Flood Geology

Snelling, Andrew A.  Earth's Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood.  Dallas: Institute for Creation Research.  2009.  A two-volume, continuously paginated textbook of Flood geology by a young-earth geologist, later of Answers in Genesis.  Volume 1, chapters 45 to 49 (pp. 299–336), is the most thorough young-earth account of how the column was built and correlated, and it accepts the column's order as fact.  Volume 2, chapter 94, discusses where the Flood ends.

1. 1a.

   Page 329:  “That the standard geologic column is a genuine physical reality and represents a reliable record of the earth's physical history has a number of far-reaching implications. Foremost among these is the implication that just as the order of physical rock units throughout the whole geologic column is real, then so also is the sequence of different fossils and fossil assemblages found in the rock units of which the geologic column is comprised.” ↩

2. 1b.

   Pages 575–576:  “Thus, while fossil graveyards are usually only of local to regional extent, though still requiring catastrophic and rapid transport and burial of sediments and organisms, the recognition of “mass extinction” on a global scale in the geologic record extends the evidence for catastrophic transport and deposition of sediments and organisms to a global scale.” ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 758:  In volume 2.  “if the Flood/post-Flood boundary is placed at approximately the Cretaceous/Tertiary strata boundary, then more than 70 percent of all the coal beds, and more than 85 percent of all the oil and gas source rocks, would have been deposited under the catastrophic conditions prevailing during the Flood. ... Even though there are large volumes of coal beds, and oil and gas source rocks, particularly oil shales and tar sands, among Tertiary strata, the depositional basins involved are only of local and regional extent, compared with the continental and greater distribution of deposition of Cretaceous strata.  Therefore, these localized Tertiary strata would still not preclude a Cretaceous/Tertiary Flood/post-Flood boundary.” ↩

Clarey, Timothy L., and Davis J. Werner.  “Global stratigraphy and the fossil record validate a Flood origin for the geologic column.”  Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, 327–350.  Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship.  Edited by J. H. Whitmore.  2018.  A paper by two Institute for Creation Research geologists who compiled over 1,500 local stratigraphic columns across North America, South America and Africa and traced six megasequences and distinctive beds such as salt and chert from column to column.  They conclude that the column is valid on a global scale and is the record of the Flood.

1. 2a.

   Page 327, section Abstract:  “Creationists should not be critical of the geologic column, but embrace it as evidence of a global Flood event.”  Page 349:  “Creationists should embrace the geologic column as it is robust evidence of a global Flood.” ↩

Wise, Kurt P., and Donna Richardson.  “What Biostratigraphic Continuity Suggests about Earth History.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism 9:611–625.  2023.  A paper by Kurt Wise, a young-earth paleontologist with a Harvard doctorate, and Donna Richardson.  At each of 114 globally defined stratigraphic boundaries they counted, in the Paleobiology Database, the species found on both sides of the boundary within about two degrees of each other, and used the pattern to place the Flood's start and end.

1. 3a.

   Page 623:  “Concerning biostratigraphy in general, the global biostratigraphic column seems to be real.” ↩

Vardiman, Larry et al.  “Summary of Evidence for a Young Earth from the RATE Project.”  Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Volume II: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, 735–772.  Institute for Creation Research (El Cajon, CA); Creation Research Society (Chino Valley, AZ).  2005.  Chapter 10 of the second RATE volume, a closing summary by eight authors.  Its main result, it says, is that nuclear decay appears to have been accelerated during brief periods of earth history.  Its section 3.2, "The Heat Problem," runs pages 761–764, and the article quotes it on the heat problem, the supernatural explanation it offers, and the freezing-oceans problem.

1. 4a.

   Page 762:  “God supernaturally protected Noah and his entourage by rapidly removing the large amount of heat that was produced by some unknown mechanism”.  Page 763:  “The removal of heat was so rapid that it likely involved a process other than conduction, convection, or radiation. For example, the cooling of granite plutons would have taken thousands of years by conventional thermal diffusion. Of course, God was directly involved in all of these events, so it is possible that He employed some supernatural process which does not occur today or cannot be detected. However, He commonly uses natural law to do His work on earth, and so we believe it may be possible to discover how He did it.” ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  101 Questions and Answers Concerning Catastrophic Plate Tectonics.  Self-published.  Apr 2012.  Baumgardner's answers to the questions that peer-review panelists put to his catastrophic plate tectonics model, in a review of Flood models hosted by In Jesus' Name Productions.  The editor shortened the questions, and the document is derived from the set of answers on that model.  The article uses it for his statements that cooling the ocean floor needs a supernatural solution, for his admitted arithmetic error on the steam jets, and for his split of the nuclear decay into two episodes.

1. 5a.

   Section Q39:  “The place in CPT where the supernatural must be invoked, as far as I can presently discern, is in regard to the removal of heat from the rapidly forming oceanic lithosphere. The measured thermal diffusivity of rock is much too low to cool the newly forming lithosphere at the rate implied by CPT. Moreover, there is no adequate sink for so much heat even if the thermal diffusivity were somehow much higher. The only solution I can envision is a rapid volumetric removal of heat, at least in the top 50-100 km of the earth, during the Flood. This, as far as I can see, represents a supernatural solution.” ↩

2. 5b.

   Section Q31, page 65:  “Whereas I once thought that perhaps as much as 1000-1500 m may have occurred, more recently I have come to suspect that the overall changes in sea level were likely much more modest. … So my present guess is that perhaps only 100-200 m of sea level rise above the pre-Flood sea level may have been involved.” ↩

Morris, Henry M., and Gary E. Parker.  What Is Creation Science?  San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers.  1982.  A popular book by the founder of the Institute for Creation Research and the biologist Gary Parker, who wrote the chapter on fossils.  Morris's chapter "The Shaky Foundations of the Geologic Column" is a full statement of the circularity charge, and it carries two concessions:  that fossils do lie in a vertical order, and that the age system was complete before radioactivity was discovered.

1. 6a.

   Pages 235–237:  “Not even radioactive minerals which the rock may contain will determine its geologic age, for the whole geologic age system had been completely worked out before the discovery of radioactivity.” ↩

Fritz, William J.  “Stumps transported and deposited upright by Mount St. Helens mud flows.”  Geology 8(12):586–588.  Dec 1980.  A paper in Geology, published in December 1980, on stumps that mud flows from the 1980 eruption carried and left standing upright.  The article uses it to show that this mainstream journal printed the upright-stump finding first, three years before Coffin's note.

1. 7a.

   Abstract.  Fritz's affiliation is given as the Department of Geology, Georgia State University, on his 1983 Comment.  “Mud flows resulting from the eruption on May 18, 1980, of Mount St. Helens, Washington, transported numerous stumps and logs.  Some stumps remain vertical (upright) after transport and partial burial alongside living trees.  Mount St. Helens mud-flow deposits serve as modern analogs for the depositional environment of Eocene 'fossil forests' in Yellowstone National Park.” ↩

Coffin, Harold G.  “The Yellowstone Petrified 'Forests'.”  Origins (Geoscience Research Institute) 24(1):5–44.  1997.  A booklet-length special edition of Origins, the journal of the Geoscience Research Institute, by Harold G. Coffin, who studied these forests for much of his life.  It counts the fossil forest levels and trees at each site, reports over 350 soil samples analyzed by X-ray and infrared methods, and argues that the trees were carried in and buried quickly rather than grown where they stand.  The article uses it as the fullest statement of the creationist case and as the reference that the ministry summaries should be checked against.

1. 8a.

   Page 36:  “Some have argued that Spirit Lake is not a good analog for the Yellowstone Fossil Forests, because the large number of logs accumulating on the bottom of Spirit Lake is very different from the more scattered fossil logs and stumps in Yellowstone.  However, one important difference between the two deposits is that Spirit Lake has not had adequate sediment input to bury the sinking logs and stumps.  If the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption had been followed by a series of volcanic breccia flows into Spirit Lake, spaced long enough apart to bury successive sets of logs and stumps as they sank, it would likely have produced a deposit very similar to the Yellowstone Fossil Forests.” ↩

Brand, Leonard, and Arthur Chadwick.  Faith, Reason, & Earth History: A Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design.  Andrews University Press, Berrien Springs.  3rd edition.  2016.  A textbook by two young-earth scientists who have published taphonomic field work in secular journals, setting out what they think the evidence does and does not show for a short earth history.  Brand led the Pisco whale study.

