The Flood/Post-Flood Boundary

Austin, Steven A. et al.  “Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History.”  Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, 609–622.  Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship.  Edited by R. E. Walsh.  1994.  A 1994 creationist conference paper proposing that the crustal plates moved rapidly apart during the Flood, a model the authors say appears capable of explaining a wide variety of data.  They call it a basic framework that is still incomplete, and say it is their composite view rather than necessarily that of the Institute for Creation Research, with which all six had some association.  The article uses it for the placement of the Flood/post-Flood boundary at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary and for the erosion answer to the missing mammals.  Mirror:  Icr.org

1. 1a.

   Page 614, section POST-FLOOD DYNAMICS — Flood/Post-Flood Boundary:  “The definition of the Flood/Post-Flood boundary in the geologic column is a subject of considerable dispute among creationists.  Estimates range from the Carboniferous [86] to the Pleistocene [79,117].  For our purposes here we would like to define the Flood/post-Flood boundary at the termination of global-scale erosion and sedimentation.  Based upon a qualitative assessment of geologic maps worldwide, lithotypes change from worldwide or continental in character in the Mesozoic to local or regional in the Tertiary.  Therefore, we tentatively place the Flood/post-Flood boundary at approximately the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary.  We believe further studies in stratigraphy, paleontology, paleomagnetism, and geochemistry should allow for a more precise definition of this boundary.”  Reference [86] is Scheven 1990, [79] is Price 1923, [117] is Whitcomb & Morris 1961. ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 614:  The paragraph immediately before the "POST-FLOOD DYNAMICS" heading:  “As the waters receded (the 'Great Regression') from off of the land the most superficial — and least lithified — continental deposits were eroded off the continents.  This would leave an unconformity on the continent not reflected in ocean stratigraphy.  The absence of these most superficial continental deposits may explain the absence of human as well as most mammal and angiosperm fossils in Flood sediments [123].”  Reference [123] is "K. P. Wise, Ecological Zonation and the Fossil Record, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, in prep."  No paper of that title has been traced, so the erosion mechanism meant to remove the mammals and humans was a promise in 1994 and has not been quantified since. ↩

Whitmore, John H., and Kurt P. Wise.  “Rapid and Early Post-Flood Mammalian Diversification Evidenced in the Green River Formation.”  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, 449–457.  Edited by A. A. Snelling.  2008.  A conference paper by John Whitmore of Cedarville University and Kurt Wise of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  It argues that the Eocene Green River Formation of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado was laid down between decades and several centuries after the Flood, and it counts about 230 families (proxies for baramins) there.  The article uses it for the diversification rate that the K-Pg camp, which places the boundary at the Cretaceous-Paleogene line, publishes, and for the window its chronology leaves for the Green River fossils.

1. 2a.

   Column left, page 455:  “then the Green River sedimentation began within decades after the Flood and may have been complete as early as several decades following the Flood.  This means that worldwide distribution of terrestrial animals may have been achieved in less than a century.  Intrabaraminic diversification may have had a generic doubling time on the order of a dozen years or so and a specific doubling time on the order of a decade.” ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 455:  “approximate translations can be made between radioisotope years in the Tertiary and solar years in Scripture (y = y0e^-rx where y is the radioisotope age (in years) before present [rybf], y0 is the radioisotope age of the end of the Flood [rybf], and x is the biblical age after the Flood [byaf]).  Three (x,y) points can allow the calculation of such a curve.  In this particular case these three points would be the end of the Flood, Babel, and the time of Solomon — the lattermost being the time when 14C and dendrochronological dates correspond in Bristlecone Pine samples.” ↩

3. 2c.

   Table 3, page 455:  Four chronology and Babel combinations give decay constants r of 0.0354, 0.01159, 0.00897 and 0.004141 per year, and place the Wasatchian at years 4–7, 13–22, 17–28 and 38–61 after the Flood.  Page 452, column right:  Their own caveat:  “Even though we are certain our lacustrine interpretation of the GRF is secure, additional geological work will have to be completed to see if this short amount of time can be reconciled within the rocks of the Green River strata.” ↩

Tomkins, Jeffrey P., and Tim Clarey.  “Whale Fossils Confirm Post-Flood Boundary.”  Creation Science Update (Institute for Creation Research).  Nov 27, 2019.  A popular article posted by the Institute for Creation Research on 27 November 2019, by two ICR scientists: Jeffrey P. Tomkins, with a Ph.D. in genetics, and Tim Clarey, with a Ph.D. in geology.  It argues that whale fossils show the Flood ended at the Neogene–Quaternary boundary, and it rejects the idea that whales evolved from Ark ancestors.  The article uses it as the Institute for Creation Research's sharpest fossil argument against a K-Pg boundary.

1. 3a.

   “Unfortunately, some creation scientists have prematurely placed the post-Flood boundary at the end of the earlier Cretaceous System.  So, how do they explain the sudden appearance of whale fossils beyond this boundary?  They claim these large marine mammals evolved rapidly from ancestors that walked out of the Ark.  But did whales really evolve from land-dwelling Ark ancestors?  Whale evolution would have required numerous and exceptionally rapid changes in anatomy and physiology.  There is no evidence to support this idea from either genetics or the fossil record.”  On the distribution:  “In fact, whale fossils are located on the coastal margins of nearly every major landmass and are also found across the entire continent of Europe.” ↩ ↩

Macrostrat.  North America project (project_id 1).  n.d.  Retrieved Sep 4, 2026.  A public academic database of rock units, here its North America project, which holds 949 columns covering 24.8 million km² and 24,141 units.  The article uses it as a public check on the rock volume, one that does not depend on creationist data.

1. 4a.

   Computed for this article.  Volume per unit is column area times unit thickness, and units that straddle 66 Ma are apportioned by time overlap.  Using max_thick: 156,260,502 km³ total, 20,885,551 km³ post-66 Ma.  Using the mean of max_thick and min_thick: 105,922,231 km³ total, 12,644,000 km³ post-66 Ma.  Using min_thick: 55,583,960 km³ total, 4,402,450 km³ post-66 Ma.  Clarey & Werner 2023 Table 1 give the North American Tejas as 17,758,530 km³. ↩ ↩

Ross, Marcus R.  “Evaluating potential post-Flood boundaries with biostratigraphy: the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary.”  Journal of Creation 26(2):82–87.  2012.  A paper in the creationist Journal of Creation.  It takes 303 North American mammal genera from 28 terrestrial mammal families, as recorded in the Paleobiology Database, and asks how many have fossils on both sides of the Pliocene/Pleistocene line.  It finds that 23% of genera cross that line, and nearly every family does, and it argues that the boundary should lie lower, at a sharper biostratigraphic break.  The article uses it as the first quantitative test of the fossil objection to a late-Cenozoic boundary.

1. 5a.

