Art, it's obvious there is a large variety
of living creatures that just got buried all at once.
There are, and the range of fossils is amazing.
They have fossil dinosaur eggs, fossil shells, fossil wood,
scoots from crocodiles and things like that — seeds.
Just a lot of different stuff.
So there is a almost unlimited range of fossils.
Even tracks of animals are considered fossils.
Well, I've heard of prints footprints being fossilized.
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, that's what I have on this slab right here.
This is a piece of Coconino sandstone
and you can see.
Oh my goodness, you can see —
The tracks just jump out.
The claws.
So, this is a creature
that is either just walking along or running or something.
Right.
There are some unique features of the tracks that indicate
that these animals were walking underwater,
which is very interesting
because this is normally thought of as a dune sand — a sand dune.
And the Coconino is right in the middle
of the rock record in the Grand Canyon.
It's lower Permian.
Dr. Brand thought, ‘well,
that would be a good place to look
because these tracks are supposed to be in dry sand
and yet we think it
probably was wet.’ So he began to analyze these tracks
and he found out animals don't make tracks
like this in dry sand.
In fact,
if you get any tracks at all, they're just big smears —
as you can imagine.
But if you have wet sand or you have sand under water,
then you can get these distinct tracks
that show the nice toe marks.
You can see these toes are really well displayed.
And that's an indication —
in Dr. Brand’s study —
that's an indication that they were made under water.
So, here's a case
where… not everybody in the scientific community
likes that conclusion,
but it's a case
where a creationist who believed in the global flood used
that as a hypothesis to study to see
if that was substantiated by his research.
And it was.
I suppose it's possible then
that the tracks we're looking at is a creature
who may have been trying to escape.
Well, historically,
it's interesting that these tracks were considered
amphibian tracks.
And amphibia live in water.
And it was changed to reptiles after Edwin McKee,
who studied the sediments in Grand Canyon,
after he concluded
that the sand was deposited in a sand dune in the desert,
then suddenly all the amphibians turned to reptiles
and now they're considered to be reptile tracks.
So, there's a lot of latitude in interpreting trackways.
But these certainly seem to be consistent with the sand
being deposited in water.
Do you have evidence
or have you found evidence in the fossilized record
of animals under distress?
Are there animals and creatures that appear
as if they just didn't die normally?
Well, there are a number of examples where you have
whole animal skeletons
in which the head is pulled all the way back,
and the neck is craned back like that.
And it was thought for many years that that was
because the skeletons were deposited in dry conditions.
Animal died and the ligaments in the neck constrain the head —
pulled it backwards.
But more recently,
scientists who study these things have discovered that, no,
it's a result of drowning.
So, when you find an animal
that has its head pulled all the way back like this,
it's because it's drowning.
So, there is a case
where something has come our way — those of us
who believe in the Flood — as a result of further study
and it is indicated
that these animals must have died catastrophically.
There are other evidences as well, for example,
in dinosaur nests
and there are dinosaur nests with eggs in them.
And often these eggs will have a double shell on them.
And that normally should be almost nonexistent
because animals lay eggs with a single shell.
But if you stress a chicken,
for example, the egg instead of being laid will pass back
through the process of laying down the shell a second time.
And so you get a double shell and
that's an indication of stress.
And we find a lot of these in dinosaur nests.
We find a lot of these double-shelled eggs.
So that's an indication that they were laying
their eggs under stress.
Now, one can only imagine what kind
of conditions would cause a dinosaur to lay its eggs
during a global catastrophe.
But they have to lay them if they're producing them,
so it would have to happen sometime.
And that brings us back to a different perspective
of the Flood that a lot of times we pass on to children.
Right?
It's like the gentle rain
comes down and then the floodwaters come up.
But this was a catastrophic event and it was going on
over a long period of time — long enough, evidently,
for us to maybe consider
that dinosaurs were stressed in the process of making eggs.
Yeah.
I think during a year's time —
which is the time
during which Noah was in the Ark — I think
the conditions of the Flood went on for some time beyond that.
There were catastrophic events going on.
But at least during their years time,
things happened very differently
than the way we visualize them as children.
There was a very complex world.
That complex world came to an end in a very complex way.
And this is why we find fossils in North America
in a layer of rock
and we find the same kinds of fossils in Europe or in Africa
in the same kind of layer.
And this is a global phenomenon.
So, the world before the Flood — whatever it was like — was
very complex and the process of the Flood was very complex.
