Creation versus Evolution - Darwinist commenters are the gift that keeps on giving!
This post will be an answer to some comments made recently and hopefully put an end to some misinformation people apparently learn in schools these days, to their detriment. Darwinism is so incredibly stupid, but so many people believe it that most do not question it and have no idea that it is not based on evidence. In fact, the evidence all around us shouts out for a Universe created and an Earth that experienced a global flood and organisms that are intricately designed with redundancies that put NASA to shame and pre-existing genetic materials to adjust to a wide variety of conditions. Organisms are prepared in advance for multitudes of contingencies and so they speciate, not evolve, when conditions change. Mutations are not creators, they are killers. Mutations are building up in the human population and frankly we will need some breakthroughs in the study of DNA to learn how to fix what is broken before humanity dies out...although as a Christian I am sure God will put an end to this existence before that happens.
As I have shared before, some of my creationist friends have asked me why I allow all the anonymous commenters to have freedom to disagree with me, call me names, call me a liar or stupid or just make dumb remarks? Well, I am a First Amendment kind of guy, for one thing, and as long as commenters do not use profanity they will be free to say what they will. Besides, I figure the reader will read my post if they make it down to the comments and the contrast between my reasoned posts and the unreasonable comments should be easily detected.
I have many readers who agree with me and like my posts. Usually those are the people who do not leave comments, other than the occasional "Atta boy" and that is always appreciated! I am blessed to know a few creation scientists and a few creation bloggers and be acquainted with many more. A very fine group of people who are a tremendous encouragement and most of them doing more and better work than what I do here at Radaractive. But we all in some sense are working together towards the goal of spreading truth, swimming against the current, doing our part.
It used to be more interesting because there were some commenters who seriously seemed to undertake the job of converting me from my stated position. The back and forth in the comment threads got interesting for awhile. Dan S. was one of my favorites. He would write long, rambling and often humorous comments and we would dialogue. But he gave up on me. He and I disagreed on various points, courtesy included, and it was actually pleasurable. Just read this post and the comments thread as an example!
One small side note on one of my posts included an equation from a work by John Hartnett. One of the commenters assailed me for posting garbage math and began a mass attack on my veracity because I had posted it. I reached out to an engineer friend of mine, who checked the math and said it was perfectly fine. But several Darwinist commenters railed on me for some time until I got additional backup and proved to my satisfaction that Hartnett was right and one commenter who goes by scohen was wrong. Cohen then pretended he had not said what he said and, even when I reprinted his remarks he still denied them! A couple of regular commenters left during that snafu. But there are a few that remain.
NOW THE COMMENTERS SPEAK AND I ANSWER!
Jon W said...
The fossil record simply doesn't support flood geology, and anyone who has actually studied the rocks in detail knows that. Everywhere that geologists have looked, fossils are found in the same sequence, unless something has happened to reorder the rock layers. Cambrian is always below Ordovician, which is always below Silurian, which is always below Devonian. One never, ever finds a Silurian layer atop an Eocene layer, and both overlain by a Cretaceous layer.
Sorting by floodwaters always separates animals of different sizes and shapes, because they float and drift in different ways. But in the rocks, each geologic period has its own set of fossils, which always appear together despite being drastically different in size, shape, diet, and habitat. Dinosaurs are never found outside Mesozoic strata, while advanced mammals are never found outside of Cenozoic rocks.
Sorry, but actually such things do happen. In fact we have found dinosaurs with birds in their stomachs, mammals with dinosaurs in theirs, and many sites with saltwater and freshwater animals along with land-dwelling creatures and plants all mixed in together. This post, below, also is pertinent to another commenter's question further down. But to say that different types of animals have NOT been found together is a lie. It is common for animals to herd together in times of distress. Before an earthquake people living out in the boondocks have reported seeing various groups of animals traveling out in the open unlike the norm. But something like a forest fire can cause mixes of animals all fleeing and we do find mixes in the fossil record, just not as often as the normal case of like animals staying generally together.
