CHAPTER 10

Fossilisation and Fossil Graveyards.

Fossilisation is a process that will only take place if certain conditions/factors are present. Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form. The fossilization of an organism depends on the chemistry of the environment and on the biochemical makeup of the organism. As a result, not all organisms in a community will be preserved.

Carbonization

Plants are most commonly fossilized through carbonization. In this process, the mobile oils in the plant's organic matter are leached out and the remaining matter is reduced to a carbon film. Plants have an inner structure of rigid organic walls that may be preserved in this manner, revealing the framework of the original cells. Animal soft tissue has a less rigid cellular structure and is rarely preserved through carbonization.

Petrifaction

Another common mode of preservation of plants is petrifaction, which is the crystallization of minerals inside cells. One of the best-known forms of petrifaction is silicification, a process in which silica-rich fluids enter the plant's cells and crystallize, making the cells appear to have turned to stone (petrified). Famous examples of silicification may be found in the petrified forests of the western United. Petrifaction may also occur in animals when minerals such as calcite, or silica fill the pores and cavities of fossil shells or bones.

Replacement/Sedimentation

Replacement occurs when an organism is buried in mud and its remains are replaced by sulfide (pyrite) or phosphate (apatite) minerals. This process may replace soft tissue, preserving rarely seen details of the organism's anatomy. Paleontologists have used mild acids to etch the phosphatized fossil remains of ancient fish found in Brazil to reveal structures such as gills and muscles. Although mineral replacement is rare, fossils created in this way are important in helping paleontologists compare the anatomical details of prehistoric organisms with those of living organisms.

Recrystallization

Many animal shells are composed of the mineral aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate that breaks down over millions of years to form the more stable mineral calcite. This method of preservation, called recrystallization, destroys the microscopic details of the shell but does not change the overall shape

Soft-Tissue Preservation

The soft tissues of animals are preserved only under extremely unusual conditions, and the preserved tissue usually lasts for only a short period of geological time. In the Siberian permafrost (earth that remains frozen year-round), for example, entire mammoths have been preserved in ice for thousands of years. The remains of the mammoths' last meals have sometimes been preserved in the stomachs, allowing paleontologists to study the animals' diet.

Mummification

Mummification may occur in hot, arid climates, which can dehydrate organisms before their soft tissue has decayed fully. The skin itself is preserved for only a short time, but the impressions of the skin in the surrounding sediment can be preserved much longer if the sediment turns to rock. Paleontologists have found skin impressions of dinosaurs preserved by this method.

Organic Traps

Whole organisms may become trapped and preserved in amber, natural asphalt, or peat (decaying organic matter). Amber is the fossilized remaining part of tree sap. When sap first flows from the tree, it is very thick and sticky, so as it runs down the trunk. It may trap insects, spiders, and occasionally larger animals such as lizards. These organisms can be preserved for thousands of years with details of their soft tissue, such as muscles and hair-like bristles, still intact.

Natural asphalt (also called tar) is a residue from oil that has seeped to the earth's surface from deposits in the rock below. When an asphalt pit is covered by water, thirsty animals that come to the pit to drink may become trapped in the sticky substance and be preserved. One well-known example of such an area is the La Brea Tar Pits of the Pleistocene Epoch in Los Angeles, California.

Animals may also be preserved in peat, although the acidic environment of this decaying organic matter may cause bones to lose their rigidity. Some human remains have been found in peat bogs in Denmark (2000 years old) and England (2200 years old).

Moulds and Casts

Acidic conditions may slowly dissolve away the skeleton of fossil animals preserved in rock, leaving a space where the organism used to be. The impression that is left in the rock becomes a mould. This process commonly occurs in fossil shells where the calcite shell dissolves easily. The impression of the outside of the shell is the external mould. Sometimes the inside of the shell is filled with sediment before the shell is dissolved, leaving an internal impression of the shell called an internal mould. If the space where the shell used to be is then filled with a new mineral, the replica of the shell forms a cast.

Tracks and Trails

When animals walk through soft sediment such as mud, their feet, tails, and other body parts leave impressions that may harden and become preserved. When such an impression is filled with a different sediment, the impression forms a mould and the sediment that fills the mould forms a cast. Moulds and casts of dinosaur tracks are relatively common and help paleontologists understand how these creatures moved.

False Fossils

Minerals can sometimes grow within rocks into shapes that resemble fossils. Dendrite crystals are often mistaken for fernlike fossils. Flint nodules in chalk can look like a variety of different life forms. Mineral concretions in sediments are sometimes mistaken for fossilized eggs. It is only with close study that the true nature of false fossils can be discovered.

Modern animals and plants sometimes become mummified or coated in travertine (calcium carbonate salts from springwater), or they may die while trapped in cracks in older rock strata. These remains are not true fossils, but trapped animals and plants may eventually fossilize with time.

