Here are some other clues about what you would need to make amber:
A huge piece of Baltic amber (9,7 kg). The piece is stored at the Natural History Museum in Berlin. (By Anders L. Damgaard)
Flood conditions are known to cause trees to make extra resin (you can find out about this by reading a paper from the U. of Georgia)
Amber sometimes is found in chunks weighing 21 pounds [9.7 kg] or more. Whatever happened, those trees were oozing like crazy (if you have enough money, you can easily buy a fairly big chunk of amber)
Some forms of amber are known to be from a badly damaged tree (click on the link to see a drawing of what this damage and resin looks like)
We know amber came from trees, but we never find amber with whole trees. The wood found with it is always broken to bits
Amber in the Dominican mountains is tightly imbedded in a lignite layer of sandstone, mine shaft opening
Amber is sometimes found with soft coal (called lignite) which is made from bark
Amber is often found covered with “marl” or limestone clay. This was laid down as think, heavy mud (see the coal link)
Other times it is covered with sandstone: another rock made from wet sediment (same link)
Often, geologists can tell the amber ended up far away from where the trees came from. Something moved them far from the original forests and then buried them. What geologic process has that kind of power?
Water
Could a quiet forest make amber like this? Hardly! You need water. Resin doesn’t melt away in water right away. It stays sticky and scientists have seen it collect bugs and things when dropped into water.
Barnacles, shellfish, green algae at low tide (Photo credit: Martin LaBar)
Scientists have also realized you need to put the resin in water to explain all the diatoms, sponge bits, water bugs, shrimp, oysters, barnacles, and other sea creatures found in it.
Some amber has wood bits, mushroom caps, or flowers stuck in it. All sorts of land creatures were sometimes trapped inside, such as lizards, frogs, worms, something like a shrew, bird feathers, and fur. But, the most common fossils we find preserved are insects.
Imprisoned (Photo credit: Rockman of Zymurgy)
Many times, the insects and spiders found in amber are just like their living cousins. They haven’t changed at all. Others are a bit different, but are still easy to recognize. These things leave two options: you can either believe these bugs evolved a lot before 100 million years ago and then just stopped changing, or that they weren’t buried so very long ago and were created a lot like we see today.
God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through? Numbers 23:19 NLT
The BBC has a couple short videos on amber including mining in the Dominican Republic and how resin oozes out to trap bugs and then gets buried under water. The first one only mentions “30 million years ago” once at the end, but you hear it a lot on the second one. You still wouldn’t want to miss the frog and lizard in amber or the great footage of resin in water, though.
It’s just one more example of our story being a lot like theirs, just way faster!
Some time ago, my brother went to visit missionaries in the Dominican Republic. When he came home, he gave me a rather unusual piece of jewelry: an amber drop with a dead fly in it.
It’s an odd little object. If I didn’t know better, my senses would tell me it was made of plastic. Amber doesn’t suck heat away from you like rock does in a cool room. It’s lightweight and you can see right into it to that bug I would sweep off the windowsill if it had died at my house. But, because it got preserved in amber, it’s a treasure. Or, it would be if I could bring myself to wear the thing!
Just what is amber and how do it help scientists piece together the environment of earth’s past?
Shorea evergreens are some of the best known sweet resin trees. Chinese amber comes from these trees.
Amber is tree resin [thick, sticky stuff], often from pines, but can come from all sorts of trees, which got really hard somehow. Some of the trees we know make enough resin to develop amber from are
These trees produce resin in the bark as a protection from being eaten by bugs and fungi. A tree will make a lot more resin when something hurts it or puts it into shock like volcanic ash or violent storms with lightning.
From the first day of the Flood, the trees would have been in danger of these kinds of damage. Scientists have found it only takes 3 weeks or less for a modern tree to make way more resin than normal.
And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. Genesis 7:17
If you read carefully in Genesis, you will notice it took a full 40 days after the rains and “fountains of the great deep” opened before the ark started floating. There was plenty of time for the trees to start mass producing extra resin before the waters climbed high enough to rip their forests apart.
Resin on the bark of a cherry tree (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Even if trees are smashed apart quickly, we know they still leak a lot of resin and usually float around instead of sinking quickly. The question is, how did the resin get preserved and hardened into amber?
Many people will tell you it takes “millions of years” underground for amber to harden. Why? Because ‘everyone knows’ it takes millions of years for the rocks around the amber to get hard. Another puzzle is that scientists haven’t figured out a way to make true amber in a lab. Amber also often contains “index fossils” so the scientists assume it’s millions of years old. (I need to write about those here!)
But, we know the resin had to get fairly hard quickly or the bugs wouldn’t be preserved so beautifully. Do you know what we use tree resins for today? Varnish used to always be made with tree resins because it dries hard, strong, and as quickly as the mix will allow!
We also know you have to cover the resin with watery sediments to protect it from oxygen and drying out. Check out this quote from a Uniformitarian website:
floating log (Photo credit: svacher)
Amber Gallery: If the resin had been deposited on the forest floor, it would have been destroyed by oxidation and drying processes. Therefore the first and most essential step to conservation was rapid transport by rivers out of the forest into oceans or lakes, where the amber was protected from weathering.
Do we need to know more? Well, there is more, coming up on Part 2
The trees of the LORD are full [of sap/resin]; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; Psalm 104:16
Back at Christmas, a church group gave us some spending money. We had enough socks already, so I decided the best thing for the kids (OK, it was really for me) would be to get the Awesome Science DVDS done by the Justice family. Here’s what I think of them.
If you can’t afford the whole set, get the St Helens one at least. Why? Because that volcano has given us observational science opportunities like no other. My personal favorite way to learn about the events there is the book by Dr. Austin, but my kids haven’t once looked at my copy. For them, a video is the way to go.
The idea of the Awesome Science series is really good. Having a “kid” do the talking gives it an instant connection with young people. The graphics and footage are well done, you can turn off the rock music in the settings, and there is a lot of information on each episode (they’re nearly an hour long).
The reason I didn’t write before is one major beef I have with the series; you need an adult vocabulary to fully understand what’s going on. I can’t imagine Noah (the c.14 year old host) wrote the script himself. In the Grand Canyon DVD (the first) he talks about how scientists “infer” things. I’ve got the study guides and that word didn’t even make the vocabulary list, they forgot how unusual it is for kids to talk about anyone ‘inferring’ anything.
Here’s a list of words I pulled from the Mount St Helens episode to give you an idea of what you’re in for. All of these were used without explanations. He wasn’t introducing you to these words, he expected you to already know how to use them:
empirical
lateral
equivilent
estimated
alleged
direct observation
homogenized
indications are
subsequent models
lakes were breached
hence
displaced the lake
interpret a geologic site
hypothesised
aniseptic waters
waters prevailed
subsequent
ultimate authority
A few of these terms are mentioned in the teacher’s guide where it would be easier to pause and find out what he was talking about. But for kids watching a movie on the weekend, that’s a lot of big words!
With my family, I’ll probably sit down and teach them the big words Noah uses (“if he can understand them, you can too”) so they can expand their vocabulary. The problem comes if you want to show the films to everyday kids, they will miss some of the more important scientific points. At the same time, they’ll still learn a lot, so it’d be worth it anyway. Plus, my kids enjoy them. Watching for the 2nd and 3rd time, most of them wandered off to play, but my 6 year old stuck it through to the end ’cause he loves volcanoes!
I’m looking forward to what the Justice family is able to film this year. The more images of real geology not filtered through the Uniformitarian mindset we get in our heads, the better!
Remember your Creator while you are young, before the bad times come—before the years come when you say, “I have wasted my life.” Ecclesiastes 12:1 Easy-to-read Version
PS Check the “Resources” page under the For Parents section to find the easiest places to order the series from.
Long ago, I posted my e-mail so you all can let me know about cool things you run into. Someone has taken the opportunity!
BTW I’m finding few of us are such important, busy people we aren’t contactable. Me, I’m just a mom who likes science; if you write me, I’ll write you back.
OK, here’s the news a reader in Canada sent in: a regular guy who likes fossils ran into a really cool rock full of fossils of a new sort of gar fish.
The Toronto Sun has some great pictures of the fossils including them lifting the whole rock with a crane to take to the museum.
Unfortunately, the Calgary Harold with the best story has some indecent photos on the side, so I’ll post the best bits they wrote:
What the Tyrrell museum has on its hands is a “mass death assemblage,” essentially what amounts to a prehistoric murder mystery.
Don Brinkman, the director of preservation and research with the Tyrrell, said they are trying to piece together how 17 fish died simultaneously and were embedded in sand during the Paleocene age.
“That’s one of the challenges that the block presents, is what’s the biology behind it,” Brinkman said. “What kind of event would have caused a group of these fish to die all at all the same time.”
Does finding a bunch of fish buried “simultaneously” puzzle you? If not, God is helping you be wise like King David, “I have more understanding than all those who teach me; because I think about your teachings.” Psalm 119:99
If the scientists would take off their “millions of years”, “slowly and gradually” goggles and remember there is a worldwide Flood in earth’s past, they wouldn’t find these fish nearly so mysterious.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:20
PS If they study some of that skin, do you think they’d find fresh tissue inside?
