The fossil record explained

[dad]

Say you have a plot of land. Land animals and plants are living there and after having lived their lives they die


Some of them die on the right spot where conditions for fossilization is ideal. So fossils of land animals and plants start to accumulate on these sites.
.

I assume most creatures on earth could not have fossilized in the former nature. So of the few that could then, some of THEM die and get fossilized.

After a while this whole formation subsides due to geological processes.

Processes like the rapid separation of continents and subsequent rapid mountain building/uplift etc.

Sea water starts to pour in. Evidently this is mostly a very slow process. We have many areas in the world that are currently slowly subsiding. For instance, Netherlands, where I live, is slowly subsiding - it's measurable and about some 20 cm per century. Also sea levels may rise due to climate change - but also at slow rate.

Water coming in? That does not require the current nature in any way.

When the sea has taken over, marine animals live there and die after having lived their lives. Fossilization occurs again and slowly new layers start to build up with only marin fossils to be found.

The sea was created in Adam's day. Nothing new about the sea. There was also a lot more seas because of the flood. There was also a lot more lakes and water as a result of the rapid glaciation/ice age melts in some areas...etc.

Millions of years later this area may start to elevate again and the sea resides.

The millions of years required in your belief system are totally unneeded.

At that very moment we will have two geological layers observable on our plot of land: the former terrestrial area with land animals and plants fossils and on top of it a layer of the former sea bedding with marine fossils.

There were pre flood seas, then the flood, and a lot of uplift and upheaval/plate movements etc after the flood. In no way do we need your religion to account for any of it.

In other words, as we observe a layer with only land animals and plants fossils, this plot of land once was terrestrial. But the layer with marine fossils sitting on top testifies the very same area became a sea floor later.

So the sea gradually pouring apparently didn't wash away the terrestrial fossils sitting in up to tens of meters of sediments.

Great, so we would still have some land animals that were now fossils under water. Nothing needed from your belief set to explain this.

In your scenario the terrestral fossils, once washed away by the sea water, will end up somewhere on the sea floor, getting mixed up with the marine fossils. But we simply don't observe such mix up.

Not sure who you are talking to, perhaps you quoted someone else and are addressing some sort of flood geology claim?

Your scenario also doesn't work when the opposite happens: when former sea beds elevate and become terrestrial again. But we do not only observe many instances where terrestrial layers are alternated by marine one but also the other way round. And when a sea dries up and becomes land area again, there is no known mechanism that would cause the land animals and plants to "move out".

Since the flood receded, where would it be some surprise that land animals get mixed with marine ones in some instances?

Or, put in othe rwords, fossils, once buried, do not move out or in. they sit in often hard and solid rock formations.

Great, so pre flood fossils, and flood fossils could have 'sit' through the flood and/or subsequent events. So?

 

[pitabread]

No I don't.

Seriously? You don't think the people who spend their professional career studying something aren't the most informed about that something?

Producing as in processing, not yielding up, although with the floods and mudslides burying people and animals some may indeed become fossils, but we won't know for a couple of thousand years.

Exactly. Things are still being buried now just as they always have been.

Anyway the sheer number of ancient fossils due to global cataclysmic events dwarfs any such recent burials. The sea floors haven't seen much of the rapid silt layering needed for fossilization in the recent past either with the possible exception of areas around volcano eruptions.

How do you know this is different now compared to the past?

In fact, the only way I could see it being different would be due to human activity disturbing burials that otherwise would remain untouched.

 

[Sanoy]

This is fantastic! Great write up.

How truly unfortunate that it is pointless in these forums as can be seen in responses already.

This is where it's not pointless. I keep coming here for posts like the OPs but rarely find them. I have a lot of agnosticism about this subject and it helps me a ton when people who know a lot about these subjects post and can answer questions rather than avoid them.

 

[Turkana]

Ruin/restoration explains it better than evolution. It's the suddenness and completeness of the change in the geologic column that eliminates the possibility of evolution. Evolution implies gradual uninterrupted change. The evidence of sudden cataclysm seen in the geologic record denies this possibility.

Evolution does not imply necessarily gradual uninterupted change. Look up "punctuated equilibrium".
It says that periods of rather slow evolution or maybe even relative stasis are intertwined by short periods of often franctic evolutionary change. "Short" in the geological sense of the word. One of those instances of rapid, punctuated evolution, the Cambrian "explosion" lasted at least (the very shortest estimate) 12 million years.

