Fossil Graveyards and How they Preclude a Young Earth and a Global Flood

As usual, the primary contender rising up and blocking Young Earth Creationism as a hypothesis with legitimacy is the dynamic duo of Geology and Paleontology.
Which is why today we're discussing Fossil Graveyards, a type of Paleontologic formation frequently used by "Flood Geologists" in favor of Global Cataclysmic Flood. As we will see in the following post, this could not be further from the truth: the unique type of death assembly so cherished by those in favor of a Global Noachian Deluge directly precludes the event's existence.
Let's dive in!
Part 1: Taphonomy and The Types of Fossil Graveyard
Taphonomy is a field in Paleontology that concerns itself with how things die. More specifically, the factors and events leading up to death (habitat and climate), burial/lack thereof (postmortem transport, decay, local scavengers) and fossilization processes (diagenesis and pressure).
Naturally then, this science is really quite important to the realm of Paleontology and Geology (the latter insofar as the two fields can and do tend to inform one another).
But so frequently "Flood Geologists" will write on the subject as though mainstream Paleontologists and Geologists are completely ignorant of the processes that impact the preservation of life, while in the same breath providing hefty evidence they themselves don't know the first thing about it:
"When we see fossilization world-wide, when we note that the water is the agency that has presented the conditions for fossilization, then we must conclude that there was a world-wide water cataclysm in the past"
This is Randy Wysong, a YEC Veterinarian and Flood Geology Advocate. Not, mind you, a Geologist or a Paleontologist. If he were, he would notice the absolutely innumerable examples of arid fossilization, sometimes known as desiccation. Or perhaps the preservation seen through freezing and encased in peat bogs and amber? Or perhaps the numerous trace fossils seen in gentle seafloor footprints. But Wysong continues:
"The geological column is not a record of the coming of life, it is a record of it's going, it's departure, it's demise. The scientific community is not naive to this evidence. Some simply shelf it or ignore it to maintain the doctrine of uniformitarianism."
This prevailing attitude of "Flood Geology" is persistent among YEC's, interpreting nearly every fossil find dated from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous as a result of the Flood. Gnawed-on bones of a long dead cerotopsian or the tell-tale-teeth-marks of cannibalistic theropods must be uniformly reinterpreted to reflect an answer already in mind: a rapid death and burial by a catastrophic flood some 2000-4000 years ago.
This is all due to a lack of understanding, education or pure dismissal of Taphonomy. Of course, I imagine they would trust the same principles applied to a crime scene.
There are Three Types of Fossil Graveyard, but all are used to make the same point by "Flood Geologists", that point being thus: The Flood buried these organisms.
If the organisms are fragile and easily destroyed by rough water, the flood was so immensely fast and catastrophic it instantly buried these creatures, even as to preserve their finer features.
If the organisms are jumbled in a mass and dis-articulated, well, the flood did that too: no truly natural process can explain the power with which these organisms were torn to shreds.
You're probably wondering, can it be both? And as we will prove here in a moment: No. No it actually cannot be both. It can only be either, and only on a small scale.
Fossil Graveyards come in three varieties:
- Localized Natural Traps which include tar pits, caves, fissures and dried up watering holes. These are the very local, and they are typically not the result of a "one time event".
- Widespread Regional Accumulations are a result of climate or habitat and include lagoons, river deltas and steppe environments. These appear to map patterns in local change, such as an ephemeral lake or the repeated massing of frozen organisms in the cold.
- Truly Catastrophic, but Spatially-Restricted Death Assemblages occur when there is a massive impact on a moderately sized area. Volcanic Eruptions, Landslide and yes, Floods are included in this.
But "Flood Geologists" appear to ignore the distinction, and lump ALL the categories into the big arching title: Fossil Graveyards. This is usually accompanied with the notion that these events are inexplicable under modern, natural conditions.
Part 2: Why Ignoring the Distinction is Problematic to the YEC Cause
Let's reexamine the first category: Localized Natural Traps.
These have occurred throughout history, and are occurring today under very routine circumstances. Gary Haynes studied African Elephants in Zimbabwe and recorded enormous sites of pachyderm death and subsequent partial or total burial around watering holes. This is because African Elephants are quite intelligent, and dig primitive "wells" around dried lakes and ponds in pursuit of a drink. Many die as the water is present, but not abundant and creates mud-traps which the elephants cannot escape from.
There is a similar assemblage in Hot Springs Mammoth Site in South Dakota, a dried lake with over 40 mammoth skeletons.
Taphonomy is taking the former and realizing is is quite relevant to the latter.
Famous proponents of "Flood Geology" Whitcomb and Morris took this idea and ran with it in the opposite direction when examining the La Brea Tar Pits, another localized natural trap.
It does not escape me that many modern proponents of the flood suggest a proto-pachyderm on the ark with mammoths and mastodons proliferating in hyper-evolutionary circumstances afterward. But this is a point being made against the due diligence of the very founders of modern Flood Geology.
