Every source the main article rests on, grouped by role, with what each one actually says and which way it cuts. Everything below was fetched and read during the research for this article except where marked not obtained; those are collected at the end, because an argument resting on a source nobody on this side has read should be flagged, not buried. Verbatim quotations, page locators, and independent recomputations are in the four dossiers beside this article: research/cpt-primary.md (the model and its physics), research/cpt-evidence.md (the claimed evidence), research/cpt-critiques.md (critics on all sides), and research/mainstream-evidence.md (the conventional data). Library keys refer to sources/index.tsv.
The primary CPT corpus
Baumgardner 1986, "Numerical Simulation of the Large-Scale Tectonic Changes Accompanying the Flood," Proc. 1st ICC, II:17–28. The founding paper. Contains, already, the 3 × 1028 J energy budget, the 87-million-year conduction time, and the conclusion that the Flood "cannot be understood or modeled in terms of time-invariant laws of nature." The printed reviewer comments include Los Alamos colleague Hans Ruppel's verdict: "an interesting mix of technical excellence and wishful thinking." Cuts both ways: it is the model's birth certificate and the first statement of its fatal problem. Key baumgardner-1986.
Baumgardner 1990, "3-D Finite Element Simulation…," Proc. 2nd ICC, II:35–44. Source of the 3.4 × 1028 J figure and the "melt 12 km of rock or boil 25 km of water" sentence. States openly that the 3-D run got its speeds "by reducing the viscosity everywhere by nine orders of magnitude." Key baumgardner-1990.
Baumgardner 1994a, "Computer Modeling of the Large-Scale Tectonics…," Proc. 3rd ICC, 49–62, and 1994b, "Runaway Subduction as the Driving Mechanism for the Genesis Flood," Proc. 3rd ICC, 63–86. 1994b is the most important technical CPT paper: the real nonlinear rheology, the runaway criterion — and the admission that the instability needs 2 × 107 years to arm itself unless the cold belt is assumed as an initial condition. 1994a is the source of the famous continent-motion pictures and of the "Newtonian analog … merely suggestive" and "trial and error" caveats. Keys baumgardner-1994, baumgardner-1994c.
Austin, Baumgardner, Humphreys, Snelling, Vardiman & Wise 1994, "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History," Proc. 3rd ICC, 609–621. The six-author synthesis that named the model. Note the AiG reprint's footer misstates the page range (609–612); ICR's reprint confirms 609–621. Keys austin-1994, austin-1994b.
Baumgardner & Barnette 1994, "Patterns of Ocean Circulation over the Continents During Noah's Flood," Proc. 3rd ICC, 77–86. The hydrological companion: Coriolis-driven gyres of 40–80 m/s over the flooded continents. Key baumgardner-1994b.
The 2002 Journal of Creation forum (16(1):57–81): three rounds, Baumgardner versus Oard, six papers, all on disk (keys baumgardner-2002-*, oard-2002-*, jcreation-2002). Baumgardner's round-1 paper is the tidiest statement of the whole model and the source of the 1.75 mm/hr radiative rainfall limit; Oard's rounds contain the initial-condition and lava-resurfacing objections. The single best entry point into the debate.
Baumgardner 2003, "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood," Proc. 5th ICC, 113–126. The first completed 2-D runaway; the "observational support" section containing the core-mantle-boundary density argument and the Venus argument; the steam-jet proposal; the "built into the Earth as God originally formed it" initial condition. Key baumgardner-2003. Companion: Horstemeyer & Baumgardner 2003, "What Initiated the Flood Cataclysm?", 155–163, key horstemeyer-2003.
Baumgardner 2012, 101 Questions and Answers Concerning Catastrophic Plate Tectonics, globalflood.org, 158 pp. The most valuable single CPT document: the 1978 origin story (Q/p. 7), the steam-jet retraction (Q33), the supernatural-heat-removal statements (Q39, pp. 94–95), the "nothing has changed since 1986" answer (Q32), the Paleozoic-needs-revelation answer (Q31), and the residual-motion answer (Q88). Key baumgardner-2012.
