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The Fossil Record

Fossils are found buried in sedimentary strata which we have already defined as rock layers laid down by water. How are fossils formed? They are formed very rapidly, very suddenly, under proper conditions. The conditions we find on the earth today are not conducive to the formation of fossils. No appreciable number of fossils are being formed today. The requirements are the proper amount of lime, sand or other sediment, the proper amount of pressure, some type of catastrophic event, and suitable cementing and fossilizing chemicals in the water.

The evolutionist, the one who accepts uniformitarian geology, (that means the one who believes that the present is the key to the past, i.e., that present earth processes can be projected back into the past to explain earth history) tells us that fossils were formed by local floods all over the earth, local cataclysms. He builds the geologic column or fossil record beginning with life on the simplest level which he calls the Cambrian period (which actually never really existed), supposedly 500 million years ago. As one continues upward through the rocks, finding more advanced fossil forms of life, one finally finds man evolving on the earth. According to his proposal of evolution one can determine the history of life on this earth by the fossil record. The strata are dated by the fossils they contain. We already talked about the circular reasoning involved in fossil dating.

Another misconception we often find in the geology textbook is the faulty assumption that we can find fossils in exactly the same order in the strata as the geology book shows, always with the simple forms of life on the bottom, always going up to more complex forms of life, and working up to the most recent layers where man is found. Unfortunately, that is not true. The Grand Canyon is one of the best examples of strata found anywhere in the earth, yet over half of the Grand Canyon, half of the geologic column is missing. Hike down the Grand Canyon, come to one of these areas of missing strata, and the geological theorists will say that is an unconformity.

Let me illustrate. Place a book on a table and call it a rock layer. Place another rock layer (book) right on top. In between we have a straight line as one book lies on top of the other. The problem in some of these areas where strata are missing is that if the evolutionary geologic time scale is correct and each layer represents a time period, you ought to have a period of time, another book so to speak, between the ones we are picturing. But that book of time is missing.

If erosion is responsible for wiping out the particular missing stratum there ought to be some irregularities, little hills and valleys left by the erosion. But again this evidence is missing. One strata is lying on top of another like two books. The evolutionist, the uniformitarian, calls that an unconformity. But the missing strata is only a part of the problem.

The real problems lie in how the geologist lays out the geological column. He does not find it anywhere on earth in the order found in the textbook. Again he uses the "scientific principle" of circular reasoning. He says the evolutionist has already proved how life has evolved and therefore when simple forms of life are found they must have been first. So he obtains strata from Arizona, some from Texas, some from Pennsylvania, and Africa, places a few layers in where they fit his preconceived ideas and builds a time scale of life upon the earth. There are many problems with that because regardless of what type of strata you find, whether it is Cretaceous (the so-called age of the dinosaurs), said to be 70 million years old according to the evolutionist, or Permian (the age of fish), 200 million years old, you can find that rock lying right on top of basement rock some place on the earth. That means it is out of order, because all the evolutionary life forms in between are missing. In actuality, these so called time periods (Permian, etc.) never existed.