DINOSAUR DISCUSSION 5
An Academic Exercise
Where did the dinosaurs come from?
Did dinosaurs ever exist?
Are dinosaur fossils simply fabrications or constructions?
Audience: Young Earth Christians
If you have been following through my dinosaur discussions you will know that I have drawn the conclusion that the geological column could not have been laid down as a result of the Flood. Rock layers take many years to form.[1] And there are problems like dinosaur tracks, dinosaur nests and eggs, found in different layers. If these layers took many years to form they could not have been deposited at the time of the Flood.
If not deposited at the Flood, then when?
Not before the Flood if had not rained. That takes us back to the Creation but there was no world wide flood then which would be required to deposit this amount of rock layers to form the geologic column.
So if not deposited as sedimentary layers, then how did we get them?
They must have come into existence some other way. If not formed by natural processes then they were either created that way or fabricated at some point up to the Flood.
If these layers were a fabrication, then the fossils currently being found in them must be part of the fabrication. This includes the dinosaur fossils. All of them.
Conclusion? NONE of these dinosaurs EVER existed as living breathing creatures at ANY time in the past!
And I concluded that 6,000 years ago at the Creation point [if that is when they came into existence], they looked just like they look like now, as the paleontologists have found them, just as fossils in the rocks.
So the first model I came up with is the Creation point model. See earlier Discussions. This simply assumes that they came into existence 6,000 years ago at the Creation point when this world came from the hand of God.
During this discussion we are going to mainly focus on the Flood point model, with 2 variants possible.
Other problems that were mentioned were that the rock layers supposedly laid down at the time of the Flood also are impossible as by ordinary rules of deposition the heaviest objects would be in the bottom layers and the lightest in the top. So really large heavy dinosaurs would be at the bottom and the really light and small dinosaurs would be in the top layers.
But the dinosaurs are found in the Mesozoic layers, more closer to the middle, well not near the top or bottom layers.
This simply means that the layers in the geological column were not laid down at the time of the Flood.
And again I drew the conclusion that these layers could have come into existence at the Creation point along with all the dinosaur fossils built into them just as the paleontologists have found them in the rocks.
But from here things get a little crazy.
As I said this is an academic exercise. And an alternative possibility that I have become aware of is a very curious thought. And it gets a little interesting too.
So in some church writings I found some very interesting comments about the Flood.
At this time very large forests were buried. And since the Flood have been turned into coal beds that now exist.
Words similar to that.
Unfortunately I have two problems with this.
Is there a solution?
We will investigate that.
First the problems.
1. Location.
In the geologic column these occur in the Carboniferous, at supposedly 358.9 to 298.9 million years ago.
Not agreeing with the ages but these nevertheless give an idea where these coal deposits sit.
A LONG way down below an imaginary 6,000 year boundary.
If we are to believe they were formed from the Flood, they would be way up in the top layers. Not where they are currently found.
2. Formation.
OK let's look at the quote:
Coal formation
Coal is a solid, black, readily combustible fossil fuel that contains a large amount of carbon-based material - approximately 50% of its weight. The formation of coal takes a significant amount of time (on the order of a few million years), and the first coal-bearing rock units appeared about 290-360 million years ago, at a time known as the Carboniferous or "coal-bearing" Period. As well, there are extensive coal deposits from the Cretaceous age - about 65 to 144 million years ago.
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coal_formation
So using normal processes, coal would take millions of years to form. Definitely not enough time since the Flood.
An interesting find!
I believe I have found some evidence of trees buried at the time of the Flood!
‘Like finding a pyramid’: What buried ancient yew trees tell us about the Fens
The discovery of woodlands believed to have been buried by flooding 4,200 years ago challenges popular perceptions of the Fens landscape
Scientists from the University of Cambridge studied hundreds of tree trunks, dug up by Fenland farmers. Most of the ancient wood came from yew trees that populated the area 4,000 to 5,000 years ago
By Tom Bawden
Science & Environment Correspondent
November 24, 2023 6:00 am(Updated 9:18 am)
The Fens of eastern England will, for many, conjure up vast fields of wheat, potatoes and sugar beet.
But this flat, low-lying, farm-heavy landscape was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, a study has found.
Scientists have studied hundreds of tree trunks, dug up by Fenland farmers while ploughing their fields.
They found that most of the ancient wood came from yew trees that grew between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago in the area – a 1,500 square mile patch of fertile land taking in parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
They believe the trees died suddenly about 4,200 years ago after a rapid rise in the sea level – possibly connected to a bout of climate change – flooded them with salty water.
“Finding these very old trees in the Fens is completely unexpected – it would be like turning a corner in rural Cambridgeshire and seeing an Egyptian pyramid – you just wouldn’t expect it,” said Tatiana Bebchuk, of Cambridge University.
“Wood rots and decomposes easily, so you just don’t expect a tree that died five or four thousand years ago to last so long.”
Much of the Fens is barely above sea level, and a sudden rise in sea level around 4,200 years ago would likely have killed the Fen woodlands, according to the researchers.
The period that the Fen woodlands died coincided with major climatic changes elsewhere in the world.
