Rapid Fossils

One of the major tenets of evolution denying the global flood has been that fossils cannot form rapidly.  This is regularly repeated across evolutionists literature. However, a recent study out of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom is challenging that paradigm. While this comes as no surprise to creationists who have long argued for the rapid formation of fossils,  evolutionists are undoubtedly going to struggle to find a way to fit it into their dogma.

The study, published in the peer reviewed journal Paleontology comes at the problem from a new angle.  In order to test how quickly they could fossilize a bone, in this case lizard bones. They found that the bone could be fossilized in a very similar way to what is found in naturally occurring rocks in as little as twenty-four hours. This did require specialized conditions.

The first of these specialized conditions was the bones had to be buried in sediments. That may not seem specialized but consider that the vast majority of creatures that die are not immediately covered in sediment. In fact many do not get covered at all and are, instead, consumed by predators and scavengers, as well as bacteria breaking them down.

The second key condition for rapid fossilization is pressure. This pressure has to be very strong to force the organic material out of the body and force the minerals into the bones.  This pressure could be applied multiple ways.  The most obvious way would be layers of rock above it. However, this is not possible in the evolutionary worldview since sedimentary rocks in that view form slowly over millions of years. Thus enough rock could not have formed above the would be fossil quickly enough to fossilize it in that manner.

The third and final key condition for rapid fossilization is consistent high temperature.  This could be provided quite easily by the pressure.  Friction generates heat energy. By piling on moving sediments, the increase in pressure would have generated significant amounts of friction. The friction would have generated significant heat. This heat could have provided the conditions for rapid fossilization.

With that data in mind let us consider. Is there a way to get these conditions to have rapid fossilization occur naturally? That’s a valid question, one which can be tested by looking at the predictions of both the evolutionism and creation models.  Since evolutionism predicts slow fossilization after a creature dies, and slow burial of the organism, rapid fossilization should never be observed. Yet we do observe it. We find animals fossilized eating each other, giving birth, and locked in combat, all indicating rapid fossilization in the natural world. Clearly rapid fossilization happened. The evolution model predicts that fossilization happened too slowly for these things to fossilize, yet they did, so the evolution model fails this hurdle.

Moving back to rapid fossilization, does the creation model provide a natural environment where rapid fossilization would be possible? We know rapid fossilization happened and that evolution cannot explain it, but that is not de facto evidence that creation can explain it. However, there is an aspect of the creation model that can very easily explain rapid formation of fossils. That aspect is the global flood in the days of Noah.

The global flood would have created climate conditions only seen in fractional form in to today’s world. It would have provided a lot of mineral rich water, perfect for fossilization. As the flood waters rushed over the land, they would have carried with them massive amounts of sediment. That sediment would have layered based on particle density and been laid down incredibly quickly, sometimes simultaneously. As it did so, it would have buried everything in its path, including animals  This would have provided the sediment required for rapid fossilization.  As the sediment that was laid down layered, the lower levels of sediment would have been under increasing pressure. The higher the layers of sediment rose, the higher the pressure.  As this pressure increased, so would the temperature.  The friction from the moving sediments would have generated intense heat.  This would allow for rapid fossilization, including creatures eating each other, giving birth and so on.

Evolutionists will insist that this process has only been done in a lab and thus has never been naturally observed. This is something akin to the pot calling the kettle black as they hold to things like abiogenesis which has never been observed anywhere, let alone naturally.  Since there is a natural event which would have permitted rapid fossilization in the past, there is no reason to be surprised that scientists are able to duplicate the process on a smaller scale in the laboratory.