“One of the most obvious and easily understood forms of sedimentary evidence for very long periods of time in earth’s history is the existence of multiple-layer, thick beds of evaporite* minerals in many parts of the world.” -NEGLECT OF GEOLOGIC DATA: Sedimentary Strata Compared with Young-Earth Creationist Writings
Oh, no! We can’t trust the Bible, we’ll just have to admit today’s Uniformitarian scientists have been right all along. Or, do we?
Here’s the typical story you’ll hear about how the massive layers of rock salt around the world got there:
Long, long ago, there were shallow seas where everything was lovely, but then things started to dry up. So, “living creatures swam to a more suitable home” (remember this, it will be important later). The heavy salts settled out gradually forming salt beds. These beds can be enormously thick, for example, one area of Michigan has rock salt layers 1300 feet [396m] thick.
Today we find rock salt layers under somewhere around 2% of the dry land. This doesn’t sound very big, But this means around 1,149,816.8 square miles [2978800km2] are covered in salt layers!
One of the things I’ve always wondered was where the salt came from in the first place. You can see the Uniformitarians think the salt came from the ocean and dried up on land to form all these layers. But, I checked where the salt in the ocean comes from with the US Navy. They say the salt comes from land’s rock salt.
Now, I’m really confused!
The University of Georgia does a good job of telling us where the water and salts come from. They just don’t remember God covered the whole earth with water at the very beginning.
“Seawater has about 3.5% salt in it– Most of this salt is common table salt– sodium chloride (NaCl), with smaller amounts of potassium, magnesium, sulfur, and calcium. Some of these elements came up from the mantle with the water during the out-gassing process that originally formed the oceans. But most of this salt accumulated over time due to weathering of rocks that make up the continents– as rain fell on the land, it slowly dissolved parts of the rocks, and the soluble salts were washed into the sea.
If they assume the salt didn’t come from the ocean in the first place, why do they believe the salt on the dry land came from the ocean? Seems they might have their thinking in a knot.
So, what’s really going on? The other day I ran into a man who’s been studying the rock salt near his home in the Netherlands and has found out some amazing things. The video itself doesn’t tell you anything about him, so I’ll send you to Biblical Geology’s Blog to learn a bit about Stef Heerema. Then, come on back and we’ll examine his video.
His accent is a little thick so I’ll post a few of his words so you can follow along better. After you’ve watched the video, see how many of the questions you can answer.
The European salt formation is call the Zechstein formation
Evaporate model = theory of rock salt formation from evaporating sea water
Magmachamber
Magmetic = coming from under the earth’s crust
Catastroph = Catastrophe
Rock salt is most often table salt (sodium chloride) or calcium sulfate (CaSO4, also known as anhydrite)
Primary igneous origin = straight from under the crust
basin = low point on earth’s crust
Thermal shrink = getting smaller as it cools
Direct contact = no insulation between two things
Underground salt body = main layer of salt
We find _________ fossils in rock salt. Would an animal or plant trapped in the salt have been destroyed or preserved by the salt?
Salt acts as a __________ when it is really hot. It flows like _________ but is twice as _________ as water
Hot salt will do what to anything organic (animal or plant remains) caught underneath it? _____________________
Do table salt and calcium sulfate mix together when they crystallize?
Where and when have scientists seen salt erupting from under earth’s crust? _______________________ in 19_____ For more see this link: unfortunately it’s a scientific paper, but just have a look for (CaSO4)
When the salts are so hot they are liquified, the salts can mix.
Which salt crystallizes first? _____Sodium Chloride _____Calcium Sulfate
At what temperature does it solidify (answer on the left side of the chart)? ____________ in Fahrenheit this is ______________ (in Celsius this is ____________)
Which one is denser? ______________
Which salt is found in the highest layer of the Zechstein formation? _______________
At what temperature does the other salt solidify (T= on the chart)? _______________
Do these salts stay mixed as they crystallize? __________________
The first chart of rock pillars with houses on top is inaccurate. He’s showing what Uniformitarians tell us happened. Why couldn’t it have happened? The weight would have __________________
The next possible explanation was “plate tectonics.” You can learn about them in the posts on Folded Mountains. Could this explain the salt pillars under Holland? ___________
Now for the Flood model of the salt pillars:
Salt erupts over a wide area, slowly cooling from the top down
Something cracks the crystalized top layers (perhaps volcanic activity, seismic waves, or contracting as it cools)
Liquid salt has enough heat energy to evaporate ____/______ of the same volume of water
That experiment is really cool, isn’t it! What happened to the red layer when the water above it started boiling? _______________
Why didn’t the white layers rise too? ________________
How is this like the solid layers of salt near the salt pillar? _______________________
When this lifts liquid salt up in the water, does it quickly cool to a stop or keep the process going? ____________________
The pillars can be up to 3.5km high. in miles this is _______________
Those detached diapirs (dye-ah-pier, not diaper, this is a geological term for a dome) are cool. How do we know there was something besides water and salt in the area when the pillars were forming? ______________________________________
The next chart shows a simple version of what would have been there as the salt rose. What does the brown color stand for? ___________
The next chart shows some odd colored lines running through. These are thin slices of the sedimentary layers covering all of the area with the rest stripped away so you can see the salt pillar. Pay attention to where the different colors are.
The lower layers of sediment don’t cover the top, so we know they were/weren’t there when the pillar was pushed up.
Those lower layers do rise up along the sides of the pillar. What could have pushed them up against the pillar as it formed? ______________________
Does the Gulf of Mexico salt formation make sense from a Uniformitarian view? Why? __________________________
Gypsum is made of ______________________ and ____________
You can’t make gypsum out of _________________ salt
Be sure to visit the video on YouTube and give it a like if you enjoyed Mr. Heerema’s presentation!
Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. Mark 9:50
PS, Creation Ministries International has a whole long article by Heerema with a great map of world rock salt locations and lots more.
Did you know somewhere around 80% of the volcanic eruptions take place under water? Even today, sea volcanoes are actively changing the crust of the earth and influencing our world.
My kids and I were learning about earth history using an Usborne book, so I could show them what most western children are being taught.
We briefly mentioned things from how they can “know” what the core of the earth is like when
artist’s rendition of dinosaur extinction. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
it’s impossible to send a probe so deep.
We talked about Pangea (or Gondwana) and the guesses of the continents having been all in one place in the past
We looked at the timeline chart showing early sea creatures with a fish dragging itself onto the land.
We saw the giant bugs and reptiles earth used to be filled with
We read the different theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs and “75%” of earth’s species (See my post on surviving species HERE)
Then we talked about the volcanoes geologists know were very active in the past and the Ice Age we all know happened.
The wonderful thing is how straightforward explaining geology and glaciology is from a biblical perspective. You can read more about the Ice Age in my mini-series: Part 1 and Part 2
The most fun part was finding videos online so we could watch mini volcanoes erupting underwater today!
Study Guide:
There is a lot of gas in magma. What are we pretty sure it’s mostly made of? _________
Where did a lot of the water for the Flood come from? See Genesis 7: 11 ________________
Could it be some of that water didn’t get out during the Flood? ____
There’s another short video of a boatload of people watching an eruption close to the surface. You can see the steam, dust, and power of a tiny eruption happening right in front of you. (BTW, I would have started the boat turning about 15 seconds before the guy noticed. Wild nature isn’t a safe place!)
Creation Science Today (a ministry new to me) has a cool computer simulation of earth’s cross-section before, during, and after the Flood. It’s simplified, as all replicas must be, but effective. They just don’t mention the subterranean water chambers Dr. Walt Brown does so well. Scroll 2/3s down THIS PAGE to see what I mean.
The LORD sits upon the flood; yes, the LORD sits King for ever. Psalm 29:10
Working on the fossil section of my book I realized I hadn’t thought about this question from a Uniformitarian perspective. If you do a search engine query, you’ll soon discover we Creationists are much more fond of answering it than any one else. In fact, it was hard to find a secular page which would tackle the topic at all!
That’s a good basic question. I was surprised when I looked in my books and one after another they talked about the processes of fossilization, but no words about how long it takes! So after about 5 or 6 books I thought I’d search the web. Google is my favorite search engine.
This is about the best site I could find that told something of the process, and it only says “over a long time”. [I've dropped the link here]
Petrified Araucaria mirabilis Cone;
For what it’s worth my impression has always been that the time is probably on the order of thousands of years, possibly longer, because you do not see fossils of things hundreds of years old - those are still skeletons, as far as I know.
Sorry, I thought this would be easier to answer than it was.
Hmmm, I wonder why they wouldn’t want to talk about this? Maybe because everyone, including themselves, would realize how far from reality their beliefs actually are?
I did find a new blog to add to my roll. It’s called Dark Canopy which is not a typical name, but his motto is “darkness … His canopy around Him” Psalm 18:11, so, don’t be scared. The most recent post is from back in December; it’s not too active, but not an archived blog either.
Here’s the post whose research saved me from more fruitless hunting, so thanks, Benjamin Williams!
We don’t know how long it took for fossilization of the Stegosaurus skeleton to occur. Experimental work I have conducted has shown that the process does not necessarily take very long (Carpenter 2005). Under ideal situations, a dinosaur could be fossilized in only a few years. The rate seems dependent upon the supply of dissolved atoms and molecules in the water available for bacterial use. This in turn is dependent upon the replenishment rate of the water. The rate is faster for bone buried in sand than for bone buried in mud, because ground water can flow more freely around the sand grains than around the clay particles. Kenneth Carpenter
Is this stuff exciting or what?
