Flood: Dinosaur footprints on top of coal

[Vance]

Here is a thread started by Notto in the other forum. It is similar to Glenn's points about trace fossils existing in the middle of a long sequence of sedimentary layers. The key to getting this point is that the YEC flood geology is based on the idea that all the layers in the geologic column were laid down by the Flood. So far, no YEC has been able to answer this one:

"The linked article discusses dinosaur footprints that are found along with a stand of trees (observable by their roots) on the TOP of a coal seam, but buried under feet of other rock and sediment.

This would seem to falsify a flood model for the creation of the sediment layers in which these footprints were found (similar to how intact egg nests, burrows, and stream beds in other parts of the fossil record do the same).

This phenomena is intersting because it shows that
1) The material that made up the coal was not disturbed since the time the dinosaurs made the footprints (before the formation of the coal)
2) That large amounts of sediment have accumulated on top of the coal since the footprints were layed down.
3) That large amounts of sediment accumulated below the footprints before the footprints were layed down.

As of yet, I have not seen a flood model explain formations like these footprints. If the fossil record is to be explained by the flood, then one of the following assumptions must be made.

1) The footprints were layed down before the flood, therefore, all the material (including the material that eventually became the coal) was layed down BEFORE the flood, therefore showing that either sediment accumulated rapidly in a young earth model without the flood. (This does not seem likely and would contradict most YEC flood models due to lack of a mechanism.

2) The footprints were layed down after the flood, therefore, all the material above them was layed down after the flood, therefore showing that sediment accumulated rapidly after the flood was over without the flood as an explaination (Again, this does not seem likely an would contradict most YEC flood models due to lack of a mechanism)

3) The footprints were layed down DURING the flood as dinosaurs were escaping. This would not explain the trees found in the formation and also would seem to indicate that the flood was rather gentle and non threatening, but somehow managed to cause all of this sediment.

4) The footprints and the trees were put there by God or Satan to deceive us.

This phenomena is just another specific piece of evidence that falsifies the worldwide flood as an explaination of the fossil record. This phenomena is just another specific piece of evidence that is ignored by Creation "Scientists". I use quotes around scientist in this case because, as scientists, those who espouse the flood model should look at evidence that falsifies their model instead of ignoring it. Those that ignore and fail to explain evidence like this in their model are not accurately described by the label of scientist."

http://www.christianforums.com/t46140-dinosaur-footprints-in-coal-another-falsification-of-the-flood-model.html

 

[grmorton]

Here is a thread started by Notto in the other forum. It is similar to Glenn's points about trace fossils existing in the middle of a long sequence of sedimentary layers. The key to getting this point is that the YEC flood geology is based on the idea that all the layers in the geologic column were laid down by the Flood. So far, no YEC has been able to answer this one:

"The linked article discusses dinosaur footprints that are found along with a stand of trees (observable by their roots) on the TOP of a coal seam, but buried under feet of other rock and sediment.

This would seem to falsify a flood model for the creation of the sediment layers in which these footprints were found (similar to how intact egg nests, burrows, and stream beds in other parts of the fossil record do the same).

This phenomena is intersting because it shows that
1) The material that made up the coal was not disturbed since the time the dinosaurs made the footprints (before the formation of the coal)
2) That large amounts of sediment have accumulated on top of the coal since the footprints were layed down.
3) That large amounts of sediment accumulated below the footprints before the footprints were layed down.

As of yet, I have not seen a flood model explain formations like these footprints. If the fossil record is to be explained by the flood, then one of the following assumptions must be made.

1) The footprints were layed down before the flood, therefore, all the material (including the material that eventually became the coal) was layed down BEFORE the flood, therefore showing that either sediment accumulated rapidly in a young earth model without the flood. (This does not seem likely and would contradict most YEC flood models due to lack of a mechanism.