Sherburn, Baumgardner & Horstemeyer 2013, "New Material Model Reveals Inherent Tendency in Mantle Minerals for Runaway Mantle Dynamics," Proc. 7th ICC. The newest runaway physics. Case 1 (300-km cold blob) runs away; Case 2 (100-km blob) yields "no hint of runaway" and today's cm/yr speeds. The underlying rheology was published in Geophys. J. Int. (two 2011 papers, 12 and 1 citations). Key sherburn-2013.
Snelling 2009, Earth's Catastrophic Past, 2 vols., ICR. Chapter 87 (vol. 2, 691–706) made CPT the standard young-earth textbook position, including the Day-3 "knife edge of catastrophe" origin story. A full-text search finds no statement of the lithosphere-cooling problem or its supernatural solution anywhere in the CPT chapters. Key snelling-2009.
Clarey's ICR corpus: "Empirical data support seafloor spreading and catastrophic plate tectonics," J. Creation 30(1):76–82 (2016), the six-data-set defense (heat disposal absent); "Plate Tectonics After Fifty Years," Acts & Facts (2018); Clarey & Werner, "A Progressive Global Flood Model…," Proc. 9th ICC 9:412–445 (2023) — the ~3,000-column megasequence compilation, the "his math is correct" passage, and the N-Q Flood boundary. Keys clarey-2016-*, clarey-2018e, clarey-2023.
The creationist critics
Oard 2012, "Is plate tectonics really occurring today?", J. Creation 26(3):120–127 — the "There should be no residual CPT motions today" argument. Oard 2015, "Difficulties with plate tectonics—Pacific Ocean bottom features," J. Creation 29(2):86–91. Keys oard-2012-*, oard-2015-*.
Froede & Akridge 2013, "A developing schism in Flood geology," J. Creation 27(2):49–54 — the remodellers-versus-reconstructors division and the "Is this how creation science should advance?" charge. Key froede-2013.
McGuire 2014/2015, J. Creation 28(2):104–115 and 29(3):104–112 — the subducted-area arithmetic ("enough crust to go around the earth's core four times"), the Wilson-cycle timing problem, the reversals-before-slabs-arrive contradiction, and the Curie-point timing dilemma for the magnetic stripes. Keys mcguire-2014-*, mcguire-2015.
Worraker's heat series — the most important critical literature on CPT, written by a young-earth creationist for creationist venues. Worraker 2018 and 2019, "Heat Problems Associated with Genesis Flood Models" Parts 1–2, ARJ 11:171–204 and 12:211–254; Worraker & Ward 2018, "Modeling of Flood and Post-Flood Ocean Floor Cooling," Proc. 8th ICC, 673–682 — the failed attempt to reproduce seafloor bathymetry and heat flow with arbitrary heat sinks; Worraker 2023, Part 4, ARJ 16:201–251 — the 1.4 × 1029 J total, the 0.04% ocean-uptake ceiling, and the concession that the mainstream depth-age fit is "genuine, and in this case is not due merely to circular reasoning." Keys worraker-2018-*, worraker-2019-*, worraker-2022, worraker-2018b.
Oard & Reed 2020, "Working on a Global Flood Model," Creation Matters 25(3):4–6 — the irenic statement of the multiple-working-hypotheses position. Oard & Carter 2022, Biblical Geology 101 — the CMI book that names CPT the ministry's preferred model, co-authored by CPT's chief critic. Keys oard-2020, oard-2022.
The hydroplate camp: Albright 2017, "Noah's Flood… Part 3: Catastrophic Plate Tectonics" (reviewed in draft by Baumgardner and Clarey; source of his Day-3/Fall statements; her "warmed over the centuries" objection is quantitatively wrong and the article says so); Baumgardner's own critique of Walt Brown in the Flood Science Review (pp. 520–528). Keys albright-2017c, baumgardner-2011b.
The mainstream and old-earth critics
There is no peer-reviewed mainstream geophysical rebuttal of CPT — the model was never submitted to a geophysics journal. What exists: Morton 2004, "Runaway Subduction is a Sham" (oldearth.org) — the pre-Pangea paleogeography objection, by a professional geophysicist and former young-earth creationist; TalkOrigins CH430 (its "magma bubble" wording traces to Burr's magazine piece, not Baumgardner); Duff 2024, "Divine Intervention in Geology" (Naturalis Historia blog). Senter 2011 and Hill & Moshier 2009, sometimes cited as CPT critiques, are not — both are about Flood geology generally and barely mention CPT. Keys morton-2004b, talkorigins-2004, duff-2024, senter-2011b, hill-2009.