At roughly the same time, a megadrought in China and the Middle East was a possible trigger of the collapse of several civilisations, including Egypt’s Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/buried-ancient-yew-trees-fens-2772821?ITO=msn
4,000 to 5,000 years old? 4,200 years old? That's approximate.
The Flood's about 4,350 years ago. It fits. All these tree trunks were buried at the Flood. As expected in the top layers. And what are the farmers digging up? Tree trunks. They haven't changed much in 4 to 5 thousand years. No coal formation.
More thoughts on this. I have found another quote:
Subsequent experiments have more closely simulated natural geologic conditions, with temperatures of only 257°F (125°C) and lower pressures (equivalent to burial under 5,905 feet [1,800 meters] of wet sediments).[10] After only 75 days, the original plant and wood materials still transformed into coal material, comparable chemically to coal from the same area of Indonesia. Because these experiments simulated natural conditions, we can be confident that the coal-forming process is rapid and requires only months. So there is no reason to insist that coal formation requires millions of years.[3]
So perhaps the coal beds could have formed since the Flood. And on the tree trunks that the Fens farmers are digging up it just may be that they needed to be buried under many rock layers giving immense pressure and temperature needed to form coal. So sure, they’re just digging up tree trunks.
Now continuing on...
Further proof that these are from the Flood:
“a rapid rise in the sea level – possibly connected to a bout of climate change”
“a sudden rise in sea level”
A sudden rise? Some bout.
This is the Flood of Noah!
Further proof of this is what is stated next:
“At roughly the same time, a megadrought in China and the Middle East was a possible trigger of the collapse of several civilisations, including Egypt’s Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.”
A megadrought?
Isn't that interesting.
What did the Bible say about rain before the Flood? Well at least before the Fall and there is no reason to expect this to change till the Flood:
when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground;
but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground--
Genesis 2:5,6 RSV.
So at the Flood God hits the world with a deluge. Guess what that does to his watering system. It's like messed right up.
So after the Flood God's watering system is right out of whack.
What do you get?
A megadrought!
And that's what we have in the above quote.
All these tree trunks the farmers are digging up are from Noah's Flood!!!
The trees have been buried in the top layers, not way down in the Carboniferous ones.
So what do we do with the church quotes?
Well the person writing about the Flood would have realized a lot of trees were buried and had to go somewhere and the coal beds were supposedly formed by organic matter so wrote what they did, not realizing that by natural processes it should have taken millions of years for the coal to form. Or maybe not from above.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Really interesting. Really really interesting.
What about the dinosaur fossils then?
We can also assume that the fossilization of buried bones from the Flood may have been possible.
The general view of fossilization is that “This process can take thousands or even millions of years.”[4]
However, a study has concluded that “Lab-made fossils cram 1000s of years into 24 hours”[4]
But that’s an extreme under laboratory conditions. We can however confidently assume thousands of years. Low enough to be since the Flood?
And though it’s a bone of contention [or a fossil?] Young Earth Christians have cheekily dated some dinosaur fossils using radiocarbon dating to get low ages and claim they fit the Flood timeline.
Though this is extremely questionable, in the end the time for fossilization [or dinosaur age dating] probably doesn’t matter since there are some other very serious problems that rule out some of the rock layers forming since the Flood. This is mentioned later.
OK back to the dinosaurs...
Well since we find dinosaurs in the rock layers THEN we have the curious question: Were there living dinosaurs at the time of the Flood? They're in the rocks God chucked in there!
Note: the order in the rocks no longer matters here as God has chucked the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic layers for this model.
You can now see that looking at this alternative case has taken us into a very strange direction!!
Can we get an answer for this?
I believe we can. And we can thank Robert J. Schadewald for his contribution, although his work was mainly against Young Earth Creationism. Most likely a dedicated evolutionist and against the God of the Bible[4a], he used a rather fascinating quotation mentioning an estimate for the approximate number of fossilized animals in the Karoo Formation. With this he did a questionable calculation using the estimate to determine a vast number of animals per acre that he supposed should have been living at the time of the Flood:
... there must have been at least 2,100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs. ...
I saw this in reverse that since this was a ridiculous result that it was really showing that the fossil record was instead in question. And I decided to have some fun with this and use the quote in reverse to determine a dodgy dinosaur density calculation for say, the dinosaurs in the Early Jurassic. I came up with about 1 dinosaur per 4 square meters. As a result I referred to my dinosaurs as “Covid safe” dinosaurs.
BUT though we are obviously in different camps, we can still use his calculation to resolve the problem here, even if it is a bit dodgy.
IF we take this version of the geological column as constructed by God with all the animals in it supposedly from the Flood, then according to Schadewald's calculation, there is a problem. There are just too many creatures in the record. The model would need some adjustment.
Another quote from these people suggests “If all of the fossilized animals could be resurrected, they would cover the entire planet to a depth of at least 1.5 feet.”
So there are too many creatures that have been supposedly buried.
This just shows that the geologic column was not formed as a result of the Flood, by general rules of sedimentation, of course.