Punctuated equilibrium dates back to the early 1970s with even precursors being around earlier.
May I ask how you manage to have missed this?

Even more, your post completely misses the gist of mine. Must be a reason for that i suppose.

 

[Turkana]

Science admits that few organisms are ever fossilized, and then only under certain conditions.

Science does not "admit" that. It just says that fossilization is a rather rare event. Nevertheless we have tens of millions fossils stored in musea and paleontological institutes worldwide, most of them never described because there isn't just enough time and people to process them. The few millions ones actually analysed and described greatly suffice to make the evolutionary case.

I did not imply that.

Neither the sea floors or land seem to be producing fossils these days. What has changed?

Irrelevant. We simply have fossil records, irrespective of fossils being formed today.
Simply a red herring here.

 

[Aman777]

Evolution does not imply necessarily gradual uninterupted change. Look up "punctuated equilibrium".
It says that periods of rather slow evolution or maybe even relative stasis are intertwined by short periods of often franctic evolutionary change. "Short" in the geological sense of the word. One of those instances of rapid, punctuated evolution, the Cambrian "explosion" lasted at least (the very shortest estimate) 12 million years.

It's because Jesus, the Creator of ALL physical things, had 3 Universes to fill. He worked a while on Adam's Universe, the present Universe and the 3rd Heaven. His descent with modification within kinds is the same as claiming that they magically evolved from "common ancestors". Amen?

 

[tyke]

You don't think the people who spend their professional career studying something aren't the most informed about that something?

What an attitude. Why bother going to optician to sort out your eyes?? They've only been studying their chosen profession for like forever.
The list could go on and on. Just what is the point in anybody dedicating their lives to the study of a subject. Might as well just use the local postman to sort out that tumour in your brain. Ridiculous!!!

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

Can you refute my assertions?

The whole field of paleontology refutes your assertions. Along with geology, stratigraphy, hydrology, volcanology, and others. You know, all those things "experts" study. Besides, I do not claim to know more than those who actually study this stuff for a living. Your only relevant assertion is "Nuh uh!" which I may adequately refute with "Yeah huh" because you have not demonstrated your assertions to be correct.

 

[Aman777]

It's because Jesus, the Creator of ALL physical things, had 3 Universes to fill. He worked a while on Adam's Universe, the present Universe and the 3rd Heaven. His descent with modification within kinds is the same as claiming that they magically evolved from "common ancestors". Amen?

To the "funny" poster:

Didn't you know that we live in a Multiverse composed of 3 universes? The first world was totally destroyed in the flood. 2Pet3:6 The present world will be burned. 2Pet3:10
The THIRD Heaven of 2Cor12:2 is what God is currently filling with it's host, which includes ALL Christians, including the last one to be saved. Genesis 2:1 Amen?

 

[Turkana]

Let me put it another way. It's not what I believe but lets say all the old animals existed at once. This plot started as a sea bed so has tons of sea fossils, then it dries up as it moves above sea level. At which point a forest grows, then the land animals that were also in existence at the start wander to their new home.

How do we know from the layers that they came about later rather than wandering in to a new environment?

When those land animals wandered to the newly formed land after the sea dried out, it didn't wipe away the marine fossils that already were sitting there underground. the other way round, when sea started to flood sunken land, it didn't affect the fossils of land animals and plants already sitting there.

So in the first case you will observe a layer tens up to hundreds of feet thick, swarmed with marine fossils, alternated by a layer with no marine life but land animals and plants. when a layer is sitting on top of another one, it's - by sheer logic - younger.

A lyer with solely marine fossils alternated by one with exclusively land life fossils simply implies that site once was a sea floor, supervened by a terrestrial environment.

Also you must realize that a layer tens or even hundreds of feet thick always represent a long time span. For instance, we know that one meter thickness of coal layer represents at least 10 meters of biomass. There are several means to estimate this. One way is the measure the carbon contents of the coal. We know that on average the carbon stock of biomass is about 50% (differing between spcies and young or outgrown plants).

So it takes a long time for forests or swamps to build up 1 meter of coal layer, let alone, for instance, 100 meter.