The physics literature CPT leans on
Gruntfest 1963, Trans. Soc. Rheology 7(1):195–207 (Baumgardner's reference lists say vol. 8; the correct volume is 7) — the runaway criterion, for a sheared liquid layer; no planets. Anderson & Perkins 1974, JGR 79:2136–2138 — slab thermal runaway proposed for tens-of-millions-of-years volcanism. Kirby 1983, Rev. Geophys. Space Phys. 21(6):1458–1487 — the olivine deformation maps (Baumgardner 2003's ref. [19] conflates this with Kirby & Kronenberg 1987). Machetel & Weber 1991 (Nature 350:55), Peltier & Solheim 1992 (GRL 19:321), Tackley et al. 1993 (Nature 361:699), Solheim & Peltier 1994 (JGR 99:15861, "recur at intervals separated by hundreds of millions of years"), Weinstein 1993 (GRL 20:101, "catastrophic burst of convection lasting ∼10 Myr") — the avalanche literature. Moresi & Solomatov 1998 (GJI 133:669) — the episodic overturn regime. Strom, Schaber & Dawson 1994 (JGR 99:10899) — Venus resurfaced "about 300 m.y. ago," ending in "<10 m.y." All of these cut against the Flood timescale by their own numbers, which is why the article quotes them rather than paraphrases.
Kelemen & Hirth 2007, Nature 446:787–790 — the best modern treatment of exactly the shear-heating feedback CPT invokes: a 2-m-wide shear zone, periodic on 200–250 years, self-limited by melting at ~1,400 °C. Key kelemen-2007. Bürgmann & Dresen 2008, Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 36:531–567 — observed mantle viscosities; the post-Sumatra transient (5 × 1017 Pa·s, a factor ~20 below steady state) is the largest weakening ever measured in the earth. Key burgmann-2008.
TERRA's standing
Baumgardner 1985, J. Stat. Phys. 39:501–511 (the founding code paper — its validation is reproducing present plate speeds); Baumgardner & Frederickson 1985, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 22:1107–1115; Bunge, Richards & Baumgardner 1996 (Nature 379:436), 1997 (JGR 102:11991), Bunge et al. 1998 (Science 280:91 — initial conditions solved by 150 Myr of reconstructed plate motion); Yang & Baumgardner 2000 (GAFD 92:151 — the solver behind the 2003 runaway); Richards, Yang, Baumgardner & Bunge 2001 (G-cubed, 2000GC000115 — attributes Venus's stagnant lid to dryness); Nowacki et al. 2025 (JOSS, doi:10.21105/joss.07539 — TERRA "widely-used and powerful," December 2025); Burr 1997, "The Geophysics of God," U.S. News & World Report, 16 June 1997, 55–58 — the Hager and Schubert quotes, hosted by Baumgardner himself. Keys baumgardner-1985-*, yang-2000-*, richards-2001-*, nowacki-2025, burr-1997-*.
The rapid-reversals thread, in order
Humphreys 1986 (Proc. 1st ICC, 113–123, the prediction) → Coe & Prévot 1989 (EPSL 92:292, the 3°/day claim; abstract only) → Coe, Prévot & Camps 1995 (Nature 374:687, 6°/day; not obtained) → Camps, Coe & Prévot 1999 (JGR 104:17747, "fact or rock-magnetic artifact?"; not obtained) → Jarboe, Coe & Glen 2011 (GJI 186:580, the gaps were sampling gaps) → Coe, Jarboe, Le Goff & Petersen 2014 (EPSL 400:302–312, full text on disk — "now untenable," and the creationist misinterpretation named) → Bogue & Glen 2010 (GRL 37:L21308, ~1°/wk, the surviving candidate) → Sagnotti et al. 2014 vs Evans & Muxworthy 2018 (GJI, the contested Sulmona claim) → Valet et al. 2012 (Nature 490:89, transit ≤1,000 yr) and Singer et al. 2019 (Sci. Adv. 5:eaaw4621, the 22-kyr reversal). Also Snelling's AiG articles (2007, 2015) for the popular claim. Keys humphreys-1986-*, coe-2014.