1. 9a.

   Chapter 18, section Rapid Geological Processes and the Radiometric Time Scale, pages 447–449:  “sedimentary structures that indicate storms and other fairly rapid sedimentary processes that may not require more than a few hundred years, at most, for the Pisco Formation.”  “The Bridger and the Pisco Formations both contain evidence that seems to require some time—a few decades or a few hundred years during the transition from catastrophe to more modern processes—but they do not seem compatible with millions of years.”  The book does not say whether this transition lies inside the Flood year or after it. ↩

Lalomov, A. V. et al.  Research of paleohydraulic conditions and determination of actual time of sedimentation of Cambrian–Ordovician sandstones of St.-Petersburg region.  2006.  A 24-page report of joint 2004–2005 research by the Geological Laboratory ARCTUR in Moscow and the Lithological Department of the Geological Faculty of St Petersburg State University.  It applies an Einstein procedure, with the authors' additions, to four members of Cambrian and Ordovician sandstone near St Petersburg, and totals 2,919 years, which the authors say can give only the order of magnitude of the duration.  The article uses it as the best-documented application of the paleohydraulic method, and as a case where the method's own arithmetic gives centuries against the 25 million years on the stratigraphic chart.

1. 10a.

   Table 4, page 16:  Formula (3) in the report is Td = Hmax · Ce · L / (qT · Cf).  The table's arithmetic reproduces from its own inputs: Sablino lower, 8 m × 100,000 m ÷ 38.62 m³/day/m ÷ 0.5 = 41,429 days against a printed 41,424; Sablino upper, 4 × 80,000 ÷ 8.52 ÷ 0.8 = 46,948 against 46,969; Ladoga, 9 × 100,000 ÷ 5.11 ÷ 0.4 = 440,313 against 439,907; Tosno, 5 × 120,000 ÷ 3.72 ÷ 0.3 = 537,634 against 537,012.  The printed years are 114, 129, 1,205 and 1,471, summing to the printed total of 2,919. ↩

Corsetti, Frank A., and James W. Hagadorn.  “Precambrian-Cambrian transition: Death Valley, United States.”  Geology 28(4):299–302.  Apr 2000.  A research paper that places the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary in the Death Valley rocks of California, using the trace fossil Treptichnus pedum and a carbon-isotope profile.  The article uses it because the boundary falls inside the lower member of the Wood Canyon Formation, an ordinary succession with no Great Unconformity.

1. 11a.

   Page 300:  “Interbedded siltstone and sandstone units of the third parasequence, overlying the second major carbonate unit at most sections, contain an easily recognizable suite of bed-parallel trace fossils, as well as several forms demonstrating a vertical burrowing component, including T. pedum (Fig. 2D).  Thus, the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary can be correlated to the basal siliciclastic units of the third parasequence in the lower member of the Wood Canyon Formation.” ↩

Flowers, Rebecca M. et al.  “Diachronous development of Great Unconformities before Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(19):10172–10180.  2020.  Section Abstract:  The abstract says:  “Our results provide evidence that most erosion below the Great Unconformity in Colorado occurred before the first Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth and therefore cannot be a product of glacial erosion.  We propose that multiple Great Unconformities developed diachronously and represent regional tectonic features rather than a synchronous global phenomenon.”  A research paper by four geologists that studies the Pikes Peak granite in Colorado and the sandstone that was injected into it.  It argues that there are several Great Unconformities, formed at different times as regional tectonic features rather than one global event.  The article sets it against Keller and colleagues, who attribute the same surface to Neoproterozoic glaciation.

1. 12a.

   Section Constraints on the Great Unconformity in Colorado:  “Locally, the basal Cambrian beds above the Great Unconformity drape over relief induced by variably resistant, meter-scale core stones in an ∼100-m-thick weathered zone of the Pikes Peak granite (Fig. 3A).  This is clear evidence that a Pikes granite regolith was also present in the Cambrian.” ↩

Conant, Louis C., and Vernon E. Swanson.  “Chattanooga Shale and Related Rocks of Central Tennessee and Nearby Areas.”  U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 357.  1961.  A 91-page U.S. Geological Survey report on the Chattanooga Shale and the rocks around it in central Tennessee, reporting work done for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.  The article uses it for the bevel under the shale: the shale rests on 23 formations, and the beds beneath it are rarely tilted by as much as 1 degree.

1. 13a.

   Page 13:  “Throughout the area of this study the Chattanooga shale rests on a peneplain that is notable for its extent and degree of perfection.  In the Tennessee area alone the shale rests on no less than 23 different sedimentary formations (pl. 3), as mapped by Wilson (1949, pl. 2), ranging in age from Middle Ordovician to Middle Devonian.  The older beds were tilted so slightly before Chattanooga time that in most outcrops the shale appears to parallel the older rocks;  at a few places an angular discordance is visible (pl. 5A) but is rarely as much as 1°.” ↩

Sloss, L. L.  “Tectonic evolution of the craton in Phanerozoic time.”  Sedimentary Cover — North American Craton: U.S. (The Geology of North America) D-2:25–51.  Geological Society of America, Boulder.  Edited by L. L. Sloss.  1988.  A chapter in a Geological Society of America volume on the sedimentary cover of the North American craton, on the craton's tectonic evolution through Phanerozoic time, the eon of abundant animal fossils.  The article uses it for his statement that surfaces of unconformity (gaps in the rock record between layers) are rarely isochronous, meaning they do not mark one moment in time everywhere.

1. 14a.

   Page 25:  “The surfaces of unconformity are rarely isochronous in cratonic stratigraphy since such surfaces typically involve truncation and loss of record in the subjacent units and time-consuming progressive onlap of overlying strata.” ↩

Macrostrat.  Macrostrat API v2.  n.d.  Retrieved Sep 4, 2026.  Macrostrat is a database of rock units, and this article ran its own query of it for the North American columns.  The run returns 24,141 rock units in 949 North American stratigraphic columns covering 24.81 million km², and the article's boundary, package and lithology counts all come from it.  The article states these limitations in its body: unit ages are interpolated from assigned chronostratigraphic intervals, so a loosely dated unit smears across a boundary and can produce a negative apparent hiatus; the compilation is onshore-dominated; and the lithology classifier lumps quartzite with sandstone, which favours the "starts with sand" reading.

1. 15a.

   The check is restricted to columns that hold rock in the megasequence below and in the one above each boundary.  topBelow is the age of the youngest top of the lower megasequence in that column.  Sauk/Tippecanoe: 477 columns, 10th–90th percentile 414.7–484.4 Ma, spread 69.7 Myr, median hiatus −13.1 Myr, 58 columns with the upper package on Precambrian basement.  Tippecanoe/Kaskaskia: 481, 358.9–445.2, spread 86.4, median hiatus −3.2, 71 on basement.  Kaskaskia/Absaroka: 411, 298.9–357.0, spread 58.1, median hiatus −3.1, 33 on basement.  Absaroka/Zuni: 391, 156.5–274.4, spread 117.9, median hiatus 12.3, 75 on basement.  Zuni/Tejas: 405, 58.4–98.3, spread 39.9, median hiatus 6.3, 29 on basement. ↩

Baumgardner, John.  “Recent Rapid Uplift of Today's Mountains.”  ICR Impact (381).  Mar 2005.  A short popular article in the Impact series of the Institute for Creation Research, by a geophysicist at the institute's graduate school.  It relies on Ollier and Pain's book The Origin of Mountains, and says the ranges were nearly flat and near sea level before their recent uplift began.  The article uses it for the isostasy arithmetic that prices how far thickened crust lifts the surface.

1. 16a.

   Page ii:  “relative to a region with a 35 km crustal thickness, a zone with a 60 km crustal thickness, for the densities quoted above, would have”.  The sentence goes on: a surface about 14,500 feet higher under isostatic equilibrium. ↩

Worraker, William J.  “Heat Problems Associated with Genesis Flood Models—Part 2: Secondary Temperature Indicators.”  Answers Research Journal 12:211–254.  2019.  A review of the methods that read past ocean temperatures from fossil material, by William Worraker of the Biblical Creation Trust.  It covers the magnesium-to-calcium ratio in the shells of tiny shell-building sea organisms called foraminifera, the strontium-to-calcium ratio in corals, biological molecules used as temperature markers, and the clumped-isotope method, and it combines shell data with sea-level records to conclude that deep ocean water has cooled by 12 °C since the early Eocene.  The article uses it for the claim that the deep ocean never exceeded 13 °C through the Cenozoic.

