Problems With a Global Flood (last modified 7/27/94) Mark Isaak isaak@aurora.com (Ema
Problems With a Global Flood
(last modified 7/27/94)
Mark Isaak isaak@aurora.com
(Email comments and contributions to this collection are welcome. I would
especially like to add more references.)
Creationist models are often criticized for being too vague to have any
predictive value. A literal interpretation of the Flood story in Genesis,
however, does imply certain physical consequences which can be tested
against what we actually observe. Most, if not all, observations, discredit
the flood hypothesis, as you can see from what follows. (Most the the
arguments below are based only on a literal reading of Genesis, but some
specifically refer to the flood model of Whitcomb & Morris [1961].) Can any
Creationists address even half of the points in this list?
Before the flood:
How did animals travel from all over the world?
* Some, like the sloths, can't travel overland very well at all.
* Some, like koalas, require a special diet. How did they bring it
along?
* Some, like the dodo, must have lived on islands. (If they didn't,
they would have been easy prey for other animals.)
If animals all lived fairly close to Noah before the flood (as
Whitcomb & Morris suggest), how were they all able to survive the
predation and competition pressures from all the others, and why
doesn't evidence of their living together show up in fossil
distributions?
How was the ark loaded? The Bible says all the animals were all loaded in
seven days [Gen. 7:4]. Even if there were only 9 million species to
be loaded, there would have to be an average of 30 animals per
second going through the ark's one door.
How was the ark made seaworthy? The longest wooden ships in modern seas
are about 300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps
and leak so badly they must be constantly pumped. The ark was 450
feet long [Gen. 6:15].
Life on the ark:
How did all the different species fit on the ark? 10 million species is a
reasonable estimate of species presently alive (though estimates
vary widely; see May, 1992). They all would have had to fit in
about 100,000 square feet of deck space [Gen. 6:15-16]. Since most
animals are small, they probably could have all fit, but only if you
allow very little room around them. Caged animals probably wouldn't
all fit, nor would the animals have any room to exercise. The
dinosaurs, mastodons, and other now-extinct animals would have been
aboard the ark as well [Gen. 7:15; Morris, 1993], and they would
take up a _lot_ of room. Bracings, corridors, bilges, etc. would
have taken up a lot of room, too. If you hypothesize significantly
fewer species on the ark than now exist, you must explain evolution
rates faster than any evolutionists propose to account for all the
present species.
How did Noah supply food and water for all the animals for a year? [Gen.
6:21] Food for a year would have taken up many times the space of
the animals themselves. (I know of no animals, except some desert
amphibians, that hibernate for anywhere close to a year.)
How was the food kept fresh for a year? (Aphids, e.g., can't eat wilted
plants.)
What did the carnivorous animals eat, especially those which require fresh
meat?
How did creatures needing special environments survive on the ark?
How do you explain how all host-specific parasites/diseases made do with
only one pair of hosts (and if they did OK, how the hosts survived!)
How was the ark kept livable? Shoveling the manure of the ungulates alone
must have been a full time job for eight people.
How well ventilated was the ark? The body heat from millions of closely
packed animals must have been very intense.
The flood:
Where did the water come from? (It would take 4.4 billion cubic
kilometers to cover Mt. Everest.)
Where did it go?
If you accept the vapor canopy model of some Creationists, you must answer
some equally difficult questions, such as: What kept the water up
before the Flood? What happened to the heat of condensation of all
that water? Why didn't ultraviolet light from the sun break all the
water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms and blow them away?
Geological effects of the flood:
How were mountains formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of
sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of
deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling
crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were laid down during the
flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the
valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys
were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.
How does a global flood explain angular unconformities, where one set of
layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted)
and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top?
They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more,
where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time
in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering
observed.
When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older
sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces.
It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does
granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham,
1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith
and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular
unconformities.]
How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution?
Ecological zonation and hydrodynamic sorting fail to explain:
(1) the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one
dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
(2) the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life.
(Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late
Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear
that low in the geological column?)
(3) why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in
many geologic strata.
(4) why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar
hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are
still perfectly sorted.
