Evolution Impossible (16 page)

One of the first clues we have for a global flood is the evidence of widespread sedimentary deposits around the world that contain fossils of organisms that lived on land. For example, in the Zion National park, Utah, home of the Kolob Arch — the world’s longest natural arch — can be seen outcrops of the Shinarump conglomerate. This sedimentary rock, which contains pebbles and sandstone, also contains fossil wood. While it is usually less than 100 feet (30 m) thick, it spreads as an almost uniform layer over a massive 97,000 square miles (250,000 square km).
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The material contained in this deposit would require an enormous force of water to move it and spread it as almost continuous deposit over such a wide area. But the Shinarump conglomerate is just one member of the Chinle formation, a part of the Chinle group of sedimentary rocks that are spread over an estimated massive 310,000 to 890,000 square miles (800,000 to 2.3 million square km).
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Another land animal fossil–bearing rock example is the famous dinosaur fossil–bearing Morrison Formation of the western United States, which extends an estimated 580,000 square miles (1.5 million square km) from Texas to Canada, yet has an average thickness of only about 328 feet (100 m).
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This represents another massive flow of sediment over a vast area that buried land animals. Such relatively thin, widespread sedimentary rock deposits are consistent with catastrophic flood deposition rather than slow, gradual sedimentary formation.

Coconino Sandstone Formation, which can be seen exposed in the Grand Canyon, is another example. This deposit, with an average depth of around 500 feet (150 m), covers a massive 200,000 square miles (520,000 square km), including its associated sandstones.
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The lower half of the Coconino Sandstone contains hundreds of fossilized footprint trackways of amphibians or reptiles. Studies of these footprints have shown that in almost all cases the trackways are going uphill.
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These puzzling trackways have been the subject of a number of studies, with the weight of evidence from experimental studies suggesting they were made underwater and not on dry sand dunes.
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Another important clue in the Coconino sandstone is the cross bedding that suggests rapidly flowing water formed underwater sand dunes. The shape and size of these dunes indicates they were formed by water currents of around 5 feet (1.5 m) per second. These velocities are somewhat characteristic of deep ocean currents we observe today or currents generated by tsunami-type events.
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The overall picture that we get from this formation in stone is that of animals moving rapidly uphill in fast-flowing water. The water is moving a massive amount of sand over a huge area of hundreds of thousands of square miles, which rapidly buried and preserved the animal tracks.

The volume of sand in just the Coconino Sandstone formation alone is estimated to be in the order of 10,000 cubic miles (42,000 cubic km).
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However, there is no nearby source of this sand — it must have been carried hundreds and hundreds of miles by fast-flowing massive water currents from some origins in the north. The cross bedding evidence of fast-flowing water is found in the exposed Grand Canyon’s Supai group of sandstone formations, which are several strata below the Coconino layer. Again, there is no nearby source of these massive deposits of sand, which must have been transported very large distances by huge water flows.
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The Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah, seen in the spectacular mesas of Zion National Park, presents a similar scenario of a massive formation of water-deposited sand with no nearby source. However, this sand contains small amounts of zircon with inclusions of uranium, enabling identification of the source of the sand. By matching the mineral characteristics of the sand, scientists have suggested that the source of the sand was probably rocks in the Appalachian Mountain areas of Pennsylvania and New York, and possibly former mountains in Canada.
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If this hypothesis is correct, then massive flows of water transported huge volumes of sand more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km) across what is now North America.

The conventional geology interpretation is that these deposits formed slowly over millions of years — but there are no known gradual geological processes that can explain the transport and deposition of such huge volumes of sand over such large distances. On the other hand, the above evidence all points to catastrophic movements of water on a scale never recorded in the past 3,000 years or more.

Another problem for the uniformitarian model is the lack of canyons, gorges, valleys, and gullies preserved in the strata. If the sedimentary deposits around the world formed over hundreds of millions of years, we would expect to find evidence of erosion over time, resulting in the periodical creation of irregular surfaces. But many times when sedimentary layers are exposed, such as in road highway cuttings, beach cliffs, and river canyons, there is very little evidence of erosion between the layers. Many readers will have seen pictures of the walls of the Grand Canyon where there is layer upon layer of conforming — almost parallel — almost horizontal — strata. For example, on the extreme eastern wall there is a 3,600-foot (1,200-m) cliff of exposed flat strata — showing one layer on top of another with no signs of significant erosion. This strata sequence, which begins with the Cambrian-dated Tapeats Sandstone, continues up to the late Permian-dated Kaibab Limestone, covering a period of around 300 million years. In other words, we have expansive sedimentary layers requiring huge water flows to deposit them, being laid down over hundreds of millions of years, with no signs of significant erosion occurring. Yet the present topography is highly eroded and irregular. If the millions of years had actually occurred, why are the tops of the under layers not highly irregular like the present topography that we now observe?

Another problem involves the missing geological layers. For example, between one set of parallel sedimentary layers there is about a 100-million-year gap where the Ordovician and Silurian layers should be. They are missing, yet there is virtually no sign of erosion.
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In between other sets of horizontal layers there is a proposed 14-million-year gap, again with no significant signs of erosion.
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Of course, the Grand Canyon is not the only place where we find parallel horizontal sedimentary layers supposedly laid down millions of years later with no signs of significant erosion between the strata, even though in most cases huge masses of water-transporting sediments are involved. The logical explanation is that these strata were deposited at the same time or in a relatively short succession of days or months, giving no time for erosion to occur. If they were really deposited millions of years apart, we would see massive evidences of irregular erosion between the contact planes.