There are several factors involved in fossils being formed. Sudden anoxic burial is needed by some means, usually flood driven sedimentary layers, sometimes a loess storm and also quite a few insects found themselves trapped in amber (something that supports the floating mats hypothesis). Organisms likely to be swept away by the currents may not be buried anoxically and therefore not preserved. Organisms living near mankind would have been less likely to be preserved because God specifically determined to wipe out the existing civilization so it is likely that domesticated animals would be less likely to live. Otherwise, heavier bottom-dwelling sea life would be buried in place. Fortunately the fickle nature of floods would leave areas of sea bottom relatively free of deposits so that the population of bottom-dwellers was not completely wiped out.
Organisms like birds would find themselves blown out of the sky and killed. This was a storm that did not end in a day. Larger and smarter organisms would be headed for high ground and live for a while longer. We do find dinosaur and man tracks together, albeit rarely, so men who survived the initial days of the Noahic Flood would have been, like the dinosaurs, doing whatever they could to live for as long as possible.
More to the point, Jon, is how did fossils get preserved with parts of them pristine and parts gnawed on? As to the Flood, it did begin with 40 days and nights of rain and many associated events, but the entire world was not covered completely right away and was completely covered for 150 days of the just over one year of the Flood period. For a fossil to be preserved requires very unusual conditions and we rarely encounter fossils being formed today. Why? Because they are carrion and there are all sorts of organisms designed to completely recycle dead bodies. Again, where are all the opossum fossils by the roadsides?
With tides happening twice daily during the earlier days of the Flood, hungry animals might find a portion of an animal sticking out of the mud and gnaw on it. Then comes another wave of water and sediments and that scavenged fossil is now completely covered with the evidence of a partial burial before total burial saved in the rocks.
The Coconino Sandstone formation has many footprints of dinosaurs and amphibians that were puzzling to science until we discerned that they were made by animals being overcome by water.
Sigh. All of these questions are found answered on my blog. Since volcanic activity was apparently a large part of the Noahic Flood, evidence of volcanic activity interspersed with sedimentary layers is expected and the thrusts of igneous rock through recently laid sediment would also be expected.
Trees are found in the highest layers most often because...wait for it...trees FLOAT in water! The huge numbers of petrified forestation and polystrates are generally found without branches or roots. Sometimes they are upside down or sideways and often found going through many layers of sediment. Spirit Lake in Washington is associated with the Mt St Helens volcanic explosion. We are able to see in real time as trees, stripped of most if not all branches and roots float in mineral-rich water, then tilt and sink down (usually vertically) and hit bottom. If waves of sediment were being laid on a regular basis, such trees would be buried in layers once they were no longer buoyant.
We know that flowering plants and trees had to exist at the same time the "earliest" insects that are interdependent or symbiotic with them. But trees and plants were often picked up and carried away and exposed to conditions that could begin to degrade them. Bottom-dwelling sea life mostly got buried with no notice at all and most perished. But flood flows are very interesting, with the possiblity of both fresh and salt water streams within the overall flooded ocean. Modern rivers such as the Amazon and Mississippi send streams of freshwater hundreds of miles into the oceans.
Egg-laying animals will tend to do two things in times of great stress - lay any eggs they have at the moment in haste (which is why we often find groups of eggs with no embryos because they were laid before they were ready) or hold the eggs in hopes of a better chance later on. When this happens these eggs will develop a second shell, a shell that could be too thick for the hatchling to break out and live. Both of these kinds of eggs are found in the fossil records. In a world where the waters keep rising, the air is filled with ash from volcanoes and rain and dinosaurs are continually running back and forth seeking ground, eggs laid in haste are no surprise. Nor is it a surprise that dinosaurs might leave and return to a safer area to lay the eggs they have before being overwhelmed by the Flood.
Anonymous said...