1. 17a.

   Section Abstract:  “The most important conclusion from this review, based on analysis of combined δ¹⁸O-Mg/Ca data and sea level records, is that deep ocean water has cooled by 12 °C since the early Eocene. This supports the conclusion in the first paper that deep ocean temperatures never exceeded 13 °C through the Cenozoic, an important constraint on Flood and post-Flood models.” ↩

Doyle, Shaun.  “Too much heat in Noah's Flood?”  Creation Ministries International.  Jul 25, 2020.  A feedback reply from Creation Ministries International to a reader who had been given a critic's heat figure from the National Center for Science Education.  Doyle argues that science cannot decide whether the Flood was a purely natural event, because the Bible has to decide that, and he cites Worraker's two-part heat study for the size of the problem and Humphreys's 2018 paper for a possible mechanism.  The article uses it for Creation Ministries International's own statement that there is no simple scientific answer to the heat problem.

1. 18a.

   Paragraph 2:  “Whether that particular figure is right or not, there is most likely a severe heat budget issue for any purely natural explanation of what happened during the Flood. As such, there is no simple scientific answer to this issue. Indeed, there may not be one. However, this need not be problematic.” ↩

Clarey, Timothy.  Embracing Catastrophic Plate Tectonics.  Institute for Creation Research.  Apr 29, 2016.  An Institute for Creation Research article that is ICR's flagship popular presentation of catastrophic plate tectonics, the model in which the continents moved rapidly during the Flood.  The article uses it, with Answers in Genesis's chapter on the same model, as popular writing that never uses the words "heat problem," "miracle," or "supernatural."

1. 19a.

   The words "heat problem," "miracle," and "supernatural" occur zero times in this article and zero times in Snelling's "Can Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Explain Flood Geology?" (The New Answers Book 1, chapter 14, Answers in Genesis), about 17,500 words of page between them. ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  “Runaway Subduction as the Driving Mechanism for the Genesis Flood.”  Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, 63–86.  1994.  A 1994 conference paper with two-dimensional finite element calculations of a cold layer of rock at the top of the mantle that peels away and sinks, using rock-deformation behavior measured in the laboratory.  It proposes that such a runaway was the mechanism of the Flood.  The article uses it for the time the starting state takes to build, about 2 × 10⁷ years, and for the barrier at 660 km depth.

1. 20a.

   Page 9:  “Some 2 × 10⁷ years is needed before the instability occurs in the second calculation.  Most of this time is involved with the accumulation of a large blob of cold, dense material at the barrier created by the phase transition at 660 km depth.  This time span disappears when the initial condition consists of a large belt of cold material already trapped above this phase transition in the pre-Flood mantle.” ↩

Coe, Robert S. et al.  “Demise of the rapid-field-change hypothesis at Steens Mountain: The crucial role of continuous thermal demagnetization.”  Earth and Planetary Science Letters 400:302–312.  2014.  A 2014 laboratory study that re-sampled Steens Mountain lava flows and heated the samples continuously in a vibrating sample magnetometer.  It finds that the critical flow carries the same direction as the flow below it, and that a normal-polarity overprint, not a fast change in the field, made the pattern look rapid.  Coe, a coauthor of the 1989 study, is the first author, and the article uses it to show that the rapid-change case is no longer tenable.

1. 21a.

   Page 311:  “The case for two episodes of extraordinarily rapid field change ... is now untenable”.  Page 304:  “was misinterpreted by creationists in their attempts to reconcile the geological and biblical time scales (e.g., Humphreys, 1990)”. ↩

DeMets, Charles et al.  “Geologically current plate motions.”  Geophysical Journal International 181:1–80.  2010.  A long paper that builds MORVEL, a new set of present-day plate motions for 25 plates.  Seafloor spreading rates and fault directions set the motions of the 19 plates bordered by mid-ocean ridges, and GPS sets those of six smaller plates; the authors deliberately kept the geologic and GPS data apart so that the two could be compared.  The article uses it for the blind test of the Pacific–North America boundary and for the paper's note on India–Eurasia and Arabia–Eurasia speeds.

1. 22a.

   Pages 70–72:  “no data from the Pacific–North America plate boundary are used to determine the MORVEL angular velocities ... can therefore be compared with independent estimates without any circularity.”  The geologic estimate is 50.2 ± 1.1 mm/yr and the GPS estimate is 49.4 ± 0.3 mm/yr.  The root-mean-square dispersion across eight blind pairs is 4.1 mm/yr. ↩

Worraker, William J., and Richard Ward.  “Modeling of Flood and post-Flood ocean floor cooling.”  Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, 673–682.  Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh.  Edited by J. H. Whitmore.  2018.  A spreadsheet model of how new ocean floor cools, by two Biblical Creation Trust authors, which benchmarks its code against the Parsons-Sclater (1977) and GDH1 (Stein and Stein 1992) plate-cooling models and reproduces both.  It tests heat sinks (ways of removing heat from the rock) on a Flood timescale and reports that no heat-sink formulation on a Flood timescale matches observed seafloor depth and heat flow together: a tailored sink fits the general shape of the profiles, but heat flow near the mid-ocean ridges is far too high and the ridge profiles too sharp.  The article cites it for the claim that none of the heat sinks they tested fits the ocean floor near the ridges.

1. 23a.

   The same finding is restated in Worraker's 2023 article in Answers Research Journal 16 (2023), which says.  “no such heat sink formulation was found which could duplicate the observed patterns of bathymetry and heat flux”.  and that the uniformitarian fit is.  “genuine, and in this case is not due merely to circular reasoning.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A., and John Woodmorappe.  “The Cooling of Thick Igneous Bodies on a Young Earth.”  Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, 527–545.  Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship.  Edited by R. E. Walsh.  1998.  A creationist paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Creationism in 1998, by Andrew Snelling, of Answers in Genesis, and John Woodmorappe.  It argues that water moving through cracks in a cooling pluton can cool a batholith in about 3,000 years, and the article treats it as the only young-earth thermal model of a batholith.  Its page numbers are those of ICR's 17-page reprint, not the original pages 527–545.

1. 24a.

   Page 6:  “An infinitely-long batholith that is 11 km wide, 16.5 km thick, and is buried 20 km below the surface of the ground, when at zero rock permeability (that is, conductive cooling only) needs a few million years to cool.  But with the intensity of convective cooling that is allowed by a permeability K of 10 millidarcies (easily exceeded—see below), the time to cool this batholith falls to a mere 3,000 years.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “Radiohalos: Startling evidence of catastrophic geologic processes on a young earth.”  Creation Ministries International.  Apr 5, 2007.  A popular article for general readers, with photographs of uranium and polonium halos in granite.  It argues that the polonium halos show granites solidified and cooled in just 6 to 10 days, and that uranium decayed up to a billion times faster in the past; it cites Laney and Laughlin's 1981 study for the 150 °C annealing ceiling.  The article uses it as the plain-language version of the RATE argument.

1. 25a.

   “In other words, the radioactive decay of uranium was formerly up to a billion times faster than it is today!”  “polonium halos mean that the granites solidified and cooled in just 6 to 10 days!”  The same passage requires that the polonium.  “all had to concentrate within hours, or a few days at the most.” ↩

Yue, Zongyu et al.  “Lunar chronology model with the Chang'e-6 farside samples and implications for the early impact history.”  Science Advances 12:eady9265.  Feb 4, 2026.  A research paper that refits the lunar chronology, the calibration that turns crater counts into ages, using samples that China's Chang'e-6 mission returned from the Moon's far side.  The authors report that the far side is struck at about the same rate as the near side, and that the early impact rate declines smoothly with no abrupt changes.  The article uses it for the calibration table and for the measured decline in impacts.

1. 26a.