The mainstream evidence base
Vine & Matthews 1963, Nature 199:947–949 — the prediction (note: it contains no stripe map; that is Vine 1966, not obtained). Maxwell et al. 1970, DSDP Initial Reports vol. III, chs. 1 and 13 — Table 5 (p. 459), the basal-sediment ages versus distance; public domain, from deepseadrilling.org. Cande & Kent 1995, JGR 100:6093 — the polarity timescale's radioisotopic and astronomical anchors. DeMets et al. 1994 (GRL 21:2191, the NUVEL-1A recalibration), Sella et al. 2002 (JGR 107:2081, REVEL, the Iceland baseline), DeMets, Gordon & Argus 2010 (GJI 181:1–80, MORVEL — the blind Pacific–North America test, all 80 pages on disk). Parsons & Sclater 1977 (JGR 82:803) and Stein & Stein 1992 (Nature 359:123, GDH1) — depth and heat flow versus age. Clague & Dalrymple 1987 (USGS PP 1350, the Hawaiian-Emperor ages) and Gripp & Gordon 2002 (GJI 150:321 — including the current-Pacific-50%-faster complication). Ladd et al. 1960/1970 (USGS PP 260-Y and 680-A — Enewetak and Midway drilling). Grand, van der Hilst & Widiyantoro 1997 (GSA Today 7(4):1–7 — the tomography Baumgardner cites, with its actual 0.35–0.5% amplitudes). Trampert et al. 2004 (Science 306:853 — deep anomalies compositional). Straume et al. 2019 (G-cubed 20:1756, GlobSed — 404 m mean sediment) and Seton et al. 2020 (G-cubed 21:e2020GC009214 — mean crustal age 64.2 Myr). Stevens & Avouac 2015 (GRL 42:5828 — Himalayan GPS versus Holocene shortening). All on disk under the obvious keys.
The second-round dossiers (August 2026): UHP rocks, plate-rate changes, paleoseismites
Three further dossiers were added after the article's first draft, each answering a specific claimed evidence. Their full workings are in research/uhp-minerals.md, research/plate-rate-changes.md and research/paleoseismites.md, with a follow-up Franciscan thread in research/franciscan.md — the source of the finding that the Franciscan's entire marine-reptile record is three float specimens (Camp 1942; Welles 1953; PBDB-confirmed), that its peak pressures sit 0.3–0.9 GPa below the coesite line (Cisneros et al. 2022 vs Bose & Ganguly 1995), and of the Wakabayashi/Fox/Hitz olistostrome literature on how high-grade blocks got into fossil-dated low-grade matrix.
Ultra-high-pressure minerals. The discovery papers (Chopin 1984, CMP 86:107; Smith 1984, Nature 310:641 — the latter already floating tectonic overpressure); the calibration (Bose & Ganguly 1995, Am. Min. 80:231, free from MSA); the preservation kinetics (Mosenfelder & Bohlen 1997; Perrillat et al. 2003 with the 19–23 kbar present-day inclusion pressures; Warren 2013, Solid Earth 4:75, CC-BY — the best single review, full text on disk); rates and durations (Rubatto & Hermann 2001; Kylander-Clark et al. 2008, 2012 — the Table 1 of eleven dated terranes, 4–58 Myr; Hacker et al. 2003 on Kokchetav, the speed record at ~3 cm/yr); mechanisms (Hacker & Gerya 2013); overpressure (Moulas et al. 2013; Luisier et al. 2019, CC-BY); the Franciscan (Cisneros et al. 2022, open access, "coesite has not been found"; Wakabayashi 2015). Creationist corpus: one hedged sentence in Austin et al. 1994; Oard's impact/overpressure articles (CRSQ 54, 55, 56 — CRSQ eprints are openly downloadable); Snelling's regional-metamorphism papers (1994 ×2, engaging nothing above 5 kbar). Not obtained: Green 2005 (Int. Geol. Rev. 47:439 — Oard's principal secular source; do not quote through him), Rubatto & Hermann 2001 full text, Schmalholz et al. 2014, the Franciscan marine-reptile primary.