But it still could have come into existence then. We just have to make some modification in the model for this to work.
We have to reject the number of animals in this version of the column as reconstructed by God. It may have been completely reconstructed by God with all the bones in it fossilized and all the coal beds and rock layers also made. But we can't accept the animals as it is too many. So have they all been added or just a few? Actually a lot more than just a few!
It doesn't matter. And we can go back to scrubbing the dinosaurs.
Note: again, we could adjust the model for this.
At this point the Creation point model and the simplified Flood point model do look a lot simpler!
But if anyone wants to stick with this variant of the Flood point model, fine.
It's a moot point. Either way they are an act of creation. By God.
As I said it's an academic exercise.
Enjoy.
Some afterthoughts
Both of these models are valid since they are both constructions or creations by God.
But there are some very important differences.
This variant of the Flood point model is much more complicated and raises more questions than it answers:
too many animals, so which ones have been added, or maybe all of them?
Animals placed in various layers not following general rules of deposition
burial of organic matter formed as coal etc in the Carboniferous layers instead of close to the top though some organic matter occurs there also
layer clocks all set to long ages supporting appearance of age approach
And so on.
No conclusions can be drawn about the dinosaurs from this model as they may simply be one of the groups of animals that have been added and never existed at the time of the Flood.
Actually we make a final determination on this later.
The Creation point model
The alternative model using normal processes takes us back to the Creation:
Assuming these layers could not have been formed by natural processes from the Flood, the question is when?
If it didn't rain before the Flood that takes it back to the Creation point.
Which means the whole lot were constructed at the point of Creation.
In short the whole geological column [excepting the last 6,000 years] is a complete fabrication.
Doesn't matter what's where or how many animals are contained therein.
It's all a complete fabrication.
And that includes all the dinosaur fossils.
According to this model they came into existence as fossils in the rocks and never existed previously as living breathing creatures at any time in the past.
Note: since a complete fabrication is suggested here, this could have happened at any point up to and including the Flood. And actually be a workable model.
Further reflections on the Flood point model variant
Note: this is not the simplified version which suggests a complete fabrication.
Investigating this a little further I have come to the conclusion this model is a lot more complicated than first envisaged.
We first consider those coal beds. Supposedly laid in Cretaceous and Carboniferous layers. The one of interest here is the Carboniferous, being at supposedly 360 million years ago, so much lower down in the rock layers. If these were supposedly deposited at the time of the Flood, then that takes in all layers above also. Generally Christians take in the whole geologic column, at least most of it.
I'll come back to this but the most interesting question to ask here is, what about the Fens woodlands deposits in the UK? They're in the top layers, just where we would expect them to be. OK at some point here I am going to need a date. You'll see where I am going soon enough. Both articles presented here in this study are dated November 2023. So it would be fair to assume that this discovery about the Fens has come to light in 2023. The docs claim that "the trees died suddenly about 4,200 years ago". About 4200 years ago? Literally 4200 years? or maybe 4200 ± 10, 25, 50 years? Pick one.
Nomatter we will use the 4200 value, so from 2023 we arrive at approx [we're definitely going to round this] 2180 BC.
Now I had before that the Flood was approx 4350 years ago, but that's using a rough approximation of 1650 yrs from the Creation point 6,000 years ago. But that's pretty loose as no one knows exactly the Creation point only that it is approximately 6,000 years ago. So we could easily be off by a hundred years or more. Interestingly the Jews have a year count on their calendar and for late 2024 it's about 5785. A difference of about 215 years as of 2024. Think of that what you will.
Using the Jewish count the Creation point is approximately at 3760 BC.
And that is approximate as even with the Jewish count we are still going back into the mists of time.
However, we could accept the Fens discovery giving a reasonable time position to have a guess at the Creation point using the 1650 yr approximation for the Flood.
So using the scientific discovery we can make an adjustment in the time calculations.
If we take the Flood point at approximately 2180 BC we simply go back the approximate 1650 yrs to get to 3830 BC.
Alternatively add 1650 to 4200 and subtract 2023 and we have 3827 BC, rounding gives 3830 BC as above.
Note in all of this there may need to be an adjustment for no year zero. But it will make no appreciable difference anyway as this is all approximate.
Sure it's approximate but you must admit, it's a pretty good guess.
OK let's get back to the coal. If the Carboniferous layers were from the Flood that takes in all the layers up to the Fens at the top. So why weren't the Fens woodlands buried with other forests in the Carboniferous layers? We find the answer in the church writings...
the furious movement of the water heaped rocks and earth upon treasures, animals, and forests. Hills and mountains became flat plains and many flat plains became hills and mountains. These differences were more pronounced in regions that were more troublesome.
Words similar to this. It gives a good idea of what was written.
Simply put, some forests were buried deep. Really deep. And some were not.
So we have the Fens woodlands in the very top layers, and a lot of forests buried way down in the Cretaceous and Carboniferous layers.
So with this model we have all these layers supposedly deposited at the Flood, from the Fens layers down to, well all the way down, forming the geologic column. And that takes in the Mesozoic layers. And now we come to a big headache. A real big one.