2) The footprints were layed down after the flood, therefore, all the material above them was layed down after the flood, therefore showing that sediment accumulated rapidly after the flood was over without the flood as an explaination (Again, this does not seem likely an would contradict most YEC flood models due to lack of a mechanism)

3) The footprints were layed down DURING the flood as dinosaurs were escaping. This would not explain the trees found in the formation and also would seem to indicate that the flood was rather gentle and non threatening, but somehow managed to cause all of this sediment.

4) The footprints and the trees were put there by God or Satan to deceive us.

This phenomena is just another specific piece of evidence that falsifies the worldwide flood as an explaination of the fossil record. This phenomena is just another specific piece of evidence that is ignored by Creation "Scientists". I use quotes around scientist in this case because, as scientists, those who espouse the flood model should look at evidence that falsifies their model instead of ignoring it. Those that ignore and fail to explain evidence like this in their model are not accurately described by the label of scientist."

http://www.christianforums.com/t46140-dinosaur-footprints-in-coal-another-falsification-of-the-flood-model.html

Vance, glad you posted this. Here is a picture of that coal mine roof. In order for there to be footprints, the trees must have been growing in peat. The vegetation which became coal could not still be in the form of trunks and bushes or the footprints wouldn't be footprints.

 

[California Tim]

This phenomena is just another specific piece of evidence that falsifies the worldwide flood as an explaination of the fossil record. This phenomena is just another specific piece of evidence that is ignored by Creation "Scientists".

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here, before I take my wife out on a date. I have not researched this, and I have no earthly idea what any other opinion on the matter is, so I am going to risk "naively" comment off the top of my head, both on the ridiculous assumption made in the quote above and why I think it is demonstrative proof that TE'ists are nearly delusional in the lopsided attempt to jump at any straw to disprove the Biblical account of the flood.

First the comment: You claim this is "evidence that falsifies" the flood account - how readily you jump to conclusions. Yet in the same article, you list some specific scenarios that might account for the occurence within the YEC framework - albiet not to your satisfaction. How exactly can you make such a presumptuous claim that the mere existence of the evidence, alone disproves anything? Many assumptions must be made on your part -many which of course you conveniently left out. One of them that you did manage to mention is:

"The key to getting this point is that the YEC flood geology is based on the idea that all the layers in the geologic column were laid down by the Flood".​

This is simple false! I'm afraid I'm calling your bluff on this misrepresentation now and it's time you back up your claim. I want to see proof of this conclusion since I've never seen it mentioned before on any creationist venue. As this point alone, by your own admission, is the "pillar" supporting the whole argument, I think I could stop right here and dismiss the rest of the article, but I won't.

Just for fun, I want to take this a little further. I have a few more questions about the find. Some may not be relevant, but remember, I have not researched this one since you all disdain Creationist apologetic sources anyway. I'm venturing out on my own. Here they are:

#1 - what, if any other evidence denoting the age (eg. other footprints, plant or animal fossils might be present with the "dinosaur" prints?
#2 - exactly where is this coal deposit - what continent?
#3 - where can you demonstrate that any YEC'ist has claimed that NO significant changes to the surface of the planet occured after Noah touched dry land.
#4 - Can you prove that localized pockets of coal beds could not have formed rapidly
#5 - Can you substantiate any claim that might insinuate that major changes, halfway around the world would have prohibited the existence of life and the new civilzation begun by Noah.
#6 - Can you substantiate any claim that no coal formations existed as a result of natural events prior to the flood?
#7 - Can you disprove the possiblity that the North and South American continents were above water at the very same time Noah landed on Mt. Ararrat?

I'll start with that for now. But to give you a hint where I'm heading with this: There is documented historical evidence that at one time since colonization of Great Britain that the English Channel was dry and G.B. was not an island. I'll let you speculate on that for a bit. This will apply to my rebuttal and directly relates to the answers to questions #3, #5 and #7.

 

[grmorton]

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here, before I take my wife out on a date. I have not researched this, and I have no earthly idea what any other opinion on the matter is, so I am going to risk "naively" comment off the top of my head, both on the ridiculous assumption made in the quote above and why I think it is demonstrative proof that TE'ists are nearly delusional in the lopsided attempt to jump at any straw to disprove the Biblical account of the flood.