As I have shared before, some of my creationist friends have asked me why I allow all the anonymous commenters to have freedom to disagree with me, call me names, call me a liar or stupid or just make dumb remarks? Well, I am a First Amendment kind of guy, for one thing, and as long as commenters do not use profanity they will be free to say what they will. Besides, I figure the reader will read my post if they make it down to the comments and the contrast between my reasoned posts and the unreasonable comments should be easily detected.
"If Darwinists’ beliefs are so fragile that they worry exposure to alternative viewpoints is intolerable, then their beliefs are not worth believing."
I have many readers who agree with me and like my posts. Usually those are the people who do not leave comments, other than the occasional "Atta boy" and that is always appreciated! I am blessed to know a few creation scientists and a few creation bloggers and be acquainted with many more. A very fine group of people who are a tremendous encouragement and most of them doing more and better work than what I do here at Radaractive. But we all in some sense are working together towards the goal of spreading truth, swimming against the current, doing our part.
It used to be more interesting because there were some commenters who seriously seemed to undertake the job of converting me from my stated position. The back and forth in the comment threads got interesting for awhile. Dan S. was one of my favorites. He would write long, rambling and often humorous comments and we would dialogue. But he gave up on me. He and I disagreed on various points, courtesy included, and it was actually pleasurable. Just read this post and the comments thread as an example!
The Philosophy of Evolutionists versus Creationists
One small side note on one of my posts included an equation from a work by John Hartnett. One of the commenters assailed me for posting garbage math and began a mass attack on my veracity because I had posted it. I reached out to an engineer friend of mine, who checked the math and said it was perfectly fine. But several Darwinist commenters railed on me for some time until I got additional backup and proved to my satisfaction that Hartnett was right and one commenter who goes by scohen was wrong. Cohen then pretended he had not said what he said and, even when I reprinted his remarks he still denied them! A couple of regular commenters left during that snafu. But there are a few that remain.
NOW THE COMMENTERS SPEAK AND I ANSWER!
Well, at least you're consistent, Radar. You were just as wrong six years ago as you are today. I suppose that counts for something.
Thanks, Jon. Consistency is a hallmark of good character. It would be more accurate to say I am just as right as I was actually seven years ago, but that would be somewhat untrue. I have learned a lot these last seven years so actually I am MORE right than I was then.
The fossil record simply doesn't support flood geology, and anyone who has actually studied the rocks in detail knows that. Everywhere that geologists have looked, fossils are found in the same sequence, unless something has happened to reorder the rock layers. Cambrian is always below Ordovician, which is always below Silurian, which is always below Devonian. One never, ever finds a Silurian layer atop an Eocene layer, and both overlain by a Cretaceous layer.
No, Jon, the standard geological column is basically fictional. We actually DO find out-of-order (to a Darwinist) layers all the time. We also regularly find missing ones. You could do a "rock layers out of order" search on this blog to see how wrong you really are and this includes the Grand Canyon. To save readers time, a few examples:
Toppling the Darwinist Geological Column. Part one. Is there a standard geological column?
Rocks on the ground and rocks in their heads - Uniformitarianism
An Overview of Creation Science Flood Models
Sorting by floodwaters always separates animals of different sizes and shapes, because they float and drift in different ways. But in the rocks, each geologic period has its own set of fossils, which always appear together despite being drastically different in size, shape, diet, and habitat. Dinosaurs are never found outside Mesozoic strata, while advanced mammals are never found outside of Cenozoic rocks.
Darwinists cannot explain huge chalk layers found around the world but Creationists can! FYI!
Darwinists lack knowledge and understanding. Don't be fooled! You can learn and think for yourself!