"One might, for example, discuss at length the marvels as the La Brea Pits in Los Angeles, which have yielded tens of thousands of specimens of all kinds of living and extinct animals (each of which by the unbelievable uniformitarian explanation, fell into this sticky graveyard by accident one at a time)."
Morris and Whicomb of course neglect to mention the lack of anything outside the proposed secular assemblage of ecology at the time (no pterosaurs or theropods are in the pits, for example).
And for those proclaiming this is not problematic for the modern "Flood Geology" which posits this tar pit is post-flood, well, that's not really going to work either. The specimens are radiometrically dated as 10,000 to 50,000 years old depending on the species (and radiometric dating has yet to be proven even slightly incorrect consistently) and the dark color of the bones found in these pits is due to long term soaking by the tar.
Never mind the tar is gilsonite and crude oil... much of which formed after immense pressure and time from the Carboniferous to now. Proponents of the Flood already skirt Noah's use of tar to waterproof the boat by invoking the idea the Earth was created with the tar already formed. But what then, of La Brea? A Post-Flood Formation?
Localized Natural Traps are decidedly not catastrophic, and thus not a result of the Flood.
What about Widespread Regional Accumulations, the second category?
Well they aren't really helpful to "Flood Geologists" either are they, given they reflect the changes across regions, not the world.
Take Solnhofen Germany, a famous fossil site covering 45 by 25 miles and 100-300 feet thick. It consists of fine-grained deposits, and incredibly well preserved organisms (even the ink sacs of squids) as well as toothed birds and the membranous wings of ancient pterosaurs.
So what do we know from the taphonomy? Well, plant life indicates this was an arid area and the fine grain size (1-3 microns) restricts the area to warm and quiet waters so the present lime particles can settle out given their precipitation rate of 1.5 X 1015. Preserved trackways of gently moving horseshoes crabs are also present, indicating very little current. But the key is the presence of coccolithiphorid algae remains, suggesting toxicity existed in the bottom layers thanks to algal blooms and subsequent eutrophic conditions.
None of this is consistent with a global flood. And yet, the flood is invoked for the preservation of those fine feathers and wings, despite the fact that toxic lakes do the same thing to our organisms today.
The Green River formation is equally problematic. It's assemblages reflect another ecosystem within the secular restraints something Whitcomb and Morris ignore in their book "Fishing for Fossils" instead opting to say:
"it is not easy to imagine any kind of "uniform" process by which this conglomeration of modern and extinct fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals, insects and plants could have been piled together and preserved for posterity."
Except... all the forms were freshwater and appropriate for their time. There were no: trilobites, crinoids, mammoths, saltwater fish, dunkleosteans, smilodons, lobsters, dinosaurs or pterosaurs present.
And so, in come the modern FG's with the idea that this too, is a post flood deposit.
But... it's 2500 feet thick and 160 miles long by 60 miles wide with marls (fine grained mineral similar to lime). And one has 4000 odd years if working with a 6000 year time scale. With that deposition rate, does this at all sound possible?
The Morrison formation and Florissant formation present similar issues.
As is the Karoo Formation.
And that leaves the Truly Catastrophic, but Spatially-Restricted Death Assemblages.
The problem should be immediately noticeable in the name: these are specially restricted, and invariably tied to local events.
Take the Belmont Chert near Newcastle Australia. YEC buff Andrew Snelling loves to tout this area as evidence for the Flood, but a closer look (using our taphonomy knowledge) tells a different story. The Chert, 2.5 feet thick, is around 6 miles long by 1 mile wide and it is chock full of insects. Mostly their isolated wings, but enough has been preserved we now have identified 145 species. But there are ash layers, and coal seams present above and below the chert. And the fauna is limited to the insects and some off fish scales, crustaceans and plant debris. This screams local catastrophe, not global flood.
Or the Ashfall Beds of Nebraska which show an impressive assemblage of Miocene mammals entombed in ash. Curiously, there is nary a trilobite present.
Finally the Lompoc Ditomite Layers which present an enormous death assemblage of pelagic (open water) fish... and enough algae fossils to choke out anything nearby with their algal bloom anoxia.
Any of the Global Extinctions will do as well.
None of these shout to a global flood, but rather, the assemblages are forced into a jigsaw puzzle they simply do not fit to.
Part 3: Conclusion and TL;DR
The Fossil Graveyards so often sourced by Flood supporters are not what they seem. They are rich beds of history whose true obituaries lie in their microfossils, ecologic assembly, death poses, and geology. And there isn't a single Fossil Graveyard, of any kind, that points to a global flood. The reason for this, is it is simply impossible given the number of Graveyards that point to the very opposite: local or regional events. Sometimes those events can snowball into mass extinctions sure, but one flood assembly points to a local flood. To have a Global Flood, well...
All the Graveyards would scream it, from their jumbled and disarticulated fossils to their distinct lack of arid conditions, anoxia or ashfall.
But that, is simply not what we see.