There were times when dinosaurs were walking
around leaving tracks.
And so the water must have shallowed
and gotten deeper.
There are also places
where dinosaurs are leaving only front foot tracks,
which means they're probably swimming.
So, you get a picture of a world that's very complex.
A lot of things
that we might not imagine happening were happening.
And there was time
for that to happen in a global flood.
Well, everything that we have talked about points to,
obviously, a great catastrophic event —
and that's what we read in Genesis.
In particular,
a catastrophic event that involved the kind
of tumultuous processes that are almost unknown to us today.
But the conventional paradigm would look at this layer
that you're digging in and they would say
that those fossils were created a long time ago.
What's the approximate age
that the conventional paradigm would give to that?
These particular bones are cited as being
about 65 million years.
Ok.
Just below the upper Cretaceous event.
And geologists who want to believe that,
they can find rationale for believing it.
Personally, I don't think the data warrant it and I don't
… I think that the account that's given in the Bible is
a better explanation for what we see.
What have you found
that would cause you to then believe
that the Flood is recent?
And therefore,
these dinosaur bones are not 65 million years old?
That's a very difficult question
because none of us have experienced a thousand years.
We have trouble grasping the changes in a hundred years
and we're asking the question could these bones be
65,000 times as long as 1,000 years.
And we have no idea
if a bone could still maintain all its internal consistency,
and even the structures of the cells inside the bones.
And now, as you know,
we're finding biomolecules inside these bones.
All this is a challenge to the idea that we're dealing
with 65,000 times as long as 1,000 years.
We can try some experiments… We can take biomolecules,
for example, we can heat them up
and cause the rates to be much faster.
And then try to extrapolate that back to lower temperatures.
And that's a fairly scientific thing to do.
When we do that we get figures for how long a protein
or DNA can last.
It's nowhere near 65 million years.
Well, Art, you have spent a lot of time in digging fossils
and analyzing fossils and so forth.
The tree of life
that we see in our textbooks and on charts and so forth,
and we're taught would say
that all of these creatures
and even the dinosaurs themselves all came
out of one organism in the beginning
and formed all of the creatures
that we see today.
What do you see from the scientific evidence
that you have found?
Well, I enjoy looking
at the so-called phylogenetic tree —
that just means groups that are related,
so it’s talking about the genesis
or the origin of groups.
And so you see these trees constructed in textbooks.
These trees are constructed with branches and out
at the end of the branches are extant groups
or groups of fossil organisms.
But the branches themselves —
the important part that lead back to some other organism
— are bereft of meaning.
They're just a line drawn on the page.
If this was a real sequence
and evolution was the correct explanation for these diagrams,
then we ought to see a continuous development
of fossils all the way along the tree.
But instead,
when you're talking about ultimate origins
of things you'll,
have something — question mark at the bottom very often —
and then you'll have all these branches coming up.
At the end are things that we know either from fossils
or that are alive.
And where are the data?
It's just not… it's not telling us anything.
It's information depauperate.
Didn't… my understanding is that Darwin even recognized
that there wasn't a lot
of data that brought those things together.
That's right.
It's not there and it's not going to be there.
He thought that,
perhaps with more study in the fossil record,
we would learn more about this.
And you can see
these cabinets around here are all full of fossils,
but they aren't telling us anything about the connecting
of one form to another.
And so you really aren't learning anything
about the phylogenetic history of life by studying fossils.
So, it's easy to draw a line
on a piece of paper and make you think it's there.
But it's another thing to actually find it in the data.
And I'm sure that those
who believe in evolution see these lines as concrete.
Yes.
But I see them
as question marks — just conjecture.
Yeah.
Now, the Conventional Paradigm would look at that
and it would say
that that represents different periods of time —
vast difference of periods of time —
and therefore we're seeing these smaller creatures evolving
into larger creatures.
Is that what you see
from a Genesis Paradigm in can a Genesis Paradigm explain that?
No, I also have training,
as I mentioned, in molecular biology.
So, when I look at these earliest forms
and we find down in the Cambrian,
it's very easy to establish
that they're fully as complex as anything we have
on the earth today.
There isn't an increase
in the complexity at the cellular level.
There are differences.
There are certain complexities in form
that are found in things up here that are not found down there,
but these all have to do with locomotion,
which involves movement from water onto land.
And the greater complexity of organisms that walk around
on land is obvious.
That's why we have what we call the mammals.
These are animals
that mostly live on land and they're more complex.
They have arms and legs and fingers and toes.