Where Fossils Form

Fossils are found in all parts of the world, from Greenland to Antarctica. They can be found in cores drilled in and retrieved from the ocean floor, and on top of the highest mountains. Their wide geographical distribution is a result of the way the earth's surface has changed throughout its history.

Since almost every fossil used in support of evolution is found in sedimentary rock, one must question whether or not these layers were laid over hundreds of millions of years; slowly and gradually. One only has to observe the effects of minor flood-water disasters to see how quickly sedimentation layers actually build up. Considering the above factors which explain clearly the rapid conditions necessary for fossilisation in sedimentary rock, it cannot be the case that the billions of plant and animal fossils we continue to find, were fossilised over immense periods of time.

On the contrary, the huge numbers of petrified remains show quite clearly that these animals were indeed fossilised rapidly.

(Right) Fossilised tree-trunks discovered in Germany passing through several rock-strata. Example : An open-cast mine in Germany contained a large quantity of tree trunks that had been fossilised. The fossilised trunks pass through twenty feet and more, of different sedimentary rock layers. From a uniformitarian geological perspective, these trunks that have no roots and are cut clean at the bottom (using a primitive cutting tool) were fossilised in this position over hundreds and millions of years. This clearly contradicts the conditional requirements for fossilisation. These trunks would have decomposed long before those millions of years! The tree trunk, therefore, poses the most awkward problem. The sedimentary rock- strata surrounding the trunks must have been laid rapidly; more so because they are positioned upright. These tree trunks were not fossilised over hundreds of millions of years.

Similar to the above example, a group of poly-strat tree trunks, extending up through many strata, and at different levels, were discovered in France. It is impossible for the trunks to survive over hundreds of millions of years.

"Fossils are a great embarrassment to Evolutionary Theory....." (Dr. Gary Parker, PhD - Biologist/Paleontologist)

The lethal wound to uniformitarian geology is to be found within the great fossil graveyards that exist in every major country, especially the Americas. In these fossil graveyards vast numbers of creatures are violently mixed together. There are dinosaur graveyards in America and China with hundreds of dinosaurs mixed and buried together.

How did they get there in such vast quantities?

Many fossil graveyards are high up in mountainous areas. In Sicily, for example, four thousand feet above sea level on Mount Etna, there are two graves crammed with the bones of thousands of hippopotamus in each cave. On the island of Malta there are lions, tigers, mammoths, birds, beavers, hippopotamus and foxes all mixed together.

A cave in Malta contains so many fossils that Malta's present size would not keep this awesome quantity alive for just one week. In America, a death pit exists near Hollywood, with eagles, doves and approximately two hundred and fifty saber tooth tigers and fifty elephants. Incidentally, when the Spaniards migrated to America there was not one elephant to be found, and not one single horse in America, and yet horses have been found buried and fossilised by the hundreds and thousands in America.

How did they get there?

The pinnacle of the great fossil graveyards must be that of the Arctic and Siberia. It is on a scale so awesome and stupendous that they utterly defy description. Buried in the frozen tundra are countless mammoths, elephants, horses, lions, foxes, camels and other species. For mammoths alone, estimates have run as high as five million in these titanic graveyards. Some of these fossils were so well preserved that their flesh was used to feed husky dogs. How did they get there in such huge quantities? Finally, in California, petrified fish, fossilised with mouths open, backs arched and fins spread, have been found. Many of these fish are partly on end with the body passing through two planes of rock-strata. By modern geology this would mean that the fish-tail is separated from its head by millions of years. That, of course, is not possible. There are approximately five fish per square foot over approximately four square miles. This equates to more than one billion fossilised fish over an area of four square miles. Similarly, in Fifeshire, England, well preserved fish were found in sandstone. More than 1000 fish were jammed into one square yard. How did they get there? Modern geology cannot explain fossil graveyards and many geologists admit to this. These graveyards are dramatic evidence that an era of the world ended with enormous violence.
It has been admitted that fossilisation on such a calamitous worldwide scale could only have occurred through the action of immense flood waters so enormous as to defy explanation. Sedimentary rock is formed by the action of water passing over strata, and fossils are only found in sedimentary rock. The fossils we have discussed would have been buried rapidly, ensuring enough delay in decomposition to imprint the fossils that we see. The groupings of the different animals in large quantities might also suggest that they took refuge in these caves, or were simply washed there.
	Niagara Falls Niagara Falls shows that a cataclysmic flood changed the face of America not that long ago. The Niagara river began falling over its present escarpment recently. Since then, Niagara Falls have been cutting back the cliff face. The gorge is now seven miles long. How long did this take? Estimations range between nine, four and seven thousand years. All these dates suggest that Niagara is not millions of years old.
The Mississippi River Delta The Mississippi River Delta can also be used as evidence to support this. The Delta is growing fast and from its growth the age of the Mississippi river can be estimated approximately. Modern geologists have estimated an age of ten million years. However, to procure this age they claim the average depth of delta mud must be forty thousand feet, which is extremely long. The average length of delta mud is not forty thousand feet, but forty feet. The Mississippi River is the longest river system in the world. An age of ten million years is ruled out by a simple fact: in ten millions years the growing delta would have filled the entire gulf of Mexico with mud.
Far beneath six hundred miles of river plains there lies a different map of America. Beneath those plains lies an old ocean bed or estuary. Above the old ocean bed are enormous layers of gravel, sand, clay and seashells. On top there is the plain itself. How did those enormous layers get there? Certainly the river could not have deposited them there, nor could any other water action within our knowledge. It must have been water action beyond our knowledge, an unimaginable flood that refaced America. But how long ago ? At the beginning of this century the American Government appointed a team of experts to study the Mississipi River. These geologists used the correct average of Delta mud (forty feet) and they estimated the age of the great river system at less than five thousand years.
		The Mississippi and the Niagara Falls give hard and clear evidence that water action on a calamitous scale such as a deluge, changed the face of America not that long ago. Evolutionist geology rejects this deluge explanation and gives us the geological column. There are numerous examples to support the deluge explanation. The Lewis "overthrust" in Montana, the Heart Mountain Thrust in Wyoming, the Empire Mountains in Arizona and, of course, The Grand Canyon. Within the Grand Canyon is the best exposure of the fossil column since it reaches the earth's crust to the depth of about one mile. (Left) The Grand Canyon showing thousands of layers of rock-strata.