   Table 1:  Heading "Chronology calibrations in this study": fourteen surfaces with measured crater density N(1) and a laboratory age on a returned sample, including Cone crater 26.0 ± 0.8 Ma, North Ray 50.3 ± 0.8 Ma, Tycho 109 ± 4 Ma, Copernicus 800 ± 15 Ma, Chang'e-5's Oceanus Procellarum basalt 2,030 ± 4 Ma, Chang'e-6's Mare Apollo basalt 2,807 ± 3 Ma, Fra Mauro 3,922 ± 12 Ma, and the South Pole–Aitken basin 4,247 ± 5 Ma, by U-Pb, Pb-Pb, Ar-Ar and Kr-Kr. ↩

Osinski, G. R. et al.  “Impact Earth: A review of the terrestrial impact record.”  Earth-Science Reviews 232:104112.  2022.  An invited review by twelve authors, who maintain the Impact Earth database, successor to the Earth Impact Database.  It lists 188 hypervelocity impact craters, made by very fast impacts, and 13 impact sites that lack evidence of shock metamorphism, which is rock changed by the force of an impact.  The article uses the review's count of these craters and its figures on where they lie.

1. 27a.

   Page 29:  “These combined results confirm that East and West Clearwater did not form at the same time, as further supported by palaeomagnetic studies ... stratigraphic considerations (Ordovician clasts have been found in West, but not in East ...), and no meteoritic signature has been detected in Clearwater West, while Clearwater East shows a clear chondritic signature”.  The ages given there are Clearwater West 286.2 ± 2.6 Ma and Clearwater East about 460–470 Ma. ↩

Lindskog, A. et al.  “Refined Ordovician timescale reveals no link between asteroid breakup and biodiversification.”  Nature Communications 8:14066.  2017.  A research paper that tightens the timescale of the Ordovician period, a stretch of Earth's history recorded in rock, and finds no link between an asteroid breakup and a burst of new species.  The article uses it for the clock built from fossil meteorites in Swedish limestone and the zircon dates in the same beds.

1. 28a.

   Page 2:  “The sedimentation rates derived from CRE ages of fossil meteorites and U-Pb dates are in excellent agreement despite a tenfold difference in both stratigraphic and temporal resolution between the two data sets. The minimum sedimentation rate implied by the CRE data (3.3 mm ka−1) is close to the average rate implied by U-Pb data (3.1 mm ka−1)”. ↩

Bernitt, Rod.  “How many impact craters should there be on the earth?”  Journal of Creation 24(1):48–49.  2010.  A reader's letter to the journal, with Michael Oard's reply under it.  Bernitt estimated the energy of the impacts and asked how the Earth avoided becoming a magma ocean, which makes it the first published objection to the 36,000 figure.  The article uses it for Oard's admission that the energy was too much.

1. 29a.

   Page 49:  “I would say that God was in charge of the Flood and likely orchestrated the catastrophe so as to avoid the crust turning into a magma ocean, the ocean boiling away, and a direct hit on the ark by an asteroid or by a huge tsunami in shallow water. He did this only for the earth because of His creation, while he allowed the full assault on the other solid bodies of the solar system because there was no life on those bodies.” ↩

Dawson, John William.  Acadian Geology: The Geological Structure, Organic Remains, and Mineral Resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.  London: Macmillan.  2nd edition.  1868.  A book-length survey of the rock structure, fossils and mineral resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.  The article uses it for Dawson's own bed-by-bed log of the Joggins cliffs in Nova Scotia, where he recorded upright trees rooted in the roof of a coal, with land reptiles inside them.

1. 30a.

   Page 186:  “no less than six erect trees were observed at different levels, the lowest being rooted in the shale forming the coal-roof;  fifteen feet of the trunk of one of these trees still remain”.  “there are no less than thirteen distinct forest surfaces marked by underclays or erect trees, and at least five periods of submergence indicated by mussel-beds”.  “throughout the section ... the forest soils are much more frequently preserved than the forests themselves.” ↩

Clarey, Timothy L., and Jeffrey P. Tomkins.  “An investigation into an in situ lycopod forest site and structural anatomy invalidates the floating-forest hypothesis.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 53(2):110–122.  2016.  A 2016 paper by two scientists at the Institute for Creation Research that argues against the floating-forest idea, using the Fossil Grove site in Glasgow, where the fossil stumps are of lycopods (tree-sized club mosses).  Every observational statement about the site in the paper is drawn from Gastaldo 1986 (Palaios 1:31–38) and Owen et al. 2007, and it carries that attribution.  The article uses it as the creationist movement's own concession that the Glasgow stumps are rooted in place, and as the source of the criteria for telling rooted trees from transported ones.

1. 31a.

   Page 113:  “a monotypic assemblage of eleven lycopod tree stump casts with attached axial root systems (Gastaldo, 1986).  However, only ten stumps are presently preserved”.  “the tree spacing suggests a density of 4,500 trees per square kilometer (Owen et al., 2007)”.  Of the stumps being rooted in a pre-Flood soil, the authors quote Gastaldo:  “If so, it is possibly the best preserved example of an in situ lycopod forest in the world (Gastaldo, 1986).”  Pages 113–114:  “Each tree has preserved branching roots anchoring them in an irregularly laminated silty or sandy mudstone with stigmarian (subterranean stem) 'rootlets' penetrating the 'paleosol' horizon (Gastaldo, 1986).” ↩

Clarey, Timothy L.  “Floating forest hypothesis fails to explain later and larger coal beds.”  Journal of Creation 31(3):12–14.  2017.  An article by Timothy L. Clarey arguing that the floating forest hypothesis, which places the coal plants on a pre-Flood floating forest biome, cannot explain the later and larger coal beds.  Allochthonous means transported: coal made of plants carried in from somewhere else.  The article uses it for Clarey's statement that transported coal is not the issue being criticized, and that the criticism falls on the floating forest model alone.

1. 32a.

   Page 14:  “To make matters worse, the advocates of the floating forest hypothesis have made no attempt to account for the thickest and most extensive coals in the world.  Coals found in Cretaceous and Paleogene rocks globally have been largely ignored.”  Pages 12–14, section conclusion:  “cannot adequately explain even the smallest subset of coal deposits”. ↩

Bruce, Richard.  “Millions of years are not necessary for petroleum formation.”  Journal of the Biblical Creation Trust (e-Origins) 3:7–11.  2021.  Page 10:  “presented in a private capacity only, and not as a representative of my secular employment with a Mines Department in Australia.”  A short review in a creationist journal arguing that temperature, not time, controls how fast petroleum forms, so oil can form in years to thousands of years.  It covers laboratory heating experiments and a kinetic model (a rate model of how fast a reaction runs at each temperature) by Nielsen and Barth.  The author has a secular job in an Australian mines department and says on p. 10 that the article is a private view, not a statement by that employer.  The article uses it as the one creationist paper that works through a published kinetic model, and it concedes that the thousand-year figure needs about 200 °C.

1. 33a.

   Page 8:  “Modelling by Middleton indicates that after 1000 years, peak bitumen generation can occur within temperatures realisable in sedimentary basins (about 200 °C or about three kilometres depth) (Bruce et al. 1996)”.  “hydrous pyrolysis indicates that significant volumes of petroleum may be generated at temperatures in the vicinity of 200 °C, if maintained for the order of 1000 years.”  Page 10:  “subsurface situations with temperatures of 200 °C – peak generation can occur in approximately one thousand years.  The bottom line is that economic accumulations of oil and gas can be generated in thousands of years in sedimentary basins that have experienced hot fluid flow for similar durations.” ↩

Selby, David, and Robert A. Creaser.  “Direct radiometric dating of hydrocarbon deposits using rhenium-osmium isotopes.”  Science 308(5726):1293–1295.  May 27, 2005.  A Science report that dated oil in the Alberta oil sands by rhenium-osmium isotopes, a method that reads an age from the ratios of rhenium and osmium isotopes in a sample.  It gives 112 million years for when the oil arrived, which does not support models that put oil generation and migration in the Late Cretaceous.  The authors also say their samples scatter more than their measurement errors and that the mechanism is not fully known.  The article uses it because the result contradicted the prior basin model rather than confirming it.

1. 34a.