If we take the Mesozoic layers as formed from the Flood, we come to a real large amount of craziness. Take your pick, we have dinosaur eggs, nests, and tracks. An enjoyable area for evolutionists and those that don't like Noah's Flood.
So what's going on here? Simply put all these things have been found in multiple rock layers and various depositional environments. Since they are found in multiple rock layers they must have taken many years to form. We can circumvent the many years required for their formation by having the Lord do this automatically when these layers were formed. But that's only the individual formation of each rock layer. It makes sense that some or a lot of time would be required here between these various layers and depositional environments.
Nests and eggs are another problem. Dinosaurs building nests and laying eggs is a bit difficult to speed up. Especially as these occur also in many different layers and depositional environments. But this has to happen all at the time of the Flood as everything is being buried and the rock layers are all being formed!
I have heard of one Christian group suggesting the dinosaurs trod water and moved from place to place as the waters rose, where they left more tracks, nests, and eggs, and so on.
I think that's beyond pushing it since the Bible states it rained for 40 days and nights [Genesis 7:4,12]. Hardly enough time for the dinosaurs to do this. And in bad weather. These were clearly not sunny days.
If these layers came into existence then, it was not by natural processes. In short, the only way we could get this is it must be a complete fabrication. At least for these layers.
Given that at this time many animals were added to the rock layers, the dinosaurs are very good candidates. It would be fair to assume that most of the column was fabricated. And some layers like the Fens were just plain laid.
So there you have it. The Flood point model.
Many animals have been added to various rock layers;
No conclusions can be drawn about the dinosaurs from this model as they may be one of the groups of animals added and never existed at the time of the Flood;
Animals placed in various layers not following general rules of deposition;
All the doomed animals perished, those buried became fossilized for us to find later;
All the added animals were simply constructed as fossils in the rock layers;
Many layers are clearly straight fabrications;
And some layers were just plain laid;
All from approximately 2180 BC down;
layer clocks all set to long ages supporting appearance of age approach.
It's a curious model but this is how it looks;
A fracture in reality?
Considering the Flood point model we have here two possible variants.
Variant 1 is very straightforward:
Considering that the layers were laid down using normal rules of deposition and so on we determined that this was just plain impossible. Everything is in the wrong spot, heaviest creatures should be in the bottom layers, light and small creatures should be in the top layers, and so on.
Further, the layers with dinosaur nests, eggs, juveniles, and tracks are just impossible to have been laid at the time of the Flood. Dinosaurs building nests, and laying eggs, take much more time than the forty days of rain at the time of the Flood. Add to that juveniles being found in these nests that are about one year old, and like the rest, in many depositional layers, and we have a completely impossible situation.
These layers could not have been laid down as a result of the Flood. And not before if it hadn’t rained. Taking us back to the Creation point. And the only option we have for this variant is that the only way these layers could have come into existence is that they were fabricated. They came into existence with all the fossils already constructed in them and ready for us to find.
So this Flood point variant has the geologic column basically fabricated. There may be a couple of layers at the very top which is where any buried creatures from the Flood occur. This point will be covered more in a later discussion. For now we will just go with a straight fabrication.
A problem with stuff at the top?
And note that the Fens woodlands layer discovery wipes out the Flood construction of the geologic column, assuming normal deposition of these layers.
OK so what's going on here? Some points:
1. If the Fens trees buried at the Flood are being dug up by farmers then how can there be layers deposited below them from the Flood? There can't be some sort of rapid burial at this point of many things and animals and it just happens the Fens trees are sitting at the very top of all this stuff? It just doesn't seem possible. Or logical.
and
2. Not too dissimilar from point 1. If the Fens layer is sitting at the very top of the geological column with layers going down to ... ? supposedly 4.5 billion years. THEN what about any layers sitting below the Fens layer just BEFORE the Flood? Were there any layers if it had never rained? What was there and if it came into existence since the 6000 year Creation point, how could any of these foundational rock layers etc sit ABOVE a Flood constructed geologic column supposedly going down to 4.5 billion years according to their set layer clocks?
This is just showing that an ordinary deposition of layers of rock being laid down at the time of the Flood is just not workable. By ordinary rules of deposition. There may be a different work-around but that will be a different model. Mainly the church writings model.
Further, some Christians complain that the geologic column may not even exist, only appearing in text books. But evolutionists have answered this query:
“the entire geologic column is found in 25 other basins around the world, piled up in proper order.”
Conclusion point 7
The Geologic Column
and its Implications for the Flood
https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/
See Discussion 1 for more info on this.
So it's fair to assume that the geologic column exists below the Fens layer in the UK. And that completely messes the simple model up.
Nomatter, we now come to point...