For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk 2:14
“A team of researchers gave a presentation at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13–17, at which they gave 14C dating results from many bone samples from eight dinosaur specimens. All gave dates ranging from 22,000 to 39,000 years, right in the ‘ballpark’ predicted by creationists.”
Are you surprised? Do you think Nova, the BBC, and others will broadcast this FACT to the world? Oh, no, the scientific community is doing their best to sweep this finding under the rug.
Science isn’t against the Bible, Evolutionary thinking is.
Some time ago I wrote about a temple complex near the mountains of Ararat which everyone agrees is really old. In fact, archaeologists date it to 8,000 BC even though the style is quite ‘advanced.’
Why would they claim this site is so old when they want us to believe people back then were simple, wandering nomads? I discovered it was because of Carbon-14 dating of the charcoal buried among the stones.
Now, the question is, why did the C-14 give a date so old when we know the world hadn’t even been created 10,000 years ago? That question has been niggling at the back of my brain ever since. This past week I ran into enough information to start searching for the answers and you should have seen me shout when I ran into them!
Everyone knows Carbon-14 levels are NOT constant through time
Atmospheric nuclear weapon tests almost doubled the concentration of radioactive 14 C in the Northern Hemisphere, before levels slowly declined following the Partial Test Ban Treaty.
The other day I found out scientists are sure there was some kind of cosmic ray burst back in the late AD 700s. They know because trees living at that time have an “observed excess of carbon-14″. That means, they dated to much younger than we know they really are.
If things can have “too much” C-14, isn’t it possible for differences in the past to cause other things to have “too little” C-14?
Amazingly, I heard to the answer less than an hour after asking the question. I was listening to an interview with the author Dr. John F. Ashton who wrote the book Evolution Impossible. (I encourage you to sign up for these podcasts, many of them are with Master Books authors.) Towards the end of the program, Dr. Ashton mentioned how earth’s magnetic field keeps cosmic rays out which prevents extra C-14 from being produced in the first place.
Of course, I already knew earth’s magnetic field is keeping those rays out, I just didn’t realize these rays made C-14!
Everyone knows Earth’s Magnetic Field is weakening
Diagram of Earth’s magnetic field lines including magnet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It was a little hard to find a website willing to admit this without being Creationist, but National Geographic has an article on it. Do they figure out the world can’t have lasted as long as Evolution requires because of this fact? Oh, no, they just say it’s going to slow down and then start up again in the opposite direction (as they claim it’s been doing for billions of years). We’ll see how that one works out.
To find out how fast the magnetic field is fading, I checked out the Institute for Creation Research which specializes in this area. Turns out scientists have observed a drop in the magnetic field of 7% since we started studying it in 1835. ICR’s scientists figure at current rates it loses half its power in just 1,400 years. Even in Jesus’ time it would have been more than twice as strong than it is now. Wow!
Everyone knows Cosmic Radiation forms Carbon-14
I found a simple explanation of this process at an .edu website, but the web page background is really hard to read. Here’s what they say:
Carbon-14 is created from nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere of the earth. Radiation from the sun collides with atoms in the atmosphere. These collisions create secondary cosmic rays in the form of energentic neutrons. When these neutrons collide with nitrogen-14 in the atmosphere carbon-14 can be created.
First Solar Radiation Storm of Solar Cycle 24 [HD Video] (Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
The reason C-14 works so nicely to date things is that plants absorb it all the time they’re growing and everything eating plants gets the plants’ C-14 into their tissues.
I just “happened” to run across another Creation Science radio show to listen to while I’m waiting for a new episode of the Creation Today Show. Guess what the first program I listened to talked about: Carbon-14 and those trees with higher levels than normal! Dr. Don Clark explained the C-14 in our bodies today has only been there for about a year or so since we keep cycling it out somehow. Cool!
So…
It isn’t very scientific to assume the level of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere has always been exactly the same as it is today. But, if you make adjustments for a much stronger Magnetic Field, you might just get dates matching the Bible’s. Horrors!
Carbon-14 isn’t the only particle produced by cosmic rays, Beryllium-10 and Chlorine-36 are made in a similar way. The paper I found is horribly long, but you can find out more on pages 33-39 of A Christian Response to Radiometric Dating by Dr Tasman B. Walker PDF
Thanks to Alex Forsyth for his fact checking comment on yesterday’s post!
It appears that Creation Ministries International didn’t include the full picture in it’s article that whales float around until they decompose. It’s not a lie (that whale really was floating around), but there’s a lot more to the story.
The photos and video are kind of gross, but if you have a search online you can find lots of evidence that whales do sink to the bottom while still in one piece. In fact, their carcasses support a whole ecosystem that eventually devours everything!
Recently, scientists have been studying these strange, disgusting but important members of the ocean community.There up to 190 species of worm, bacteria and mollusk that make a living cleaning these messes up.
I did notice that although whales do fall to the bottom on their own, in order to find and study them, the scientists weighed down beached whales carcasses with “up to 3,000 kilograms [6,600 lb] of scrap metal” to get them to sink in a known location.
English: Osedax rubiplumus from whale-2893. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Some of the new and interesting creatures that have been found on these bones are worms called Osedax [bone eaters] that can’t eat the bones themselves, but work together with special bacteria to get the fatty food out of them. The Institute for Creation Research has an article on them: No Time for Bone-eating Worm to Evolve.
I haven’t been able to find how much bone is left when these scavengers are finished, but I did find out a few things to think about:
It can take up to 50 years to stripe all the food out of a large whale’s bones
Whale bones are up to 60% fat. Which means less than half would be left at the end and it would be riddled with holes even if not completely broken down
Sometimes, these fossils show more signs of scavenging on the upper parts that would have been above the sediment than underneath. So, for fossils to form while scavengers are still attached, you have to have something happen pretty quickly or they wouldn’t have been frozen in place like that. I found a scientific paper that mentions 4 places around the world with fossils like these (in Washington State, Louisiana, and in Spain).
Interestingly, even in the fossil record, the Osedax worms are always found with whale bones. They have always lived with their favorite food.
But, are these examples of obviously dead and later buried whale bones the only kind we find in the fossil record?
I mentioned the whales found in Peru yesterday. These fossils do not show the kind of breakdown seen today. There’s a great scientific paper detailing what scientists found:
“Between 62 and 76% of the individuals have at least one lower jaw articulated to the skull
“Between 51 and 69% of these individuals are articulated with the cervical
vertebrae as well, which indicates that the majority of the carcasses did not undergo
significant disarticulation before burial
“A number of whales (n=5) have the baleen preserved . In four of them, the
baleen is mineralized and preserved in life position within the mouth.”
In English this means most of these whales where buried while their bones were in the life position. They hadn’t been moved around much after death.
“Bones that have not been exposed by modern erosion have smooth surfaces, and bear no marks left by weathering processes, or damage from chemical dissolution or boring by
Fossil of a shark tooth
invertebrates.” but….
“Shark teeth are commonly found associated with the whale skeletons…. some with the tipembedded in a whale bone…However, some of the specimens that contain shark teeth associated have no shark tooth marks and the whale skeleton is quite complete, which argues against a high intensity of scavenging by sharks.”
We don’t have a problem with life and death having continued for years before the Flood (let’s see, over 1,600 years in fact!). Its nice to know that some of the creatures preserved in the fossil record did get to live out their natural lives before being buried (although the scavengers didn’t).
But, how do you explain the rest of the fossils like in Peru with everyday processes? Geology requires some very extraordinary things to happen to make sense if it all. How ’bout a world-wide flood!
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:21
Quotes:
Audubon Magazine: “It isn’t clear where the bacteria come from: Osedax don’t have them as larvae or seem to inherit them from their parents. “They’re somehow getting them from the environment, but we haven’t found them in the environment yet,” says Johnson. “They’re out there somewhere.””
When I had just turned 7, my family and I drove from Michigan up the Al-Can (it wasn’t paved yet, so it didn’t deserve the respectful name “the Alaska-Canada Highway) to begin a new life in Anchorage, AK. In my opinion, there isn’t a better place to grow up. We were surrounded by mountains, bordered the second-largest-tide inlet of ocean, and it was just a couple minutes’ drive to get to a glacier! The whole world up there bears the marks of the great glaciers that once filled in and carved out all the valleys. When did the glaciers do this, and why aren’t they still there anymore?
Was there really an Ice Age? If it happened, what was this period of earth’s history like? What would cause an ice age? Can we tell how long ago it happened? This week I’m going to explore these questions and what the Bible has to say about it all.Back in the late 1700s Evolutionary scientists had developed the idea that the earth formed from volcanos and therefore had been cooling down slowly ever since. This idea, called Plutonism is still the most popular non-special-creation model today. But in the 1830s evidence and memories of a time when glaciers covered much of the earth started showing up more and more. It wasn’t until the 1870s that the amount of proof led Evolutionary scientists to acknowledge that there had been ice over much of the world in the past.
I did run into a very interesting page from Ice Age skeptics (this page is fine, but I don’t recommend exploring the rest of their site). They rightly point out that a lot of the geology that we find around the world can’t be explained by a bunch of glaciers over millions of years. But that doesn’t tell us an Ice Age (following a Great Flood) didn’t really happen.