   Page 1293:  “Rhenium-osmium (Re-Os) data from migrated hydrocarbons establish the timing of petroleum emplacement for the giant oil sand deposits of Alberta, Canada, at 112 +/- 5.3 million years ago.  This date does not support models that invoke oil generation and migration for these deposits in the Late Cretaceous.  Most Re-Os data from a variety of deposits within the giant hydrocarbon system show similar characteristics, supporting the notion of a single source for these hydrocarbons.  The Re-Os data disqualify Cretaceous rocks as the primary hydrocarbon source but suggest an origin from older source rocks.”  The age is a multi-sample isochron and assumes a shared initial ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os ratio and no gain or loss of Re or Os since formation; it depends on the ¹⁸⁷Re decay constant. ↩

Grosjean, E. et al.  “Origin of petroleum in the Neoproterozoic-Cambrian South Oman Salt Basin.”  Organic Geochemistry 40(1):87–110.  2009.  A geochemical study of oils and rock samples from the South Oman Salt Basin, by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Newcastle University.  It uses molecular fossils (biomarkers) and carbon isotopes to match oils to the Huqf Supergroup rocks they came from, and it finds little molecular evidence that the older Nafun Group contributed much oil.  The article uses it for the claim that these are the world's oldest known commercial oil deposits.

1. 35a.

   Page 87:  “The South Oman Salt Basin (SOSB) is host to the world's oldest known commercial deposits.  Most of the South Oman oils have been proven to be associated with the source rocks of the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian Huqf Supergroup.” ↩

Berger, W.H. et al.  “Neogene carbonate sedimentation on Ontong Java Plateau: highlights and open questions.”  Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program, Scientific Results 130:711–744.  1993.  Section Abstract, page 711:  “…the outstanding feature of the carbonate record, the Tortonian-Messinian accumulation rate peak centered in the latest Miocene (maximum sedimentation rate >60 m/m.y.), is the product of a complex interplay of a general late Miocene to early Pliocene productivity maximum combined with increased mechanical and chemical erosion before and after the peak.”  Page 717:  “The interval centered near 7 Ma displays some of the highest rates (>50 m/m.y.) yet recorded in open-ocean pelagic sediments.  (Similarly high rates are seen in the central equatorial Pacific [DSDP Site 572, Theyer et al., 1989], and even higher ones have now been reported for this period from the eastern equatorial Pacific [ODP Site 849, Leg 138, Mayer et al., 1992].)”  A review of Neogene carbonate sedimentation on the Ontong Java Plateau, drawn from ocean drilling.  The article uses it for the record accumulation peak in the latest Miocene, with rates above 50 and locally above 60 metres per million years.  Berger et al.'s own text attributes part of the peak to increased erosion and to winnowing and redeposition on the plateau flanks, so some of it is lateral focusing rather than primary rain. ↩

Hsü, Kenneth J. et al.  “The Origin of the Mediterranean Evaporites.”  Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project 13:1203–1231.  1973.  “43. The Origin of the Mediterranean Evaporites”.  A chapter, number 43, of the Deep Sea Drilling Project report on Mediterranean cores, and the long form of the same three authors' four-page Nature note from the same year, making the same argument.  It uses the drilled salt, the seismic profiles and the basin's water budget to argue that the Mediterranean dried out into a deep basin cut off from the Atlantic, and sets that model against two rival models.  The article uses it for the authors' salt table and water budget, and for their figure of thirty refills of the basin.

1. 37a.

   Page 1214, table 1:  “Volumes and Thicknesses of Salts Precipitated (after Schmalz, 1969).”  Per litre of seawater and per 1,500 m column: MgCl 1.48 cm³ gives 2.2 m; KCl 0.43 gives 0.65 m; MgSO₄ 0.94 gives 1.41 m; NaCl 12.87 cm³ gives 19.31 m; CaSO₄ 0.59 gives 0.89 m; carbonates 0.06 gives 0.18 m.  Total 24.64 m of evaporite from 1,500 m of seawater, which is 77.7 km of seawater per kilometre of halite and 60.9 km per kilometre of mixed evaporite. ↩

Heerema, Stef.  “A magmatic model for the origin of large salt formations.”  Journal of Creation 23(3):116–118.  2009.  An essay in the Journal of Creation, published by Creation Ministries International, that argues large salt formations were put in place as molten salt magma from deep in the crust, not formed by evaporating seawater.  The author's stated credential is a bachelor's degree in aircraft engineering, and the essay's main case is the thickness of salt deposits, the lack of sand and marine fossils in them, and the melting points of the salts in a table.  The article uses it as the clearest young-earth statement of the magma model, accepts its 60 km arithmetic, and tests the model against its own melting-point table.

1. 38a.

   Page 116:  “To form a deposit only 1 km thick would require seawater 60 km deep to be evaporated.”  His footnote 6 gives the inputs:  “Given the current salt content of sea water (3.5 % by weight) and a specific gravity of NaCl (2,162 kg/m³).”  His figure treats all dissolved salts as halite, which is why it matches Hsü's 61 km per kilometre of mixed evaporite rather than the 77.7 km for halite alone. ↩

Anderson, Ken B. et al.  “The nature and fate of natural resins in the geosphere – II. Identification, classification and nomenclature of resinites.”  Organic Geochemistry 18(6):829–841.  1992.  A chemistry paper by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory that sorts resinites, the fossil resins that include amber, into four classes by their chemical structure.  To leave out the effects of maturity, the classes describe the original resin, not the aged sample.  The article uses it for the principle that the chemistry of amber tracks maturity, which reflects both age and thermal history.

1. 39a.

   Page 831:  The paper defines Class I (labdatriene polymers, including Baltic succinite as Class Ia), Class II (cadinene polymers), Class III (natural polystyrenes) and Class IV.  “Like all forms of sedimentary organic matter, the structure and composition of resinites undergo systematic changes over the course of geologic time.  The rates at which these processes proceed are almost certainly strongly temperature dependent ... For this reason, it is inappropriate to describe structural changes in resinites as a function of the "age" of the sample.  Rather, it is more appropriate to describe changes in the structure and composition of these materials as a function of "maturity", which reflects both age and thermal history.” ↩

Seyfullah, Leyla J. et al.  “Production and preservation of resins – past and present.”  Biological Reviews 93:1684–1714.  2018.  A review of how living trees make resin and how the resin turns into amber, by six authors at universities and museums in Germany, Finland and France.  It also reports new observations on resin from araucarian conifers.  The article uses it for its table of amber deposits that formed in coal and lignite, and for the New Zealand kauri swamps, which show that large resin deposits can build up in thousands of years.

1. 40a.

   Page 1699:  “The preserved swamps vary in age from approximately 20000 to 100,000 years old (based on carbon-dating;  Boswijk, 2005).  Agathis australis is naturally highly resinous ... and large deposits accumulated over a relatively short time span of only thousands of years, potentially contradicting ideas proposed by Poinar (1992) and Weitschat & Wichard (2010) that the exudations required to form the Baltic amber deposit occurred over millions of years.”  “8000 tons per annum were removed for sale between 1907 and 1914 (Anon, 1921).  Over 450,000 tons of resin in total have been removed (Haywood, 1989) with some nuggets weighing more than 270 kg each (McNeill, 1991).  Most of this massive amount of resin is reported to have come from within 3 m of the surface.” ↩

Wolfe, Alexander P. et al.  “A new proposal concerning the botanical origin of Baltic amber.”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276:3403–3412.  2009.  A chemistry study that compared infrared spectra of Baltic amber with 79 modern conifer resins and fossil resins, and proposed that its source trees belonged to the family Sciadopityaceae, which has one living species, Sciadopitys verticillata.  It argues against the older views that the trees were Araucariaceae or Pinaceae.  The article uses it for two points: that the amber lies in rock it was not formed in, and that the glauconite around it formed on an oxygen-poor sea floor.

1. 41a.

   Page 3403:  “Baltic amber is never found in its original stratigraphic position, having been redeposited in Eocene glauconitic marine sediments as well as Neogene fluvial and glacigenic deposits.” ↩

Shi, Guanghai et al.  “Age constraint on Burmese amber based on U-Pb dating of zircons.”  Cretaceous Research 37:155–163.  2012.  A dating study of zircon crystals, tiny minerals that survive erosion, separated from the sedimentary rock that holds Burmese amber in northern Myanmar, using uranium-lead dating.  The magmatic zircons, which came from volcanic rock fragments in the rock, gave 98.79 ± 0.62 million years, which the authors treat as a maximum age for the amber.  The article quotes this figure in its account of how old Burmese amber can be.

1. 42a.