   Section Abstract, page 82:  “It is found that when the Flood/post-Flood boundary is placed at or near the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary, then a significant number of mammalian genera (23%), and nearly every family (>96%), crosses this boundary.”  Page 86:  “The lone exception is the Rhinocerotidae …, the last members of which in North America suffer extinction during the Pliocene.  So if the family approximates the baramin, then >96% of the mammal baramins evaluated here migrated from Laurentia/North America to the Ark, and returned again to North America.”  Table 1, p. 86, gives 70 of 303 genera crossing, and per-family rates from 0 % (Rhinocerotidae, 17 genera) and 3.7 % (Equidae, 27 genera) to 60 % (Felidae, 9 of 15). ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 86:  “taxa which would have had to return to North America are in some cases genera known only from North America (e.g. Antilocapris (pronghorn antelope), Odocoileus (whitetail and mule deer), Sylvilagus (cotton-tail rabbits)).  For these taxa, there is no pool of species from their genus on other continents which could coincidentally migrate to North America during the post-Flood period.  In other words:  why would endemic pre-Flood North American mammals return only to North America?” ↩

3. 5c.

   Pages 86–87:  “Lastly, and perhaps most damaging:  why are there no post-Flood mammal migrants into North America, the Flood-derived fossils of which are otherwise only known from India?  Or Africa?  Or Australia? … Yet there are no fossil kangaroos, koalas, or Tasmanian wolves in North America or any other continent.  They are not present anywhere else in Pleistocene deposits, or indeed in any other Cenozoic deposits on any of the other continents.” ↩

4. 5d.

   Page 87:  “At present, the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary appears to be the stratigraphically highest and most prominent biostratigraphic break (it includes the last in-place stratigraphic appearance of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and several other bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian groups), though a similarly thorough analysis must be completed in order to strengthen its claim to the Flood/post-Flood boundary.” ↩

Whitmore, John H., and Paul Garner.  “Using Suites of Criteria to Recognize Pre-Flood, Flood, and Post-Flood Strata in the Rock Record with Application to Wyoming (USA).”  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, 425–448.  Edited by A. A. Snelling.  2008.  A conference paper by John Whitmore of Cedarville University and Paul Garner of Biblical Creation Ministries.  It proposes 27 criteria for telling pre-Flood, Flood and post-Flood rock apart, ranks each from 1 (most important) to 3 (least important), and applies them to a section in Wyoming; the criteria section runs pp. 428–433.  The authors invite others to test the method on other continents.  The article treats it as the only published method for locating the boundary.

1. 6a.

   Page 436:  “We conclude, therefore, that in our Wyoming section, the Flood/post-Flood boundary falls approximately during Lance to Fort Union Time (the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary occurs after the Lance).” ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 436:  “Finally, we suggest that attempts are made to apply our model in other localities.  A logical place to use this model next might be the Colorado Plateau. … The model could also be extended to the central and eastern United States and to other continents.  Once our model has been applied in various regions, attempts can then be made to correlate the identified Flood boundaries.” ↩ ↩

3. 6c.

   Page 436:  “This conclusion represents a significant modification of the position previously expressed by Garner (1996a, 1996b).  However, it is consistent with the preliminary conclusion of Austin et al. (1994).” ↩

4. 6d.

   Page 431:  “Since the Flood involved the global inundation of the continents with ocean water, and since ocean temperatures were likely to have been high during the Flood, we would not expect any widespread glacial sediments associated with Flood-deposited sequences.  After the Flood, the oceans would have gradually cooled by evaporation and we would expect post-Flood sequences to be characterized by declining temperatures and the growth of extensive ice sheets over the mid- and high-latitude continents.  We rank this criterion as '1' since we think there was only one period of extensive glaciation that happened in post-Flood times.”  The criterion is rank 1 only because Oard 1997 had reinterpreted the pre-Pleistocene tillites as submarine debris flows, which is a creationist reinterpretation, not an observation. ↩

Clarey, Timothy L.  “Local Catastrophes or Receding Floodwater? Global Geologic Data that Refute a K-Pg (K-T) Flood/post-Flood Boundary.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 54(2):100–120.  2017.  A paper in the Fall 2017 issue by Timothy L. Clarey of the Institute for Creation Research.  It tests the K-Pg boundary against three-dimensional lithologic models of three continents, built from boreholes, cores and seismic data, and concludes that the Flood/post-Flood boundary must lie at least at the top of the Miocene.  The article uses it as a creationist case for a boundary far above the K-Pg, and as an example of the same criteria giving a different answer over a larger area.

1. 7a.

   Page 117, column 1–2:  “Unlike Whitmore and Garner (2008), who applied these criteria only to western Wyoming, the present study has examined the rock record across three entire continental masses … In this regard, the conclusion of Whitmore and Garner (2008) for western Wyoming does appear to be correct.  However, when examining this criterion on a global scale, extensive deposits of marine sediments are observed across northern Europe (Vandenberghe et al. 2014), North Africa, and the Middle East (Figure 13).  We conclude that marine deposition continued across large expanses of the continents well above the K-Pg boundary and continued to the top of the Miocene or higher.” ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 117, column 2:  “Applying the criterion of 'deposits of unparalleled extent' leads to a post-Flood boundary interpretation that is much higher than the K-Pg.” ↩ ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 113, column 3:  Clarey quoting Kurt Wise:  “Wise (2009, p. 143) has even proposed whales may have evolved after the Flood, and that 'vestigial legs and hips in modern whales confirm legged ancestors of the whales existed only a short time ago.'  Wise (2009, p. 144) has concluded that 'mammal taxa which lack a fossil record from the Lower Eocene or before can be understood to have arisen after the Flood as subtaxa of ark kinds.'  Wise (2009, p. 136) has also pointed out that '44% of living mammal genera have no fossil record at all.'” ↩

4. 7d.

   Page 117:  “Pimiento et al. (2017) determined that 36% of the Pliocene genera failed to cross the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary”.  The same wording, without the qualifier "marine megafauna", appears in his abstract. ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  “¹⁴C Evidence for a Recent Global Flood and a Young Earth.”  Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth II:587–630.  ICR and CRS.  2005.  Chapter 8 of the second volume of the RATE book, the young-earth project's report on carbon-14.  It reports carbon-14 values for ten coals and argues that they combine carbon from the pre-Flood biosphere with carbon made in place by accelerated decay during the Flood.  The article uses it for those coal numbers and the model that explains them, and the author calls the pre-Flood estimate very soft.

1. 8a.

