Geological Layers in Paleontology

According to Gary Parker in The Fossil Book, the geologic column represents the order in which things were buried during the flood. He also indicates that these layers roughly correspond to habitats starting with the sea-floor in the cambrian and going through swamps and jungles on the way up.

Now, there could be a good deal of scrambling during a catastrophic flood, but if this model is true then the Jurassic layer (for example) would represent a swampy jungle with plenty of ferns but no flowering plants. The Cretaceous would represent a similar jungle but include flowering plants.

I like the general idea of this model, but I have a few questions. First, what about sea animals like plesiosaurus that are found in the Cretaceous layer? Were they just open sea animals that happened to be buried here? Or were they really denizens of a swampy jungle? Or does this layer represent more than one habitat? Or is this layer arbitrarily identified by evolutionists with an agenda, and there really is no clear boundary for splitting fossils by layer?

All the evidence I have heard about fits with Parker's model, but I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts?

Tags: Fossils, column, geologic, habitats, layers

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Permalink Reply by David Thomas Posey on October 6, 2011 at 9:04pm

I do agree that weight/density would play a role in how deep something was buried, but since comparatively small animals such as clams and crinoids are supposedly found deeper in some areas than dinosaurs, I think habitat has to play a major role as well.

That brings up one question I asked earlier: since I have heard that the exact layering shown in the geologic column diagram occurs nowhere in the world, how many places do have a series of layers ranging from the supposedly older to the supposedly newer? If the sediment near the surface of a place has a good many animals typical of the Jurassic layer, and a person digs down under this, how many other geologic-column-layers can he hope to find?

Francis M Russell said:

I think that to get an understanding of the geologic column you have to look at it from at least two angles.

The first would be from a general point of view of how the Flood would have occurred and the dynamics involved on a universal level. Say you were sitting on the moon and had an outside view of the turmoil happening on the earth as first the flood waters rose with the rain lashing down and then, after the 40 day rain period came to end, of how the waters were receding during the remaining 10 or 11 months.

Of particular importance would be Gen 8:1-5 wherein (vs 1) God made a wind to blow over the earth (read waters), the abatement of the waters after 150 days (vs 3) and the continued receding of the waters until and even after the tops of the mountains were seen (vs 5).
I imagine there would in all probability be a variety of forces at work during this stage, such things as subduction, plate tectonics, mountain raising, valley deepening and non-linear pressure systems affected by varying flood depths at different points around the globe. Keep in mind that the dead and dying flora and fauna are within this water/soil/rock/vegetation matrix, swirling around within this matrix but at the same time being sorted according weight (the heavier sinking lower than the lighter), some caught within vegetation mats etc.

The second angle would be from a view within the flood itself, like cruising around in a sub and being able to go from one location to another. I envision that this view would be affected by a wide variety of conditions some of which we could not even imagine, but which nonetheless would greatly affect the layering of the various soil horizons and the deposition of the now mainly dead animals within them.

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Permalink Reply by Francis M Russell on October 7, 2011 at 4:01am

David, it is difficult to identify supposedly older layers from newer layers primarily because this type of layering does not exist in the real world, just like the non-existence of the geologic column.

Consider for a moment that the geologic column came about through interpretations based on uniformitarianism. The various layers called Jurassic, Cretaceous etc. came about as a result of trying to tie in certain fossils with certain rock layers. Whilst this had an advantage in enabling identification in stratigraphy its premise was founded on bad science, or at least on bad interpretation of scientific observances.

I think you are familiar with the circular reasoning that evolutionists’ use to identify fossil and rock ages and the confusion among the secular scientific forums this method of interpretation has wrought. If you strip the assumptions from the relevant scientific data on rock layers and fossils you will find that though layer A may contain more of one fossil than layer B in some locations, this is not fixed and is dependent on region. The fact that there are locations where so called index fossils are found out of place and in rock layers outside their evolutionary assigned ages confirm the bias underpinning such interpretations.

If you ask me, I think that a new and fresh approach is needed in identification of fossils and rocks that are NOT referenced to the false and misleading geologic column.

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Permalink Reply by Brian Guiley on October 7, 2011 at 12:28pm

Layering is different at different points, and it is debated if there is any point where the "whole column" can be found. There are areas where representative layers for each of the "eras" are all found together. As much as I hate referring there, Talk Origins has an article about the geologic column and a representative area with "all of the layers".

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Permalink Reply by Francis M Russell on October 13, 2011 at 3:18pm

Has anyone produced or tried to produce a geological column/columns based on what is actually there and what fossils are contained in them? I know that the layers vary from one place to another but is there some info out there that shows a general trend in the layering and what fossils may be found in each layer?

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brenneman on October 13, 2011 at 4:15pm

The strata have been examined rather selectively, and sequences are reported with a bias for evolution. Any fossils that don't agree are considered anomalies or intrusions.

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Permalink Reply by Francis M Russell on October 14, 2011 at 2:25am

That's the problem, Jim. It seems that the info available on the various geolgical layers is passed through the evolutionary filter. The difficulty/confusion is in trying to seperate the facts friom the fiction (evolutionary assumptions).

I was hoping there would be info devoid of this bias, info that sticks to what's been observed in situ and reported in an as impartial manner as possible so that an inquirer can make their own conclusions based on this "unbiased" data.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Brenneman on October 14, 2011 at 7:57am

Surely there are some articles in AiG or other resources? How about Snelling's new two-volume work?

Everyone talks about the "geological column" or the "Fossil Record," like there is someplace somewhere that it appears in some canyon somewhere, and everywhere exactly the same, from top to bottom right down to Cambrian and the lifeless bedrock below that, right down to the mantle of the earth. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. It doesn't exist.

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Permalink Reply by David Thomas Posey on October 14, 2011 at 11:02am

The latesst issue of Answers Magazine has a few articles which I believe discuss the "column" a bit, but I haven't had time to read them fully yet. It seems from what I've read so far that they endorse the theory I described in the initial post, and don't get into "misplaced fossils". I suppose the geologic column theory has been popular so long that there is little information that hasn't been filtered.

On one of those pesky evolutionist dinosaur shows I was watching the other day, they showed a map of all the places in America where dinosaur fossils have been found, and it looked like only about a third of the country contained any of these fossils. I would like to see a similar map showing other types of fossils.