This is an unfortunate lie, the idea that fossils stick to their layers assigned by Darwinists. While I cannot know if Jon believes it or not, I know it is not true. First, every single body type has been found in Cambrian rocks. Second and more important, the idea that all creatures are always found in the same layers is preposterous! Lazarus Taxa are living proof that this is a canard! A Darwinist either has to believe that these creatures (and we identify more of them every month probably) went extinct and then reformed very recently, or they must abandon their sequential organism myth entirely. Did you know that Cambrian trilobites have been demonstrated to have some of the most advanced eyes ever? How did the best eyes appear suddenly in Cambrian rock and then vanish? Also, recently Darwinists found fossils of a predatory Cambrian arthropod and didn't realize they had discovered a variety of Mantis Shrimp, which are still around and also have amazing eyesight far superior to ours. How did the Coelecanth avoid fossil layers for millions of years and then reappear? How is it that various organisms like the octopus and the crocodile or the dragonfly manage to remain pretty much unchanged for supposedly millions of years and yet here they are now? Why did we find dragonflies in supposedly "ancient" rocks and then the disappear only to be commonplace now?
Since paleontologists are generally Darwinists, they are in charge of the majority of fossil finds in the world. There are stories of fossils being dumped in the ocean because they were contrary to the ruling paradigm, the very real destruction of a footprint of dinosaur and human together being hammered to pieces in the Paluxy riverbed area of Texas. More have been found since, so that was wasted effort. Since Darwinists use circular reasoning to date fossils by layers and layers by fossils, they kept the folly going for quite awhile. However, we now know about actual flesh found in supposedly millions of years old fossils and that cat is out of the bag, so now we hear of this more often. Thanks to Mary S. and her T. Rex, others have stepped forward and revealed remains rather than mineralized fossils.
Out of place objects!
Is every single object found in coal from the time of original deposit? In the early days of coal mining, miners were supposedly used to finding pots and kettles and such and simply took them home. After all, if you believed in the Noahic Flood, what would be surprising about finding a manmade item in a seam of coal? Recently Darwinism has become a common belief system, so sometimes an item found in coal or rock makes the news. How about just recently, for instance? The Russian press decided anything found in "300 million year old coal" must be from a space alien?! No, NADA, NYET, this was just another sign that mankind was pretty well advanced before the Flood and a few finds in coal and rock show up from time to time.
The Russian view of a machinery part found in coal!
Out of place fossils!
Out of place objects!
Is every single object found in coal from the time of original deposit? In the early days of coal mining, miners were supposedly used to finding pots and kettles and such and simply took them home. After all, if you believed in the Noahic Flood, what would be surprising about finding a manmade item in a seam of coal? Recently Darwinism has become a common belief system, so sometimes an item found in coal or rock makes the news. How about just recently, for instance? The Russian press decided anything found in "300 million year old coal" must be from a space alien?! No, NADA, NYET, this was just another sign that mankind was pretty well advanced before the Flood and a few finds in coal and rock show up from time to time.
The Russian view of a machinery part found in coal!
Out of place fossils!
Sorting by floodwaters generally brings animals of similar size and shape together, because they respond to the floodwaters the same way. But we never find sauropod dinosaurs mixed with elephants, or either one mixed with brontotheres. We never find rhamphorhychoid pterosaurs with neornithine birds. Dolphins are never found with ichthyosaurs, nor whales with pliosaurs, despite inhabiting similar niches in similar habitats. Trilobites are never found with modern flatfish.
There are several factors involved in fossils being formed. Sudden anoxic burial is needed by some means, usually flood driven sedimentary layers, sometimes a loess storm and also quite a few insects found themselves trapped in amber (something that supports the floating mats hypothesis). Organisms likely to be swept away by the currents may not be buried anoxically and therefore not preserved. Organisms living near mankind would have been less likely to be preserved because God specifically determined to wipe out the existing civilization so it is likely that domesticated animals would be less likely to live. Otherwise, heavier bottom-dwelling sea life would be buried in place. Fortunately the fickle nature of floods would leave areas of sea bottom relatively free of deposits so that the population of bottom-dwellers was not completely wiped out.
Organisms like birds would find themselves blown out of the sky and killed. This was a storm that did not end in a day. Larger and smarter organisms would be headed for high ground and live for a while longer. We do find dinosaur and man tracks together, albeit rarely, so men who survived the initial days of the Noahic Flood would have been, like the dinosaurs, doing whatever they could to live for as long as possible.