Geologists have long been aware of these types of gaps. Dr. Ariel Roth, who served as director of the Geoscience Research Institute at Loma Linda University in California, discusses other examples from around the world. These include the problems the European Alps and Australian coal deposits pose for the uniformitarian long-age model, and how they best fit the global flood model.
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Many instances of strata in a different order to that in the “geological column” show that much of the various fossil strata comprising it were laid down simultaneously in one enormous global event. There are some outstanding examples of this found around the world. For example, at Lochseite in Switzerland, Jurassic rocks claimed to be 180 million years old conformably overlie Eocene rocks claimed to be 60 million years old. How can rocks higher up in the strata be 120 million years older than the rocks underneath them? The conventional geological explanation is called “overthrusting.” It is assumed that subterranean forces have pushed the lower older layers up and over the younger layers. There are many geological formations where this is a reasonable explanation, and the formation I have just described is called the Glarus overthrust. However, for this particular location it is suggested that the older rocks have been pushed 21 miles (34 km) over the younger ones, yet there is no evidence of unconformity.
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That is, the top layers are sitting on top of the lower layers without signs of massive erosion, rupturing, or piling up and rippling of the strata, even though these massive rock layers would have had to slide 21 miles over one another. This does not seem reasonable, and it was reported in the geology literature some years ago that overthrusts of more than a one-half mile are unlikely to be sustained. The reason is that the enormous strain required to push slabs of strata over distances of more than a fraction of a mile are such that the strain would be automatically relieved by a succession of ruptures, and the sliding of smaller slabs one over another. This would form imbricated (overlapping tile-like) structures, rather than a large mobile slab of strata moving over a passive underlying block.
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The absence of imbriction in the Glarus formation suggests that the strata were simply laid down in the order they are in. That is, the top Jurassic rocks are not 120 million years older than the Eocene rocks but, together with the fossils they contain, are the same age.

Another example is in the Franklin Mountains near El Paso, Texas, where Upper Ordovician limestone dated at 450 million years old overlies Lower Cretaceous strata dated at 130 million years old, yet there is no evidence of overthrusting.

In the Glacier National Park of southern Alberta and Chief Mountain, Montana, and extending about 500 miles (800 km) along the Rocky Mountains, there is an area of
several thousand square kilometers where the fossil order is very different and does not follow the conventional evolutionary pattern. In this area we find Precambrian limestones (dated as greater than 600 million years old), Cambrian (dated around 500 million years old), and other Paleozoic sediments lying conformably over Cretaceous shales containing dinosaur fossils (dated 100 million years old). Geologists attempt to explain this change in the fossil order by hypothesizing a massive overthrust from the west sliding rocks eastward over distances of 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 km). This is referred to as the Lewis overthrust. However, not only is there no evidence of imbrication or rupturing, but there is also no evidence of the huge amount of frictional heat that would have been generated, which would have changed the structure of the rock surfaces (metamorphism) along the contact zone.
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It seems unreasonable to assume that thousands of square miles of sedimentary strata deposited 400 million years beforehand could then be pushed along over the top of other strata without major signs of rupturing and other frictional effects. Also, as we shall see in a later chapter, erosion losses in those intervening 400 million or so years would have been enormous and enough to erode the Rocky Mountains away entirely many times over. But the concept of overthrusting illustrates the extent to which scientists will hypothesize an explanation to try to preserve the fossil record of evolution in the face of conflicting evidence.

The most reasonable explanation consistent with the observed data is that the fossil layers were simply laid down in the order they are in under massive flood conditions, and that Cambrian and Cretaceous fossils originally existed at the same time.

In Arizona, the Permian rocks of Empire Mountain, which date greater than 200 million years, overlie Cretaceous sediments dating around 100 million years. In this particular location, the Permian deposits are in deep grooves eroded in the underlying Cretaceous material. However, no projections are planed off and there are no gouge marks, slickensides, or brecciation. In places, the deposits are described as being like the meshing of gears. It is extremely hard to imagine how this gear-like structure could form as the result of the older layer being pushed up over the other. As retired geographer and international government consultant Dr. Colin Mitchell points out, the obvious explanation in all these cases of apparently out-of-order strata is that the concept of fossil evolution is at fault. The rocks were laid down originally in the order in which they now occur.
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Another problem for the long ages, uniformitarian geological model for the formation of the vast sedimentary deposits is the occurrence of poly-strate fossil trees. These are fossils of trees that have been fossilized in an upright position and that transverse many sedimentary strata. For example, the cliffs at Joggins in Nova Scotia reveal abundant polystrate tree fossils, as does the hillside at Specimen Ridge in the Yellowstone National Park in the USA. The Joggins site in particular attracted the attention of early geologists such as C. Lyell and J.W. Dawson, who reported fossilized animal remains within some of the preserved upright trees.
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Recent investigations of this site have revealed fossilized tree trunks up to 16 feet (5 m) tall and 30 inches (75 cm) in diameter and over 100 individual specimens of 11 different types of vertebrates, including amphibians and reptiles, as well as snails, millipedes, worms, and a mayfly.
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Many of the tree trunks are hollow and filled with sediment that washed in, taking with it animals trapped in the sediments by the speed of the moving water. The presence of cross bedding in the sandstones inside the hollow trunks confirms the rapid water flow.
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