   Table 2, page 605:  The ten coals from the US Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank, in percent modern carbon.  Eocene: DECS-1 Texas 0.30 ± 0.03, DECS-11 North Dakota 0.20 ± 0.02, DECS-25 Montana 0.27 ± 0.02.  Cretaceous: DECS-15 Utah 0.35 ± 0.03, DECS-16 Utah 0.10 ± 0.03, DECS-28 Arizona 0.18 ± 0.02.  Pennsylvanian: DECS-18 Kentucky 0.46 ± 0.03, DECS-21 Pennsylvania 0.13 ± 0.02, DECS-23 Pennsylvania 0.19 ± 0.02, DECS-24 Illinois 0.29 ± 0.03.  Means 0.257, 0.210 and 0.268.  The identical table is on p. 133 of the 2003 companion paper.  These are not raw measurements.  The table's own caption reads:  “The reported values shown in the last column are the measured values minus the laboratory's standard background of 0.077±0.005.”  The text on the same page explains that the background.  “is obtained by measuring the ¹⁴C in a purified natural gas”.  and that four separate targets were run per sample and combined as a weighted average. ↩ ↩

2. 8b.

   Pages 618–619:  “To estimate the pre-Flood 14C/C ratio we of course require an estimate for the amount of 14C.  As a starting point we might assume the total amount, that is, the total number of atoms, of 14C was similar to what exists in today's world.  If that were the case, and this 14C were distributed uniformly throughout the biosphere, and the total amount of biospheric C were, for example, 500 times that of today's world, the resulting 14C/C ratio would be 1/500 of today's level, or about 0.2 pMC. … Our present conjecture is that the total mass of 14C in the pre-Flood world was likely not much greater than that of our present world.  This then implies a pre-Flood 14C/C ratio of about 0.2 pMC.”  Baumgardner hedges the figure twice.  Page 618:  “But this guess of 0.2 pMC is very soft because of the large uncertainly [sic] in knowing the total amount of 14C in the pre-Flood world.”  Page 619:  “Again, we emphasize this estimate is very soft.” ↩ ↩

3. 8c.

   Page 619:  “We note, however, that the amount of 14C potentially generated in situ from an episode of accelerated nuclear decay during the Flood catastrophe, as outlined in a preceding section, can be of comparable or even larger amplitude as that just discussed for the 14C that existed in the tissues of the pre-Flood organisms.  Therefore, as a tentative working explanation of the available measurements, we favor a model that includes both these sources for the observed 14C.  In this working model, the pre-Flood 14C component would provide a low, more or less uniform, contribution to the total 14C/C ratio of perhaps 0.05–0.1 pMC.  The in situ component, on the other hand, would be much more variable and depend on the local U concentration and the amount of N in the sample.  Its contribution could be in the range from zero to, perhaps, 1 pMC.” ↩

4. 8d.

   Page 619:  “it is necessary for the 14C/C ratio to have increased dramatically and rapidly, by a factor on the order of 500, to reach its present value after the cataclysm.  The means by which this could have occurred has long been a difficulty for the young-earth Creation/global Flood framework.”  Also on decay since the Flood:  “Accounting for the 14C decay over the span of 4500 years since the Flood catastrophe reduces the pre-Flood level by a factor of 0.6, so that organisms with 0.2 pMC 14C 4500 years ago would display a level of 0.12 pMC today.” ↩

5. 8e.

   Page 622:  “Moreover, when we average the results from our coal samples over a geological interval, we obtain mean values of 0.26 pMC for Eocene, 0.21 pMC for Cretaceous, and 0.27 pMC for Pennsylvanian—remarkably similar to one another.  These results, limited as they are, indicate little difference in 14C level as a function of position in the Phanerozoic portion of the geological record.  This is consistent with the young-earth view that the entire fossil record up to somewhere within the middle-upper Cenozoic is the product of a single recent global catastrophe.”  Baumgardner was a co-author of Austin et al. 1994, which placed the boundary at the K-Pg.  Neither the author nor anyone else appears to have flagged the change.  The rounded means in the chapter, 0.26 / 0.21 / 0.27, agree with the 0.257 / 0.210 / 0.268 means calculated from Table 2. ↩

6. 8f.

   Page 622:  “an explanation for the notable spread in the 14C ratios among the ten samples of Table 2 was at first not obvious to us.  However, as we calculated the levels of 14C that would be generated by thermal neutrons in the crust as a consequence of an episode of accelerated nuclear decay during the Flood, we realized that such an in situ source of 14C possibly is of sufficient magnitude to account for the observed variation, given the large variations in N content and local U concentration.” ↩

7. 8g.

   Page 604:  “Most AMS laboratories are now using such Precambrian graphite for their procedural blanks.”  The sentence before it gives the value: Precambrian graphite from crustal settings.  “commonly display 14C values on the order of 0.05 pMC.”  Baumgardner reads that 0.05 pMC as possibly primordial ¹⁴C rather than as contamination, which is the interpretation the three laboratory papers cited above reject. ↩

Lowe, David C.  “Problems Associated with the Use of Coal As a Source of ¹⁴C-Free Background Material.”  Radiocarbon 31(2):117–120.  1989.  A short laboratory-practice note, four pages long, on why coal makes a poor background test material.  Lowe was at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, and the note is not a reply to creationists.  The article uses it because Lowe surveyed the laboratories' experience with coal, which the paper says routinely gives a finite age.

1. 9a.

   Page 117:  “Some of the background samples tested by Vogel et al (1987) were specimens of anthracite coal which showed ¹⁴C concentrations considerably higher than expected due to machine background ages and contamination during sample preparation.  When background ages in the vicinity of 50 kyr were expected, the coal samples yielded 40–45 kyr.  There are many other unpublished accounts by ¹⁴C laboratories in which the use of coal as a background test material has been investigated.  In many cases, the samples were found to contain ¹⁴C, and further studies were discontinued.  The AMS and gas counting facilities, DSIR, in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, eg, have observed apparent ages for coal specimens ranging from 25–40 kyr, and the NSF Accelerator Facility at Tucson, Arizona has determined ages of anthracite samples ranging from 30–40 kyr.”  Page 118:  The question the paper is built on:  “How is it then, that a material, which should show a ¹⁴C age indistinguishable from that produced by a combination of machine background and contamination during careful sample preparation, routinely produces a finite ¹⁴C age?”  The proposed mechanism, and how little it takes:  “Assuming that a sample of coal contains no ¹⁴C, microbial action only has to result in the deposition of ca 0.1% by weight of modern carbon in the coal to produce an apparent age of 45 kyr for the specimen.”  Lowe also rules out the radium route: the ¹⁴C decay mode of ²²⁶Ra is.  “only of the order of 10-11 of the preferred a decay channel to 222Rn.  Thus, the amount of ¹⁴C produced by such events derived from radium in coal must be considered as insignificant”.  On the printed page, 10-11 is 10⁻¹¹ and 'a decay' is α decay.  Page 119:  “the use of coal samples as routine ¹⁴C laboratory background test samples should probably be avoided”.  Geological flake graphite gave this value at the New Zealand facility:  “a 51 kyr background”. ↩ ↩

Taylor, R. E. et al.  “Misunderstandings Concerning the Significance of AMS Background ¹⁴C Measurements.”  Radiocarbon 60(3):727–749.  2018.  A review written for non-specialists to answer people who argue that the carbon-14 AMS laboratories report in very old samples shows those samples cannot be older than 10,000 BP.  The authors work at the Keck Carbon Cycle AMS Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, and their abstract judges the explanation of those who reject the radiocarbon time scale to be the least probable.  The article uses it for the laboratory's numbers rather than its verdict.

