Such sedimentary rocks often contain fossils, which are the remains of former living things, in the form of bones, casts, petrifaction's, tracks, or other marks of the organism which formed them. In fact, fossils are very abundant in sedimentary rocks, so much so that they are almost universally used as the chief means of identifying the geologic “age” of a particular rock. The study of fossils and their supposed evolutionary history is called paleontology. Although there are actually only a relatively small number of professional paleontologists in the world, this field of study has become of critical importance in the standard evolutionary interpretation of earth history.

This is so because the fossil record is by far the most important evidence for the theory of evolution. All other supposed evidences for evolution are strictly circumstantial in nature, consisting merely of various types of similarities between organisms and various types of small biologic changes which may occur in different species. Such evidences as these can, of course, be understood as well or better in terms of an original creation of all the basic “kinds” or organisms, with degrees of similarity between organisms, in proportion to the similarities of function and purpose intended for them by their Creator, and with provision in their respective genetic systems for a fairly wide range of variation (though always within definite limits) in response to environmental changes in time and space.

The fossil record in the sedimentary rocks, however, is supposed to demonstrate the actual evolutionary development of life into more and more complex and specialized forms over the vast span of geologic time. Thus the true nature of this fossil record and its proper interpretation are critical to the evolution question.

Fossil assemblages (especially certain marine “index fossils”) indeed provide the chief mechanism for dating rocks in the “geologic column.” The geologic time scale has in fact been developed over the past 150 years primarily on this basis. Other facts, such as lithologic characteristics, radioactive mineral ages, vertical superposition of strata, etc., are also used, but the fossils are always of determinative importance whenever conflicting data (and this is quite often) are discovered.

Obviously an important question is: “How do we know which fossils belong to which age, so that we can use them with such assurance to determine age?” The answer is that they are required to conform to the evolutionary history of life! Since simple marine organisms such as trilobites must have evolved early, rocks containing only such fossils are assumed to be quite old. Since man supposedly evolved most recently, rocks containing human fossils must be very recent. And so on. The detailed order of the fossils, and therefore the geologic column which is built up from it, is based directly on the assumption of the gradual evolution of life over vast stretches of cosmic time.

This might be reasonable if we somehow knew (by divine revelation, perhaps) that evolution were really true. But, as a matter of fact, the only real evidence for evolution is this same fossil record! And this is where we came in!

The zeal with which this evolutionary circle of reasoning is guarded is seen clearly in the approach taken with respect to its problems and contradictions. When radioactive mineral age determinations conflict with the paleontology dating (as they frequently do), they are abandoned as having been somehow altered since deposition. When, in a given location, a formation of a certain age rests conformably and naturally on a formation of a much earlier age, with all the intervening ages omitted (and this kind of thing is found almost everywhere), then it is assumed that these missing ages were ages of uplift and erosion rather than deposition, even if no evidence of this exists. When fossils from different “ages” are found together in the same formation (as does happen with some frequency), then it is assumed that earlier deposits have been “re-worked” and mixed together. And when (as very often is the case) formations with “ancient” fossils are found lying conformably on top of formations with “recent” fossils, then great earth movements and “overthrusts” must be invoked to get the column out of its proper evolutionary order, even though in many cases there is no evidence of such movements and even though there is no adequate physical mechanism which could produce them!

There thus appear to be sound reasons for questioning the orthodox evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record and its uniformitarian framework of earth history. Furthermore, there does exist a legitimate alternative explanation. 8-4

It is significant that fossils, especially of large animals such as the dinosaur, must be buried quickly or they will not be preserved at all. Furthermore, the sediments entrapping them must harden into stone fairly quickly, inhibiting the action of air, bacteria, etc., or else they will soon be decomposed and disappear. The very nature of fossilization thus seems to require catastrophism. Most certainly must this be true of the great dinosaur beds, the massive fish-bearing shale's, the tremendous deposits of elephants and other animals in the arctic regions, and the great numbers of other “fossil graveyards” with which the geologic column abounds.

According to the Bible, death did not even “enter the world” until after Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12). And the fossil record, more than anything else, is a record of death—in fact, of sudden death—and on a worldwide scale!

At the end of the creation period (Genesis 1:31), God pronounced everything in the whole universe “very good.” Thus the struggling, groaning creation (Romans 8:22) everywhere evident in the fossil record must be dated Biblically as occurring after man’s sin and God’s curse on man’s dominion (Genesis 3:15). And this can only mean that most of the sedimentary rocks of the earth’s crust, with their fossils, were laid down during the awful year of the great Flood, when “every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground” (Genesis 7:23).

This must have included the dinosaurs and all other terrestrial , cept those preserved in Noah’s ark. Evidence is available (in the form of human and dinosaur footprints in the same formation, of dinosaur pictographs left by primitive tribes in Africa and North America, and of the universally prevalent traditions of dragons among ancient peoples) that dinosaurs lived contemporaneously with early man. The geologic column, rightly interpreted, therefore, does not tell of a long, gradual evolution of life over the geologic ages, but rather its polar opposite—the rapid extinction of life as a result of God’s judgment on the antediluvians when “the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6).