First the comment: You claim this is "evidence that falsifies" the flood account - how readily you jump to conclusions. Yet in the same article, you list some specific scenarios that might account for the occurence within the YEC framework - albiet not to your satisfaction. How exactly can you make such a presumptuous claim that the mere existence of the evidence, alone disproves anything? Many assumptions must be made on your part -many which of course you conveniently left out. One of them that you did manage to mention is:

"The key to getting this point is that the YEC flood geology is based on the idea that all the layers in the geologic column were laid down by the Flood".​

This is simple false! I'm afraid I'm calling your bluff on this misrepresentation now and it's time you back up your claim. I want to see proof of this conclusion since I've never seen it mentioned before on any creationist venue.

Well, then you don't read carefully the Creationist literature.

"Therefore, it is now becoming a cause for concern that a growing number of young-earth creationists are seemingly about to repeat the mistakes and compromises of the past, arguing that the Biblical Flood cannot really explain the geological record after all. Some are concluding that the Tertiary formations are to be attributed to a number of post-Flood geological catastrophes, and some are even alleging that the Flood can only account for the Paleozoic rocks, or maybe not even all of these. Some are also suggesting that at least a portion of the fossiliferous Proterozoic rocks, were laid down by episodic events of some kind before the Flood.

"If such equivocations continue, the Flood itself will eventually be used only to account for the marine strata of the Cambrian and Ordovician 'periods.' Sooner or later difficulties will be found even in these, and the Flood will once again (as so often in the past) be explained away as only a tranquil flood or a local flood. Some (e.g. Davis Young, Glen Morton) have already gone this whole route, starting out not too many years ago as full‑fledged Flood geologists but then allowing supposed geological difficulties gradually to relegate the Flood to only a trivial part , if any, of the geologic column." ~ Henry M. Morris, "The Geologic Column and the Flood of Genesis", Creation Research Society Quarterly 33:1(June, 1996), p. 50

This is clearly an attack on Kurt Wise, Steve Austin and Andrew Snelling for their 1994 ICC paper where they put the post flood boundary at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. But the fact remains that if YEC can't explain the geologic column, the 50,000 feet of Tertiary sediment beneath New Orleans, then it can't have a young earth. It would take hundreds of millions of years for the Mississippi River to bring the sediment we see in the Gulf, to the Gulf.

Morris continues:

There is, therefore, no real evidence that the entire geologic column (to the extent that it actually exists) could not have been formed in a single worldwide complex of catastrophes extending over a relatively short duration of time, finally comprising a unique hydraulic/volcanic/tectonic cataclysm. This of course, is also what the Bible teaches." ~ Henry M. Morris, "The Geologic Column and the Flood of Genesis", Creation Research Society Quarterly 33:1(June, 1996), p. 54-55

John says the same thing

“At the very least, it did what all flood do, eroding some areas and redepositing the eroded material elsewhere as sediments. The sediments were be full of plants nad animals that died in the Flood. If Noah’s Flood happened the way the Bible says it happened, then modern-day sedimentary rocks containing fossils are its result.” John Morris,The Young Earth, (Colorado Springs: Master Books, 1994), p. 123

And in the granddaddy of all creationist books, The Genesis Flood Whitcomb and Morris say:

That the Flood was universal and was responsible for the major geologic formations of the earth was accepted almost without question in the western world during that period.” John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, (Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse, 1961), p. 91

“Never since the world was formed could there ever have been such extensive erosion of soil and rock beds, on a global scale, as during the Genesis Flood. And the materials that were eroded must eventually have been redeposited somewhere, and necessarily in stratified layers, such as we find everywhere around the world today in the great sedimentary rock systems.” John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, (Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse, 1961), p.123

And the entire chapter A Scriptural Framework for Historical Geology, goes through each age and explains how it fits into the Flood. Your rejection of Vance's statement is flawed.