Here’s what we see around the world that makes us believe that in the recent geological past a lot more of the world was covered with glaciers than right now. There are still (even with people burning fossil fuels) a lot of glaciers around the world and we can study what happens as they ooze down mountains, expanding and retreating. The School of Geology & Geophysics, U of OK, explains a lot of what we see glaciers doing in the present and the effects left behind when a glacier has been somewhere.
Icebergs are breaking off glaciers at Cape York, Greenland. The picture was taken from a helicopter.
Here’s a short page from Scandinavia explaining the formations an average glacier leaves behind when it melts with a coded picture. I really liked the mention of the drainage notches along the ridgeline. I hadn’t heard about those before, so I’ll keep an eye out for them as I travel .This page from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows examples of the types of landscapes we find where a glacier has melted. If you still want to know more about glaciers click on the links to the left to find a very good set of pages about them and galleries of glacial pictures.
The University of Wisconsin has a great set of pictures showing the formations that glaciers carve out. Just click on one of the types listed on the left to see lots more pictures.
Some of our most spectacular landscapes we have around the world were carved out by glaciers. The Matterhorn, Yosemite, The Great Lakes, New York’s Finger Lakes, Ireland, England and Scandinavia were all carved out by glaciers. Check out these pictures of the landscapes around Karakoram Range to the west of the Himalayas
Ice age Earth at glacial maximum. Based on: “Ice age terrestrial carbon changes revisited” by Thomas J. Crowley
So we can tell where glaciers used to be by recognizing these formations around the world. This page for kids is pretty good on explaining how we realized there had to be an Ice Age. Just ignore the dates (I’m going to post on secular dating methods here soon, but you can read this page in the meantime). We can even see where ice sheets flowed over what is now ocean. This page shows the ice river that ran between Scotland and Scandinavia, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the ocean floor picture.
Tomorrow I will post on what Creation Scientists have to say about the Ice Age.
God asked Job: Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder; To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Job 28:25-30
All geological changes don’t require the amount of time we hear they do. For example: stalactites, fossil formation, and canyon formation
Here’s a picture of Stalactites growing under the Lincoln memorial (I wonder why the government doesn’t take some new pictures of these stalactites so we can see how much they’ve grown since men wore hats like that???)
I can’t see how long this stalactite is, but it’s definitely growing under a bridge somewhere in Tennessee. The people at John MacKay’s site won’t tell us where exactly, because people would go there on purpose to break it off.
This page is really cool with a bat caught in a stalactite (how long could that have taken, since the bat didn’t rot away?) along with an 11 foot long stalactite/stalagmite formation that’s only about 40 years old!
This page has a lot of information and a lot of big words (unfortunately, I can’t recommend the whole website, since they are LDS). Check out the petrifying stream in England at the bottom. (If you follow their link to Mother Shipton’s site, the page titled “the story” is about a witch, but the science parts are real!)
ICR has an article that talks about how quickly things can be petrified.
If you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon or read a book about it, you will have heard that the Colorado River carved it all out slowly over millions of years. Is this even possible?
Bright Angel Point trail – Grand Canyon North Rim
Have your parents help you read this map of the area around the Grand Canyon. Red means lowlands, and the paler the color the higher the land in that area. If a lot of water were dammed up in the middle of the picture, how could it escape from its valley? There’s one spot just north of the Grand Canyon almost low enough, but not quite. The only way out of its prison was to shoot through that narrow gap.The funny thing is that the Grand Canyon’s gap punches right through a rise in the land. For more on how that could have happened see the free technical book by Dr. Walt Brown. For you older folks his ideas and studies are fascinating! Dr. Walt Brown was the first to recognize that there had once been huge lakes up there (the area is still full of petrified trees which need water to form) and that the Grand Canyon is a dam breach.
Remember this video of a dam release in Washington State? This event was WAY smaller than the breach that led to the Grand Canyon! And that was tiny compared to the devastation the world-wide flood caused.
In the video you can see all the mud that water like this can carry. They were moving too fast to lay down layers of sediment there, but somewhere near or just into the ocean, all that dirt would be let down and form a delta like the ones we see at the ends of rivers around the world.
What do you think? Little river over millions of years, or big lakes flowing out really fast?
And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. Luke 19:40
But the falling mountain crumbles away, And the rock moves from its place; Water wears away stones, Its torrents wash away the dust of the earth; Job 14:18,19 NASB
If you’ve ever looked at a book about geology at a public school or the library, you probably ran into one of these charts. Ever since Charles Lyell made Uniformitarianism popular, many people have looked at the order of the sedimentary rocks as “proof” that the earth is millions of years old and that Evolution is true. But, is that what the rocks really show?
First, we have to remember that we cannot actually ‘see’ the past in the rocks. Every scientist makes guesses about what the things we find in the rocks actually mean. What we do see is layers of sedimentary rocks where we find different types of animals and plants preserved as fossils.
People claim there are 26 places in the world that contain all the layers a chart like this one shows. (I’ll put up a link at the end to an Evolutionist saying this.) Interestingly, they are all in a basin (a bowl-like valley). Since this would have protected the sand and other things that dropped out of the water when the waves calmed down, it makes a lot of sense that these places would have such neat layering. (I’m going to post later about other interesting things that happen in some of these basins (ever heard of Ayer’s Rock?).
Everywhere else in the world we find missing layers (called Unconformities), out of order layering, which would mean (if the timeline idea was correct) that millions of years vanished from most places and sometimes earlier times happened after later times!
So, since we have decided to believe the only eye witnesses there were of these events (Noah’s family and God), what do we actually see in the fossil layers? We see that the lowest rocks contain tiny sea creatures. The next layers up have larger sea creatures. As you get closer to the surface, lizards, then really big lizards (aka Dragons), then little mammals, then big mammals were buried.
This fits in nicely with a Global Flood that took five months (Genesis 7:24) to completely bury the highest points on earth at the time. Things that were near the bottom of the water got buried first, then larger fish and sea creatures, then finally land animals that lived near the water and that weren’t fast enough to run away. Last to be buried were the quick creatures, far from the old oceans, whose bodies took longer to sink after drowning. Check out this PDF with cool pictures of Pre-Flood environments from Answers in Genesis. And two more from Biblical Geology.net that explain how the Geologic Column fits in with the Flood: Page 1 and Page 2.
Just thinking about the billions of dead things the rocks have preserved for us to find is sad and scary. When God said He was going to start over again, He meant it!
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his[Jesus'] coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation[uniformitarianism]. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. II Peter 3:3-7
Praise our powerful, just, and merciful Creator for the protection we can have in Jesus’ blood!!
Natural arches, pillars and other erosion formed features are falling down faster than they are being formed.
This comes out of our Worldview of how quickly things can change from my Catastrophe! post.
The world-wide flood of Noah’s day had unimaginable power to change the surface of the earth. Have a look at THIS VIDEO of a dam release in Washington State. (I got this video from the Biblical Geology blog and my kids have made me play it again time after time.) This gives you a little taste of the eroding power of the world-wide flood.
As the water washed over huge layers of newly laid rocks, it eroded caves, arches, pillars, and all kinds of beautiful and strange formations around the world. A couple of years ago our family was visiting Mackinac [mack-ih-naw] Island, Michigan and went to see Arch Rock. We were told that although they are trying to shore up the arch, it is expected to fall in the next 20 years or so. This got me thinking about all the features like this that are still standing.
Although coast lines are the usual place to find arches, many water-eroded features are now far from a major source of water; some are even found in deserts. If Evolution were right, that would mean they had been standing for millions of years. Are there new places around the world that are now developing similar features that could be still stand in new deserts in another couple of million years? Think about it.
Delicate Arch, Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, USA. Find the hiker under the arch in a blue shirt!
Almost all arches are formed in softer sedimentary rock that would have been brand new (think freshly poured cement) at the Flood. Here’s an exception formed of granite in Colorado. Have a look at a much more common type of granite Arch in Girraween, Australia. What do you think? Did arches like these get formed with the help of a lot of time or a lot of water?Great pictures of arches around the world HERE.
Natural Arches has a whole website about these formations. Check out the gallery, find out lots more about them, or even find one to visit near you!
Just so you know how quickly natural features around the world are falling (not including those being vandalized on purpose), have an adult click HERE to see four fallen features and be sure to notice what it says about the last one in the list which is still standing.
This page at Wikipedia talks about how the coastlines of the world are constantly trying to smooth themselves out. But they sure haven’t gotten anywhere close yet!
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Isaiah 51:6
I came up with this prediction without any help, but recently found others who spotted this evolutionary problem as well.
Creation.com: Antiquity of landforms (scroll halfway down to the section Evidence of receding Flood waters for the same topic)
2004 tsunami in Ao Nang, Krabi Province, Thailand.
There are some evolutionists who recognize that big, harmful events, called catastrophes [cuh-tass-truh-fees] must have happened around the world because of how it looks. But most evolutionists believe in something called Uniformitarianism [uniform-ih-tare-ian-ism]. This theory says that the world has always worked the same way and everything we see can be explained by the kinds of things that happen now. In other words “the present is the key to the past.” Here’s what the Apostle Peter has to say about that: “and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:” II Peter 3:4-6.