1. 10a.

   Page 744:  On 1,140 measurements of "3 types of assumed infinite ¹⁴C age materials (calcite, wood, and coal)" at the Keck laboratory:  “down to ~0.3 milligrams (mg) … of synthesized graphitic carbon from an infinite ¹⁴C age sample, the measured ¹⁴C concentrations held approximately constant at ~0.2 percent of modern carbon (pMC) which is the equivalent to an apparent 'age' of ~50,000 years.”  Table 5, page 747:  Table 5 gives the Keck laboratory's own values in pMC: processed coal 0.12 ± 0.01 and 0.14 ± 0.01; processed geologic graphite 0.10 and 0.12; processed diamond 0.15; unprocessed diamond 0.005 to 0.05.  Page 746:  “The significant variability in the inferred ¹⁴C 'ages' assigned to infinite age materials on the basis of their measured ¹⁴C concentrations when those levels drop below about 0.1 pMC (percent modern carbon) is most reasonably interpreted as the result of the complex interactions of the many sample and instrument based contamination factors listed in Table 3.”  Page 727:  Their verdict on the creationist reading, from the abstract:  “of all of the possible explanations for the reports of the presence of ¹⁴C in these background samples, the least probable explanation has been advanced by those rejecting the validity of the ¹⁴C time scale.”  The pattern they rest it on is the mass dependence: processing a smaller sample adds the same absolute contamination and so returns a younger apparent age, which is what a real residual would not do. ↩ ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  Earth's Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood.  Volume 2.  Answers in Genesis, Petersburg, KY.  2009.  Volume 2 of a two-volume book by Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis, which sets out a biblical geologic model of Earth history.  The article cites chapter 94, The Flood/Post-Flood Boundary in the Geologic Record, and chapter 95, The Post-Flood World.  The article uses it for Snelling's own placement of the boundary above the Cretaceous/Tertiary line.

1. 11a.

   Page 761:  “available evidence suggests that the Flood/post-Flood boundary certainly must be above the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary in the strata record.  This approximately corresponds to a transition from worldwide/continental to regional/local deposition and therefore possibly more correctly marks the transition point to the regression stage of the Flood.”  Page 759:  He rules out a Tertiary/Quaternary boundary on the ground that the Ice Age needs.  “several centuries.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 758:  “if the Flood/post-Flood boundary is placed in the middle Carboniferous, then about three times the volume of oil and gas sources rocks would have been deposited during the post-Flood period compared to those source rocks deposited in the Flood itself!  On the other hand, 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.” ↩

Holt, Roy D.  “Evidence for a Late Cainozoic Flood/post-Flood Boundary.”  CEN Technical Journal 10(1):128–167.  1996.  A 1996 article in a creationist journal by Roy D. Holt, who reports starting slightly biased toward the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary and being convinced by the data that the boundary is much later.  It tests five kinds of evidence (sediment mass and post-Flood erosion, volcanism and climate, sea-level change, the mountains of Ararat, and fossil fuels) and places the boundary most likely in the Pleistocene.  The article uses the sediment and erosion arithmetic to test each candidate boundary against the amount of rock that would have to move after the Flood.

1. 12a.

   Page 131:  “The amount of sediment in the Tertiary is the largest of any sub-era or period, and that in the Quaternary is the smallest.  The total amount of Phanerozoic sediment is estimated at 2.3 x 10^24 g.” ↩

2. 12b.

   Page 139:  “Earlier placement of the boundary requires greater precipitation, erosion, and/or time.  Placing the boundary at the end of the Mesozoic requires carrying to the ocean 4.38 x 10^23 g of sediment, less the biogenic and volcanic air-carried portions.  This is nearly 400 times greater than the upper post-Flood limit estimated above.  In addition, 1.69 x 10^23 g of sediment would have to be eroded and re-deposited on the continents.  These quantities represent about 25 per cent of the total Phanerozoic sediment.” ↩

3. 12c.

   Page 139:  “Placement of the boundary at the end of the Mesozoic would require incredibly severe post-Flood erosion.  It would take over 10,000 years at 220 times (or 100,000 years at 22 times) the present annual global runoff to move 4.38 x 10^23 g of sediment.  The required precipitation level to produce this much runoff is so high that all the land surfaces would be in a constant and tremendous downpour of rain.  Terrestrial plants would find survival difficult, if not impossible, in such a wet environment.  The cloud cover required to supply this much precipitation would make seeing the stars, Moon, Sun, and even a rainbow, a rare event.” ↩

4. 12d.

   Page 139:  “There are 8.77 x 10^23 g of existing Palaeozoic sediment, whereas 14.39 x 10^23 g of sediment are Mesozoic and Cainozoic.  A Palaeozoic/Mesozoic boundary for the Flood would require post-Flood catastrophism to move 62 per cent of the entire Flood sediments”.  Page 161:  Holt's own verdict:  “Evidences from (1) global sediment and post-Flood erosion, (2) volcanism and climatic impact, (3) changes in the global sea level, (4) formation of the Mountains of Ararat, and (5) the formation of fossil fuels, place the Flood/post-Flood boundary during or after the mid-Pleistocene.”  Page 162:  On how far the chronology can be stretched:  “Increasing this duration to 4,000 years stretches the Genesis genealogy beyond reasonable limits but only moves the boundary to the Pliocene at the earliest.” ↩

5. 12e.

   Page 137:  “Present rivers, as supplied by present precipitation levels, carry about 1.6 to 2.0 x 10^16 g/yr of solid and dissolved material to the ocean.  This average is presumably about twice the rate of erosion before extensive farming began.”  The article's table uses the upper figure, 2.0 × 10¹⁶ g/yr, which is 20 billion tonnes and about 8 km³ at a bulk density of 2.5.  Using the lower end of the range raises every multiple by a quarter.  The figure includes dissolved load, so it is generous to the young-earth side: the solid-sediment flux alone is smaller and the multiples correspondingly larger. ↩

6. 12f.

   Page 162:  “The average rate of deposition of sediment during the Flood was at least 7.3 x 10^23 g/day and was probably twice this level.  This is a daily movement of sediment that is over 131 million times what all the Earth's rivers presently carry.”  The printed exponent is wrong by two orders of magnitude.  The Phanerozoic total of 2.3 × 10²⁴ g divided by the 314-day Flood is 7.32 × 10²¹ g/day, and only that value reproduces the "over 131 million times" comparison printed in the same sentence against the modern river load of 1.6–2.0 × 10¹⁶ g/yr. ↩

Garner, Paul.  “Continental Flood Basalts Indicate a pre-Mesozoic Flood/post-Flood Boundary.”  CEN Technical Journal 10(1):114–127.  1996.  A 1996 article in a creationist journal that argues from continental flood basalts, which are huge lava flows erupted onto dry land.  Their almost complete absence from the Palaeozoic, and their return at its end, lead Garner to place the Flood/post-Flood boundary near the end of the Palaeozoic.  The four authors of a 2000 letter later said they were no longer satisfied with the model the 1996 papers proposed, and the article uses this paper as the 1996 case for a Palaeozoic boundary.