   Section abstract:  “The burmite-bearing rock is sedimentary and consists mainly of rounded lithic clasts (0.03–0.15 mm in diameter) ... Among the lithic clasts are mostly volcanic rocks.  Zircons separated from the amber matrix form two groups:  Group-I zircons are overgrown ... and their Ion microprobe ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U ages fall into a very narrow range of ∼102 Ma–∼108 Ma;  Group-II zircons are typical magmatic ones with rhythmically flat zones, inferred to be derived from volcanic rock clasts, and yielded a concordia ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U age of 98.79 ± 0.62 Ma. ... the age of 98.79 ± 0.62 Ma therefore can be used as a maximum limit for the burmite (either at or after), establishing an earliest Cenomanian age for the fossilized inclusions.”  It is a maximum depositional age on a volcaniclastic sandstone, read by the authors as the age of a nearby eruption; the number of zircons is not in the abstract. ↩

Yu, Tingting et al.  “An ammonite trapped in Burmese amber.”  PNAS 116(23):11345–11350.  2019.  A report on one piece of Burmese amber from a mine near Noije Bum village in northern Myanmar, holding a juvenile ammonite (an extinct shelled sea animal), marine snails, isopods and at least 40 arthropods.  The authors used X-ray micro-computed tomography to make 3D images of the ammonite, which they use as evidence for a late Albian to early Cenomanian age for the amber.  The article uses it for two points: that the marine shells and debris in the amber came from a beach, not from the sea floor, and that the ammonite helps date the amber.

1. 43a.

   Page 11345:  “The ammonite is a juvenile Puzosia (Bhimaites) and provides supporting evidence for a Late Albian–Early Cenomanian age of the amber.” ↩

He, Jason J. Y. et al.  “Late Miocene Colorado River arrival in the Bidahochi basin supports spillover origin of Grand Canyon.”  Science, 289–294.  Apr 16, 2026.  A research article in the journal Science, written by thirteen authors.  Its dating of volcanic ash and of 3,596 detrital zircon grains (sand-sized crystals that record the age of the rock they came from) placed Colorado River sediment in a lake basin east of the canyon by 6.6 million years ago.  He and Crow contributed equally, and the corresponding author, Crow, is at the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff and is the same Crow who co-authored the 2014 thermochronology paper and led the lava-dam work.  The article uses it as the newest evidence that the river got through the Kaibab arch by lake spillover, the mechanism creationists have argued for far longer than the mainstream has. ↩

1. 44a.

   Page 294:  “It is notable that lake spillover would have established the route of the river, allowing the initiation of new fluvial incision, but catastrophic flooding during that process is not necessarily invoked as contributing substantially to canyon deepening.” ↩

Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe.  Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California.  Edited by Steven A. Austin.  1994.  A 1994 book edited by Steven Austin and published by the Institute for Creation Research.  The article uses its fifth chapter, "How Was Grand Canyon Eroded?" (pp. 83–110), for the lakes Austin proposed, for the volume of rock he says the canyon lost, and for what he says those lakes left behind.

1. 45a.

   Page 103:  “Sedimentary deposits have yet to prove the existence of Canyonlands Lake.”  No deposit at all is claimed for Vernal Lake. ↩

Billingsley, George H., and Stanley S. Beus.  “The Surprise Canyon Formation — An Upper Mississippian and Lower Pennsylvanian(?) rock unit in the Grand Canyon, Arizona.”  U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1605-A, A27–A33.  1985.  A U.S. Geological Survey chapter, printed in a volume of stratigraphic notes dated 1984, that names and describes the Surprise Canyon Formation, a rock unit that fills valleys cut into the Redwall Limestone.  The 1999 monograph often cited with it is Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 61, not USGS Bulletin 2111.  The article uses it for the width and depth of the valleys cut into the Redwall Limestone, for the plants and erosion surfaces in the fill, and for the solution caves inside the Redwall. ↩

Mead, Jim I., and Larry D. Agenbroad.  “Isotope Dating of Pleistocene Dung Deposits from the Colorado Plateau, Arizona and Utah.”  Radiocarbon 34(1):1–19.  1992.  Page 3:  All dates are conventional radiocarbon years using the Libby half-life, uncalibrated.  Page 12:  Rampart Cave:  “a small limestone cave at 525 m elevation with a north-facing entrance. In 1976, fire destroyed all but a small section of the deposit.”  Page 14:  Stanton's Cave:  “at 927 m elevation, is 44 m above the present river level.”  A review, by two Northern Arizona University researchers, of 20 Colorado Plateau localities where the dung of large animals was preserved in caves and alcoves and then radiocarbon dated.  The authors say identified dung and hair of large mammals is considered the most reliable material for radiocarbon dating when the question is when a local extinction happened.  The article uses it for the depth-ordered dates from Rampart Cave.

1. 47a.

   Pages 12–13:  Laboratory prefixes: A- is University of Arizona, I- is Isotopes Incorporated and L- is Lamont-Doherty.  The authors also reject one anomalously young date on physical grounds: on the 10,035 ± 250 from the trampled surface layer,  “Martin, Thompson and Long (1985) suggest Neotoma contamination of this 'young' sample”.  which is worth noting, because radiocarbon workers discard dates for stratigraphic reasons too.  At Muav Caves six surface boluses run 10,650 to 11,810, a tight cluster consistent with one horizon.  At Stanton's Cave the extinct mountain goat's pellets run 10,870 at 20-25 cm to 17,300 at 55-60 cm, and.  “No 'large pellets' were found above the 20-cm level in the stratified section”.  so the extinction is stratigraphic, not merely chronological. ↩

Whitmore, John H.  “Lithostratigraphic Correlation of the Coconino Sandstone and a Global Survey of Permian 'Eolian' Sandstones: Implications for Flood Geology.”  Answers Research Journal 12:275–328.  2019.  A 2019 paper in the Answers Research Journal, a creationist journal, that correlates the Coconino Sandstone and surveys Permian 'Eolian' sandstones, with implications for Flood geology.  The article cites it for two points: the reading of the Hermit-Coconino cracks as sand injectites, and the argument that flat contacts between marine layers are easier to explain than flat land surfaces.

1. 48a.

   Page 282:  His own numbered list.  Items quoted or discussed in this article:  “2. the grains of the Coconino can best be described as subangular to subrounded, 3. K-feldspar is a common accessory mineral and is often more angular than the quartz … 6. avalanche tongues, a feature common on steep slopes of eolian sand dunes, are missing in the Coconino … 7. cross-bed dips average about 20 deg and our hundreds of measurements agree with hundreds of other measurements made by Reiche (1938) and Maithel (2019) … 9. dolomite (we believe it is primary) occurs in many places … 10. the expected sedimentary details commonly found in eolian sands (as far as grainfall, grainflow and ripple structures) are for the most part absent or have been difficult to recognize in the Coconino (Maithel 2019).”  Item 6 fails on the movement's own sources: McKee figures dry-sand slump and avalanche marks by name, and Maithel's own first conference paper was on Coconino "avalanche beds."  Item 10 misstates the source it cites, which says the structures are hard to differentiate, not absent.  The measured dip means behind item 7 are in Whitmore 2019, Fig. 6, pp. 287-288 (6A-H on p. 287, 6I-O on p. 288): Bunker Trail 21.4°, Aubrey Cliffs 19.3°, Clear Creek 22.8°, Holbrook 17.3°, all-Arizona Coconino pooled 20.2°. ↩

Karlstrom, Karl E. et al.  “Telling Time at Grand Canyon National Park: 2020 update.”  Natural Resource Report NPS/GRCA/NRR-2021/2246.  National Park Service, Fort Collins.  2021.  A National Park Service report on the ages of the rock layers in Grand Canyon National Park, with a table of numeric ages for them.  The Park Service's web version of that table was last updated on 12 March 2024.  The article uses it for the three unconformities the Park Service names in the canyon and for the revised date of the Cardenas Basalt.

1. 49a.

   On the Redwall Limestone, the authors write:  “These fossils and the use of fossil biozones and the International Stratigraphic Chart v 2020/01 indicate that the Redwall Limestone is late Early to Middle Mississippian in age (which is about 340 million years old).”  There are no datable ash beds anywhere in the canyon's Paleozoic section, so the numbers come from detrital-zircon maximum depositional ages and from biozones correlated to dated sections elsewhere. ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “The Tonto Deformation: Responding Again to 'Peaceful Science' Critics.”  Answers in Depth.  Answers in Genesis.  Feb 1, 2026.  Part three of Snelling's reply, published in early 2026, to critics of his Grand Canyon fold work, and the most recent word in that exchange.  It belongs to the series "A Detailed Response to 'Examining Young Earth Creation Claims About the Grand Canyon'," and its title names the Tonto deformation.  The article quotes it throughout.