 

[Turkana]

To the "funny" poster:

Didn't you know that we live in a Multiverse composed of 3 universes? The first world was totally destroyed in the flood. 2Pet3:6 The present world will be burned. 2Pet3:10
The THIRD Heaven of 2Cor12:2 is what God is currently filling with it's host, which includes ALL Christians, including the last one to be saved. Genesis 2:1 Amen?

Instead of these fantasies, you might bother to provide observational evidence?

 

[Turkana]

No I don't.



Producing as in processing, not yielding up, although with the floods and mudslides burying people and animals some may indeed become fossils, but we won't know for a couple of thousand years. Anyway the sheer number of ancient fossils due to global cataclysmic events dwarfs any such recent burials. The sea floors haven't seen much of the rapid silt layering needed for fossilization in the recent past either with the possible exception of areas around volcano eruptions.

You are simply producing irrelevant red herrings.

This whole rambling about how currently fossils are being formed or not is totally evading the simple fact that we DO observe hundreds of fossil layers intertwining that clearly ARE showing fossil stratification. We DO see one geological layer SWARMING with thousands of fossils - example, example, example - sometimes even dozens of them sitting on on piece of rock of a mere dm2. And we DO SEE one layer only containing marine fossils while the very next one sitting on top of it only terrestrial plants and animals.

So why on earth are you constantly talking about fossil formation NOW while WE are talking about the fossil HISTORY record before our own eyes?

 

[Turkana]

I assume most creatures on earth could not have fossilized in the former nature. So of the few that could then, some of THEM die and get fossilized.
Processes like the rapid separation of continents and subsequent rapid mountain building/uplift etc.

Correct but irrelevant because the ones that did manage to fossilze clearly testify of evolution as I showed and demonstrated and so far not even touched, let alone addressed properly.

Water coming in? That does not require the current nature in any way.

Geological processes do not occur because theu are required they happen due to natural causes. Water coming in happening very now, slowly, by sea levels rising and on some places also due to subsidence processes. And it happened in the past because otherwise we would not observe geological layers full of marine fossils sitting on other ones that are completely lacking marine fossils but are swarmed with remains of terrestrial animals and plants.

The sea was created in Adam's day. Nothing new about the sea. There was also a lot more seas because of the flood. There was also a lot more lakes and water as a result of the rapid glaciation/ice age melts in some areas...etc.
The millions of years required in your belief system are totally unneeded.

So the earth is only 6000 years old?
We could consider this a geological hypothesis. Normally it takes one single, well aimed experiment or observation to falsify a scientific hypothesis. Mostly such falsifications will raise a lot of discussion and the result may need to be replicated by other researchers to be sure but generally that's it.

Now, the 'hypothesis' of a 6,000 years old earth has been falsified more than 100 times by all different types of dating techniques, each based on very different principles and thus methodologically spoken entirely independent of each other. Each single of these dating techniques has yielded instances where objects, materials or specimens were dated to be older than 6,000 years. To get an impression: read this, this and this (there's overlap but together they add up well over 100).

The 'hypothesis' of a 6,000 years old earth has been utterly and disastrously falsified by a tremendous amount and wide variety of observations.

The geological stratification makes minced meat out of your fantasy stories. It shows a sheer, almost endless number of different layers, each with often very distinct composition and morphology and, abovce all, fossil record. There are at least dozens of different rock types. Different rock types can not come from the same process - that's why they are different in composition.

We have:

• a limestone layer containing only marine fossils...
• sitting on top of a layer without a single marine fossils but swarming with terrestrial fossils...
• sitting on top of a sandstone formation, lacking entirely marine fossils as well but containing fossil sand dunes, complete with ancient, captures rain droplet dimples and footprints of typically desert arthropodal species...
• sitting on top of a coal layer, a former forest, sometimes complete with charcoal remnants, indicating wildfires - a bit difficult in a flood, DON'T YOU THINK?...
• sitting on top of a limestone layer again, with marine fossils...
• and so on and on and on, kilometers of sediments worth.

THAT is what we OBSERVE and it's completely falsifying your bronze age mythology stories, such as:

There were pre flood seas, then the flood, and a lot of uplift and upheaval/plate movements etc after the flood. In no way do we need your religion to account for any of it.

Great, so we would still have some land animals that were now fossils under water. Nothing needed from your belief set to explain this.
Not sure who you are talking to, perhaps you quoted someone else and are addressing some sort of flood geology claim?