1. 13a.

   Page 124:  “Continental flood basalts require subaerial conditions to form.  They could not develop during the Flood because the continents were under water at that time.  This would explain the almost total absence of continental flood basalts from the Palaeozoic.  However, the reappearance of continental basalts at the end of the Palaeozoic indicates that large continental regions were above water and forming dry land throughout the Mesozoic and Cainozoic.  It is difficult to see how the data on stratigraphic distribution of continental flood basalts can be accommodated into models in which the Flood does not end until the Cretaceous or Cainozoic.  I am led by these data to place the Flood/post-Flood boundary much lower in the stratigraphic record than most creationists have done in the past — towards the end of the Palaeozoic.” ↩ ↩ ↩

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.  A creationist conference paper by two researchers at the Institute for Creation Research.  They compiled nearly 3,000 stratigraphic columns, which are records of rock layers at one site, from five continents using oil wells, measured sections and seismic data, sorted the fossil-bearing rock into six packages called megasequences, and report that the Tejas, which is the Cenozoic, holds 32.5 % of the global Phanerozoic deposits (the rock record with abundant fossils).  The article uses their volume table because it is the only compilation with numbers for each interval.

1. 14a.

   Table 1, page 422:  Volume in km³ across five continents: Sauk 33,417,420; Tippecanoe 24,578,200; Kaskaskia 38,483,240; Absaroka 108,912,900; Zuni 191,723,290; Tejas 191,255,830.  The six rows sum to 588,370,880 km³, which is 8.73 % less than the printed Total row of 644,658,610 km³, a gap of 56,287,730 km³.  The caption explains overlap effects for surface area and average thickness only, and volume should be additive.  Clarey's own Figure 14 percentages (Zuni 32.6 %, Tejas 32.5 %, Absaroka 18.5 %) reproduce against the sum, not against the Total, so the sum is used here.  On that sum, a K-Pg boundary puts 32.5 % of Phanerozoic sediment after the Flood and a mid-Carboniferous boundary puts 83.6 % after it.  The underlying database is not public. ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Page 436:  “In contrast, advocates for a K-Pg Flood/post-Flood boundary consider all Cenozoic (Tejas) fossils to have formed in the window of time between the ending of the Flood and the beginning of the Ice Age (Austin et al. 1994;  Whitmore and Garner 2008;  Whitmore and Wise 2008;  Snelling 2009).  This only allows about 100 to 200 years for the dispersal (whatever the mechanism) and incredible diversification and subsequent burial of all Cenozoic mammals, flowering plants, and other fossils on multiple continents and in nearly the exact same stratigraphic order simultaneously (Wise 2009).” ↩

Tomkins, Jeffrey P., and Timothy L. Clarey.  “A Comprehensive Model of the Global Flood Based on Paleontology.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism 9:561–587.  2023.  A creationist conference paper that builds a Flood model from paleontology and places the end of the Flood at the top of the Neogene, the period just before the Quaternary.  The article uses it for the authors' figure of 1.94 km average thickness across five continents, and for the boundary they call the N-Q Flood Boundary.

1. 15a.

   Page 581:  “As noted above, the Tejas megasequence alone accounts for 32.5% of the total volume of the Phanerozoic sedimentary rock record (Clarey and Werner 2023).  How could local catastrophes after the Flood produce this volume of sediment, averaging 1.94 km in thickness across five continents today, and totaling 191,255,830 km3 of sediment across much of the land mass of the world (Clarey and Werner 2023)?”  The boundary statement follows on the same page:  “Thus, the end of the global Flood is most likely defined as the upper margin of the Neogene system (just before the Quaternary at the top of the Cenozoic).  It is thus called the N-Q Flood Boundary (Clarey 2020).” ↩ ↩

2. 15b.

   Page 581:  “the Lower Tejas (Paleocene) Whopper Sand in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico was poured into the Gulf at the onset of the Tejas.  It is between 300-575 meters thick and is found at distances of 350-400 km offshore (Berman and Rosenfeld 2007).” ↩

Garner, Paul et al.  “Flood models.”  TJ 14(3):79–80.  2000.  A 2000 letter, a reply to McIntosh and colleagues, in which the four authors of the 1996 Flood-boundary papers say their earlier work had been misconstrued.  They disown several claims the critics attributed to them, including that most fossils came from post-Flood catastrophes and that dinosaurs were trapped in the Carboniferous floating forests.  The article uses it for their statement that none of them is satisfied with the 1996 model.

1. 16a.

   “None of us subscribes to the idea (in our opinion untenable) that only 350 years separate the Flood from the end of the dinosaurs or that the dinosaurs perished just before Abraham's time. … None of us is satisfied with the model that we proposed in 1996.  In the light of the problems encountered, our thinking has moved on, albeit not in a direction that McIntosh et al. would approve of.  On the other hand, we remain convinced that Genesis preserves a trustworthy historical record of a global Flood.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “The Geology of Israel within the Biblical Creation-Flood Framework of History: 2. The Flood Rocks.”  Answers Research Journal 3:267–309.  2010.  Part 2 of a study by Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis, describing the Flood-deposited rocks of Israel.  It finds that the rocks lie on pre-Flood basement, that the end of the Flood is marked by a regression and an erosion surface across the country, and that the boundary there is more reasonably placed in the Oligocene.  The article uses it as one of three conflicting boundary placements by the same author.

1. 17a.

   Page 305:  “it seems more reasonable to place the Flood/post-Flood boundary in the geologic record of Israel in the Oligocene, or at the end of it.”  Page 304:  His reason:  “At the end of the Eocene there is a major well-defined and recognized regression right across Israel due to the retreating of the ocean (Flood) waters off the country (Garfunkel 1978), followed by a period of extensive erosion in the Oligocene.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “Locating the Flood/post-Flood Boundary Using the Relative Dating of the Weathering of Ore Deposits.”  Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, 553–566.  Creation Science Fellowship.  Edited by J. H. Whitmore.  2018.  A conference paper by Andrew A. Snelling of Answers in Genesis, in the Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism.  It proposes that the relative ages of supergene minerals, which form by weathering near the surface and are dated by the 40Ar/39Ar and (U–Th)/He methods, can place the Flood/post-Flood boundary at the K-Pg boundary, with a relative age of 66 Ma.  Snelling accepts those dates only as relative ages, because of what he calls documented problems with the radioisotope methods, and the article uses the paper as one of three placements it attributes to him.