 

[California Tim]

And the entire chapter A Scriptural Framework for Historical Geology, goes through each age and explains how it fits into the Flood. Your rejection of Vance's statement is flawed.

It appears I stand corrected on that issue. But then I also saw within the article, a reference to other YEC"ists who at one time or another did not accept that explanation both in the past and now. In my case, I have to wonder what traces the initial creation of the earth (out of chaos) would have left behind in the geologic column. Much of the surface world was and has been water. Doesn't it stand to reason that many layers might have been laid down in the process of raising the land from the water? But that is a relatively moot point because we are still left with ample reason to accept the worldwide literal Genesis flood in either case.

 

[grmorton]

It appears I stand corrected on that issue. But then I also saw within the article, a reference to other YEC"ists who at one time or another did not accept that explanation both in the past and now. In my case, I have to wonder what traces the initial creation of the earth (out of chaos) would have left behind in the geologic column. Much of the surface world was and has been water. Doesn't it stand to reason that many layers might have been laid down in the process of raising the land from the water? But that is a relatively moot point because we are still left with ample reason to accept the worldwide literal Genesis flood in either case.

No it doesn't stand to reason that the sediments 'might have been laid down'. You have to explain why in varves the pollen varies cyclically within one varve and varies as the season of blooming.

Try Lake Suigetsu which is an annual varve lake in Japan. This is from my web page on the topic:

Why Radiocarbon dating works--Lake Suigetsu

In 1998 I ran across an article on the internet talking about a Japanese lake which had calibrated Carbon-14 dating back to 43,000 years ago. The article said

Bottom of Lake Refines Carbon Dating Technique

By Kenneth Chang
ABCNEWS.com
Feb. 23 - Each spring, tiny plants bloom in Lake Suigetsu, a small body of water in Japan. When these one?cell algae die, they drift down, shrouding the lake floor with a thin, white layer.
The rest of the year, dark clay sediments settle on the bottom. The alternating layers of dark and light count the years like tree rings. That has allowed scientists to fine?tune a technique called carbon-14 dating, which is used to pin down dates for artifacts tens of thousands of years old. "http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/dailynews/carbon0220.html [I don't know if this is still out there]

Anyway, I got the Science article to see what they were talking about. It is H. Kitagawa and J. van der Plicht, "Atmospheric Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B. P.: Late Glacial Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production," Science 279(1998):1187-1190 and the picture below comes from that paper.

Here is the line of logic which shows that C14 works.
1. We see the Lake bloom with algae every year, today.
2. we see the algae die and make a white layer on the lake bottom.
3. We have no reason to think that the white layers are formed in any other way.
4. we see one white layer per year.

With this, we can then count the white layers to get what year the white layer was deposited. There are 100,000 of them in the lake (which presents its own problem for YEC apart from carbon 14)

Since the white layer is organic, we can carbon date it to see the age. Below is the picture of the dating. Clearly, carbon 14 and the white layer count come out pretty closely. If anything, however, the C14 is giving a slightly younger age than the white layer actually is. Because of this, we can know that carbon 14 works. Any explanation from the silent young-earth creationists?

I want the young-earthers to know in their heart of hearts that they can't explain this data. And if they can't explain the data, it means that they can't have the correct model of the earth history. Any explanation from the silent young-earth creationists?
**end of web page.

I have attached two pictures. One is the count of varves vs. the carbon-14 dates. The second is a picture of the white layers from a core in Lake Suigetsu.


And ask yourself WHY the kind of data I am showing you doesn't appear in the pages of Creation, CRSQ or other young-earth literature? Your leaders are not telling you what is out there in the geologic record.

You still have to answer things like why animals were walking around from one end of the geologic column to the other. When is there evidence of animals being killed off and NOT walking around.

 

[California Tim]

Here is the line of logic which shows that C14 works.
1. We see the Lake bloom with algae every year, today.
2. we see the algae die and make a white layer on the lake bottom.
3. We have no reason to think that the white layers are formed in any other way.
4. we see one white layer per year.

