between the major rock layers are remarkably flat, without evidence of much erosion.  If these rock layers were laid down gradually, with millions of years between them, we would not expect these flat, knife edge contacts, but would expect effects of erosion, gullies, soils, and such.  And again, these layers give evidence of being rapidly deposited.  The Tapeats Sandstone, for example, has a very flat contact at it’s base, and has what are called storm beds like what we would see today deposited by hurricanes, and also has large boulders up to 19 feet across in the base of the Tapeats formation.  All this points to rapid, catastrophic water formation, with little time in between layers.  See Snelling [1], No Slow and Gradual Erosion, also this article by biologist and geologist Ariel Roth:  “Flat gaps” in sedimentary rock layers challenge long geologic ages

Bent and Folded Rock Layers:

A problematic geological find for an ancient earth are bent rock layers in sedimentary rock strata.  Often rock layers believed to have been laid down over time periods of hundreds of millions of years, such as in the Grand Canyon, are found with bends and folds in them, sometimes up to 90 degrees, as if they were in a soft condition when bent.   These layers can be up to thousands of feet thick, yet were bent and folded without apparent cracking or breaking.   Rock layers laid down by water could be bent and folded when in a soft condition, but would harden in at the most 100 years.

For example, in the Grand Canyon, there are several layers believed to have been deposited from 520 to 250 million years ago, then all these layers uplifted around 70 million years ago, yet they did not break or crack, but look as though they were folded and bent while in a soft condition.  How could they have remained in a soft condition for all that time?  But if they were laid down relatively rapidly, then they could have been bent or folded before they hardened.  This phenomenon is not a local one, but can be found in formations that are almost continent-wide.

The standard answer to this finding is that supposedly if there is enough heat and pressure from all sides on a rock, it can be made bendable.  The problem is that this would visible alter and elongate sand grains or cement in the rock, and they would be in either a broken or recrystallized state, and these features are not seen in the bent rock layers.  The rock itself is not in a different condition from the surrounding rock that is not bent.  It has not been transformed into metamorphic rock such as quartzite or marble, by the heat and pressure, if this were the correct explanation for the bending.

If the Genesis Flood happened as in the Bible, we would expect these sediments to be laid down quickly and would have been deformed during the flood as tectonic uplifting took place.  More recent post-flood uplift and faulting would have broken or cracked these same sediment layers.  In fact, additional evidence that fits the Flood model is the fact that  the rocks believed to be pre-flood, such as the Vishnu Schist, did break during tectonic uplifting as would be expected.

This geological phenomenon does not prove a young earth or Noah’s flood, but is consistent with both, and inconsistent with an old-earth model.

For reference articles on this subject,  see below :

Rock Layers Folded, not Fractured,

Warped Earth?

Grand Canyon strata show geologic time to be imaginary

Polystrate Fossils:

This is a powerful evidence for rapid deposition of rock layers.  Trees have been found in coal beds, penetrating through many layers that were supposedly laid down over millions of years.  But this is a huge problem for uniformitarian models, since the tree would rot long before being buried by all these layers, so they would have to have been buried rapidly. Also, the layers in which the trees are buried look just like the surrounding layers that were thought to have been deposited slowly and gradually. Further, if the trees grew up into previously deposited rock layers, there would be evidence of upwarp and distortion.

There are many places where we see polystrate fossils, such as Mount St. Helens, (see: Learning the lessons of Mount St. Helens)  or the Joggins formation in Nova Scotia [2], The Polystrate trees and Coal Seams of Joggins Fossil Cliffs.)

Furthermore, many of these trees have no root systems.  Geologist Dr. Steven Austin has studied the formations at Mount St Helens extensively, and he theorizes that the trees were ripped up by the catastrophic mudslides on Mount St. Helens and deposited in Spirit Lake, where eventually they sank to the bottom, some landing in upright positions, and were buried under the sediment and bark that was stripped off the trees, and eventually formed coal (which does not have to take milions of years to form, incidentally).   Dr Austin and Dr. John Morris have written an entire book about Mt. St. Helens describing how many features of the geological record thought to require long ages have been shown by the evidence at Mount St. Helens to be explainable by rapid processes [3]  also see article by geologist Tas Walker: Polystrate fossils-evidence for a young earth

Also  see A Classic Polystrate Fossil for an article about a fossil pictured in National Geographic Magazine.

Surface features:

Raindrop impressions, footprints, ripple marks in rocks, all need to be buried rapidly to be preserved.  These are found throughout the geological column, and indicate rapid deposition.  See article by geologist John Morris: Surface features require rapid deposition

Andrew Snelling’s two volume work, Earth’s Catastrophic Past gives extensive evidence from all facets of the geologic record that support the Flood model.

So how could this flood have happened? What mechanisms could have been involved? This will be the subject of the next article in this series.

[1] Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , pp. 587-596.

[2] Ibid., pp. 565-566.

[3] Austin, Steven, and Morris, John, Footprints in the Ash, The Explosive Story of Mount St. Helens, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2003.