1. 18a.

   Page 560:  “The relative ages of supergene minerals thus favor a placement at the K-Pg boundary with a relative age of 66 Ma, the Flood/post-Flood boundary favored by many Flood geologists.”  With his own caution:  “Much caution obviously needs to be exercised in interpreting all these data.”  The supergene ages are radiometric.  Snelling accepts their order and rejects their scale, and nothing in the data picks 66 Ma rather than any other point in a continuous 70.5 to 4.8 Ma distribution. ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 560:  “Subsequent residual post-Flood catastrophism may have involved mountains still rising and ore deposits still forming, such as the porphyry copper deposits associated with granite intrusions as the Andes continued to rise.  The erosion to expose those later-formed ore deposits and the subsequent weathering to produce supergene minerals from them may thus have occurred well into the early post-Flood era.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Geology indicates the terrestrial Flood/post-Flood boundary is mostly in the Late Cenozoic.”  Journal of Creation 27(1):119–127.  2013.  A direct reply to Ross 2012 by Michael J. Oard, arguing from geology that the terrestrial Flood/post-Flood boundary lies mostly in the Late Cenozoic.  The article uses it for the Cenozoic deposits that Oard says a Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary would have to explain, and for his answers to Ross.

1. 19a.

   Page 121:  “Creationists who believe the post-Flood boundary is at or near the K/T need to address this range of contrary evidence.  To date, no detailed refutation of these criteria has been published.  Furthermore, they need to explain the biblical basis for post-Flood catastrophism required to deposit thick sequences of Cenozoic rocks in many areas, particularly the continental shelf deposits.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 121:  “We must remember that the stratigraphic boundaries are subjective names with chronostratigraphic placements based on the evolutionary/uniformitarian system.  The Pleistocene is not the stratigraphic equivalent of the post-Flood Ice Age, or any other post-Flood events.  There can be thousands of feet of Pleistocene sedimentary rocks in various places on Earth not associated with the Ice Age (see below), and that would be difficult to explain by post-Flood processes.” ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 119:  “Ross simply assumes there should be a significant paleontological discontinuity at the Flood/post-Flood boundary, but this starting assumption in Ross's argument need not be the case.  Before the Flood, there likely would have been a great variety within each kind of mammal. … As the varieties within each kind expanded in the post-Flood period, one would expect that these post-Flood mammals would walk on top of their dead ancestors buried in Flood sediments.  Many of the Flood-buried and post-Flood mammals should be similar and so there need not be a paleontological discontinuity at the Flood/post-Flood boundary.” ↩

4. 19d.

   Page 125:  “Those who think the Flood ended at the K/T boundary are faced with the necessity of explaining the uplift of the mountains, sinking of the basin, and deposition of 28,000 m of basin fill sediments.  To complicate matters, the sediments are not simply from landslides.  The horizontal bedding precludes that explanation.  Instead, rapid subaqueous deposition is required.”  Page 122:  The Messinian figures are from p. 122: 2.5 million km² of salt and gypsum, 0.3 to 3 km thick, 3.5 km in the Herodotus Basin, with about another kilometre of Pliocene sediment above. ↩

5. 19e.

   Page 125:  “The Great Escarpment is up to 3,000 m high in southeast Africa and is called the Drakensberg.  It probably represents the final product of about 100 km of westward erosion of the planation surface.  It is difficult to imagine a post-Flood hypothesis that would explain such widespread erosion”. ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Defining the Flood/post-Flood boundary in sedimentary rocks.”  Journal of Creation 21(1):98–110.  Apr 2007.  The author's own paper in the creationist Journal of Creation.  It sets out twelve qualitative criteria for the boundary, six for the Inundatory Stage, five for the Recessive Stage and one paleoclimatic, using Walker's model of the Flood's stages.  The article uses it for Oard's landform case, which places the boundary in the late Cenozoic.

1. 20a.

   Page 98:  “The above schools of thought represent a considerable divergence of opinion, and as a result, contradictory concepts of the Flood have developed.  All three schools of thought have used informal criteria.  No set of criteria has been published against which the Flood/post-Flood boundary can be defined.”  Page 105:  “Since planation surfaces commonly formed in the middle to upper Cenozoic, assuming the geological column, the Flood/post-Flood boundary must be in the late Cenozoic in many areas.”  Page 106:  “For instance, there are 300 water gaps in the Zagros Mountains that are as deep as 2,500 m.  The formation of the mountains cut by these water gaps would have been during the Flood.  The Zagros Mountains are dated as Pliocene or late Cenozoic, so the Flood/post-Flood boundary would be somewhere in the Pleistocene in this region.”  Page 98:  Oard concedes the method's limit on the same page:  “The criteria are currently qualitative, but it is hoped that further research will enable quantification.”  Nineteen years on, no quantification has been published. ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Megasequences during the Flood? A response to Clarey and Werner.”  Journal of Creation 39(2):61–67.  2025.  A reply in the same Journal of Creation exchange as Clarey's answer, by a Flood geologist who accepts that the Sauk megasequence is real but doubts the post-Sauk megasequences and calls the authors' language overconfident.  He argues that the 118 global boundary points that define the geologic timescale cannot resolve the Flood into days, and that the rock eroded from North America during the Flood's recessional stage would appear as the Zuni and Tejas megasequences.  The article uses it for both points.

1. 21a.

   Section Deposition of strata highly nonlinear in time:  “For North America, Reed, Klevberg, and I estimated an average of about 1,900 m of rock was eroded during the Recessional Stage and redeposited on the continental margins.  These strata would represent the Zuni and Tejas Megasequences and, more importantly, it would have been preferentially removed from the top of existing sediment, which was probably between 3,500 and 4,000 m thick.” ↩

2. 21b.

   Section Global biostratigraphic correlations?:  “The current geologic timescale is defined by 118 GSSPs (Global Boundary Stratigraphic Section and Points) and GSSAs (Global Standard Stratigraphy Ages).  This implies, for Clarey and Werner, that we have resolution down to three Flood days (371/118 = 3.14).  Really?  Was the trilobite Lemdadella, which defines a few million years in the Cambrian, deposited on the same day worldwide early in the Flood?” ↩

Clarey, Timothy L.  “Megasequences during the Flood: a response to Oard.”  Journal of Creation 39(2):68–74.  2025.  Clarey's reply to Oard's critique, printed in the same issue of Journal of Creation.  The article uses it for Clarey's answer to Oard's estimate of eroded rock, which says the eroded rock became the Tejas deposits without measuring them.

1. 22a.