And if you're a fish, you don't really need those.
So, you don't have them.
Well, Art, I think a lot of us were taught
that the life at the bottom is primitive —
that's the word that was used — primitive.
And so that’s a little different than what you're saying.
It sounds like it's really not that primitive.
When you look at the animals that have survived,
like some of the bracciopods
and others that are still extant today,
that are also found in the Cambrian —
the lowest layer where we have these complex life forms —
you can investigate how complex the animals were.
And you find out
that these animals are fully as complex as
any animals today in terms of their cellular biology.
It really makes it very difficult to believe
in Evolution when you find out
how deep the complexity is inside the cell.
And I think that's one of the compelling arguments
that suggest that Evolution can't explain what we see.
And that complexity is found,
and it's easy to demonstrate this logically
that that complexity is found
in the first complex organisms we find in the Cambrian.
When you go below the Cambrian,
you don't have these levels of complexity,
in fact, other than some single cells
and a group of fossils of unknown affinities,
you don't find anything below the Cambrian boundary.
But once you get into the Cambrian,
even in the very lowest part of the Cambrian,
you find not only
representatives of every phylum — every major group of animals —
but you also find diversity.
You find many species of these different kinds.
Trilobites for example.
And we happen to be standing by the trilobite drawer,
so I can show you some of these.
This is… This is a Cambrian trilobite.
Oh, that's awesome.
It's, clearly a member of the arthropods —
the same group that has modern insects and crabs
and other crustaceans in it.
And the spiders.
It's all… they're all part of this alliance
that have a hard exoskeleton.
And these organisms are very complex.
They had a head.
They had a tail.
They had compound eyes just like modern insects.
They had swimmerettes on the bottom with gills on them
that they used for exchanging oxygen.
They had antennae that came out the front.
Very, very complex and I'll show you
— even though these are not from the Cambrian — I'll show
you some of the other diversity
that we have in these trilobites.
Here's one — That's incredible!
Well-furnished for protecting itself.
It's one of the phacops alliance.
And you can see these compound eyes.
You can easily see the ommatidia —
the facets of the eye.
Well that's hard to imagine this is a fossil.
And there isn't any increase
in complexity from the first organisms we have all the way
through the fossil record at the cellular level.
Now, there are changes in complexity in terms
of the ability to move.
So, these animals didn't have to walk around on land
and they didn't have just two legs like we do.
So… We require more complexity to move us around,
but it's all a part of the aspect of motion.
It's what we need to do to move efficiently.
Well, when we were in the Grand Canyon,
and even Dr. Marcus Ross pointed
out those Precambrian rocks — those layers.
So, what we're talking about now is the fossils
that are found just above that Great Unconformity.
Is that correct?
That's exactly right.
Essentially, you're going
from no complexity to the full spectrum of complexity
that we have today.
So, again the word ‘primitive’ kind of
prejudices the mind, doesn't it?
To say that these are… But these are very complex creatures.
They are and they have the same complexity
at the cellular level,
and this includes their developmental biology,
as modern insects do.
We can clearly establish that line of logic.
If you're going to try to explain the origin of life,
for example, you have
to have a way of explaining the full spectrum of complexity
that we have in modern cells.
Nothing short of that will do.
So, since the Cambrian,
since these first organisms occur we
see differences in diversity, but we don't see new complexity.
And the complexity we do see is related
to the ability to move.
So, I think that shows us
that whatever is behind the complexity we see
in this animal has to be behind the whole scheme of things
because you can't have this happening
by random processes.
But, Art,
how then do you explain from the Genesis Paradigm the fact
that at these lower levels we don't have creatures
that walk around?
I mean, we have very,
very complex and beautiful creatures — extremely complex.
But we don't have… There is a sorting,
it appears, to have been done in those in fossil layers.
There is.
And it's not clear
exactly why things are in the order they are,
but it's clear
that there is a movement from marine ocean to things
that lived underwater to things that lived on land and then,
at higher levels,
things that could escape from burial in this water.
So, I think it's clear
if we were to start covering up the earth today —
if we were to have another Flood — the first things
that would be buried are the things
that live on the bottom of the ocean and then,
subsequently, we would see layers of rock —
or layers of sediment
— that had things
that lived higher and higher levels
in the ocean — we get fish
— and eventually we'd get things
that lived on the top of the ocean
— and then we'd get things
that lived on land — and eventually,
if the burial kept going,
we'd find remains of complex animals like us.