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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2004
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Claim CH561.1:

Patterns of fossil deposition in Noah's Flood can be explained by ecological zonation. The lower strata, in general, would contain animals that lived in the lower elevations. Thus, marine invertebrates would be buried first, then fish, then amphibians and reptiles (who live at the boundaries of land and water), and finally mammals and birds. Also, animals would be found buried with other animals from the same communities.

Source:

Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 118-120.

Response:

  1. The fossil record does not show such a pattern of organisms sorted ecologically:
  2. Even if ecological zonation could explain how deeply various faunal zones are buried, it does not explain how they came to be buried atop one another. How did a terrestial ecology come to be transported on top of a marine ecology, such that fine details such as footprints, burrows, and paleosols were undisturbed and such that the layer extends over hundreds of square miles? How did many such layers get stacked on top of each other? Ecological zonation implies that the ecological zones got buried in place. What we see is ecological zones forming and living for awhile on top of the fossils of older ecological zones, repeatedly.

  3. Fossil strata often appear in orders that contradict ecological zonation (and other flood deposition explanations). For example, North American midcontinent outcrops record at least fifty-five cycles of marine inundation and withdrawal (Boardman and Heckel 1989; Heckel 1986). That is, marine ecologies are interleaved with terrestrial ecologies.

References:

  1. Heckel, Philip H., 1986. Sea-level curve for Pennsylvanian eustatic marine transgressive-regressive depositional cycles along midcontinent outcrop belt, North America. Geology 14: 330-334.
  2. Boardman, D. R. II and P. H. Heckel, 1989. Glacial-eustatic sea-level curve for early Late Pennsylvanian sequence in north-central Texas and biostratigraphic correlation with curve for midcontinent North America. Geology 17: 802-805.

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created 2003-7-20