(5) why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present
animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to
high ground?
(6) how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were
preserved intact with other fossils below them.
(7) why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid
mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper
strata.
How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed
layering? One formation is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400
days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the
flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling *per day*. And
yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly
layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring
within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a
neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal
flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a
thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area
of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed
by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, followed by thirty
minutes more of .... well, I think you get the picture. [From: Bill
Hyde; see also Kent & Olsen, 1992]
How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in
Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to
those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so
fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.
[From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys)]
How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras
and several different (independent) radiometric and nonradiometric
dating methods? [Short et. al., 1991]
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? A worldwide flood
would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes
in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and
thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably
other evidence. All such evidence is lacking in annual layers
dating back 40,000 years.
How were limestone deposits formed? Limestone is made of the skeletons of
zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of
meters thick. Were all those animals alive when the flood started?
If not, how do you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in
the deposits?
How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the
bodies of planktonic animals 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter
[Bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154
mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the flood, they could have
settled about half a meter. [From xdegrm@oryx.com (glenn r morton)]
Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have
originated only on the surface, such as:
* rain drops;
* river channels;
* wind-blown dunes [Kocurek & Dott, 1981; Clemmenson & Abrahamsen,
1983; Hubert & Mertz, 1984];
* beaches;
* glacial deposits [Eyles & Miall, 1984];
* burrows;
* in-place trees [Cristie & McMillan, 1991];
* soil [Reinhardt & Sigleo, 1989];
* dessication cracks;
* footprints. [Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing
dinosaur footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers
above and below it. Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more
examples, including dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p.
361-366).]
How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?
How could a one-year flood deposit explain stratigraphic sections showing
a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other, all with
upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil? Such
layers of forests appear in many locations. [See Dawson, 1868;
Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Yuretich, 1994, for examples.]
Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as
an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but
deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, and the
layering.
How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra
Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalacians during the flood?
How do you explain fossil mineralization - the replacement of the original
material with a different mineral?
* Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly
mineralized, including some that biblical archaeology says are
quite old - a substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this
diluvian geology. For example, remains of Egyptian commoners
buried near the time of Moses aren't extensively mineralized.
* Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite
variable mineralization.
* Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.
* Trilobite remains are usually mineralized - and in different
sites, fossils of the same species are composed of different
materials.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of
remains in a single episode of global flooding?
[From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)]
How could the flood deposit layers of solid salt, sometimes meters in
width, interbedded with sediments containing marine fossils? This
apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water
intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can occur more or
less at random times in the geological history, and have
characteristic fossils on either side. Therefore, if the fossils
were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood, there are, it
seems, only two choices:
(1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time,
during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or
(2) the salt is a later intrusion.
I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a theory
of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils. [From:
marlowe@paul.rutgers.edu (Thomas Marlowe). See also Jackson et al.,
1990]
How were sedimentary deposits recrystalized and plastically deformed in
the short time since the flood? The stretched pepple conglomerate
in Death Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south
of Hwy. 190), for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed
to quartzite and stretched to 3 or more times their original length.
Plastically deformed stone is also common around salt diapirs
[Jackson et. al., 1990].
How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were
laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an
oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.
How are the polar ice caps possible? Such a mass of water as the flood
would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off
their beds. No way to drop them _exactly_ back onto their original
location, _or_ to regrow them. (In fact, the Greenland ice cap
would _not_ regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.)
[From: Bob Grumbine rmg3@psuvm.psu.edu]
A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an
uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain
size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope
ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater),
(4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of
these show up?
When did impact craters on the earth occur? Geological evidence indicates
that they would have formed in sediments early enough for erosion
and crustal movements to partially erase them. Creationists
Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest they occurred during the year of Noah's
flood. But the heat from all those impacts concentrated in one year
would have vaporized the flood waters. [Fezer, pp 45-46]
And before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to
meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column
and the relative dates therein were laid out by _creationists_
before Darwin even formulated his theory. (See, for example, the
closing pages of Dawson [1868], who was cited above.)
Biological effects of the flood:
How did _all_ the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some need
brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier.
A flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.
How did short-lived species survive? Adult mayflies on the ark would have
died in a few days, and the larvae of many mayflies require shallow
fresh running water. Many other insects would face similar
problems.
How did all the modern plant species survive? Many plants (seeds and all)
would be killed by being submerged for a few months. Most plants
require established soils to grow--soils which would have been
stripped by the Flood. Some plants germinate only after being
exposed to fire or after being ingested by animals; these conditions
would be rare (to put it mildly) after the Flood.
How do you explain the survival of any sensitive marine life (e.g.,
coral)? Since most coral are found in shallow water, the turbidity
created by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off
from the sun. The silt would cover the reef after the rains were
over, and the coral would ALL DIE. By the way, the rates at which
coral deposits calcium are well known, and some highly mature reefs
(such a the great barrier) have been around for MILLIONS of years to
be deposited to their observed thickness. [From: bmb@bluemoon.rn.com]
Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating?
How does the flood explain the geological sorting of pollen? Fossil
pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels
of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by
telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see
what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen
hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic
evidence is different for each layer? Furthermore, pollen and
spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches,
and roots produced by the same plants [Stewart, 1983]. How could a
flood sort all of them together perfectly?
How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The moon is
slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have
rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would
have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days
per year. Corals can be dated by the number of "daily" growth
layers per "annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example,
show nearly 400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong
correlation between the "supposed age" of a wide range of fossils
(corals, stromatolites, and a few others -- collected from geologic
formations throughout the column and from locations all over the
world) and the number of days per year that their growth pattern
shows. The agreement between these clocks, and radiometric dating,
and the theory of superposition... is a little hard to explain away
as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a 300-day-long
flood. [From: stassen@alc.com (Chris Stassen)]
If a single flood is responsible for all fossils, where were all those
animals when they were alive? From "Six 'Flood' Arguments
Creationists Can't Answer" by Robert Schadewald,
_Creation/Evolution_ IV (Summer 1982), pp. 12-13:
"Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's
rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian
Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in
"fossil graveyards" as evidence for the Flood. In particular,
creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa, which
is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate
animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As
pseudoscientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis
that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood.
"Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota,
has studied the Karroo Formation. He asserts that the animals
fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size
of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A
minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion
animals in the Karoo formation could be resurrected, there would be
twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth. Suppose we
assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains
1 percent of the vertebrate fossils on earth [land fossils
only--whj]. Then when the Flood began, there must have been at least
2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense
dinosaurs. To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded."
A thousand kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according
to experts in Leningrad [N. Newell, _Creation and Evolution_; 1982,
Columbia U. Press, p. 62], contains about 500,000 *tons* of tusks.
Even assuming that the entire population was preserved, you seem to
be saying that Russia had wall-to-wall mammoths before this "event."
How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood
would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms
should be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant,
since Creationists hypothesize greater land area before the Flood)
in the fossil record. Yet shallow marine environments account for
by far the most fossils.
Even if there were room physically for all the large animals which now
exist only as fossils, how could they have all coexisted in a stable
ecology before the flood? Montana alone would have had to support a
diversity of herbivores orders of magnitude larger than anything now
observed.
Historical effects of the flood:
Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese
civilizations which existed at the time?
Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths
given in Genesis) place the flood 1300 years before Solomon began
the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near
Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records
from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are
independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as
dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple
can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood
around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have
written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great
Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years
before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian
inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.
How did the human population rebound so fast? Geneologies in Genesis put
the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen
10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to
make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly,
there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and
the Pyramids, found the Sumarian and Indus Valley civilizations,
populate the Americas, etc.
Aftermath of the flood:
How did koalas get from Ararat to Australia, polar bears to the Arctic,
etc., when the kinds of environment they require to live doesn't
exist between the two points.
How were ecological interdependencies preserved as animals migrated from
Ararat? Did the yucca an the yucca moth migrate together across the
Atlantic? Were there, a few thousand years ago, unbroken giant
sequoia forests between Ararat and California to allow indigenous
bark and cone beetles to migrate?