Plate-rate changes. The steelman-and-verdict dossier. Mainstream: Torsvik et al. 2017 and Bono et al. 2019 (both Nature Comms, both CC-BY, the unresolved bend dispute); Copley et al. 2010 (India's 15→4 cm/yr, via HAL); Dalton et al. 2022 and 2025 (the 35–38% slowdown and its modest consequences, via headless Chrome); Seton et al. 2015 (the ~50 Ma Pacific reorganization). Creationist: Snelling 2014 (Answers 9(1), the full deceleration-and-island-size argument); Clarey 2022/2025 (ICR, built on Dalton); Baumgardner 101 Questions Q98 (the careful version — hotspot mechanism accepted, "about 1 km/hr"); the hotspot-rejecting camp (Oard 2015, Brown, Walker 2011, Enyart 2018, Klevberg 2007); Collins 2020 (the self-published rebuttal to Snelling). Not obtained: Müller et al. 2016 (Ann. Rev. — confirmed unreachable without institutional access), Sharp & Clague 2006, Tarduno et al. 2003, Cande & Stegman 2011, and Froede 2001 (CRSQ 38:96 — on its title the most on-point creationist hotspot paper; request from CRS).
Paleoseismites. Creationist: Snelling 2017 ("When Continents Collide" — the claim's origin), Wise 2018 (GSA abstract — the 43-in-707-m field count and the "enigma" concession), Garner 2020 and Ryan 2025 (the escalating retellings), Austin 2012 (the Dead Sea calibration the retellings contradict), Snelling ECP p. 284 (the reductio), Isaacs 2022 (ARJ 15:97 — the ichnofossil argument against pervasive liquefaction), Baumgardner & Navarro 2023 (the 144,000-event engine). Mainstream: Obermeier's USGS reports (public domain — the magnitude thresholds), Shanmugam 2016 (the 21-trigger critique, CC BY-NC-ND), Van Loon 2009/2014 (Geologos, open), Hilbert-Wolf & Roberts 2015 (PLoS ONE, CC-BY — giant seismites at M~6+), Marco & Agnon 1995 and Marco et al. 1996 (the Dead Sea 5–11% deformed fractions), Lindström et al. 2015 (the end-Triassic seismites, obtained via Luxembourg repository — the decisive stratigraphic-confinement quote), Kanamori & Anderson 1975 (the 60-bar stress drop, via Caltech), Toon et al. 1997 (impact magnitude ~10), Atwater 2015 (Cascadia, public domain), USGS magnitude-cap pages. Not obtained: Ambraseys 1988, Simms 2003/2007 full texts, Netoff 2002 and Huuse et al. 2005 full texts (abstracts only), Van Loon & Pisarska-Jamroży 2016 full text (the Latvian counts are abstract-level — verify before print), Owen & Moretti 2011, Miall 2016 pp. 48–52, the Weeks & Chadwick 2011 poster, Day & Maslin 2005.
Not obtained
Flagged so no one mistakes secondhand knowledge for firsthand:
- Coe & Prévot 1989 and Coe et al. 1995 full texts — the original rapid-reversal papers (paywalled; their content is quoted here via Coe et al. 2014's restatement).
- Camps, Coe & Prévot 1999 — the "fact or artifact?" hinge paper.
- Su, Woodward & Dziewonski 1994 — needed to confirm what amplitude it actually reports, since Baumgardner cites it for a density figure.
- Froede, Akridge & Reed 2014, "Phanerozoic animal tracks: A challenge for catastrophic plate tectonics," CRSQ 51(2):96–103 — the leading fossil-record objection to CPT from inside creationism; CRSQ is subscriber-only. Highest-priority acquisition.
- Reed (ed.) 2000, Plate Tectonics: A Different View (CRS Books) — the book-length creationist case against plate tectonics.
- The 2007 nine-author Creation Matters anti-CPT statement (Akridge et al., 12(3):1, 6–8).
- Clarey 2020, Carved in Stone — its CPT pages (114–151) are cited here at second hand.
- Whitcomb & Morris 1961, The Genesis Flood — a readable full text (the archive.org OCR is fragmentary); needed before asserting what it says about continental drift.
- Vine 1966 (Science 154:1405, the Eltanin-19 profile); Ishii & Tromp 1999; van der Meer et al. 2018 (Atlas of the Underworld); Hayes et al. 2018 (Slab2); the Chamberlin 1928 anti-Wegener quotation (do not print it unverified).
- The primary video interview behind Duff's 2024 report that Baumgardner called the cooling "simply impossible" — the published 2012 equivalents are used instead.