3. The Fens of England very strongly suggests that the geologic column could NOT have been formed from the Flood!
"There is evidence of human settlement near the Fens from the Mesolithic on. The evidence suggests that Mesolithic settlement in Cambridgeshire was particularly along the fen edges and on the low islands within the fens,"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fens#Pre-Roman_settlement
"The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, mesos 'middle' + λίθος, lithos 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. ... In Europe it spans roughly 15,000 to 5,000 BP;"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolithic
Before Present (BP) or "years before present (YBP)" is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1 January 1950 as the commencement date (epoch) of the age scale, with 1950 being labelled as the "standard year".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
Basically, we have some settlement stuff here predating the Flood! So if the geologic column rock layers were laid down by ordinary rules of sedimentation etc at the time of the Flood, then these pre-Flood discoveries would not exist, or at least be visible. In short, they weren't buried under all the layers forming the geologic column supposedly from the Flood! Which means the geologic column was not formed from the Flood! [as sedimentary layers being laid down]
There may be a problem here with the references. Referring to the Mesolithic and then launching into a discussion of Pre-Roman settlement. That may hardly be before the Flood, but I will add the reference to this in the References section below.
OK I found I didn't have to go into the Mesolithic at all. The Neolithic would do fine so I looked for something that would clearly be before the Flood but not too far before. And I found the following. Not near the Fens but that hardly matters for what we are discussing here!
Stonehenge: A pre-Flood construction of 25 ton solid stone blocks
Constructed of 25 ton solid stone blocks, Stonehenge PROVES that the geological column was NOT formed as a result of the Flood! [by natural processes]
"Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons
...
Stonehenge was constructed in several phases beginning about 3100 BC and continuing until about 1600 BC. The famous circle of large sarsen stones were placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
OK nowhere near the Fens, but that doesn't matter. This fits very nicely just before the Flood at supposedly 2180 BC, and clearly makes the point. Constructed of 25 ton solid stone blocks, Stonehenge PROVES that the geological column was NOT formed as a result of the Flood! [by natural processes] If the geological column WAS formed by the Flood, then Stonehenge would be sitting at the very BOTTOM of it, or underneath it, not where it currently is at the very top of it!
The following was part of 3 but I am making a new number for it...
4. You can't have your cake and eat it. It appears that there are Carboniferous layers in various parts of England, maybe all of it? If the Carboniferous layers were formed from the Flood, then the Fens woodland layers with all the tree trunks being dug up by farmers, WOULD NOT EXIST. They would all be down with the rest of the organic material, in the Carboniferous layer below the Fens.
The Fens and Carboniferous layers in England PROVE that the geologic column was NOT formed as a result of the Flood!
Is this correct? This may need further investigation, some time.
The Fens Earth Heritage
the fenland basin is underlain mostly by Jurassic clays that are world famous for the fossils of huge marine reptiles ... Underlying the southeast edge of the Fens is the Cretaceous Chalk,
https://www.fensforthefuture.org.uk/the-fens/interesting-facts
Well if the Cretaceous and Jurassic layers are underlying the Fen basin, then the Carboniferous layers are way below them. As above, if the Carboniferous layers are way below the Fens, then the Fens woodlands tree trunks would have been buried way down in the Carboniferous layers and the farmers would NOT be digging them up. That is, if the Carboniferous layers were formed as a result of the Flood.
Again the conclusion is pretty simple. The geologic column rock layers were not formed as a result of the Flood. This is according to the general rules of sedimentation deposition and so on.
Again, this is just supporting the simple model, a complete fabrication at the Flood point as a possibility.
The alternative Flood point version is the model using the church writings.
But it is a curious model. AND you would have to be consistent.
And this version probably turns a lot of things on its head.
Simple point list for the church writings model:
very large forests buried and turned into coal beds that now exist
some forests buried deep, some not. So possible to have coal beds in the Carboniferous layers etc and the Fens trees in the top layers. It may be puzzling but this model allows for it
a small representative selection of the animals which God had created were saved in the Ark
previously large trees had grown on the tops of mountains
men, animals, and trees buried to give a record to later generations that the original world came to an end by a flood
Creatures much larger than now exist, were buried, to give a record as above.
These points are very important to the construction of this model.
Except maybe the comment about trees growing on the tops of mountains. These days you see pics of bare mountain tops or snow covered etc.
The mountains before the Flood were much lower and sustained plant life at their tops.
At the Flood the surface of the earth was broken. Maybe not everywhere. But some mountains disappeared and gave way to plains, and some plains gave way to mountains.
Anyway, you get the idea. From the church writings, and the Bible, the Flood was a pretty climactic event.
So from this model the geologic column is made up of layers which contain creatures that perished in the Flood.
Evolutionists have commented on this and worked out that if all these creatures could be resurrected they would cover the whole world in so many feet and so on.
In short, there are too many creatures found in these layers to have all been buried at the time of the Flood.
We simply adjust the model for this.
So obviously a lot of these creatures have been added.
Which ones?
We don’t know but I have worked out a pretty good approach to this.
But first I want to ask the question: If all the creatures not saved on the ark perished, and we have dinosaur fossils, this suggests they may have been buried at the Flood.
So could we have living dinosaurs at the time of the Flood? And does this track them back to the Creation?
That would sit very nicely with a lot of current Christian videos about dinosaurs and the Flood.
But there are some problems here.
The dinosaurs may be one of the groups of creatures that have been added and never existed as living breathing creatures at any time in the past.
