Dr. Austin reported this theory that billions of large nautiloids were buried by a gigantic submarine sediment flow having regional extend. The sediment flow hydroplaned westward through Nevada so fast it smothered and buried marine animals within the single layer of Redwall Limestone.The newsletter says that Austin will be submitting a technical report to a peer-reviewed geology journal and the National Park Service for the “regionally extensive mass kill and burial event in the Grand Canyon region.”
Geologists had been accustomed to thinking of millions of years to deposit Redwall Limestone. ICR scientists are reinterpreting the strata to have formed within minutes by catastrophic flood processes.
Combined with the recent change of opinion about the formation of the canyon itself (see the July 22 headline), this represents a major shift in thinking about earth processes. Dr. Austin has led expeditions into the Grand Canyon for decades, and has gathered all this data first-hand. His credentials and evidence cannot be lightly dismissed with accusations about his motives as a creationist. The fossils can be seen by anyone willing to look. They cannot be ignored except by the same attitude that caused some of Galileo’s peers to refuse to look through his telescope.
This find does not prove Noah’s flood, of course, but is certainly consistent with it, and inconsistent with slow and gradual uniformitarian processes. A catastrophe this widespread and rapid is unprecedented. It cannot be reconciled with Lyell’s adage that “the present is key to the past.” Also, it is not just this layer that Austin and other creationists have demonstrated must have formed rapidly. The ICR book Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe is filled with information about how all the other layers show evidence of rapid deposition in water, even those thought to have been desert sand dunes like the Coconino Sandstone. The old long-age interpretation is riddled with problems, such as huge gaps in the geological sequence with no evidence of erosion, and radioactive ages at the lowest layers that read “younger” than those at the top (also determined by Austin’s team). The capstone of this story is to see even National Park geologists finally admitting, after a century of tales about millions of years, that large portions of the canyon formed quickly in recent times by catastrophic flooding.
Creation research takes a big leap forward with this announcement. The Geological Society of America, with its doctrinal statement opposing creationism, should be facing a crisis of conscience.
... And the evos are no doubt squirming. Amazing! Billions of nautiloids all buried at the same time in such a small space! Know what a nautiloid is? It's not a bacterium. It has non-trivial volume? Billions of them would have needed quite a lot of space and lots to eat, but there they were all right there to be buried by the flood.
If you read and think about this stuff instead of just rushing to slam the next one in some potential sucker's face, you could see where more time makes more sense.
And do they listen? Naah!