Since the flood receded, where would it be some surprise that land animals get mixed with marine ones in some instances?
Great, so pre flood fossils, and flood fossils could have 'sit' through the flood and/or subsequent events. So?

Well this IS NOT what we OBSERVE. It's simple as that.

And NOW address the points I made, please instead of these fantasies without one speck of evidence.
i am not going to address bible fantasies. EVIDENCE please.

 

[Abraxos]

You are simply producing irrelevant red herrings.

This whole rambling about how currently fossils are being formed or not is totally evading the simple fact that we DO observe hundreds of fossil layers intertwining that clearly ARE showing fossil stratification. We DO see one geological layer SWARMING with thousands of fossils - example, example, example - sometimes even dozens of them sitting on on piece of rock of a mere dm2. And we DO SEE one layer only containing marine fossils while the very next one sitting on top of it only terrestrial plants and animals.

So why on earth are you constantly talking about fossil formation NOW while WE are talking about the fossil HISTORY record before our own eyes?

It's important to examine how fossils formed because that's how science works. Is it possible to "reenact" a fossil formation through lab tests? Is this observable in nature? If not, then what special conditions are required to form a fossil in nature? From that we should be able to construct a theory shaped around the evidence gathered from understanding the formation of fossils?

It allows less room for confirmation biases and more regard for allowing the evidence to shape the theory rather than what you propose - which is the fact that fossils are there in the strata rock layers, and making up a theory on how they got there. That's pseudo-science?

 

[Aman777]

Aman777 said: ↑ Didn't you know that we live in a Multiverse composed of 3 universes? The first world was totally destroyed in the flood. 2Pet3:6 The present world will be burned. 2Pet3:10
The THIRD Heaven of 2Cor12:2 is what God is currently filling with it's host, which includes ALL Christians, including the last one to be saved. Genesis 2:1 Amen?

Instead of these fantasies, you might bother to provide observational evidence?

Sure, but remember that Genesis is the best and only evidence of these events. Since the Spirit of Truth is the Author, He MUST tell the Truth Scripturally, Scientifically, Historically and in every other way.. ie. God told us more than 3k years ago that He created and brought forth from WATER, "every living creature that moveth". Gen 1:21

Science confirmed this 2 years ago.
Behold LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of Life on Earth ...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/.../behold-luca-last-universal-common-ancestor-life...

It was on the 5th Day/Age or 3.77 Billion years ago, in man's time. God's Truth is the Truth in every way if you understand Genesis One. Amen?

 

[dad]

Correct but irrelevant because the ones that did manage to fossilze clearly testify of evolution as I showed and demonstrated and so far not even touched, let alone addressed properly.

In your religion they might testify to that. In point of fact they don't do anything of the sort. They testify to your hopelessly wrong view of the fossil record and what it actually represents. They testify to you ignoring Creation in the fossil record. By the way you showed and demonstrated nothing so far but that you believe.

Geological processes do not occur because theu are required they happen due to natural causes. Water coming in happening very now, slowly, by sea levels rising and on some places also due to subsidence processes.

The issue outside of your religion is not what is happening or not and how slow or fast that may be. The issue is what happened long ago and in what nature it happened.

And it happened in the past because otherwise we would not observe geological layers full of marine fossils sitting on other ones that are completely lacking marine fossils but are swarmed with remains of terrestrial animals and plants.

"It" depends on what you mean by it. Something happened. How we determine what that something was depends on the nature in place when it happened.

So the earth is only 6000 years old?

Give or take a bit.

We could consider this a geological hypothesis. Normally it takes one single, well aimed experiment or observation to falsify a scientific hypothesis. Mostly such falsifications will raise a lot of discussion and the result may need to be replicated by other researchers to be sure but generally that's it.

Now, the 'hypothesis' of a 6,000 years old earth has been falsified more than 100 times by all different types of dating techniques, each based on very different principles and thus methodologically spoken entirely independent of each other.

Every single dating method used without exception is based on this nature and how it works..on atoms, light, tree growth etc etc. All the same exact principle manifested differently, depending on where your beliefs are foisted.

Each single of these dating techniques has yielded instances where objects, materials or specimens were dated to be older than 6,000 years. To get an impression: read this, this and this (there's overlap but together they add up well over 100).

