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Though I wasn't there I would assume that more laws than the Law of Gravity were at play when the fossil record was laid down.

Equally, one might assume the earth and moon were both made of green cheese when the fossil record was laid down--lacking further evidence, I think we may safely assume the law of gravity prevailed, and heavy, dense things did not uniformly float on top of light loose things.

Fossilized creatures with the capacty to rise above through physical exertion should be found at higher levels. Are they?

That's a good one, what mechanism do you propose for this--flash fossilization?

I also appreciate it when scientists know the difference between induction and story telling.

There is no functional difference between story-telling and theories derived by inductive reasoning--it is just a question of how much faith you put in the story, and why you do so. Your disclaimer is absurd. You want to argue that a story with virually no positive, tangible, incontrovertable evidence is more believable than the one story with more and better evidence than any other scientific story around today. Holding your hands firmly over your eyes and saying "what evidence?" over and over, is not a pursuasive counterargment.

I think we may safely assume the law of gravity prevailed, and heavy, dense things did not uniformly float on top of light loose things.

We may safely assume the Law of Gravity was present and active, yes. But I believe there other other laws of physics active at the time. Present physics demostrate fairly well that even Michael Moore would float after immersion in water for an extended period of time. I definitely know you have only some notion of how the fossil record came into being because neither you nor anyone else was there to observe it.

That's a good one, what mechanism do you propose for this--flash fossilization?

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of flash flooding like the kind that has been documented by human voice and hand over generations since the time of recorded history. A much more reliable source than the imagination, to be sure.

There is no functional difference between story-telling and theories derived by inductive reasoning . . .

The heck there isn't. My definition of story telling the creation of fiction, thus having departed from objective truth. Really. Who wants to put faith in a story and call it science. Never mind. It happens in high places all the time.