The fossils are too well sorted. I am indebted to R.S. Beal Jr. for reminding me of this. Conodonts are microscopic fossils which are the "teeth" of an ancient animal. The shape of these conodonts change with each succeeding geologic level are unique. In the Grand Canyon, in the Redwall limestone, is divided vertically into the Whitmore Wash, Thunder Springs, Mooney Falls and Horseshoe Mesa members. In each of these layers a peculiar shaped and unique conodont is found. A conodont named Gnathodes typicus is found in the Whitmore Wash member and not in the other layers. Scoliognathus anchoralis and Dolignathus latus are unique to the Thunder Springs member. Gnathodus texanus is found in the Mooney Falls member only and the conodont Taphrognathus variarus is limited to the Horseshoe Mesa member.
Conodont are extremely small and microscopes must be used to examine them. How in the world could a global flood so perfectly sort these tiny particles into layers that only contain conodonts of certain shapes? The turbulence of the flood was supposed to be so great and yet world-wide, microscopic animals are sorted vertically through the various layers of the geologic column.
In the Gulf of Mexico, when we drill wells, we always find the same vertical order of microscopic planktonic foraminifera, nannoplankton, and benthic foraminifera. I know that a peculiar shape of planktonic foram, Glob Menardi changed its coiling direction at the same geologic horizon as the last occurrence of D. brouweri "A", and the benthic foram, Cristellaria S. I know that microscopic benthonic Trimosina A is found above this level and the microscopic calcarious nannoplankton Discoaster A is below this level. Each of these fossil forms have a unique shape and are easily distinguishable. How could the flood so perfectly sort these small uniquely shaped creatures into vertical layers?
Other fossils are equally well sorted but not on the characteristics that global Flood
advocates suggest. I use some rather old books for this, because it illustrates how long ago this information was known. This is important because as long as this has been known, Christian apologists never talk about ammonites in their books on the Flood.
Ammonites were a nautiloid-like animal that lived in the Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas as the animal grew, it excreted a shell wall behind the animal but inside the shell which was attached to the outer shell. The junction of this interior partition with the external shell left a suture pattern on the exterior of the shell. This suture pattern was constant for each species and was constant for each individual throughout its life. A small individual had the same sutures as a large individuals of the same species. This is important because global flood advocates believe that the fossils are sorted according to the laws of hydrodynamical sorting. These laws, Stoke's Law and variations of it, would predict that the ammonites would be sorted by size, with the biggest ones on bottom and the smallest ones on top. (See Potter et al, p. 9)
Henry Morris, an expert on hydrodynamics (1967, p. 40) wrote:
"The hydrodynamic sorting action of moving water is quite efficient, so that each stratum would tend to contain an assemblage of fossils of similar shapes and sizes."
Now, what do we find? We find that the ammonites are not sorted by size in the geologic column, but are sorted by suture shape!
The same sized organism with different suture shapes are found at different stratigraphic levels. In the Jurassic ammonite zones are defined nearly world wide based upon the different sutures of the animals.
One is correct to say that the flood could not sort everything perfectly, yet if the geologic column was built up by a 1 year flood, that is exactly what you must say happened. Ammonites were deposited in a strict order based upon suture shape. Since the suture shape could not have made that much difference in the sorting process, the only conclusion is that the ammonites were not deposited in one big catastrophe.
The only reasonable explanation is that the layers were laid down over a very, very long time period and the ammonites which lived in one time period died out before the next and were replaced.