More of that irritating Evidence for Creation and against Evolution
And then there are the more specific details...
Paleosols (preserved soil layers) take time to form -- years at the least. The Flood supposedly happened in less than one year. So why do we find paleosols in the middle of the supposedly Flood-deposited rocks?
Some fossils are found weathered and scavenged, indicating they were exposed to the elements and to scavengers before they were buried. What scavengers had time or energy to scavenge in the middle of those roaring floodwaters?
With tides happening twice daily during the earlier days of the Flood, hungry animals might find a portion of an animal sticking out of the mud and gnaw on it. Then comes another wave of water and sediments and that scavenged fossil is now completely covered with the evidence of a partial burial before total burial saved in the rocks.
The Coconino Sandstone formation has many footprints of dinosaurs and amphibians that were puzzling to science until we discerned that they were made by animals being overcome by water.
The Grand Canyon as evidence for the Flood? Yep!
Sadly, many of the pictures no longer load, so you have to go looking to find them now. More on those footprints are found here:
Real Science should welcome Young Earth Creationists (Young Age Creationists)
Time for Ian Juby to join in:
We find fossiliferous rocks in between layers of igneous rocks, indicating that the area was covered by lava, then recolonized by plants and animals, then covered by lava again. All this in just the few months of the Flood?
Advanced flowering trees always appear in Cretaceous and higher rocks. How did they outrun the dinosaurs of the Jurassic to higher ground?
We find nesting colonies of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and birds preserved in the fossil record. How did these animals make multiple layers of nests in the few short months of the Flood?
As always, no answer was the sad reply...
Trees are found in the highest layers most often because...wait for it...trees FLOAT in water! The huge numbers of petrified forestation and polystrates are generally found without branches or roots. Sometimes they are upside down or sideways and often found going through many layers of sediment. Spirit Lake in Washington is associated with the Mt St Helens volcanic explosion. We are able to see in real time as trees, stripped of most if not all branches and roots float in mineral-rich water, then tilt and sink down (usually vertically) and hit bottom. If waves of sediment were being laid on a regular basis, such trees would be buried in layers once they were no longer buoyant.
We know that flowering plants and trees had to exist at the same time the "earliest" insects that are interdependent or symbiotic with them. But trees and plants were often picked up and carried away and exposed to conditions that could begin to degrade them. Bottom-dwelling sea life mostly got buried with no notice at all and most perished. But flood flows are very interesting, with the possiblity of both fresh and salt water streams within the overall flooded ocean. Modern rivers such as the Amazon and Mississippi send streams of freshwater hundreds of miles into the oceans.
Egg-laying animals will tend to do two things in times of great stress - lay any eggs they have at the moment in haste (which is why we often find groups of eggs with no embryos because they were laid before they were ready) or hold the eggs in hopes of a better chance later on. When this happens these eggs will develop a second shell, a shell that could be too thick for the hatchling to break out and live. Both of these kinds of eggs are found in the fossil records. In a world where the waters keep rising, the air is filled with ash from volcanoes and rain and dinosaurs are continually running back and forth seeking ground, eggs laid in haste are no surprise. Nor is it a surprise that dinosaurs might leave and return to a safer area to lay the eggs they have before being overwhelmed by the Flood.
Anonymous said...
If a global flood had taken place, we would expect one layer, fairly toward the bottom, that would be heavily dominated by fossilized trees etc. As Jon pointed out, the trees don't outrun the animals. Animals may try to escape in different ways, but plants are rooted to the ground. Even if some of them are uprooted, the vast, vast majority would be caught in place where they are.
You drastically underestimate the violence of the Flood. If a piddly little tsunami like the ones that hit in Indonesia and Japan could uproot trees, houses, cars and so on, how could a worldwide flood fail to uproot trees? The vast majority of trees would remain in place? With rapid tectonic plate subduction, flood tides twice daily, volcanoes erupting and earthquakes associated with them, it is actually amazing so many animals made it to higher ground and found a few weeks of harried existence. We would not expect any trees to remain rooted in place at all anywhere.