Why are so many marsupials limited to Australia; why are there no
wallabies in Indonesia? The same argument applies to any number of
groups of plants and animals.
How could more than a handful of species survive in a devastated habitat?
How could more than a handful of the predator species on the ark have
survived, with only two individuals of their prey to eat? All of
the predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger numbers
of food animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn require
large numbers of the animals they prey on, and so on, down to the
primary producers (plants...etc.) at the bottom. And if the
predators survived, how did the other animals survive being preyed
on?
How could more than a handful of species survive random influences that
affect populations? Isolated populations with fewer than 20 members
are usually doomed even when extraordinary measures are taken to
protect them. [Simberloff, 1988]
How could more than a handful of species survive the inbreeding depression
that comes with establishing a population from a single mating pair?
How do you explain the genetic variation in all populations today?
The Bible states that seven pairs of all "clean" animals, but only one
pair each of other animals, were taken aboard the ark. Thus, after
the flood, clean animals should have started with seven times the
genetic variation. (Clean animals could have had up to 28 alleles
of any gene, while non-clean animals would have been limited to 4
alleles.) Why do we not observe a correlation between genetic
variation and Hebrew dietary restrictions?
Is the flood model consistent with the Bible?
The model seems to say that large numbers of kinds of land animals became
extinct because of the flood [e.g., Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p.
69n], while Genesis repeatedly says that Noah was ordered to take a
representative sample of all kinds of land animals on the Ark to
save them from extinction, and that Noah did as ordered. Which is
right?
Genesis 6:20 and 7:14-15 say there were two of each kind of fowl and clean
beasts, yet Genesis 7:2-3,5 says they came in sevens. How can a
literal interpretation be appropriate if the text is
self-contradictory?
If your style of Biblical interpretation makes you take the flood
literally, then shouldn't you also believe in a flat and stationary
earth? [Dan. 4:10-11, Matt. 4:8, 1 Chron. 16:30, Psalms 93:1, ...]
In fact, is there any reason at all why the flood story should be taken
literally? Jesus used parables; why wouldn't God do so, too?
How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind [Gen. 7:15-16]
when some species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have
only females, and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites?
And what about social animals like ants and termites which need the
whole nest to survive?
What was used to waterproof the ark? We are told that God instructed Noah
to coat the ark with pitch inside and out with the naturally-
occurring hydrocarbon pitch, which causes a bit of a problem since,
according to Whitcomb and Morris, all oil, tar and coal deposits
were formed when organic matter was buried DURING the flood.
Does the flood story make the whole Bible less credible?
Davis Young is a working geologist who also is an Evangelical
Christian. He has personal doubts about some aspects of evolution,
but he makes a devastating case against "Flood Geology." He writes
(_Christianity and the Age of the Earth_, p. 163):
"The maintenance of modern creationism and Flood geology not only
is useless apologetically with unbelieving scientists, it is
harmful. Although many who have no scientific training have been
swayed by creationist arguments, the unbelieving scientist will
reason that a Christianity that believes in such nonsense must be a
religion not worthy of his interest...Modern creationism in this
sense is apologetically and evangelistically ineffective. It could
even be a hindrance to the gospel.
"Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the
lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be
false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense
of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not
truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has
given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is
done...."
[From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys) See also
Young, 1988]
If God is omnipotent, why not kill what He wanted killed directly? Why
resort to a roundabout method that requires innumerable additional
miracles?
The whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?
Finally, even if the flood model weren't riddled by all these problems,
why should we accept it? What it does attempt to explain is already
explained more accurately, consistently, and thoroughly by
conventional geology and biology, and the flood model leaves many
other things unexplained, even unexplainable. How is flood geology
useful?
References:
(My thanks to R. Andrew MacRae for supplying most of these references.)
Bignot, G., 1985. _Micropaleontology_ Boston: IHRDC, p. 75
Clemmenson, L.B. and Abrahamsen, K., 1983. Aeolian stratification in desert
sediments, Arran basin (Permian), Scotland. Sedimentology, v.30,
p.311-339.