1. 50a.

   “Only if thin section examination of the sandstone reveals deformation lamellae and undulose extinction in the quartz grains under cross-polarized light due to deformation stress will it have been demonstrated that the mechanical crowding of the sandstone beds in these folds has been due to slow [ductile] deformation under stress of solid [cemented] sandstone.” ↩

Fossen, Haakon.  Structural Geology.  Cambridge University Press.  1st edition.  2010.  An undergraduate textbook on structural geology, the study of how rock layers bend, break and flow, by a professor at the University of Bergen, Norway.  Snelling cites the 2016 second edition throughout his papers, while Mitchell and Tillman cite this first edition.  The article uses it as the textbook Snelling leans on, for its definitions of ductile and brittle deformation and for forced folds.

1. 51a.

   Page 113:  “Quartz deforms by brittle mechanisms up to about 300-350 °C, which for typical continental temperature gradients corresponds to crustal depths of around 10-12 km.  At greater depths, crystal-plastic mechanisms (creep mechanisms) and diffusion dominate.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “The Carbon Canyon Fold, Eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona.”  Answers Research Journal 16:1–124.  2023.  A long research paper by Andrew Snelling on the bent Tapeats Sandstone in the Carbon Canyon fold.  It uses field observations, thin sections (rock slices thin enough to see through under a microscope), scanning electron microscope images and experiments with damp soft sediment, on samples from the hinge, the limbs and several miles away, and it concludes that the bending happened soon after deposition, before the sand cemented.  The article uses it as the main technical source for the claim that the Tapeats Sandstone was still soft when it was folded.

1. 52a.

   Page 96:  “In conclusion, therefore, the consensus from all these estimation methods is that the Tapeats Sandstone prior to the Laramide deformation responsible for the Carbon Canyon fold would have been subjected to a burial temperature of 110-130°C.”  Earlier on the same page, these two tuff units:  “have since their burial only been subjected to maximum temperatures of 110-130°C, well below the 200 ± 40°C temperature for total annealing of fission tracks in zircon.” ↩

2. 52b.

   Page 98:  “From field observations of the outcrop of the Tapeats Sandstone beds in the Carbon Canyon fold it is quite clear that bedding plane or flexural slip must have occurred to accommodate their folding.” ↩

Wilbur, Jay H.  “Natural Arch Information: Frequently Asked Questions.”  Natural Arch and Bridge Society.  n.d.  A frequently asked questions page on natural arches, put out by the Natural Arch and Bridge Society.  It says that no natural arch is older than about 30 thousand years and that most are probably between 5 and 15 thousand years old, and it says the age of a specific arch cannot be determined except for the handful whose formation was observed and recorded.  The article uses it for the society's own estimate that most arches are between 5 and 15 thousand years old.

1. 53a.

   “Except for the handful of natural arches whose formation has been observed and recorded, there is currently no way to determine the age of a specific arch.  However, it is also clear that all of these features are very short-lived on geologic time scales, and are quite recent phenomena… it is safe to say that no natural arch is older than about 30 thousand years.  Most are probably between 5 and 15 thousand years old, i.e., not incomparable to the span of recorded history…  Sea natural arches have typical ages of a few centuries, or even decades, as opposed to millennia.” ↩

Faulkner, Danny R.  “More About Arches, and More.”  Danny Faulkner Blog, Answers in Genesis.  Sep 19, 2024.  A blog post in which Faulkner explains how he modelled arch lifetimes.  He writes that arch formation has never been observed, so in his first analysis he set the current formation rate to zero, and he says a good model must include both formation and collapse.  This article uses it for Faulkner's own admission, in print, that his model counts deaths and assumes zero births.

1. 54a.

   “While it is clear how arches cease to exist, there is much uncertainty about how arches form.  We have some numerical information on the rate at which arches in Utah's Arches National Park are collapsing, but we have no data on the formation rate of arches.  A good model of arch lifetimes must include both processes.  Since we have never observed the formation of an arch, in my initial analysis, I assumed that the current formation rate is zero.” ↩

Purcell, David E.  An Administrative History of Arches National Park.  Museum of Northern Arizona, for the National Park Service.  2019.  The Park Service's administrative history of Arches National Park, which records how the park's count of arches grew and prints its list of collapsed arches.  The article uses it for where the count of 43 collapses comes from, and for how the arch census was built.

1. 55a.

   Page 375:  “In 1993, a list of arches known to have fallen since 1977 was compiled by unknown persons (possibly Dale Stevens).  An undated document with the table calls them 'Fallen Arches,' but notes that their inclusion on the list does not mean that the span has collapsed in every case, but that at a minimum a crack through the span has separated it from the rest of the arch, and it is no longer intact.”  The book cites the underlying manuscript as Anonymous, "Known Fallen Arches Since 1977," ca. 1993, ARCH 101/007-037, SEUG Archives. ↩

Genuite, Kim et al.  “Dating the landscape evolution around the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc cave.”  Scientific Reports 11:8944.  2021.  A dating study of the landscape around the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc cave.  The authors used uranium-series and electron spin resonance analyses, two dating methods that read radioactive decay and trapped electrons in minerals, to date the formation of the Pont d'Arc natural arch.  The article uses it as the one natural arch anywhere dated by radiometric methods, which it puts at about 120,000 years old.

1. 56a.

   “We used uranium-series and electron spin resonance analyses to date the formation of the Pont d'Arc natural arch in the Combe d'Arc meander cutoff, near the Chauvet Cave.  Results show that the meander became totally cutoff between 108 and 138 ka (95%).  Hence, the natural arch formed before the Upper Paleolithic and the first known human presence in the Chauvet Cave, dated to 37 ka cal BP.” ↩

Faulkner, Danny R.  “My Recent Arch Trip to Utah.”  Danny Faulkner Blog, Answers in Genesis.  Apr 25, 2025.  A blog post from a trip to Utah in which Faulkner questions two numbers from his own 2024 article: the 43 arch collapses over 49 years, and the count of 2,000 arches.  This article uses it for Faulkner's own doubts about the two numbers his 2024 argument rests on.

1. 57a.

   “That is, the 43 arch collapses over 49 years may have been an overestimation.  I probably ought to revisit my publication from last year.” ↩

Creation Evidence Museum of Texas.  “The London Artifact.”  Creation Evidence Museum.  2013.  The museum's own exhibit page for the hammer.  It gives the find as a loose rock in 1934, describes density scans and a file cut, and lists open questions, including the chlorine and the age of the nearby Cretaceous sand.

1. 58a.

   “In June of 1934, Max Hahn discovered a rock, sitting loose on a rock ledge beside a waterfall outside London, Texas. Noticing that this weathered rock had wood protruding from it, he and family members cracked it open with a hammer and chisel”. ↩

Stromberg, Pierre, and Paul V. Heinrich.  “The Coso Artifact:  Mystery from the Depths of Time?”  Reports of the National Center for Science Education 24(2):26–30.  2004.  An investigation of the Coso artifact by a skeptic and a Louisiana Geological Survey geologist.  The owner refused access, so they worked from the published X-rays and photographs, traced the story to its first printings, and had spark-plug collectors identify the object.  They also corresponded with the young-earth author who promoted it and print his replies.  Mirror:  Ncse.ngo

1. 59a.

   Section Comparisons and Analysis:  “There is no doubt that this is merely an old spark plug. Most probably, it is a Champion spark plug, similar to the two enclosed.”  Section The Artifact Itself:  What Is It?:  “To date, there has been no dissent among the spark plug collectors as to the identity of the Coso Artifact.”  The first quotation is from Chad Windham's letter of 14 September 1999. ↩

Barker, Harold et al.  “British Museum natural radiocarbon measurements VII.”  Radiocarbon 13(2):157–188.  1971.  A date list from the British Museum's radiocarbon laboratory, giving each sample, its laboratory number, its age and a comment from the submitter.

1. 60a.