Portrait of Sir Charles Lyell (1797—1875).
If you go HERE you can read about Darwin and Sir Charles Lyell, the scientist who made the theory of uniformitarianism popular. Near the bottom it says something like this (translated into English for you): Scientists like to hear things that agree with what they already believe. They didn’t want to hear about catastrophes because it sounded too much like Noah’s flood, so they’ve ignored the evidence as long as they can. Now they only admit terrible things have happened in certain areas when they have no other choice.
Evolutionists will never be able to completely let go of Uniformitarianism because that is the only way they can look at rocks, ice and minerals and claim that they are millions of years old. If things changed really fast at some time in the past they could show great age without truly being old. If that were real, then the methods scientists use to tell how old something is can’t be trusted, and that could mean… the Bible might just be true!!
Flood in Znojmo (2006)
Biblical Creationism says that there was an original climate, land formations and oceans, but they were washed away by a world-wide flood. The Bible says that the heavens rained for forty days and at the same time great underground chambers of water were cracked open, destroying everything that breathed on the whole surface of the earth. These waters kept rising for 6 months and then were slowly washed back into the shape of oceans and water systems that we see today. Lots more on this in later posts!
Jesus said: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Matthew 24:35
One of the books I got with my birthday money was this one by John Morris and Steven A. Austin. I was especially looking forward to reading it because I’ve heard bits of how much evidence the Mount St. Helens explosion gave us. I’ve even heard a story of a scientist finding Jesus as his Savior and Lord following the study of this volcano (he hasn’t posted his testimony online yet).
I’m actually going to start with a mini review of the book, Grand Canyon: A Different View. There was a copy of that book at the retreat center my writers conference was held at, so I stayed up late one night to check it out. It looked beautiful (all the hard covers I’ve seen from Master Books do), and had some amazing pictures. But it didn’t take long before I started noticing a very defensive tone in their writing. They were always saying things like, “although main stream science claims… we believe it happened much faster.” The tone almost sounded whiny with frustration at not being accepted.
I did not order that book for my personal library.
So, just a bit concerned, I cracked open my lovely edition of the book Footprints in the Ash last week. I shouldn’t have worried. The style and voice of this book couldn’t have been more different. Drs. Morris and Austin ooze with confidence and excitement. They spend very little time talking about “millions of years,” and “slow and gradual geological change” and get straight to the facts.
Everything they share from their first hand experience is backed up with amazing pictures and diagrams. I especially liked the maps showing the drainage patterns before, shortly after, and several years after the main explosion.
I’m not going to cover their evidences in detail today (I might draw out some interesting bits at some point in the future), but here are their main points:
Stratification (rock layering) can happen very quickly (in seconds to minutes)
Canyons can erode in a few hours
Uprooted trees still often end up being buried upright, but not where and how they grew
Peat layers (like coal is made from) can form very quickly
Recovery from a disaster happens much faster than scientists predicted
One of the things I was most impressed by with this book was their awareness of the reader. This is not a book that requires you to have already accepted the authors’ claims before you can bear to read it. It would be excellent to give to a geology lover who has never considered the possibility of a world-wide catastrophe before. They’ll get the point, but not by having it stuffed down their throats. The book does end with a gently stated call to choose eternal protection in Jesus.
You can check out more reviews at the publisher’s page.
The glory of the LORD shall endure for ever: the LORD shall rejoice in his works. He looks on the earth, and it trembles: he touches the hills, and they smoke. I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Psalm 104:31-33
Caveat: I had to pay for my copy like everyone else, no one at New Leaf Publishing has any idea I’m writing. This review was done solely because I REALLY LIKE IT! So, get yourself a copy, or ask your library to buy one.
Dawn Redwoods turn colors and drop their leaves in the Autumn
For a couple of weeks I had a plant in my kitchen that everyone agrees hasn’t changed since dinosaurs were plentiful: a dawn redwood seedling. Unfortunately, I forgot to water it too long and it bit the dust. One thing I didn’t lose was the story of how it was rediscovered (by the world at large).
If you’ve ever looked at a book on dinosaurs at your library, you will see paintings of them with volcanoes in the background and some very strange plants growing around them. Why do they draw them that way? Because of what we see in the fossil record.
Cycad Specimen tree within RHS Wisley’s Glasshouse.
One of the main beliefs of Genesis-rejecters is that the lower down a fossil is, the more millions of years old it must be. They look at the types of fossils in a certain layer and assume that all the things found in that layer were alive at the same time, but not alive at the time of layers under or over it.
So, what do they do with living things that look the same both as fossils and today? Darwin himself gave them an answer. He just called them Living Fossils. As a creationist, I would call them Flood survivors, just like humans and everything else still alive.
Here are some of the plants we all agree lived with dinosaurs that are still making it today:
Norfolk Island Pine
Cycads (sigh-kadz) (they look kind of like palmettos) the ones alive today show signs of having had a major population bottleneck when the dinosaurs were wiped out. They also show mutational changes, but no where close to turning into something else. Are we surprised?
Araucaria: the Norfolk Island Pine is one of the surviving species. Do you think it took “millions of years of erosion” to wear off the fossilized prickles? Or, could it have happened much faster?
Ferns, horsetails (sphenophytes), club-mosses (lycophytes) and whisk ferns (psilophytes) are ALL “living fossils.” Again we find a far greater variety of types in the fossil record than we find living today.
Ginkgo tree: the lowest fossils of this family are assigned to the Permian (supposed 251-299 million years ago). The fossil record tells us they were buried in places across the globe. Now they are being reintroduced to a lot of old places and are doing great.
Dawn Redwoodtree: check out the story of it’s discovery during WWII. Now that we know about
Acer grandidentatum Just your average Living Fossil
it and are collecting and caring for the seeds, this tree is doing well in a number of places through the temperate world.
Elm (Ulmus), redwood (Sequoia), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga), oak (Quercus) and maple (Acer) are ALL living fossils. Who knew?
Wollemi Pine: like the dinosaurs, scientists were sure the wollemi pine had been extinct for millions of years until a park ranger in Australia ran into a living one. Did they change their worldview and give up Evolution? Not a chance, they just added it to the long list of living fossils
Naturally, all these things are much harder to
explain using the framework of biological evolution than our belief in a perfect creation that had a major catastrophe interrupt it. I’ve collected a few pages on these plants that were fossilized but still survived from creation sites for you:
Creation Revolution has an Article 4 Kids on Living Fossils. They open with a photo of an Ariziona
Botanical Garden Meran Forest Gardens, Ferns and living Fossils
sycamore leaf!
Creation Studies Institute has an all-inclusive page on Living Fossils (great pictures)
John MacKay of the Creation Research Group really likes the Wollemi Pine. They even grow some in their living museum.
Northwest Creation Network has covered a number of Living Fossils. Click on their links to read more
Florissant, Colorado, USA. This flower fossil dates back to the late Eocene epoch, 35 million years ago, or does it?
Creation.com has more, but I’m linking to their article on Horsetails (they have links at the bottom to the rest)
The Institute for Creation Research has lots of articles on Living Fossils. I’m linking you to the shortest (the titles alone to other articles are cool “Dinosaurs ate Rice”? What?
And last, but not least, Answers in Genesis’ take on Living Fossils with the history of scientific thinking on how they continue to be.
and from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the faithful witness. He is first among all who will be raised from death. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Jesus is the one who loves us and has made us free from our sins with his blood. Revelation 1:5Easy-to-read Version (mostly)
For more on Cycads, Fossil News (evolutionary) has a detailed page
Twice my husband and I have had a chance to vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains. One of the things I begged him to do with me was visit one of the local caves. As a little girl in Ohio I’d gotten to visit a cave and the memory stuck. Now I had a chance to share the wonder with my new family.
We went to visit a cave close to where we stayed, called Tuckaleechee Caverns. It had every kind of formation I had hoped to see including not only enormous stalactites and stalagmites, but ribbons, huge rooms, and a stream with a waterfall at the beginning.
But something was sad about everything we saw. All the formations were a uniform, rusty color.
I assumed this was just the way things were since red dirt is so common in that part of the world. It wasn’t until we came back some years later (no coaxing needed this time) that I learned that wasn’t the real reason.
There is a small stalagmite right next to the trail that had been broken off or rubbed so much already that they go ahead and let you touch it. The sides of the narrow cone were red like the rest, but the top, showing the core, was translucent white.
What? The formations weren’t the same color all the way through?
Our guide told us that in the late 1800s, the mountain above the cavern had been clear cut: all the trees had been dragged off the whole mountain side. Then the rains came.
The erosion and flooding from the water just rolling down the bare mountain was horrible. It filled the whole cavern to the brim with muddy water. Every feature inside was stained the same, dull red. Any flat, undisturbed place has small stones and dirt clods still resting as silent markers of that event. I’m sure it would be far too harmful to power wash the whole place, but that’s what it would take to clean the place up.
Now, I’ve been thinking about cave formation in general. What did it take in order to get a huge amount of water, big enough to fill the whole cavern to the top? Well, in recorded history, it took a rainstorm (in a notoriously wet area) on a mountain without trees.
Was there ever such a time in the past when many places would have had similar conditions causing underground flooding?
