1. Issues with the Tejas Megasequence – Darwin’s “abominable mystery” About 20 years after Charles Darwin published his famous book on evolution, he penned a letter to his close friend and renowned botanist Joseph Hooker, complaining, “The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery” (Buggs 2017, p. 1). The primary reason for Darwin’s claim of an abominable mystery was the sudden and massive appearance of numerous kinds of flowering plants (known as angiosperms), which first began showing up in the Cretaceous and then exploded in the Tertiary. In a recent paper, British botanist and evolutionary expert Richard Buggs showed that Darwin mainly considered the mystery to be abominable because the leading paleobotanists of his time, such as his friend Oswald Heer and his evolutionary critic William Carruthers, saw it as evidence for the work of a Creator (Buggs 2021). This glaring problem deeply bothered Darwin because the fossil record did not support his theory. Interestingly, Darwin’s Tertiary angiosperm enigma is still a conventional paleontological mystery. More recently, a 2016 research paper assessed the current extent of angiosperms in the paleontology databases (Xing et al. 2016). The authors claimed, “The Cenozoic [mostly Tertiary] angiosperm macrofossil record is extraordinarily rich” (p. 1) and “the diversification of angiosperms during the Cenozoic, and the causes of such changes in diversity, remains unclear” (p. 2). In other words, Darwin’s mystery is more abominable for evolution today than it has ever been. While Darwin’s model of evolution and deep time make little sense of the fossil record, and especially the abominable mystery of angiosperms in the Tertiary, a Flood-based model of progressive burial by ecological zonation fits the data closely. In fact, a PBDB query of the Cenozoic (predominantly Tertiary) shows that angiosperm fossils are pervasive globally (Figure 16). 2. Issues with the Tejas Megasequence – Tertiary coal seams Another powerful piece of evidence supporting the Tejas as the receding phase of the global Flood involves the presence of huge Tertiary coal beds formed from mostly angiosperm (flowering) plants. This is directly related to Darwin’s “abominable mystery.” Coal beds are formed by enormous amounts of plant material being ripped up, transported en masse, and then buried rapidly before the material has a chance to decay – exactly the type of catastrophic processes that occurred in the global Flood. Local catastrophes after the Flood are highly unlikely to produce the extent of these coal beds (100 km by 100 km), the volume of these coals, nor possess the energy required to create these massive coal layers, especially as many are stacked one on top of the other. Compared to the Carboniferous coal beds formed earlier in the Flood that contained tropical coastal vegetation, the larger Tertiary coal layers were formed from plants and trees growing at higher elevations in the pre-Flood world. Like the many other Tertiary fossils, these coal beds had a propensity to collect and form in large basins that formed late in the Flood year at the base of uplifted mountain ranges where the plant material would have been easily trapped and buried. A spectacular example of Tertiary coal in North America can be found in the Powder River Basin, which extends from the center of eastern Wyoming up into the lower third of Montana (Scott and Luppens 2013). This large region contains some of the largest known reserves of low-sulfur subbituminous (black lignite) coal in the world, making it economically important. In fact, about 42% of United States coal production comes out of the Powder River Basin, and at least six coal seams in this basin exceed 30 meters in thickness, with some more than 60 meters thick (e.g., the Big George coal layer). Other extensive, but thinner, Tertiary coal deposits are located across regions in the midwestern and southern states (Scott and Luppens 2013). Huge Tertiary coal deposits can also be found in other parts of the world such as South America, which comprise the thickest and most extensive across that continent as well (Weaver and Wood 1994). It has been estimated that these make up about half of all coal in South America with the total tonnage estimated to be greater than any other geological system or combination of systems in that continent. Extensive Tertiary coals are also found in many offshore Tejas deposits around Asia, including the Arctic Ocean (Clarey et al. 2021; Tomkins and Clarey 2021). Oil-well drilling in the South China Sea off the coast of Borneo has revealed a huge region of bedded Tertiary coals that, according to evolutionists, “is both thick and rapidly deposited” (Lunt 2019, p. 231). The best explanation for these offshore Tejas coal beds is that the intense energy of the receding phase of the Flood transported and buried these land plants offshore in late Flood continental runoff. Evolutionary in situ models for coal swamps fail to explain coals this far offshore and in such an extent as found in the deep water near Asia. And local catastrophes after the Flood also fail to produce sufficient energy to transport this volume of plant material, and so systematically at so many locations simultaneously. 3. Issues with the Tejas Megasequence – Tertiary mammal fossils The Cenozoic (mostly Tertiary) is often called the Age of Mammals due to the fact that many kinds of mammals make their first fossil appearances in these Tejas sediments. As in lower parts of the rock record, many of the fossils in these layers that have living counterparts look the same, showing no sign of evolution (stasis). Tertiary mammal fossils came from creatures living at higher, more temperate elevations than dinosaurs and thus would have been buried in the uppermost Flood layers. The mammal fossils found in these layers that are extinct likely would have been represented aboard Noah’s Ark but have since died off due to habitat loss or human hunting. Some examples of land mammals making their first appearance in Tertiary sediments include rodents, horses, rhinoceroses, elephants, dogs, cats, pigs, cattle, sheep, antelope, and gazelle. One particular group of mammals that illustrate the global concordance of Tertiary strata are primates (specifically monkeys), whose fossils have been found across multiple continents (Figure 17). Monkey fossils of the same type have been found in the same Tertiary rock layers of the completely separate continents of South America Figure 15. Megasequence sediment volumes by percent of the total geological column. TOMKINS AND CLAREY Paleontology of the Global Flood 2023 ICC 579
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