   “What became of the 1,900 m of erosion off the top of North America that Reed, Klevberg, and Oard estimated for the recessional stage of the Flood?  We contend it simply became the Tejas Megasequence deposits both onshore and offshore.” ↩

Arment, Chad.  “Implications of Creation Biology for a Neogene-Quaternary Flood/Post-Flood Boundary.”  Answers Research Journal 13:241–256.  2020.  A 2020 paper by Chad Arment, an independent scholar, in Answers Research Journal.  It argues from Genesis 7 that only one pair of each unclean land kind survived the Flood, lists living genera from the same North American fossil sites below the Neogene–Quaternary boundary, and concludes that the boundary is not viable within a biblical framework.  The article uses it as a sharper version of the kind argument, made from a purely creationist premise, against a Neogene–Quaternary boundary.

1. 23a.

   Page 250:  “Table 1 shows that there are (at least) 44 monobaraminic associations of extant genera at 38 North American Miocene and Pliocene fossil sites, which should only be possible with post-Flood fossil sites. … Table 3 shows the extensive Neogene-Quaternary boundary-crossing (73 genera in only 10 families) found in terrestrial carnivore families all over the world, indicating that this is not a problem limited to one continent.” ↩

2. 23b.

   Page 250, section opening of the Conclusion:  “There do not appear to be any arguments that can explain worldwide Cenozoic fossil data and trends from a Neogene-Quaternary Flood/post-Flood boundary perspective.  If upper boundary proponents truly believe such an argument can be made, that should be their priority if they wish to sway those who hold to competing models.” ↩

Walker, Tasman.  “Post-Flood boundary — a robust analysis flawed by hidden assumptions.”  Journal of Creation 28(2):60–61.  2014.  A letter in the Journal of Creation forum from Tasman Walker, replying to Marcus Ross's 2012 biostratigraphic analysis of North American mammal fossils in the Paleobiology Database.  Walker argues that the database's fossil assignments depend on hidden assumptions, so the analysis cannot determine the boundary.  The article cites the exchange only as evidence about the state of the field.

1. 24a.

   “it is incorrect to try to find the post-Flood boundary using the geological column in this way.  The problem is that the column is not a physical reality, but a hypothetical construct.  The assignment of rock units to the column depends on many different assumptions.  The same sort of assumptions feed into the fossil classifications contained in the Paleobiology Database.” ↩

Ross, Marcus R.  “Reliable data disconfirm late Cenozoic post-Flood boundary.”  Journal of Creation 28(2).  2014.  Ross's reply to Walker in the same Journal of Creation exchange, defending his 2012 analysis of North American mammal fossils.  It reports that 23% of the mammal genera surveyed cross a Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary, and it concludes that the boundary lies at or near the K-Pg boundary.  The article cites it only as evidence about the state of the field, including Ross's charge of quote-mining against Walker.

1. 25a.

   “Yet if Walker continued reading the two paragraphs following his lifted quote, he would have learned how this has changed to the point that Prothero states, on the same page, 'the huge number of unidentified rhino bones in collections all over the world can now be identified.'  Walker's misleading arrogation of these writers' works is infuriating, because it leads readers away from the truth.  It sadly but unreservedly warrants the charge of quote-mining, and I take no pleasure in stating this.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Is the K/T the post-Flood boundary? part 1: introduction and the scale of sedimentary rocks.”  Journal of Creation 24(2):95–104.  2010.  “part 2:  paleoclimates and fossils”.  Part 1 of a two-part article in the creationist Journal of Creation, arguing that the case for a K/T boundary raises more questions than it answers, and that the end of the Flood corresponds to the Late Cenozoic.  Part 2, on paleoclimates and fossils, is Journal of Creation 24(3):87–93, at https://creation.com/en/articles/kt-boundary-flood-2.  The article draws on part 2 for its Arctic, cooling and missing-mammal arguments against the K/T boundary.

1. 26a.

   In part 2:  “the early Tertiary subtropical trees found on Axel Heiberg Island in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada, at 80 N, and the alligators and lemurs on adjacent Ellesmere Island. … Early to mid-Tertiary fossil crocodiles are found as far north as southern Saskatchewan.  A tropical cycad fossil was found in the early Tertiary of northeast Washington.” ↩

2. 26b.

   Section The Tertiary cooling trend:  In part 2, in Oard's transcription of Sloan and Barron (1990):  “Eocene and Cretaceous climate-model experiments demonstrate that regardless of conditions of warm polar oceans, differences in pole-to-equator surface-temperature gradient, or topography, above freezing temperatures in winter for continental interiors at middle to high latitudes cannot be maintained.”  Oard drops the word "surface" from "above-freezing surface temperatures" and closes up the hyphen; otherwise his transcription is exact.  He also gives the title as 'Equable' climates during earth history?, where the printed title capitalises Earth.  The article quotes the primary, not this. ↩

3. 26c.

   Section Tertiary mammals of the western United States:  In part 2 of the series:  “If mammalian fossils indicate post-Flood deposition, then where are the mammals that should have been buried in the Flood?”  And, in the same section:  “This is another inconsistency in the K/T position:  they find few mammals from the Flood, but find massive numbers from 'post-Flood catastrophes'.  Would these post-Flood processes have even had the ability to permineralize fossils like those in the Flood?” ↩

Sloan, L. Cirbus, and Eric J. Barron.  “'Equable' climates during Earth history?”  Geology 18(6):489–492.  Jun 1990.  A climate-model study of four Eocene and two Cretaceous general-circulation experiments at Penn State's Earth System Science Center, run with prescribed zonally constant sea-surface temperatures spanning a wide range of polar warmth and equator-to-pole gradient.  It found that winter temperatures in continental interiors at middle to high latitudes stay below freezing whatever the polar warmth or gradient.  The article uses it because Oard takes the physics from it: if continental interiors cannot stay above freezing in winter, Arctic alligators cannot have lived there after the Flood.

1. 27a.

   Page 489:  From the abstract:  “Eocene and Cretaceous climate-model experiments demonstrate that regardless of conditions of warm polar oceans, differences in pole-to-equator surface-temperature gradient, or topography, above-freezing surface temperatures in winter for continental interiors at middle to high latitudes cannot be maintained.  Continental interiors will have cold winter temperatures, even during globally warm periods, unless currently unrecognized forcing factors influenced past climates.”  Page 491:  The body states the result again:  “In all the cases described here, the combinations of polar warmth and equator-to-pole temperature gradient were insufficient to maintain continental-interior temperatures above freezing in winter.” ↩

2. 27b.

   Page 492:  “Unfortunately, much of the data from fossil plants and animals is representative of continental margins, and actual continental-interior data that could be used to test this hypothesis are rare.  The results illustrate the critical need for additional paleoclimatic data from continental interiors.”  The paper's own caution about its method, on the same page: "Perpetual January simulations tend to produce continental-interior temperatures that are 4 °C lower than full seasonal simulations for the present day" (p. 492), and CO2-doubling runs "do tend to produce winter continental-interior temperatures that are several degrees warmer relative to a control simulation." ↩

Archibald, J. David et al.  “Comments and Reply on '"Equable" climates during Earth history?'.”  Geology 19(5):539–541.  May 1991.  Two Comments on the 1990 Sloan and Barron paper, followed by Sloan's Reply, in the same journal.  The Comments are by J. David Archibald (Department of Biology, San Diego State University) and Scott L. Wing (Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution), and the Reply is by L. Cirbus Sloan.  The article uses it because the Comments dispute the 1990 result, and the Reply applies the paper's own 4 °C correction for its perpetual-January method.

