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For many people, the fossil record is still believed to be “exhibit A” for evolution. Why? Because most geologists insist the sedimentary rock layers were deposited gradually over vast eons of time during which animals lived, died, and then were occasionally buried and fossilized. So when these fossilized animals (and plants) are found in the earth’s rock sequences in a particular order of first appearance, such as animals without backbones (invertebrates) in lower layers followed progressively upward by fish, then amphibians, reptiles, birds, and finally mammals (e.g., in the Colorado Plateau region of the United States), it is concluded, and thus almost universally taught, that this must have been the order in which these animals evolved during those vast eons of time.
However, in reality, it can only be dogmatically asserted that the fossil record is the record of the order in which animals and plants were buried and fossilized. Furthermore, the vast eons of time are unproven and unproveable, being based on assumptions about how quickly sedimentary rock layers were deposited in the unobserved past. Instead, there is overwhelming evidence that most of the sedimentary rock layers were deposited rapidly. Indeed, the impeccable state of preservation of most fossils requires the animals and plants to have been very rapidly buried, virtually alive, by vast amounts of sediments before decay could destroy delicate details of their appearance and anatomy. Thus, if most sedimentary rock layers were deposited rapidly over a radically short period of time, say in a catastrophic global flood, then the animals and plants buried and fossilized in those rock layers may well have all lived at about the same time and then have been rapidly buried progressively and sequentially.
Furthermore, the one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that when we find animals and plants fossilized together, they didn’t necessarily live together in the same environment or even die together, but they certainly were buried together, because that’s how we observe them today! This observational certainty is crucial to our understanding of the many claimed mass extinction events in the fossil record. Nevertheless, there is also evidence in some instances that the fossils found buried together may represent animals and plants that did once live together (see later).
Mass Extinctions
In the present world, when all remaining living members of a particular type of animal die, that animal (or plant) is said to have become extinct. Most scientists (incorrectly) regard the fossil record as a record of life in the geologic past. So, when in the upward progression of strata the fossils of a particular type of animal or plant stop occurring in the record and there are no more fossils of that animal or plant in the strata above, or any living representatives of that animal or plant, most scientists say that this particular creature went extinct many years ago. Sadly, there are many animals and plants that are extinct, and we only know they once existed because of their fossilized remains in the geologic record. Perhaps the most obvious and famous example is the dinosaurs.
There are distinctive levels in the fossil record where vast numbers of animals (and plants) are believed to have become extinct. Evolutionists claim that all these animals (and plants) must have died, been buried, and become extinct all at the same time. Since this pattern is seen in the geologic record all around the globe, they call these distinctive levels in the fossil record mass extinctions. Furthermore, because something must have happened globally to wipe out all those animals (and plants), the formation of these distinctive levels in the fossil record are called mass extinction events. However, in the context of catastrophic deposition of the strata containing these fossils, this pattern would be a preserved consequence of the Flood.
Now geologists have divided the geologic record into time periods, according to their belief in billions of years of elapsed time during which the sedimentary strata were deposited. Thus, those sedimentary strata that were supposedly deposited during a particular time period are so grouped and named accordingly. This is the origin of names such as Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and more.
There are some 17 mass extinction events in the fossil record recognized by geologists, from in the late Precambrian up until the late Neogene, “just before the dawn of written human history.” However, only eight of those are classed as major mass extinction events—end-Ordovician, late-Devonian, end-Permian, end-Triassic, early-Jurassic, end-Jurassic, middle-Cretaceous, and end-Cretaceous. Most people have probably heard about the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event, because that’s when the dinosaurs are supposed to have been wiped out, along with about a quarter of all the known families of animals. However, the end-Permian mass extinction event was even more catastrophic, because 75 percent of amphibian families and 80 percent of reptile families were supposedly wiped out then, along with 75 to 90 percent of all pre-existing species in the oceans.
Asteroid Impacts and Volcanic Eruptions
So what caused these mass extinction events? Evolutionary geologists are still debating the answer. The popularized explanation for the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event is that an asteroid hit the earth, generating choking dust clouds and giant tsunamis (so-called tidal waves) that decimated the globe and its climate, supposedly for a few million years. A layer of clay containing a chemical signature of an asteroid is pointed to in several places around the globe as one piece of evidence, and the 124-mile (200 km) wide Chicxulub impact crater in Mexico is regarded as “the scene of the crime.”
However, at the same level in the geologic record are the massive remains of catastrophic outpourings of staggering quantities of volcanic lavas over much of India, totally unlike any volcanic eruptions experienced in recent human history. The Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in 1991 blasted enough dust into the atmosphere to circle the globe and cool the following summer by 1–2°C, as well as gases which caused acid rain. Yet that eruption was only a tiny firecracker compared to the massive, catastrophic Indian eruption. Furthermore, volcanic dust has a similar chemical signature to that of an asteroid. Interestingly, even more enormous quantities of volcanic lavas are found in Siberia and coincide with the end-Permian mass extinction event.
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