The canyon reveals superb rock strata, sedimentary rocks and thousands of square miles of horizontal strata. The canyon is the clearest, convincing case that the world underwent an immense period of floodwater proportional to that of a cataclysmic deluge.

Let us infer that the deluge did in fact happen, and there is much evidence to support it; a cataclysmic flood caused not so much by rain but by the fountains of the great deep - the oceans; enormous upheaval of the ocean beds and some temporary sinking of continental lands, and inundation by the oceans; continents temporarily covered by the oceans. If this did happen then the geological column must be reinterpreted. It is not, therefore, a record of the process and progression of evolution. Instead, it is a record of the sequence in which creatures were buried in the flood sediments.

	At the bottom of the column are the simple sponges, jellyfish, seafish, seaworms, corrals, shellfish and the trilobites etc. It is logical that they are at the bottom because that is where they lived. They lived at the bottom of the sea and they would have been the first organisms to have been buried by the flood sediments. The free swimming fish would have been trapped later, as is evident from the huge concentration of fossilised fish that we find. The amphibians would follow later since they lived even higher up at the level of the land. Therefore, the layers of fossils would record the sequence of burial in the flood sediments. After a certain stage of the flood, another factor would then come into operation - streamlining! Simpler animals are streamlined in water. Higher animals are more complex and are not streamlined in the moving floodwaters. This hydraulic principle of streamlining would sort out the animals so that the simpler streamlined ones would sink faster and be buried sooner, whilst the complex ones would have sunk more slowly and thus be found higher up the column. The third factor would have been the escape factor. The higher animals are more mobile. i.e. the birds, the horses, the apes etc., and of course - man. Being more agile, fleet wing, fleet footed, they could escape the rising flood a little longer and so they would be the last to drown, and would thus be buried at the top of the fossil column. The actual fossil column fits quite well with the deluge explanation.
In essence, this means that the great sedimentary rocks were deposited very quickly and that the whole fossil column would have been deposited rapidly.; all the living creatures of the world engulfed in sediments and buried during a short period. It would mean that the fossils are mostly of creatures that lived on earth during the same period, whether they were trilobites, dinosaurs, mammoths or Neanderthal men etc. The discussion, therefore, is moving towards an earth that is not incredibly old, but surprisingly young. In making this statement I am challenging the scientific techniques used to date fossils and rocks. I am challenging radioactive dating. I might appear to be somewhat subordinate for questioning radioactive dating. However, radioactive dating must go under circumstantial scrutiny on several points! Many physicists have disregarded these methods of calculating the ages of rocks and fossils because the techniques themselves, rest on dissimilar assumptions from the outset. In order to prove to you that radioactive dating cannot give authentic ages of rocks and fossils, it is necessary at this juncture, to go into some depth on the actual process of dating fossils/rocks.

If radioactive dating is controvertible then the supposed age of the earth - 4.5 billion years, must be reconsidered. Evolution asserts that man evolved from amoeba through random, purposeless and undirected changes over a vast period of time. If radioactive dating is untrustworthy and these vast time spans are inaccurate then evolution, on another logical point, has no case!

Chapter 11

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