That makes the dinosaurs maybe/maybe not.
But I believe we can make a better determination.
Since the dinosaurs are in the layers we have to possibly consider them as one of the groups of animals that perished in the Flood, and so those buried ended up as fossils.
However, they may have been added. And we can make a conclusive decision on this.
The problem is layers with dinosaur nests, eggs, and juveniles in the nests.[5]
Found in different depositional layers.
Sure, we can allow for the layers being instantaneously formed by God at the time of the Flood.
BUT
even if the layers were formed instantaneously, we can’t speed dinosaurs up.
This was mentioned in Discussion 2.
It would take the dinosaurs some time to build all these nests, and then lay eggs, wait for them to hatch and so on. The juveniles that have been found supposedly preserved in the rock layers were about a year old [or less].
And this process had to be repeated quite a few times to generate the various layers in different depositional areas.
It’s only a guess but let’s say two years between layers.
So we have many years here to get all these different layers, and this has to all happen within the forty days the rain is falling for the Flood.
Well there is only one way we can compress many years into a period less than forty days.
These layers with all the nests, eggs, and juveniles in the nests, must have been fabricated.
And if these layers are part of the fabricated parts we may as well extend this to the whole Mesozoic layers and include all the dinosaurs.
So there’s the answer.
The dinosaurs were added.
And there were no living dinosaurs at the time of the Flood.
So even considering the church model for the Flood point we still end up with the dinosaurs being fabricated in the rock layers, along with a lot of other animals.
But not all. Remember I said there may be a way to have an educated guess at which ones may not have been fabricated.
Creatures much larger than now exist were buried as an evidence for us to find that the previous world perished by a flood. [this was a church writing model point]
Which ones? I would suggest creatures that look similar to ones we have today, but obviously larger.
There is mention of large insects and underwater bugs and mammals much larger than today.
I suggest we accept those ones.
And sure, what about the dinosaurs?
Do we have any animals today, smaller, that look like any dinosaurs? [apart from small lizards]
No smaller T rexes, or triceratops, or stegosauruses and so on? Nope. So they don’t make the cut here either.
OK I think we have covered most of the points for the church writings model.
This model posits that
animals were buried at the time of the Flood
large forests were buried and formed the large coal beds that now exist. Some trees became petrified.
The geologic column with all the fossils in it came into existence at the time of the Flood.
To accommodate this we had to make an adjustment in natural rules
many animals were added, or fabricated, meaning the layers they occur in were fabricated
animals that were buried eventually became fossils
and so on.
But you get the idea. This way we can say that the geologic column came into existence with animals buried at the time of the Flood.
This is just following the church writings.
Note: I originally had quotes suggesting fossils may have taken millions of years to form, same for coal being formed.
But much shorter times have been found and coal simulating normal conditions has been formed in about 2 or 3 months.[3,4]
But there is one more point that must be considered with this model.
And I mentioned before, that if we are going to consider this model, we have to be consistent.
IF the geologic column was deposited / part fabricated at the time of the Flood, then the column MUST be sitting above anything that existed BEFORE the Flood.
So what about Stonehenge?
If Stonehenge is sitting in the top layer above the geologic column, then Stonehenge came into existence AFTER the Flood. Dating the Flood to approx 4200 BP [about 2250 BC].
But we are told that “Stonehenge was constructed in several phases beginning about 3100 BC”[see References] and well BEFORE the Flood.
So Stonehenge should be sitting at the very bottom of the geologic column, probably below the Proterozoic layers somewhere.
That’s not where it is, is it?
So what does that mean?
Well, if we are using this model there is only one thing it can mean.
Anything in the very top layers that date to well before the Flood must simply be a fabrication. Because they can’t exist there. Anything in the top layer must have come into existence SINCE the Flood, not BEFORE it.
This is why I said this model turns a lot of things on its head.
Stonehenge is one of those things.
Note: this is not a problem with the fully fabricated models. They were not formed as layers of rock being laid down, but a complete fabrication, or refabrication of the original rock structure that was already in existence from the Creation. For the Creation point model, that’s how the rock structure came into existence, containing all the fossils and so on from the very beginning.
OK without looking up a lot of curious things dating to before the Flood, the simplest way to say it is that this model probably raises more questions than it answers. But in a nutshell, that’s about it.
So there you have it. Two possible models for a Flood point construction:
One clearly a complete fabrication since using normal rules of sedimentation, deposition etc, these layers as they are found in the geologic column are just not possible. So only a complete fabrication gives the answer here.
The second model followed some church writings. This allowed for the burial of many animals etc at the time of the Flood. This was for us to be able to find them later as an evidence that the old world had perished by a flood. This model needed some adjustments so in the end it became a mix of sedimentary layers containing animals buried at the time of the Flood and most likely the majority of layers just plain fabricated. A bit of a mix but this way it works.
So that’s where we’re at. Two possible models from the Flood point.
And another model from the Creation point. This one was also supporting a complete fabrication with all the fossils built into the rock layers.
It is extremely interesting that the dinosaurs [non-avian] did not survive any of these models.