Oh, yes, there was! When the “fountains of the great deep” were broken up (Genesis 7:11), there was more than just hot water spewing from the earth. There were also volcanoes. The World-Wide Flood itself stripped every tree on earth away.
Then came the upheaval of the new continents. Mountains folded and lifted. More volcanoes erupted. The water drained, but it would take some time for enough trees and other plants to get a good hold on the soil to slow erosion.
Next came the storms. The Institute for Creation Research has done a lot of study about the good possibility of hyper-canes and other massive storms pummeling the planet for hundreds of years after the Flood ended. We can see from the volcanic rocks that eruptions continued to be common; changing the climate for some time after the Flood year ended.
Cave formations (Photo credit: Tolka Rover)
All of that worked together in a way we thankfully only rarely see in today’s world. The wonder is that some of what was formed at that time is so beautiful we pay good money to get a close and careful look at it!
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also put eternity in people’s hearts, but we can never discover the work God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
My mom brought over her Christmas catalogs yesterday and I ran into one of these. I remember having a cheap water/sand art window when I was a girl. It was mesmerizing to watch the sand swirl into new layers and shapes as I turned it.
Why am I urging you to buy a fancy desk toy for your kids? Have a good look at the picture. You have water, sand, grit, and in this model: gold flecks. Right away you are aware of how these different elements work together to produce thin laminations and different formations in a few seconds.
This is a toy that shows geological, sedimentary processes right before your eyes. It is a science experiment you can do over and over again. The best part (as a mom), there’s no mess to clean up!
Who’s going to believe in layers taking years and years to form when you see them form almost instantly at home? This is REAL science not speculation based on what someone wants to be true!
If I had a spare $85 plus shipping, I would get my family the one in the picture because it has such beautiful gold flecks in it to add extra dimension to the layering. The same store also has a few other designs that should last a long time if you can afford them (click on the picture link to go to their store).
For the rest of us, there is quite a collection at the “Office Playground” with prices right around $20. Sorry for you international people; if there’s a non-USA site, I didn’t find it.
Of course, this doesn’t replace getting some good written materials (it will take years for me to have enough posts to give you all the basic info for free!). My Creation Links has a whole section on resources with all the main stores listed.
The whole universe is God’s; it can’t help but prove Him true when we actually examine it carefully!
The earth and everything on it belong to the Lord. The world and all its people belong to him. Psalm 24:1 Easy-to-read Version
Usually fossilized bones will be scattered across a wide area, like Dracorex’s. Sometimes they are even buried with a whole bunch of other bits mixed together in a “bone bed” (we creationists like to call them “grave yards“). But sometimes we find a whole creature in one piece, much like a pressed flower.
When I wrote about Archeopteryx, I mentioned the way the fossil is positioned with its neck arched WAY back. One of the things I learned is that this quite common when a dino or bird is fossilized in one piece. The term opisthotonic [oh-pis-thoh-tohn-ik there's a 2nd way, but I can't say it] death posture describes this extreme neck (and tail) arching.
Sinosauropteryx fossil: Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China
Scientists have a lot of fun trying to figure out why these animals were buried like that. They like to argue about whether it happened before or after death, or even from water (water now!) swishing the corpses into that position before burial.
You can read about the discussion for yourself on this slightly eye-crossing science paper. The paper’s conclusion seems to be that the animals found this way all use a lot of oxygen, so they probably got some sort of disease that messes with oxygen. It’s a guess, but is that the most likely reason, or do they just want to get far away from a flood?
In fact, all of those ideas are just guesses until you find a way to get a modern day animal to do the same thing on its own.
Sinosauropteryx prima fossil displayed in Hong Kong Science Museum
Many chickens had to die to give us these results, but here is a study from Brigham Young U. that actually tried their guesses out (BTW that is real science).
I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the first sentence of the article:
“Recreating the spectacular pose many dinosaurs adopted in death might involve following the simplest of instructions: just add water.”
It’s a wonder they didn’t lose their job letting the cat out of the bag like that. We’re supposed to think fossils form everyday; why, some of us might just fossilize in a few million years. But we’re not supposed to picture watery catastrophes!
Here’s what they did. First, the scientists put already killed chickens on a bed of sand for 3 months to see if they would bend backwards. Nothing but gross, rotten chickens.
Then they tried water:
Archaeopteryx – Berlin
“When seven other chickens were placed into cool, fresh water, however, their necks arched and their heads were thrown back within seconds. Sustained immersion of the birds for up to a month slightly increased the severity of the pose, but the major movement of the head occurred almost immediately.”
Did you catch that? “Within seconds,” not days, months, or millions of years. Seconds!
If we had looked for evidence of water being involved in these creatures’ burial, we couldn’t have found anything better.
The article closes with a comparison study that did not find the same results. Back in 2007 a group had dunked dead quails in salt water and they didn’t bend up. Nobody knows if the salt, temperature or something else gave such different results.
Maybe you can talk your parents into dunking your Thanksgiving turkey in different waters before it gets cooked so you can check it out for yourself! But you would need the neck still attached…
They said, “‘Welcome! God bless the king who comes in the name of the Lord.’
Peace in heaven and glory to God!”
Some of the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell your followers not to say these things.”
But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if my followers didn’t say them, these stones would shout them.” Luke 19:38-40 Easy-to-read Version
Fossil flower, collected August 2010, from the commercial Clare Family Florissant Fossil Quary, Florissant, Colorado, USA. This fossil dates back to the late Eocene epoch, 35 million years ago. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I ran into such a good page on fossils yesterday that I decided to give it a post on its own.
Although the Petrified Wood Museum specializes in tree fossils, they have a wonderful page on fossils in general. It will be our text for the day!
The word fossil is derived from the Latin fossilis, which means “dug up”. Initially, the term fossil applied to any strange or interesting material found within rock whether or not it was of organic origin
That would explain why the word fossil is used in so many ways, wouldn’t it?
The word ancient is arbitrary. To some ancient applies only to extinct organisms while to others it implies time limits….A more common time limit defines fossils as being prehistoric thus; fossils preserve remains or activities of ancient organisms older than 10,000 years.
Like we saw yesterday, someone else is calling the age limit on how young fossils “arbitrary”. Scientists just decide that anything fossilized MUST be really old. They don’t actually have any proof, they just want it that way.
Organisms become trapped within sediment layers due to the action of water, wind or gravity.
Water action we are familiar with. Let’s have a look at when things get trapped by wind or gravity. Wind-borne dirt (called Loess) is something I’ve heard of with the Wooly Mammoths. I covered this form of rock in my post on Devils Tower. You can read more at Answers in Genesis: “Mr. Ice Age” Solves Woolly Mammoth Mystery.
At first I didn’t have a clue what gravity-caused sediment layers would look like. Wikipedia pointed out that landslides count in this category. That makes sense; a living thing gets buried by dirt, mud, and rocks tumbling down on it.
Here’s the thing: unless you have a rare form of dirt that we know isn’t formed under water (like loess), you don’t know whether the landslide was dry or wet. We know there are landslides under water, so there is no way to prove that water wasn’t involved.
Fossilization often occurs as a result of rapid burial, usually by water-borne sediment, followed by chemical alteration. Rapid burial and specific chemical environments help to reduce decomposition from bacteria and fungi.
When would a bunch of things get buried rapidly in “water-borne sediment”? How about a giant flood, so big it covered the highest points on earth by 20ft [+6m]?
Deposits that contain vast numbers of fossils represent Concentration Lagerstätten. The preservation may not be exceptional, but the great numbers can be very informative.
Here they’re talking about special times we find helpful fossils . Next time I discuss fossils I want to get to these collections of “vast numbers” of fossils buried together.
Conservation Lagerstätten contain fossils with soft body preservation, impressions of soft tissue or fossils of well-articulated skeletons without soft tissue preservation.
This is the kind of fossil I wrote about on Monday. These creatures were so well preserved that it is obvious that they didn’t just get sick/old, die, and slowly sink to the bottom. They had to be buried quickly or they wouldn’t be in the form they are found.
examples of index fossils
Finally, fossils are the most practical way of telling time in geology
Do you know what that is saying? Scientists long ago decided that the deeper an animal was buried the more millions of years old it must be. Then, when they find other rock layers with the same kinds of creatures, they say both layers are from the same era. For more on this, see my post on the Geologic Column and check out the links.
The truth is, the fossils don’t come with time badges on them. You can’t even date them with Radiometric dating, so “the most practical way” to say the earth is old is just a complicated set of guesses.
I say this because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, “He catches those who think they are wise in their own clever traps.” The Scriptures also say, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise. He knows that their thoughts are worth nothing.” I Corithians 3:19,20 Easy-to-read Version
Saurexallopus, a four toed dinosaur or bird trace fossil
Last week on facebook I shared someone’s photo of a museum display that proclaimed “fossil. n.: any evidence of life more than 7,000 years old.”
I had a bit of a lively debate discussing what exactly a fossil would be. The best they could come up with was that a fossil is something turned to stone by pressure and time with no organic material remaining.
Most educational sites are much more careful to use a definition that is accurate, I rather like the acrostic Stories in Stone uses to explain how something qualifies for the title Fossil:
Petrified Araucaria mirabilis Cone; Patagonia, Argentina
Found
Only in
Sedimentary
Stones
Indicating
Life
Although even that will show to miss some real fossils.
