Fish and the flood

mortongr@flash.net
Mon, 13 Sep 1999 22:17:53 +0000

This note concerns the problem fish present to the YEC view of the flood.
It was originally written as a response to a particular flood viewpoint but
it can be generalized to every flood view. The YEC flood view has the land
animals on the ark and the fish off. This means that fish should not show
the same pattern in the fossil record as animals on the ark. In the case of
mammals the data is as follows taken from
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/fish.htm:

Recent 4631 species
Pleistocene 282
Pliocene 67
Miocene 2
oldest

The two living species found in the Miocene are the carnivore Callorhinus
ursinus and the bat, Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum.

The final implication of the data is that other than these (aggregate 282
species), ALL species found in the fossil record are different from those
living today. The number of extinct species found in the various epochs of
the Tertiary are:

Youngest
Pleistocene 786
Pliocene 1119
Miocene 2988
Oligocene 1282
Eocene 1819
Paleocene 604

fish show a similar pattern also taken from my web page:

youngest period # Fish genera # living genera # extinct genera

Recent 3245 3245 0
Pleistocene 422 408 14
Pliocene 416 372 44
Miocene 496 320 176
Oligocene 321 207 114
Eocene 398 157 241
Paleocene 124 53 71
Cretaceous 340 38 302
Jurassic 146 5 141
Triassic 175 0 175
Permian 86 0 86
Pennsylvanian 106 0 106
Mississippian 163 0 163
Devonian 524 0 524
Silurian 57 0 57
Ordovician 5 0 5
Cambrian 1 0 1

The suggestion was made that the data looked different for the family level
rather than the species or generic level. The mammalian data is:

# living families
Pleistocene 109
Pliocene 77
Miocene 68
Oligocene 40
Eocene 26
Paleocene 2
Upper Cretaceous 1

Before the Upper Cretaceous, no modern mammalian families are found in the
fossil record. Thus if the animals on the ark were the modern species, then
it is amazing that these were just the ones that were able to survive until
late in the flood year.

I took my fish genera database and reduced it to the family and order
level. It shows the same pattern as did the mammalian family level. Here
is the data.

Total familes modern families Extinct families

Recent. 193 193 0
Pleistocene 177 177 0
Pliocene 177 174 3
Miocene 185 166 19
Oligocene 165 147 18
Eocene 174 127 47
Paleocene 94 73 21
Cretaceous 122 52 70
Jurassic 56 13 43
Triassic 41 2 39
Permian 38 1 37
Pennsylvanian 54 1 53
Mississippian 54 0 54
Devonian 105 0 105
Silurian 19 0 19
Ordovician 3 0 3
Cambrian 1 0 1
There are a total of 508 fish families. 315 fish families are not alive
today. But more importantly for the YEC theory, 333 families do not appear
in the Paleozoic but appear after the Paleozoic. The breakdown is as
follows: 143 appear first in the mesozoic and 190 appear for the first time
in the Tertiary with 57 of those appearing in Miocene, Pliocene,
Pleistocene or Recent.

Only 1 of the 193 modern families of fish is found Paleozoic sediments. It
is the Lepidosirenidae. All other modern familes are gone, yet there are
over 100 extinct familes of fish that were found in flood sediments. Are
YECs thus saying that all modern fish were able to avoid being buried early
in the flood? Every single individual of every species of every genera and
family?

Now to trying to anticipate the YEC response that they may want orders
rather than families as the basic unit, the same thing applies to that
taxonomic level. Here is the data.

Total orders modern orders Extinct orders
Recent. 38 38 0
Pleistocene 38 38 0
Pliocene 38 38 0
Miocene 40 38 2
Oligocene 39 36 3
Eocene 42 35 7
Paleocene 36 30 6
Cretaceous 50 25 25
Jurassic 33 11 22
Triassic 23 5 18
Permian 16 3 13
Pennsylvanian 28 3 25
Mississippian 23 2 21
Devonian 30 0 30
Silurian 7 0 7
Ordovician 1 0 1
Cambrian 1 0 1

There are 101 orders. Only 49 are found early in the flood, in the
Paleozoic strata. The rest are found only after later in the flood. Why
are not all orders found in earlier in the flood? Were they not on earth?

THere are 38 orders that first appear in the Mesozoic 12 that appear in the
lower Tertiary and 2 orders appear after the Oligocene. There are NO modern
fish orders prior to the Mississippian. Why?

This sort of pattern does not match the flood idea.

The source for all this is Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution 1988

glenn

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