Re: Fossil Scenario
David Campbell (bivalve@mailserv0.isis.unc.edu)
Thu, 20 Nov 1997 15:46:56 -0400>The observed pattern, with stasis of kinds and paucity of transitions, is
>more amenable, in my mind, to a creation/flood scenario with lifezones in
>the preflood world being buried during successive stages of the Flood,
>first the teeming seafloor creatures, with a few land plant fragments
>(Lower Paleozoic - Cambrian to Silurian and on), then the water-logged
>"coal-forest" plants (which may have been floating forests) and their
>faunas, notably amphibians and insects (Upper Paleozoic -- Carboniferous
>and Permian), then as the waters rose over the continents, the eroded land
>plant communities and their faunas, notably dinosaurs (Mesozoic - Triassic,
>Jurassic, Cretaceous) topped by the upland floras, notably angiosperms (mid
>Cretaceous on), and then after several months as the waters declined, many
>floating plants beached and buried, some able to resprout, water animals
>beginning to reproduce again either in the seas or inland lakes left by the
>lowering sea level, and insects multiplying ferociously and cleaning up
>some of the dead (Lower Tertiary - Paleocene and Eocene), then a long
>process of migrations, differential survival, speciation filling new
>niches, and gradual development of our present biogeographical patterns.
Why do shallow marine deposits occur throughout the section, with changing
faunas? A multiple catastrophe old-earth but non-evolutionary scenario
seems better than a young single flood, though the transitional forms are
not accounted for in this scenario.
David Campbell