The vanishing giant
by Carl Wieland
Some popular beliefs are so strongly, if subconsciously, held that they need to
be refuted over and over. One is the notion that fossils form when a creature
is slowly buried by the ‘sands of time.’ Somehow, most people
see fossilization as the long-term result of an average death.
This is why, for instance, people often assume that if there were kangaroos in the
Middle East (we know from the history in the Bible that there were, even if only
for a short time), then we should find their fossils there. Or at least in
places between Mt Ararat and their current Australian home.
The answer is that fossilization is a rare, special event in today’s world.
In the normal course of events, animals that die do not form fossils.
Millions of kangaroos are killed on Australia’s roads each year, but they
are decidedly not in the first stages of fossil formation. They decompose.
This elephant carcass provides a dramatic illustration. The inset above [refer
to Creation Magazine Volume 24:4 for photos] shows it one day after death,
the inset photo above right was taken 7–8 days later.1 Biological processes (mostly insect activity) have
so ravaged its structure that it is clear that, shortly, all that will be left will
be a few scattered bones.
These will also most likely succumb to the forces of erosion and destruction, unless
they are buried by a local flood in sediment which then soon hardens to prevent
further decay through oxygen and bacterial action.
Of course, not all decomposition is as spectacularly rapid as this example.
But even allowing several more months for the process, the point is that under normal
conditions today, virtually any specimen will decompose rather than fossilize.
So, when someone finds a relatively intact dinosaur skeleton, for instance, consider
that it had to be buried quickly to form in the first place. Consider also
that most such fossils are found in huge graveyards, often within layers of rock
(such as the Dakota Sandstone in the USA) that cover hundreds of thousands of square
km. Then ask yourself whether we see things like that happening on the Earth
today.
The Bible’s account of a massive global hydraulic cataclysm is a much more
logical explanation for the existence of ‘billions of dead things, laid down
by water, all over the Earth.’
Reference
- Natural Environment Research Council, p. 4, Spring 2002.
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