The Extinction Event

Is there any chance that what modern science refers to as an extinction event in the past could be the same event referred to in the almost ubiquitous ancient flood stories?

snowball Earth

Good answer.

For those interested, "snowball Earth" is slanguage for the infra-Cambrian glaciation of about 700 million years ago, the most severe of three known Ice Age epochs in geological history.

Virtually all known multicellular fossils (the only real exceptions being growths of cysnophyte algae called stromatolites) date from the three Eras of the Phanerozoic Eon: the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic [in glib terms, the Ages of Invertebrates, Fishes, and Amphinbians, of Dinosaurs, and of Mammals respectively). The famous Burgess Shale fauna is the premiere example of the so-called "Cambrian explosion" of multicellular life during the Cambrian period, at the beginning of the Paleozoic (and of the Phanerozoic Eon). Pre-Cambrian time, the Crytozoic Eon, mostly has no clear evidence of multicellular life except the Ediacara fauna of Vendian time at the very end of it. Just prior to the Vendian, there seems to have been a glaciation that was worldwide in scope, approaching or reaching the equator of the time. While the Pleistocene glaciation ("the Ice Age" in popular parlance) covered much of the northern areas of the Northern Hemisphere, and the Permian glaciation near the end of the Paleozoic did the same in the Southern Hemisphere, the one near the end of the Cryptozoic, which I think is called the Varangian glaciation, appears to have been far more severe than either of the two since, covering all or almost all the Earth.

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There have been 5 major extinction events in the past. Which do you want to associate with the Flood?

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We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

-- Charles Darwin

I was just listening to Niles Eldredge on this last night.

He points out that there are different levels of extinction events. A minor local environmental change might lead to the extinction of a local population.
The 5 major extinctions each wiped out many hundreds of species (Over 90% of the Permian species in the Permian extinction.)

In between there can be medium-sized regional events which lead to significant extinctions in a region. An example would be the formation of the Panama land bridge between North and South America which led to the extinction of most of South America's then largely marsupial fauna. Similarly the land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last Ice Age brought humans into North America for the first time--an event that was followed quite swiftly by the extinction of most mega-fauna in North America.

So it seems to me a regional flood of significant impact could cause many extinctions in the affected region--not only immediately, through drowning, but also through habitat destruction and reduced food supply which would continue for a while after a prolonged flood.

There is no indication in the biblical story that any species became extinct. In fact the very idea that species could become extinct shocked Europeans when it was first proposed by Georges Cuvier. It didn't fit with prevailing ideas about creation that anything God had caused to be could cease to be. That is probably why the flood story speaks of saving a sample of every form of life, not of any species being destroyed.

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The high, the low, all of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God's Justice permits creation to punish humanity~~ Hildegard of Bingen cited in, Earth Prayers from around the World

Any one which could have occurred after the advent of humans I guess.

Are you saying that each separate flood story could be based on a separate actual flooding event?

No, because the first human fossils don't occur until long after the last mass extinction event (K-T).

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We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

-- Charles Darwin

But the fact that human fossils don't occur until a certain time doesn't necessarily mean that there were no humans before that time, does it?

According to the story, why did God send the Flood?

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We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

-- Charles Darwin