Museums seem to be more forceful trying to make fossils prove their claim that the earth must be old. Here’s what the Natural History Museum of San Diego says about them:
Fossils are the remains and/or traces of prehistoric life. The critical factor is age. Fossils have to be older than 10,000 years, the generally accepted temporal boundary marking the end of the last Pleistocene glacial event.
OK, they don’t care about the pressurization (very wise) or organic remains, they just try to make them so old the Bible must be lying. Wikipedia’s Fossil page was honest enough to admit that claiming fossils MUST be 10,000 years old is “arbitrary” [which means they just decided it should be that without a good reason].
So what is a fossil really? Here are the types of things scientists call fossils (from Enchanted Learning):
mold fossils(like when you press a toy into playdough and pull it back out)
Fossil Homeosaurus maximiliani Paris, Galleries of Paleontology and Compared Anatomy
cast fossils (when something else fills in that shape)
true form fossils (fossils of the actual animal or animal part)
This last one, where the animal or plant is still there (more or less) is divided into these sub-types:
unaltered preservation (like insects or plant parts trapped in amber, a hardened form of tree sap)
permineralization=petrification (in which rock-like minerals seep in slowly and replace the original organic tissues with silica, calcite or pyrite, forming a rock-like fossil – can preserve hard and soft parts – most bone and wood fossils are permineralized)
Did you catch that? Those dino bones we love to visit are petrified just like the teddy bear in the spring. And as we know, they stink, so there is still organic material in there that wasn’t replaced by minerals.
Tree bark fossil called Lepidodendron, 005411 (Photo credit: Black Country Museums)
carbonization=coalification (in which only the carbon remains in the specimen – otherelements, like hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are removed)
Sometime I will get around to all the amazing things we find in coal. Notice that coal is made from a living thing (a plant) that has lost other elements leaving only the carbon behind.
recrystalization (hard parts either revert to more stable minerals or small crystals turn into larger crystals)
Do we have trouble with fossils just because we believe God made the world only about 6,000 years ago? Not a bit. We would if we didn’t believe in a global catastrophe, but the Bible carefully explains that to us as well.
On the 17th day of the second month, when Noah was 600 years old, the springs under the earth broke through the ground, and water flowed out everywhere. The sky also opened like windows and rain poured down. The rain fell on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. That same day Noah went into the boat with his wife, his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives.
Every living thing on earth died—every man and woman, every bird, and every kind of animal. All the many kinds of animals and all the things that crawl on the ground died. Every living, breathing thing on dry land died. In this way God wiped the earth clean—he destroyed every living thing on the earth—every human, every animal, everything that crawls, and every bird. All that was left was Noah and his family and the animals that were with him in the boat. Genesis 7:11,21-23
“Most fish sink when they die, but float to the top as they begin to rot. With small fish, this
can happen in as little as 24 hours.”
So why are there so many fish fossils if they normally float when they begin to rot? Maybe they were buried quickly before there was time for them to rot.
“For more than a century, the Green River formation in southwestern Wyoming has been famed for its preserved fossils, most of them herring-sized fish. The thin-layered strata there were laid down as sediments in ancient lakes, and some layers… contain as many as 500 fish fossils per square meter (46 per square foot).
Scientists have identified more than 20 possible causes for modern-day fish kills worldwide,…
Unidentified bird species from the Fossil Butte Member in southwestern Wyoming, USA
…that scenario doesn’t explain the fossilized remains of birds also found in the layers, Hellawell suggested.”
I wonder why they don’t want to consider a massive flood event pouring mud over them?
People knew God, but they did not honor him as God, and they did not thank him. Their ideas were all useless. There was not one good thought left in their foolish minds. They said they were wise, but they became fools.
Instead of honoring the divine greatness of God, who lives forever, they traded it for the worship of idols—things made to look like humans, who get sick and die, or like birds, animals, and snakes. Romans 1:21-23 Easy-to-read Version
The other week when I checked out that amazing page of a fossil collecting trip to Europe, I was really struck by something. Fossils are evidence of huge numbers of animals who died.
If you haven’t watched the video, I encourage you to go to Southern Ontario Creation Flood Evidence Museum’s trip page and scroll 3/4 of the way down to their video of the Fossil Horseshoe Crab. First you see these little markings through the sand (now rock). These tracks continue for a few feet (there may have been more, but the rock is broken behind, so we don’t know) and then end with a fossilized horseshoe crab.
One of the things that Evolutionists and Old-Earth Creationists can comfort themselves by thinking is that fossils lived out their lives and then were slowly buried by everyday processes. We don’t have pleasant stories like that to ease our sorrow. Fossilized animals were alive up to a few moments of their burial in many instances and we can see that.
Here are some more examples:
Fossilized Jellyfish (just so you know, dead jellyfish don’t regularly make it to the sea floor. The only time they’ve been observed to sink to the bottom was in the Gulf of Oman. The jellyfish remains rolled down the continental shelf in a meter [yard] wide mass. That is not the way we find them fossilized)
Ammonite (extinct spiral-shelled sea creature) didn’t get to swallow its snail and crustacean meal
Ichthyosaur giving birth to her baby that never quite made it out (everyone knows about this one, but finding a picture for you was hard. The blog I found is great, you just have to scroll almost halfway down a long page to see her)
Ichnofossil
There are a number of other evidences for rapid burial of creatures that weren’t dead before they were entombed under a bunch of water and mud, but these are more than enough to get the idea.
For all we learn from the fossil record, it is still a sad testimony of the consequences of people’s sin and how much God is willing to do to clean His world. With authority comes responsibility. God takes our actions very seriously.
But why are people even important to you? Why do you take care of human beings?
You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.
You put them in charge of everything you made. You put all things under their control:
all the sheep, the cattle, and the wild animals, the birds in the sky,
the fish in the sea, and everything that lives under water.
Lord our Lord, your name is the most wonderful name in all the earth! Psalm 8:4-9
James Hutton was the grandfather of Biological Evolutionary theory as well as being grandfather of Uniformitarianism. His follower, Lyell, is much more famous for discouraging people from believing in geology based on a real, world-wide flood. And we all know who followed Hutton’s ideas of slow change from one kind of animal to another: Charles Darwin.
Here’s the sad thing I found about both Hutton and Lyell. They both claimed to love God.
There is a well done page on the SHiPS science teacher’s Resource Center website talking about Hutton. If you’re in high school or older I’d recommend reading the whole page for yourself to see what can happen to people who love God and ignore His Word. This secular site realized that modern atheistic science has been hiding the real faith of our founding scientists. They were the only site I found that knew Hutton believed in God.
“Hutton himself was a theist. Moreover, his conclusions were strongly guided by his theology. Indeed, for Hutton, a beneficent God was the major reason for believing that the world was extremely old.”
A “theist” is the opposite of an “atheist,” it means a person who believes there is a god of some kind out there. Hutton even believed that this god was “beneficent” that is, actively good and caring.
“…he saw no beginning and no end to the Earth; the planet was timeless. Why? For Hutton, the Earth was created by God especially for human habitation. As such the world was wisely self-perpetuating. Though humans might consume many vital elements, they were all replenished. As animals used oxygen, for example, plants regenerated it using the animal’s carbon dioxide waste.”
That sounds a lot like the God we worship except for one thing. The Creator God who gave us the Bible tells us the world isn’t timeless. He told us exactly how He created the ordered earth in 6 ‘mornings and evenings.’ Apparently God’s witness in the Scriptures didn’t bear much weight with Hutton.
“For Hutton, God had built a great “world machine”–in the Newtonian sense of a clockwork universe. The world was composed of great cycles–cycles without beginning or end. For Hutton, there was certainly no “evolution” in our sense of gradual, directional change. There were only great endless cycles. This view was also shared by Charles Lyell, who later popularized Hutton’s “uniformitarian” view of geology that so influenced Darwin.”
Here was a man who thought he was doing right by explaining how God “really” set up the earth, but did it help people turn to God? His work was what gave Darwin and his followers the tools they needed to explain God out of the picture.
Charles Lyell
As for Charles Lyell, I found a single paragraph web page about this man who made Hutton’s ideas about long, slow earth changes popular. Here’s what they tell us about Lyell:
He defined the epochs of the Cenozoic and made key advances in stratigraphy, sedimentology, and paleontology. His original views on earth history held species to be immutable and specially created at the beginning of each geological era.
Immutable means unchanging, so Lyell originally believed in an old earth which God filled with different types of creatures at the beginning of each geological age. “Special creation” means God bringing in new life forms from nothing. I believe in Special Creation, but only during one week of history!
Lyell apparently later came around to his friend Darwin’s way of thinking and became an Evolutionist, although he still wasn’t too sure natural selection could do it. He never published anything saying he believed in Evolution either.
These men shared something in common with their view of God and His Word. The didn’t believe the Bible was an accurate history of God’s working in the world. So they invented their own way of looking at the world around them.
The idea of the earth being really old came first; the way paved by men who pledged allegiance to God. Belief in naturalistic Evolution followed close behind.
And Jesus answered and said unto them, “…from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” Mark 10:5,6
But these people don’t want to remember what happened long ago. The skies were there, and God made the earth from water and with water. All this happened by God’s word. Then the world was flooded and destroyed with water.