Are you able to conclusively rule out the possibility of multiple layers (blooms) annually throughout history? Would a global climate change have any effect on the number of times the algae might bloom for example? At least you are honest when you state: "We have no reason to think that the white layers are formed in any other way." Of course this simply states the obvious. You feel confident in your assumption but there is always a potential error.

 

[grmorton]

Are you able to conclusively rule out the possibility of multiple layers (blooms) annually throughout history? Would a global climate change have any effect on the number of times the algae might bloom for example? At least you are honest when you state: "We have no reason to think that the white layers are formed in any other way." Of course this simply states the obvious. You feel confident in your assumption but there is always a potential error.

Your approach to anything that conflicts with your viewpoint is disturbing. You constantly wriggle around looking for even the tiniest escape hatch. That is not the way one honestly faces up to data and contradiction.
What you have is not any real rational reason to reject the layering but you have a hope that there might be somewhere sometime an answer. If that is your response, you will dig yourself deeper and deeper into self-delusion. Is this the way the Christ would have us deal with problems--acting like a lawyer explaining why the blood on the hands of his client MIGHT be due to the suicidal victim throwing blood at the man? Sure, it might be but those 19 stab wounds in the back don't easily fit into the picture.

I note that you didn't address a really fundamental issue here. Why do you think your YEC leadership never shows you this kind of stuff? Why do they never prepare people like you for people like me?

 

[Vance]

This is also close the "God of the gaps" dilemma. At a given point in history, we are sure about a number of things, suspect others, but are not yet sure, and have no clue about yet other areas. What some Creationists do is insist that God must be in those "gaps" in our current knowledge. He is the explanation for X, since we do not yet have a natural explanation. The problem with this is that when we DO find a natural explantion for X, and are sure about it, then it has the effect of actually damaging the Christian position in the eyes of the World.

Personally, I do think that there IS one gap that God MUST fit in and that is in the role of God. Beyond that, I am not going to insist that just because I am not sure how something happens that it must be God working directly. Yes, He may indeed fit, as a direct supernatural causitive force, in one or more of the basic "gaps" in our knowledge, whether it be abiogenesis or the Big Bang, etc. But I am just as comfortable with God letting almost everything happen via natural processes that HE developed and designed and which fit His ultimate purpose.

In this sense, God is more than just in a particular "gap", He is in every part of His creation, every process, every development, every event.

 

[fossilman]

I'd like to try to answer some of the questions posed by CA Tim.

#1 - what, if any other evidence denoting the age (eg. other footprints, plant or animal fossils might be present with the "dinosaur" prints?

Fossil pollen from the coal itself, and fossil leaves from the layers above the coal confirm a Cretaceous age.

#2 - exactly where is this coal deposit - what continent?

Carbon County, Utah, U.S.A., North American continent

#3 - where can you demonstrate that any YEC'ist has claimed that NO significant changes to the surface of the planet occured after Noah touched dry land.

I believe that grmorton answered this.

#4 - Can you prove that localized pockets of coal beds could not have formed rapidly

For coal to be formed rapidly, you'd need both a high source of heat and/or pressure. We know that very small pockets of very high rank coal can be produced next to ignious intrusions. I guess this counts as formed rapidly, but probably not in the way you meant.

#5 - Can you substantiate any claim that might insinuate that major changes, halfway around the world would have prohibited the existence of life and the new civilzation begun by Noah.
Not really sure what was meant here, sorry.

#6 - Can you substantiate any claim that no coal formations existed as a result of natural events prior to the flood?

No, because we can't substantiate that there was a flood.

#7 - Can you disprove the possiblity that the North and South American continents were above water at the very same time Noah landed on Mt. Ararrat?

I think that you're trying to put dinosaurs in North American at the same time Noah was landing on Ararrat. According to the bible, all animals not on the ark would be dead, thus unable to leave footprints.

Arguing for the flood using geologic data is a pretty precarious task. It should probably be avoided.

 

[Vance]

Any more thoughts from YEC's in support of a global flood?