Flood Geology's Abominable Mystery

Flipping through the most recent issue of Nature I found an article about the various microbes that have been identified in 220 million-year-old amber from the southern alps. This article along with another published this year by the same group: “Triassic Amber of the Southern Alps” in Palaios (21:143-154) reminded me of how striking the distribution of fossils is in the fossil record. In particular what is striking is the types of pollen and other microorganismal remains in these amber droplets. All of the pollen (many thousands of pollen grains in hundreds of amber droplets) found is of Conifers with many spores of ferns and lycophytes the later of which are an uncommon group today. There is absolutely no evidence of pollen from angiosperms (flowering plants) in any of this amber.

This lack of angiosperm pollen I should think would be absolutely mind-boggling to any flood geologist. Over the years members of this list have spent much time exposing the problems with thick chalk deposits, clays, salt deposits etc.. as problems for flood geology. The segregation of cocoliths and other micro-organisms in the fossil record has also been made abundantly clear. While these may be clear examples to those who are familiar with the fossil record the enormity of the problems are difficult to communicate to the lay Christian. I personally find the lack of angiosperm pollen in the bottom two thirds of the fossil record to be one of the most dramatic and obvious problems and believe it may be an easier issue for some to grasp. I like to call it Flood Geology's Abominable Mystery. Clearly the Scriptures suggest that seeded plants existed prior to the Noaic flood and thus it seems reasonable to assume that angiosperm type pollen and angiosperms in general existed prior to the Flood. Today, angiosperm pollen can be found ubiquitously on the face of the earth. In fact it would be nearly impossible to find any soil that does not have angiosperm pollen in it. While there is a fair amount of conifer pollen from pines even in a pine forest one will not find pine pollen in exclusion of angiosperm pollen. Furthermore, it should be noted that angiosperm pollen is quite distinct from Gymnosperm pollen (For a nice overview of angiosperm pollen and theories of angiosperm origins please see: http://www.unifiedworlds.com/cornet/Why02/why.htm#Angiosperm)

Simply put, most people recognize that the vast majority of plants they see are flowering plants and these plants all produce pollen to some extent. Pollen is quite readily preserved in sediments and thus the fossil record hence the young earth creationist’s prediction would be that flowering plant pollen should be found throughout the entire geological column (even possibly in part of the column which were formed prior to death being introduced into the world!). However, this is clearly not the case and these amber pieces are just one of thousands of examples of evidence that flowering plant pollen is restricted to only the upper parts of the fossils record. How could sap have fallen from a tree, or even been on a tree, and have collected thousands of conifer pollen grains and fern spores but not have had a single flowering plant pollen grain get trapped in them? There are hundreds of other example of similar distinct distributions of fossils in the fossil record but I have always found this example of flowering plant distribution to one of the most dramatic and accessible to those that may not understand much about geology.

One YEC member’s acknowledgment of fossil succession:

In 2002, in a debate between Baumgardner and Oard over Catastrophic Plate Tectonics versus Vertical Tectonics, Baumgardner made one of the strongest admission of the reality of the fossil record that I have seen by any member of the YEC community. Oard tends to deny aspects of fossils succession and in this reply by Baumgarder quoted below, Baumgarder summarizes the ‘facts” that must be accommodated by any YEC model. To date, none of the models, including his, can account for these facts.

Quote from Baumgarder (TJ 16(1):78–81 April 2002, “A Constructive Quest for Truth”)

“As a final point, I would like to address Michael Oard’s general rejection of the concept of fossil succession in the geological record. Fossil succession represents an undeniable reality of what creationists and evolutionists alike observe in the rock strata. For example, we find no archaeocyathids, a vase-shaped coral-like organism with a double-walled calcareous skeleton, above middle Cambrian strata. We find no pentamerus brachiopods or cystoid crinozoans or psilopsid plants above Devonian strata, no graptolites above Mississippian strata, and no trilobites or rugose corals above Permian strata. On the other hand, we find no birds or angiosperms in strata lower than Jurassic, no mammals in strata lower than upper Triassic, no reptiles in strata lower than Pennsylvanian, and no amphibians in strata lower than Devonian. A similar unmistakable sequence of types also exists in the case of the microfossils.

One can personally examine the actual physical sequence of rock strata with their fossils, starting, for example, at the bottom of Grand Canyon and continuing up onto the Colorado Plateau at Bryce Canyon. Independent of the names and geological periods that have been assigned to them, these rock units indeed have genuine identity, can readily be tracked laterally for hundreds of miles, and display an unambiguous vertical fossil sequence for anyone who cares to look. Creation tours actually provide this opportunity on a frequent basis. Oard cannot provide a rational defence for his denial of such observable reality. Creationists have long recognized this ordering in the fossil record and have related it to the progressive destruction of ecological habitat as the transgressing waters of the Genesis Flood reached higher and higher topographical regions of the planet. Oard in his mind seems to be equating fossil succession to evolution, not understanding that evolution is merely the interpretation evolutionists are imposing on the observed data. If we as creationists are to make genuine progress in reconstructing the actual history of the Earth in light of God’s revelation, we simply cannot afford such denial and misrepresentation of crucially important information.”

Picture of amber (resin usually from a tree like a pine) showing spores and other organisms trapped inside. This amber has been identified from the Triassic period which is considered just over 200 million years old.

Photo: Guido Roghi/Nature