The fabrication models clearly failed them since they came into existence as fossils in the rock layers and never existed as living breathing creatures at any time in the past.
And even the church writings Flood point model failed them as again they could not have been in the group of animals buried at the time of the Flood. Reasons given above.
So no matter which way we come at this, there were never any living breathing dinosaurs [non-avian] at any time in the past. Not in the antediluvian period, or in the Garden of Eden. They only existed as fossils in the rock layers in the ground, no matter which model you want to embrace.
And there is one more model we want to consider. That will be mentioned in another discussion.
But don’t worry. I won’t get your hopes up. It turns out to be another fabrication construction.
Until then,
Stephen.
Postscript
Theological Implication
There is a very fascinating deep theological implication with the Flood point models.
The Creation point model has this problem. Pretty much it was straight appearance of age with the geologic column fully constructed [fabricated] at the Creation. Some people have complained that it posits supposedly, millions of years of death and destruction, animals killing others etc, even if a fabrication, under the Garden of Eden. I never worried about that since it was obviously just a fabrication. But nevertheless it is a curious argument since at the end of the Creation it states that "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. .." Genesis 1:31 NRSV.
Some have questioned how God could have said that with all this supposed mess under them in the ground hidden in a supposed fossil record.
It's an interesting point and as I said one that I never really worried about.
But these two proposed Flood point models completely resolve this problem.
According to these models, at the Creation there was NO mess in the ground under Adam and Eve. Whatever the Created rock layers looked like there was NO record of death and destruction. As God had said, it was ALL very good.
REFERENCES
The flat Fens of eastern England once held vast woodlands, study finds
by University of Cambridge
Scientists from the University of Cambridge studied hundreds of tree trunks, dug up by Fenland farmers while plowing their fields. The team found that most of the ancient wood came from yew trees that populated the area between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago.
The Fens of eastern England, a low-lying, extremely flat landscape dominated by agricultural fields, was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, according to new research.
These trees, which are a nuisance when they jam farming equipment during plowing, contain a treasure trove of perfectly preserved information about what the Fens looked like thousands of years ago.
The Fen yew woodlands suddenly died about 4,200 years ago, when the trees fell into peat and were preserved. The researchers hypothesize that a rapid sea level rise in the North Sea flooded the area with salt water, causing the vast woodlands to disappear.
The climate and environmental information these trees contain could be a valuable clue in determining whether this climate event could be related to other events that happened elsewhere in the world at the same time, including a megadrought in the Middle East that may have been a factor in the collapse of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. The researchers have published their findings in Quaternary Science Reviews.
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-flat-fens-eastern-england-held.html
In lithostratigraphy, coal measures are coal-bearing strata, with the term typically applied to European units of the Upper Carboniferous System.
In the United Kingdom, the term is equivalent to regional components of the Westphalian-age Coal Measures Group. ... Within the Pennine Basin, these barren measures are now referred to as the Warwickshire Group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_measures
The Westphalian is a regional stage or age in the regional stratigraphy of northwest Europe, with an age between roughly 315 and 307 Ma (million years ago). It is a subdivision of the Carboniferous System or Period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_(stage)
Other links giving some more information about the Fens and the Carboniferous in the UK...
The Fens
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fens
Coal measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_measures
Maps of England
https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/united-kingdom/england
The Fens England map
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Fens_England_map.svg
Pic: basin3.gif
(Figure courtesy of Thomas Moore)
The Geologic Column
and its Implications for the Flood
https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/
And the Mesolithic Mystery...
There is evidence of human settlement near the Fens from Mesolithic times.
https://www.fensforthefuture.org.uk/the-fens/heritage
OK this didn't eventually matter as we only need to go a little further than 2200 or 2300 BC. That's down into the Neolithic:
The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia, Mesopotamia and Africa (c. 10,000 BC to c. 2,000 BC).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic
and we can't do better than the following!!...
Stonehenge2007 07 30.jpg
Stonehenge
Attribution: garethwiscombe
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stonehenge2007_07_30.jpg
Stonehenge was constructed in several phases beginning about 3100 BC and continuing until about 1600 BC. The famous circle of large sarsen stones were placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the bluestones were given their current positions between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC.
One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
1.
Types Of Sedimentary Rocks
There are two types of sedimentary rocks, referred to as either detritus or chemical.
Detritus Rocks
Detritus sedimentary rocks are formed when rock fragments, debris or sediments accumulate over time and can be either organic or inorganic in makeup. These detrital rocks come together under great pressure, usually over many years. The debris, or matter that form the rocks, can be either organic or inorganic.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-are-sedimentary-rocks-formed.html
In one of my earlier discussions the problem of how long it took to form rock layers popped up. And an original quote I had suggested millions of years. And I used it.
However, from a youtube video[2] referring to a doc by Scott Dunn about clay depositions says something like "Basic soil mechanics shows that consolidation times for 1000 m-thick clay layers are in the order of millions of years".
So a conclusion is that each rock layer may have taken millions of years to go from sediment to solid rock. That may not be completely correct.