If you disagree that all instances are based on a a belief in a same state past nature, then list ANY that weren't! You can't. I guarantee it.

The 'hypothesis' of a 6,000 years old earth has been utterly and disastrously falsified by a tremendous amount and wide variety of observations.

Your beliefs disagree with actual ages. So?

The geological stratification makes minced meat out of your fantasy stories. It shows a sheer, almost endless number of different layers, each with often very distinct composition and morphology and, abovce all, fossil record. There are at least dozens of different rock types. Different rock types can not come from the same process - that's why they are different in composition.

Not in any way is that remotely close to a shadow of the truth.

Merely having many layers does not in any way whatsoever mean that your religion is needed to explain them. Really.

We have:

• a limestone layer containing only marine fossils...

Pre flood water.

• sitting on top of a layer without a single marine fossils but swarming with terrestrial fossils...

So water covered an area that was formerly land. Whoopee do.

• 
  

  [*]sitting on top of a sandstone formation, lacking entirely marine fossils as well but containing fossil sand dunes, complete with ancient, captures rain droplet dimples and footprints of typically desert arthropodal species...

  Point? What does land getting covered later with water have to do with neededing your particular belief set?

  [*]sitting on top of a coal layer, a former forest, sometimes complete with charcoal remnants, indicating wildfires - a bit difficult in a flood, DON'T YOU THINK?...

  Ah, I see. A complete strawman and canard. You think I use the flood year to explain all things! Ha. Ridiculous.

  [*]sitting on top of a limestone layer again, with marine fossils...
  [*]and so on and on and on, kilometers of sediments worth.

  Name the formation, and we can explain it without your religion. Easily.

THAT is what we OBSERVE and it's completely falsifying your bronze age mythology stories, such as:

Wrong. You didn't even clue in to what my position was. Instead you flail around attacking some flood geology strawman.

i am not going to address bible fantasies. EVIDENCE please.

So you end your little tirade with a slur against the Scripture and how you reject it out of hand. Well I reject rejecting it. How's that?

 

[dad]

It was on the 5th Day/Age or 3.77 Billion years ago, in man's time.

Wasn't it on the 22nd day and 7.444444 trillion years ago? Ha.

 

[Aman777]

Wasn't it on the 22nd day and 7.444444 trillion years ago? Ha.

I'm sorry that you don't even know what Day it is, dad. Jesus told us. 2Co 6:2 We live today at Genesis 1:27 and will not advance to the prophecy of Genesis 1:28-31 until AFTER Jesus returns to rule and reign for a thousand years. Amen?

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Science does not "admit" that. It just says that fossilization is a rather rare event. Nevertheless we have tens of millions fossils stored in musea and paleontological institutes worldwide, most of them never described because there isn't just enough time and people to process them. The few millions ones actually analysed and described greatly suffice to make the evolutionary case.

I did not imply that.



Irrelevant. We simply have fossil records, irrespective of fossils being formed today.
Simply a red herring here.

How does the fossil record make the case for evolution?

 

[juvenissun]

We have:

• a limestone layer containing only marine fossils...
• sitting on top of a layer without a single marine fossils but swarming with terrestrial fossils...
• sitting on top of a sandstone formation, lacking entirely marine fossils as well but containing fossil sand dunes, complete with ancient, captures rain droplet dimples and footprints of typically desert arthropodal species...
• sitting on top of a coal layer, a former forest, sometimes complete with charcoal remnants, indicating wildfires - a bit difficult in a flood, DON'T YOU THINK?...
• sitting on top of a limestone layer again, with marine fossils...
• and so on and on and on, kilometers of sediments worth.

THAT is what we OBSERVE and it's completely falsifying your bronze age mythology stories, such as:

Here is a fundamental question of stratigraphy and sedimentation. It bothered me all the time, and I think it is a critical one to the concept of transitional fossil.

A limestone layer sit on top of a shale layer (conformably). As simple as that. Similar cases could be: shale on top of sandstone, sandstone on top of limestone, etc.

Please tell me what happened to make these two layers separated by a clear contact. Remind you this is not an unusual feature, but is an extremely common feature in stratigraphy. So please do not use the idea of punctuated equilibrium for the explanation. If you use the idea too many times, then you are becoming a creationist.