And here we would expect - if there were any truth at all to the global flood scenario - to see all kinds of plants in one place. The plants that paleontologists assign to different ages (because that's where we happen to find them in the fossil record, a logical conclusion) would all be found in the same layer.
This is something we categorically NEVER see. Do YECs have any plausible explanation for this?
Of course not.
Of course we do. Plants would, like the trees, be likely to be uprooted and wind up floating or rotting. It is believed that giant mats of trees and plants would be formed and very possibly some vertebrates found refuge there for awhile. But like a sailor alone at sea, no food or fresh water eventually would be their demise if they were able to withstand the waves, which is problematic.
Funny how we so often find land and sea creatures buried in the same area of fossil rocks. Were trees fishing for clams? Did dragonflies go fishing for shrimp and bring them back to the land? In fact, why do we find so many clams and other bivalves and trilobites buried in the living position? You do know that bivalves will open when they die? Yet I have walked over layers of shellfish that were too numerous to count, all with almost no exception closed, which means they were buried alive and covered up before they could even open!
In fact, studying carefully the rock layers of Southern Indiana, I found layers of shellfish buried alive that extended for miles, exposed by creeks here and there, otherwise buried under other layers and the surface soils. But by careful orienteering one could determine that the same fossil rock layers found in one area were exposed again miles away with the same fossils.
The limestone common to Indiana and Illiinois is in a layer that is at times remarkably thick and would be in total milllions of tons of rock. Workers in gravel pits see fossils all the time. I know an area of Illinois where so-called "ancient" rock layers are right below the surface soils. There are places you cannot go down more than three or four feet and hit that limestone with the typical Cambrian fossils in them. I have found so many crinoids I could have built a house with the rocks, replacing bricks, had I the time and skill set. Trilobites are found withn a few feet of the topsoil. Where did the untold millions of years go, where did all those ages go? Did that part of Illinois exist 350 million years ago and then go away only to come back, kind of like the Greenleaf Damselfly? To give Gregg a platform:
Another thing for you to ponder? After the Flood we have mudrock everywhere, shifting formations leading to mudslides and burial post-Flood. The conditions right after the Flood would be just right for massive snowstorms near the poles, piling up layers of snow that became glaciation and eventually an ice cap that extended hundreds of miles from the poles and thus came the Ice Age. With vast amounts of warm water pouring off of the emerging continents into the new oceans, there would be a lot of clouds forming and precipitation as snow would inundate the landforms near the poles. North American and Europe-Asia were evidently rapidly populated with animals and people soon after the end of the Flood and the snows continued and the winters got longer and colder. The animals speciated to include only the long-furred forms at those locations, some of them going extinct from the changing conditions and predation.
Remember what Americans did to the herds of bison that were so massive that early settlers noted that they filled the plains as far as the eye could see? We wiped them almost completely out! Well, it would not be just the weather that wiped out the bigger specimens of vegetarian beasts and the more dangerous predators like the remaining dinosaurs, it was man who killed them off. We found it easy to kill off bison and necessary to kill off cougars. Had mankind not decided to preserve bison and mountain lions they would both be extinct by now for differing reasons. There was no one concerned with the preservation of dinosaurs in the first millennium after the Flood. Sabre-tooth tigers were a danger and so were allosaurs or whatever Grindel happened to be. Remember, we have countless records and drawings and carvings of extinct animals, including all sorts of dinosaurs. Reports from the Congo, Suriname and Papua New Guinea are that there may be a few holdouts still?
Your ancestors lived with dinosaurs. A few posts to pique your interest and perhaps begin a journey of discovery?
Beowulf, Grendel and a preponderance of dinosaurs
Behemoths and Leviathans and Dragons, oh my!
You drastically underestimate the violence of the Flood. If a piddly little tsunami like the ones that hit in Indonesia and Japan could uproot trees, houses, cars and so on, how could a worldwide flood fail to uproot trees? The vast majority of trees would remain in place? With rapid tectonic plate subduction, flood tides twice daily, volcanoes erupting and earthquakes associated with them, it is actually amazing so many animals made it to higher ground and found a few weeks of harried existence. We would not expect any trees to remain rooted in place at all anywhere.
