Here is the nature of fossils: they were formed rapidly, and most formed during the Genesis Flood.
This is not the typical children’s education explanation, which always includes deep time (millions of years) for fossils to form. But that explanation does not make physical sense in view of the types of fossils, where they appear, and how they appear. But in most classrooms, a biblical view cannot be discussed.
What is your view of history? The world view that is held makes a big difference. It may come as a surprise, but the evidence of fossils makes much more sense in a biblical world view. Let’s consider the example of leaf fossils. Leaves are delicate, they are destroyed easily under normal circumstances. How can they be fossilized?
While leaf fossils are not as common as marine fossils, they are still plentiful if you know where to look. The two images are leaf fossils from the Lake Sakakawea region in North Dakota. Now they sit as a showpiece of my daughter’s home. Take a close look at the top view, then look at the front view of the rock.
The sediments, laid down quickly, did not radically disturb the leaf detail and left an indentation in the once pliable layer of sediment that one would expect of a cross section of a leaf in mud. But these layers were laid down quickly, and they included minerals and silicates that harden fast. So, the leaf details are “captured” in the process. I also included a sketch that gives scale. the same area was full of petrified wood and fossilized small branches of trees.
Note the image below of a black leaf fossil from Glendive State Park in Montana. It shows the effect of different minerals that were in the rapid fossil process to yield the color. Note the preserved detail. This does not happen in a slow process, because the leaf would have been destroyed by a combination of forces.
Let’s go back to one of my favorite collected marine fossils — a clam. It was buried alive and also fossilized during the Genesis Flood. The shell was unopened. Normal clams, if exposed to air or any slow process, would simply be destroyed or eaten. The backside of the fossil, which was chipped, shows the innards were still there and fossilized right along with the shell. All this is why marine fossils, which are easy to find, typically exhibit that a rapid process took place. Can it really be millions of years old, or is the wrong world view being considered?
Of course, there are bigger fossils of whales, dinosaurs, jellyfish, and dozens of other types of life. How can this be around the world, far from seas, at high altitudes but also found beneath the sea? How can we have over 85 technical reports of partially fossilized dinosaurs with recoverable protein, flexible structures, and some DNA? How do we get perfectly fossilized insects we can recognize in amber? How can coal seams often have a rotten stench? How can layers of plant matter get turned to coal and be found around the world? All these things are generally not considered together, because they are very difficult to explain in an evolutionary world view. But they fit a biblical world view very well.
Stand back from fossils and consider that the evidence speaks of a worldwide catastrophe due to water and the connected breakup of land masses. That sounds like the Genesis Flood, and that is where the challenge to evolution and naturalism becomes all too apparent. So, your child never sees it. Most adults have never seen it. Why not look at the evidence more closely and consider a biblical world view?
If the Flood is true, uh-oh, the Bible is true. If the Bible is true, concepts of history are quite different. Layers of mud and sediments that cover most of the globe do not translate to eons of times, the translate to rapidly deposited layers of sediments during the Flood cited in Genesis 6-8. The array of fossil evidence, which continues to grow, make perfect sense. It all translates to a worldwide catatstrophe just 4500 years ago.
Now you see why a simple leaf fossil seems so interesting when we get to find it ourselves.
Want more information and study what you may have never heard? Get the free phone app. Want more technical reports about the Flood model or the truth of Genesis, start with creation.com, or icr.org, or answersingenesis.org.
And, by all means, open the pages of a Bible.
On YouTube, find us on the CreationStudyHelps channel. Watch some of the short videos or the chalk talk videos.