And that same word of God is keeping the skies and the earth that we have now. They are being kept to be destroyed by fire. They are kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of all people who are against God. II Peter 3:5-7 Easy-to-read Version
Remember how God first cursed the ground for Adam’s sake after their disobedience? Up to that point the Bible tells us there were no prickers or other unpleasant plants.
Have a look at this page from John MacKay’s (rhymes with pies) trip to Nova Scotia last week:
This was posted at the Biblical Geology Blog earlier and is very exciting because it shows how looking at modern land forming events verifies what the Bible tells us about our past so well. Here’s an excerpt:
“What is revealing is how frequently the geology lecturers talk about and invoke catastrophic deposition. They argue that many of the observed layers have been laid down in hours … yes hours!!!!”
Do you see that in your textbook? They’re having to teach it on the field because we see it happening.
Yet when mud is observed today to be catastrophically deposited, such as when a dam breaks, or a landslide or severe flood, it does in fact sort itself into laminations over a period measured in hours. The appearance of these is no different from what I observed in the field. Worse, for the long-age view, the mud shows very clear cross bedding and a clear direction of flow can be measured (and I did).
This one I’m going to add to my Folded Mountains posts:
“The lecturers also argued that the folding of the strata took millions of years. Yet when I asked, strata at pressures of 5 km of water depth and at low temperature are in fact ductile and not rigid (Greenschist facies). They could fold rapidly, like multi coloured toothpaste out of a tube.”
And a wonderful conclusion:
All in all I was greatly encouraged to witness firsthand the uniformitarian framework applied as the guiding principle to interpret the rocks. Not only do the rocks themselves do not require this framework, but they don’t fit very well within it.
The evidence truly does work from all viewpoints. Not only equally well, but it fits the eye-witness account we have in the Bible better than man’s made up ideas about the past. Don’t give in, there is no good reason to!
But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he rewards them that diligently seek him. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Hebrews 11:6,7
I am very excited to share some amazing videos that I ran into today. Both videos are pure footage of God’s world. Enjoy!
patagonia (Photo credit: Dave_B_)
Want A Glimpse of Heaven? by Lyn Leahz links to a 13 minute showcase of some of the most spectacular scenery on earth. The music only deepens the awe. My kids what to know how the cave jumpers were ever going to get out again. BTW to understand what formed those caves, read all about it in Karst Landscapes. Else where, notice the steep cliffs with perfectly straight layering near peaks with tipped layers. Also, all the smooth water weathering in the middle of the desert.
Our God Is Awesome from Provocations & Paintings is only 3 1/2 minutes, but presents a unique view of our earthy home from the International Space Station. My favorite part starts at the 1 1/2 minute mark with the Northern Lights! I’d never seen them from above. I also liked the lightening and the glowing atmosphere bits. Awesome.
One last light post: Faith Unfeigned asks a simple question with a beautiful picture to spark your thinking.
Deeper and longer posts (meaning high school and up):
Here’s a thought for the Theistic Evolutionists [people who believe God used Evolution]: I Sometimes Make God Too Small That’s not Every Day Awe’s point, but it is true. We all have a tendency to forget just how big our God really is. If you do, watch that first video again; that should cure you!
On a different note, a new guy at The Christian Armory has a post comparing what we know about population growth and what the Bible teaches: An Approximation of the Age of Man (I think I will use his idea sometime soon).
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:18,19
I forgot to include my Red Panda pictures on Friday’s post, so I’ve just replaced the ones on my full post on those cool animals. My husband is quite a photographer, isn’t he?
One of the things that I like best about Binder Park is a walking trail on stilts through one of the swamps that are very common around the northern US Midwest. It gives us a close picture of something that is happening around the northern world (it probably is, or was, in some areas of the southern hemisphere, but I couldn’t find anything on it). This is the rise of the land and shrinking of the glacial lakes since the Ice Age ended.
Although people have had a big hand in the shrinking of the wetlands across the northern US and Canada since we started settling 200 years, we aren’t the only cause. Turns out we’ve just sped up a process that has been going on for thousands of years.
As you will remember, during the Ice Age much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered with glaciers. When things started to settle down to the climate that we now have, the ice melted back leaving scoured valleys and pockets of lowland that filled in with water. Large areas of lowland became lakes, some of which dwarfed the Great Lakes that we still have. Small bits eventually became the wetlands that much of the glacial area is filled with (check out THIS PAGE to see a map of the wetland areas of the world.
The curved lines along the bottom show how much faster we figure the land rose right after the ice mellted. Just stretch the numbers out so you have a 4 on the bottom left.
Another thing that happened as the Ice Age came to an end is that the land underneath began to spring back. I’ve seen this described as something similar to what happens to a mattress when a large person gets up out of bed. We know that northern Canada’s land rose very quickly after the ice melted and is still rising more slowly. Uniformitarians figure the rate of rise was about 33 feet [10m] per hundred years (so they can fit things into their extra long timeline). We do know that the land is still rising near Hudson Bay at a rate of 4.3ft [1.3m] per century right now. This is happening as far south as the upper edge of Lake Michigan.
This isn’t the only place where the land is rising. Hundreds of years ago the Swedes were sure the sea level was falling. They finally realized that it was their land that was rising instead! In northern Sweden, the land is rising today at a rate of 11mm every two years. That works out to 220m [722ft] in 4,000 years!
I found an article by a guy here in Michigan who has seen the results of all this upheaval in his own lifetime. He has seen lakes shrink quite a lot and has heard accounts of these lakes being even larger less than 200 years before. This was the article that showed me the connection between our shrinking swamplands and the land rising. Part of this man’s experience was that places that had been swamp had become forested, and small lakes had become the new swamps.
We have an important responsibility to be careful with the beautiful world God has made for us. But we aren’t in complete control of everything that happens to our environment. Even if we are very careful with the special places that are still left, things are still getting slowly worse and worse, not better and better as the Evolutionists want us to believe. Let us look to our Creator God and ask Him to help us preserve and protect His workmanship.
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Genesis 2:15
I was sure my series on Limestone was finished with last week’s folded mountain posts, but then I ran into an article on Mother of Pearl from Creation Revolution. Being fond of pearls, I checked it out and discovered that Calcium Carbonate, the stuff Limestone is made of, is the main ingredient in them!
Nacre [neigh-kur], is the ”official” name for Mother of Pearl which is the coating some mollusks like oysters make. When I first started studying all the forms of Limestone, I learned that most of it has bits of sea shells and some is made completely from shells like Chalk. So I knew that mollusks (shellfish) are good at turning Calcium Carbonate into shell. But I didn’t realize until now that Pearls are a fancy form using the same ingredients.
I want to show you how scientists are copying these mollusks which will also show you all the things a tiny blind animal has been preprogrammed to do all by itself!
Argonite Cave: the kind of crystals the CC wants to make
First, you have to keep the Calcium Carbonate from forming the kind of crystals it automatically wants to make and instead force it to settle onto the surfaces you are coating. Scientists do this with both ions (electrically charged particles) and special “organic compounds” added to the water. I found a Pearl Page describing natural Nacre and it says these organic things are “elastic biopolymers, which are chains of organic substance, such as proteins and carbohydrates, [and] are soft and flexible.” I’m afraid compounds and polymers are a little past my teaching level, but I think you get the idea. These two very different substances settle out of the water onto hard surfaces and form super thin, strong layers.
Every website I’ve found that talks about this process compares the Calcium Carbonate to bricks and the organic stuff to mortar. That picture shows how the CC provides the strength needed to build up the shell/pearl while the organic part provides flexibility and holds the whole thing together. Remember, the reason God designed the mollusk to make Nacre (besides to make beautiful jewelry and gates out of) is to protect itself from intruders: parasites that would eat the animal, and sand/grit that would scratch it up.
This is a simple schematic of what nacre looks like on a microscopic scale.
Next, the shellfish and scientists coat this first thin layer with more organic compound glue filled with microscopic pores. I ran into an older biomimicry page talking about how copying the mollusk can help windshield designers make safer and stronger glass. We’ve already been using a simple form of layered glass and plastic in our cars for almost 90 years. God was way ahead of the curve, as usual!
Finally, repeat and repeat and… you get the idea. I’ve found some other studies from earlier that copied most of this well, but it was taking so much work and time that it wasn’t ready to actually use. It seems the real break-through in this newest method is being able to accomplish all of this quickly and easily (= less money). Turns out this time they used a robot to do the repeated dipping into the solutions. Can’t you just see factories full of robot arms dipping back and forth? Wild!
So, what are we thinking of doing with this new stuff? Apparently no one’s too excited about jewelry (although I linked to the National Jeweler for the latest research). God’s design is too perfect and copying it would likely lower the price too much to be very interesting to investors. What I’ve seen interest in are things like:
Cheap, tough coatings for ______ cars? windshields? watches and other decorative items? you name it! (that page has a cool comparison photo of God’s and man’s Nacre)
The Engineer.co.uk put their article about the latest research in the Medicine and Health Care section, but didn’t say why, so you can guess for yourself
Once more we see how amazing God’s designs are:
Aragonite layers in a blue mussel shell
It takes years of research for us to even figure out what’s going on and more years to make rough copies of His designs.
God is so smart He programmed “simple” mollusks to do it.
And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. Revelation 21:10,11,21