And here we would expect - if there were any truth at all to the global flood scenario - to see all kinds of plants in one place. The plants that paleontologists assign to different ages (because that's where we happen to find them in the fossil record, a logical conclusion) would all be found in the same layer.
This is something we categorically NEVER see. Do YECs have any plausible explanation for this?
Of course not.
Of course we do. Plants would, like the trees, be likely to be uprooted and wind up floating or rotting. It is believed that giant mats of trees and plants would be formed and very possibly some vertebrates found refuge there for awhile. But like a sailor alone at sea, no food or fresh water eventually would be their demise if they were able to withstand the waves, which is problematic.
Funny how we so often find land and sea creatures buried in the same area of fossil rocks. Were trees fishing for clams? Did dragonflies go fishing for shrimp and bring them back to the land? In fact, why do we find so many clams and other bivalves and trilobites buried in the living position? You do know that bivalves will open when they die? Yet I have walked over layers of shellfish that were too numerous to count, all with almost no exception closed, which means they were buried alive and covered up before they could even open!
In fact, studying carefully the rock layers of Southern Indiana, I found layers of shellfish buried alive that extended for miles, exposed by creeks here and there, otherwise buried under other layers and the surface soils. But by careful orienteering one could determine that the same fossil rock layers found in one area were exposed again miles away with the same fossils.
The limestone common to Indiana and Illiinois is in a layer that is at times remarkably thick and would be in total milllions of tons of rock. Workers in gravel pits see fossils all the time. I know an area of Illinois where so-called "ancient" rock layers are right below the surface soils. There are places you cannot go down more than three or four feet and hit that limestone with the typical Cambrian fossils in them. I have found so many crinoids I could have built a house with the rocks, replacing bricks, had I the time and skill set. Trilobites are found withn a few feet of the topsoil. Where did the untold millions of years go, where did all those ages go? Did that part of Illinois exist 350 million years ago and then go away only to come back, kind of like the Greenleaf Damselfly? To give Gregg a platform:
Creation: Lazarus Taxa Come Forth!
Another thing for you to ponder? After the Flood we have mudrock everywhere, shifting formations leading to mudslides and burial post-Flood. The conditions right after the Flood would be just right for massive snowstorms near the poles, piling up layers of snow that became glaciation and eventually an ice cap that extended hundreds of miles from the poles and thus came the Ice Age. With vast amounts of warm water pouring off of the emerging continents into the new oceans, there would be a lot of clouds forming and precipitation as snow would inundate the landforms near the poles. North American and Europe-Asia were evidently rapidly populated with animals and people soon after the end of the Flood and the snows continued and the winters got longer and colder. The animals speciated to include only the long-furred forms at those locations, some of them going extinct from the changing conditions and predation.
Remember what Americans did to the herds of bison that were so massive that early settlers noted that they filled the plains as far as the eye could see? We wiped them almost completely out! Well, it would not be just the weather that wiped out the bigger specimens of vegetarian beasts and the more dangerous predators like the remaining dinosaurs, it was man who killed them off. We found it easy to kill off bison and necessary to kill off cougars. Had mankind not decided to preserve bison and mountain lions they would both be extinct by now for differing reasons. There was no one concerned with the preservation of dinosaurs in the first millennium after the Flood. Sabre-tooth tigers were a danger and so were allosaurs or whatever Grindel happened to be. Remember, we have countless records and drawings and carvings of extinct animals, including all sorts of dinosaurs. Reports from the Congo, Suriname and Papua New Guinea are that there may be a few holdouts still?
Your ancestors lived with dinosaurs. A few posts to pique your interest and perhaps begin a journey of discovery?
Beowulf, Grendel and a preponderance of dinosaurs
Behemoths and Leviathans and Dragons, oh my!