Cristie, R.L., and McMillan, N.J. (eds.), 1991. Tertiary fossil forests of
the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago,
Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 403., 227pp.
Dawson, J.W., 1868. Acadian Geology. The Geological Structure, Organic
Remains, and Mineral Resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Prince Edward Island, 2nd edition. MacMillan and Co.: London,
694pp.
Donohoe, H.V. Jr. and Grantham, R.G. (eds.), 1989. Geological Highway Map
of Nova Scotia, 2nd edition. Atlantic Geoscience Society, Halifax,
Nova Scotia. AGS Special Publication no. 1, 1:640 000.
Eyles, N. and Miall, A.D., 1984, Glacial Facies IN: Walker, R.G., Facies
Models, Second Edition. Geoscience Canada, Reprint Series 1,
p.15-38.
Fezer, Karl D., 1993. "Creationism: Please Don't Call It Science"
Creation/Evolution, 13:1 (Summer 1993), 45-49.
Gansser, A., 1964. Geology of the Himalayas, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., New
York, 289pp.
Genesis 6:9-8:22.
Gilette, D.D. and Lockley, M.G. (eds.), 1989. _Dinosaur Tracks and Traces_,
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 454pp.
Gore, Rick, 1993. "Dinosaurs" National Geographic, 183:1 (Jan. 1993), 2-54.
Hubert, J.F., and Mertz, K.A., Jr., 1984. Eolian sandstones in Upper
Triassic-Lower Jurassic red beds of the Fundy Basin, Nova Scotia.
Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, v.54, p.798-810.
Jackson, M.P.A., et al., 1990. Salt diapirs of the Great Kavir, Central
Iran. Geological Society of America, Memoir 177, 139pp.
Kent and Olsen, 1992. (Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Geological
Observatory) Discover, Jan. 1992
Kocurek, G., and Dott, R.H., 1981. Distinctions and uses of stratification
types in the interpretation of eolian sand. Journal of Sedimentary
Petrology, v.51, no.2, p.579-595.
May, Robert M., 1992. "How Many Species Inhabit the Earth?" Scientific
American, 267:4 (Oct. 1992), 42-49.
Moore, Robert A., 1983. "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark"
Creation/Evolution, #11 (Winter 1983), 1-43. The entire issue is
about the ark. Moore lists over one hundred references.
Morris, John D., 1993. "Did dinosaurs survive the flood?" Back to Genesis,
#53 (May 1993), d.
Reinhardt, J., and Sigleo, W.R. (eds.), 1989. Paleosols and weathering
through geologic time: principles and applications. Geological
Society of America Special Paper 216, 181pp.
Short, D. A., J. G. Mengel, T. J. Crowley, W. T. Hyde and G. R. North, 1991.
Filtering of Milankovitch Cycles by Earth's Geography. Quaternary
Research. 35, 157-173. (Re an independent method of dating the
Green River formation)
Simberloff, David, 1988. "The Contribution of Population and Community
Biology to Conservation Science" Annual Review of Ecology and
Systematics, #19, 473-511.
Stewart, W.N., 1983. _Paleontology and the Evolution of Plants_. Cambridge
Univ. Press, Cambridge, 405pp.
Tarnocai, C. and Smith, C.A.S., 1991. Paleosols of the Fossil Forest area,
Axel Heiberg Island. IN: Cristie & McMillan [see above], p.171-187.
Twenhofel, William H., 1961. _Treatise on Sedimentation_, Dover, p. 50-52.
Whitcomb, John C. and Morris, Henry M., 1961. _The Genesis Flood_,
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia.
Young, Davis, 1988. _Christianity and the Age of the Earth_. Artisan
Sales, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Yun, Zhang, 1989. "Multicellular thallophytes with differentiated tissues
from Late Proterozoic phosphate rocks of South China" Lethaia, #22,
113-132.
Yuretich, Richard F., 1984. "Yellowstone fossil forests: New evidence for
burial in place," _Geology_ 12, 159-162.
Re frozen mammoths as evidence of a catastrophe:
Farrand, Wm. R.;_Science_, 133:729-735, March 17, 1961
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