Scott Dunn was discussing clay layers with a lot of water and it was taking a LOT of time for the water to drain out. Also the millions of years time is for 1000 m thick clay layers.
So layers that are not formed from clay and a lot less than 1000 m thick may take a lot less time.
Sure, still a lot of time but maybe less than a million years.
What got me on this track is realizing a lot of megafauna have been found from the Late Pleistocene which supposedly covers between c. 129,000 and c. 11,700 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene
Anyway if a lot of fossils have been found from Late Pleistocene rock layers, then these layers couldn't have taken millions of years to form.
Anyway the National Geographic quote I originally used suggested that fossils take a minimum of 10,000 years to form so I took that as possibly the minimum rock layer formation time. [using natural processes of course]
Just some thoughts.
However, National Geographic have revised this quote, removing the actual formation time, and I am no longer using it.
2.
The Mud Problem Precludes Young Earth Creationism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQcQSqH13xU
Gutsick Gibbon
Jun 14, 2024
OK not endorsing this site but there is a lot of interesting stuff here.
Note: This site is VERY much against a young earth Creation.
3.
How Did We Get All This Coal?
by Dr. Andrew A. Snelling on April 1, 2013 ; last featured April 1, 2014
Featured in Answers Magazine
Subsequent experiments have more closely simulated natural geologic conditions, with temperatures of only 257°F (125°C) and lower pressures (equivalent to burial under 5,905 feet [1,800 meters] of wet sediments).10 After only 75 days, the original plant and wood materials still transformed into coal material, comparable chemically to coal from the same area of Indonesia.
Because these experiments simulated natural conditions, we can be confident that the coal-forming process is rapid and requires only months. So there is no reason to insist that coal formation requires millions of years.
It appears that lush vegetation might have covered up to 75 percent of the pre-Flood world, including the floating forests fringing the land. The Flood waters rose from the oceans and swept over the land, catastrophically destroying and burying all the vegetation in beds between other fossil-bearing sediments. The temperatures and pressures at these depths, aided by the presence of water and clay, converted these beds into coal within months.
Thus the huge coal deposits of today’s world can easily be explained.11 The coal formed quickly in the year-long Genesis Flood only about 4,300 years ago.
https://answersingenesis.org/biology/plants/how-did-we-get-all-this-coal/
10.
W. H. Orem, S. G. Neuzil, H. E. Lerch, and C. B. Cecil, “Experimental Early-stage Coalification of a Peat Sample and a Petrified Wood Sample from Indonesia,” Organic Geochemistry 24.2 (1996): 111–125.
4.
The most common way an animal such as a dinosaur fossilises is called petrification. These are the key steps:
1. The animal dies.
2. Soft parts of the animal's body, including skin and muscles, start to rot away. Scavengers may come and eat some of the remains.
3. Before the body disappears completely, it is buried by sediment - usually mud, sand or silt. Often at this point only the bones and teeth remain.
4. Many more layers of sediment build up on top. This puts a lot of weight and pressure onto the layers below, squashing them. Eventually, they turn into sedimentary rock.
5. While this is happening, water seeps into the bones and teeth, turning them to stone as it leaves behind minerals.
This process can take thousands or even millions of years.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-are-fossils-formed.html
[Natural History Museum, London]
Lab-made fossils cram 1000s of years into 24 hours
By Ben Coxworth
July 25, 2018
In an effort to better understand how the fossilization process affects various types of biological materials, scientists at Britain's University of Bristol developed a lab-based process in which fresh specimens such as bird feathers, lizard limbs, and leaves can be converted into "synthetic" fossils within approximately one day.
Using a hydraulic press, the items are first packed into clay tablets about the diameter of a dime. Each tablet is then placed in a sealed metal tube, which gets heated to over 410 ºF (210 ºC) while also being subjected to 3,500 psi (241 bar) of pressure. After around 24 hours of this treatment, the tablets are cracked open to reveal their now-fossilized contents.
https://newatlas.com/lab-made-fossils/55619/
4a.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schadewald
cites quite a few docs against Creationism.
5.
many new nesting sites have been found all over the world ...
Dinosaur eggs are known from a variety of depositional environments.
Beach sands: Floodplains: Sand dunes:
One ancient beach deposit in northeastern Spain actually preserves about 300,000 fossil dinosaur eggs.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200727101303/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_egg
A nest of 15 young dinosaurs uncovered in Mongolia — cousins of Triceratops — now suggests these plant-eating beasts might have cared for their young, scientists reveal.
The dinosaur is named Protoceratops andrewsi, a sheep-size herbivore that lived about 70 million years ago that's known for the frill at the back of its head. Within the nest were infants about 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) long and probably no more than a year old.
https://news.yahoo.com/15-infant-dinosaurs-discovered-crowded-nest-161409482.html
Stephen Buckley
E-mail: snoaktrua [at] duck.com
Last revised: 30 May 2025.
Constructed: 21 Oct 2024.
Companion pages
Stonehenge: A pre-Flood construction?
Page design/construction Stephen Buckley 2024,2025.
Snoaktrua