   Page 183:  “958 ± 116 BM-496. Castenedolo skeleton A.D. 992 Collagen separated from vertebrae and costae of human skeleton (ref. Castenedolo I) found at Castenedolo, Brescia, Italy … Comment (K.P.O.): comparison of nitrogen content of Castenedolo bones with range of nitrogen values of bones from Italian sites indicated that these skeletons were intrusive burials in Pliocene marls”. ↩

Taylor, R. E.  “Six decades of radiocarbon dating in New World archaeology.”  Radiocarbon 51(1):173–212.  2009.  A review of radiocarbon dating in American archaeology by the head of the laboratory that dated the Calaveras material in 1992.  It mentions the Calaveras result in passing and gives the wrong year, 1854, for the skull's discovery.

1. 61a.

   Page 183:  “a 14C determination of 740 ± 210 BP (UCR-2161B/AA-1879) on an organic fraction of the Calaveras Skull was, in a sense, anticlimactic (Taylor et al. 1992). However, this measurement put an absolute fini to a much too long debated subject.” ↩

Wise, Kurt P.  “The Way Geologists Date!”  Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism 1:135–138.  1986.  A short paper by a young-earth paleontologist telling fellow creationists that their usual attacks on geological dating are wrong, with the Lewis Overthrust as a worked example.

1. 62a.

   Page 136:  “The most popular inverted section cited by creationists is the Lewis Overthrust in Northern Montana and Southern Alberta. … A close examination of the contact between the Cretaceous and Precambrian rocks leaves no doubt that the contact is a fault contact. Highly sheared rubble is found between the units in many places. … In addition, slickensides are found in the Precambrian sediments.” ↩

Clarey, Timothy L.  “South Fork and Heart Mountain Faults:  Examples of Catastrophic, Gravity-Driven "Overthrusts," Northwest Wyoming, USA.”  Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Creationism.  2013.  A conference paper by a young-earth geologist, formerly an oil-industry exploration geologist, on two detachment faults in Wyoming.  It accepts that large thrusts are real and proposes that they slid catastrophically on overpressured layers during the Flood.

1. 63a.

   Section Introduction:  “Creationists in the past have been right to criticize secular explanations for overthrusts (Whitcomb and Morris 1961; Lammerts, 1966, 1972; Burdick, 1969, 1974, 1977). Today, however, creationists must accept the results of 100s of drill-hole penetrations and 1000s of kilometers of seismic reflection data, collected since the 1970s, proving the existence of many overthrust faults … Authors who are critical of the geologic column should no longer use the denial of overthrusts as part of their argument.” ↩

Isaak, Mark.  “Problems with a Global Flood.”  TalkOrigins Archive.  2nd edition.  1998.  A hostile secondary source, an online FAQ last updated in November 1998, that tests what a literal Flood would require against what we actually observe.  The article uses it only for its framing, since every number in the article is taken from the primaries, the original sources it cites directly.

1. 64a.

   Section Runaway subduction (subsection):  “Baumgardner estimates a release of 10^28 joules from the subduction process. This is more than enough to boil off all the oceans.” ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  “3-D Finite Element Simulation of the Global Tectonic Changes Accompanying Noah's Flood.”  Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, 35–44.  Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh.  Edited by R. E. Walsh and C. L. Brooks.  1990.  A 1990 conference paper by John R. Baumgardner of the Institute for Creation Research.  It proposes that the cold, dense pre-Flood ocean floor sank into the mantle, releasing gravitational energy, and it simulates that sinking in three dimensions on a computer.  The article uses it for the energy figure and for the temporary rise in world sea level of as much as 1,500 m that the paper predicts.

1. 65a.

   Page 3:  “we obtain a value of 1.4 x 10^9 J/m3 for the gravitational potential energy density. This may be compared with the energy per unit volume required to melt silicate rock, 5.6 x 10^9 J/m3, and with the energy per unit volume needed to boil cold water at atmospheric pressure, 2.7 x 10^9 J/m3. Considering the volume of oceanic lithosphere to be layered 80 km thick covering 60% of the earth's surface, we obtain a value of 3.4 x 10^28 J for the amount of associated gravitational potential energy.”  The derivation is 0.6 × 5.1 × 10¹⁴ m² × 8 × 10⁴ m × 1.4 × 10⁹ J/m³ = 3.4 × 10²⁸ J.  Morton and Murphy's "10²⁸ J" understates it. ↩

Billingsley, George H., and Stanley S. Beus.  “The Surprise Canyon Formation.”  U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1605-A:A27–A33.  1985.  A U.S. Geological Survey bulletin that describes the Surprise Canyon Formation, a rock unit that fills valleys and caves cut into the top of the Redwall Limestone.  The paleovalleys "average about 300 m in width and 75 m in depth"; the thickest is 122 m, at Quartermaster Canyon, where the paleovalleys cut through the Horseshoe Mesa Member into the Mooney Falls Member.  The article uses it for the size of those valleys and for what fills them. ↩

Banks, V. J., and P. F. Jones.  “Measurement of rates of surface lowering of limestone in the southern Pennines: an example in the Wye catchment, Derbyshire, UK.”  Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 125(1):20–30.  2014.  A field study of how fast limestone dissolves, measured on a railway cutting in the Wye valley, Derbyshire, where resistant chert bands stand out in relief from the limestone around them.  The authors give a rate of 0.035 millimetres per year, within the range of earlier UK measurements, and their Table 7 lists ten earlier published rates.  The article uses it as its worked example of a measured limestone dissolution rate, taken from a cut of known age.

1. 67a.

   Table 7:  Ten published limestone surface-lowering rates, in millimetres per year: Goodchild 1875 Yorkshire 0.051; Sweeting 1966 0.042; Sweeting 1972 NW Yorkshire 0.049-0.050; Goldie 2006 Yorkshire 0.003-0.013; Parry 2007 0.0037-0.0135; Wilson et al. 2012 0.018; Pitty 1966 Derbyshire 0.083; Piggott 1962 Derbyshire 0.055-0.100; Gams 1962 Slovenia 0.077-0.080; Lauritzen 1990 North Norway 0.033 ± 0.010.  These are temperate humid-climate rates with soil and vegetation present, near the high end globally, so using the fastest of them is generous to the young-earth side.  Most karst dissolution is focused at dolines and along the epikarst rather than spread evenly, so the plateau-average figure is an order-of-magnitude floor rather than a date. ↩

Clarey, Timothy L., and Davis J. Werner.  “A Progressive Global Flood Model Confirmed by Rock Data Across Five Continents.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism 9:412–445.  2023.  The Institute for Creation Research's megasequence model of the Flood, built on a database of rock columns from five continents.  It assigns each of Sloss's six megasequences to a stage of the Flood year.

1. 68a.

   Page 423:  “the consistent internal stratigraphy of each megasequence testifies against significant erosion.  Megasequences often start out with sandstone followed by shale and then carbonate rock.  For example, the Sauk in North America still exhibits a complete cycle consisting of basal sandstone (Tapeats equivalent), followed by shale (Bright Angel equivalent) and topped by a carbonate (Muav equivalent).  Vast erosion in between each megasequence cycle would have likely destroyed this systematic signature in many locations, if not totally.  And yet we observe the complete sequence of sandstone, shale and carbonate in the Sauk megasequence across large portions of North America.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  Analysis of Walt Brown's Flood model.  Creation Ministries International.  2013.  Its verdict:  “There are many more specific problems that can be brought forth against Brown's version of the dam-breach hypothesis, but the above are enough to show that his hypothesis won't work.”  He notes, against Brown's block-faulting, that the Grand Staircase and Book Cliffs.  “are obviously erosional escarpments … They are not fault scarps”.  He also says the lakes did not breach at the low points of the Kaibab Plateau, an objection that hits Austin equally.  A critique that Creation Ministries International commissioned from Michael Oard, a full-time researcher known for his field geology, because it kept receiving mail about Brown's hydroplate model.  It summarizes Brown's model and then tests it, most closely on the origin of Grand Canyon and on the woolly mammoths.  The article uses it for the water-budget objection to Brown's lakes.

1. 69a.

   Section Not enough water for erosion:  “the total volume of rock eroded by sheet flow would be 8,500 km³ (2,000 mi³).  The volume of Brown's two lakes east of Grand Canyon was only about 12,000 km³ (2,930 mi³).  That is a little more than a cubic km of water to erode a cubic km of sediment, which seems like too little water, just to erode the 300 m (1,000 ft) of sediments before Grand Canyon was even carved!”  And:  “that much water only eroded about 200 km³ (50 mi³) of soft silt and hard basalt along the flood path.  That is about a 10 to 1 ratio of water to erosion.” ↩