1. 28a.

   Page 539:  “Referring to the tolerances of these large, terrestrial tortoises, Hutchison noted that 'The average winter temperatures are therefore interpreted to be well above freezing (13 °C or above) and produce only light frosts. . . .'  There is no basis to believe that tortoises and myriad other animals and plants have greatly modified their temperature tolerances in recent time.  Accordingly, the subfreezing winter lows proposed by the simulations of Sloan and Barron are greatly at odds with what is well known from paleontologic data.”  “Overall, paleontological evidence from the northern Rocky Mountain region, at ~45°N, strongly implies minimum temperatures of ~0 °C, cold-month mean temperatures of 4.4–13 °C, mean annual temperatures of 13–17 °C, and only moderate temperature seasonality.”  The Comments cite "more than 560 Late Cretaceous and Paleogene fossil localities in western interior North America between paleolatitudes 30° and 55°N." ↩

2. 28b.

   Page 540:  From Sloan's Reply:  “In terms of the model, we noted in our original paper that 'perpetual' January simulations may produce unrealistically cold surface temperatures because of the lack of a seasonal radiation cycle.  We estimated a difference of ~4 °C for the continental interior in this area for the present day … A temperature difference of 4 °C would be important in the cases depicted here, because the data located at the freezing margin would then be located in a region with temperatures between about −3 and +2 °C.  Whereas these temperatures are lower than the minimum temperature of 13 °C suggested by Hutchison (1982) for this region, they are nearly in agreement with other estimates of minimum surface temperature at this time.”  The Reply also says:  “We do not feel that this wealth of geologic information is beyond reinterpretation in light of paleoclimate modeling studies, just as we feel that our modeling efforts and understanding could be improved by consideration of robust paleontological data interpretations.” ↩

Paleobiology Database.  n.d.  Retrieved Sep 4, 2026.  The Paleobiology Database is an online database of fossil records.  This query counts the mammal genera recorded from the Cenozoic, the last 66 million years, which gives 5,728.  The article uses the count to measure how much mammal fossil record a K-Pg Flood boundary would put after the Flood.

1. 29a.

   The 5,238 pre-Quaternary Cenozoic mammal genera, against Lightner's 137 tentatively identified ark kinds, is log₂(38.2) = 5.26 doublings of genus count.  Over Snelling and Matthews' 100 years to Babel that is one doubling per 19.0 years; over Whitmore and Wise's longest chronology of 870 years, one per 165 years.  Starting from Lightner's alternative figure of 350 kinds gives 3.90 doublings, one per 25.6 years over a century.  This article's calculation, not a published figure. ↩

Lightner, Jean K.  “Mammalian Ark Kinds.”  Answers Research Journal 5:151–204.  2012.  A paper in the creationist Answers Research Journal by Jean Lightner, an independent scholar, which counts the mammal kinds that would have been on Noah's Ark.  It works from living species, which it puts at 137 kinds, and adds that the fossil record could raise the count to well over 300.  The article calls it the standard young-earth census of Ark kinds and uses it as the denominator for its comparison with the Paleobiology Database.

1. 30a.

   Page 195:  “In this paper 137 kinds have been tentatively identified.  If the fossil record is taken into consideration, this number could easily double.  Beech (2012) listed terrestrial vertebrate families represented in the fossil record.  In the list of mammals 210 to 218 families are not recognized here.  This suggests that closer to 350 mammal kinds were on the Ark.”  On where the kind sits:  “It seems to me a better rule of thumb is that the level of the kind is anywhere from the level of the family to the level of the order.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A., and Mike Matthews.  “When Was the Ice Age in Biblical History?”  Answers 8(2):46–52.  2013.  An April–June 2013 magazine feature by Andrew A. Snelling and Mike Matthews, reprinted on the Answers in Genesis website, that dates the start of the Ice Age from the Genesis genealogies and the Babel account and calls its result "only a benchmark based on our starting parameters."  The article uses it for the young-earth scheme that puts the glaciation about a century after the Flood, below which every camp's boundary must fall.

1. 31a.

   “So it is reasonable to conclude that the start of the Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere (the Pleistocene) roughly coincides with the Babel judgment, around a century or so after the Flood (perhaps 2250 BC).”  On the megafauna:  “Their weapons show up in the fossil record about the same time that the large Ice Age mammals went extinct — around 2100-2000 BC.” ↩

2. 31b.

   Editor's note appended to the article:  “Biblical creationists have not reached a consensus on one Ice Age model.  This article represents one view.  Differences between the models have no major bearing on the overall timescale of a straightforward reading of Scriptures, i.e., the Flood of Genesis 6, which occurred roughly 4300 years ago, brought on one major Ice Age that lasted a few hundred years.” ↩

Pimiento, Catalina et al.  “The Pliocene marine megafauna extinction and its impact on functional diversity.”  Nature Ecology & Evolution 1(8):1100–1106.  2017.  A 2017 paper, based on a new analysis of the fossil record, that finds an extinction among marine megafauna (mammals, seabirds, turtles and sharks) at the end of the Pliocene.  Its extinction rates were three times higher than in the rest of the Cenozoic, and it reports that 36% of Pliocene genera did not survive into the Pleistocene.  The article uses it to check the number that Clarey takes from it: the number is right, but the paper's extinction is narrower than Clarey's wording.

1. 32a.

   Section Abstract:  “Here, based on a new analysis of the fossil record, we identify a previously unrecognized extinction event among marine megafauna (mammals, seabirds, turtles and sharks) during this time, with extinction rates three times higher than in the rest of the Cenozoic, and with 36% of Pliocene genera failing to survive into the Pleistocene.”  The proposed driver is the loss of neritic habitat area as sea level began to oscillate. ↩

Baumgardner, John R. et al.  “Measurable ¹⁴C in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young-Earth Creation-Flood Model.”  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, 127–142.  Edited by R. L. Ivey.  2003.  A conference paper by four authors that reports a table of ten coal samples, with their radiocarbon values, and whose title says fossilized organic material holds measurable ¹⁴C.  The same ten-coal table appears in a 2005 book chapter with identical values.  The article uses it as the paper that first published the table, and tests the table against the dilution model.

1. 33a.

   Page 127:  “John R. Baumgardner, PhD, Los Alamos National Laboratory … D. Russell Humphreys, PhD, Institute for Creation Research … Andrew A. Snelling, PhD, Institute for Creation Research … Steven A. Austin, PhD, Institute for Creation Research.”  Snelling's current address is given as Answers in Genesis.  The 2005 book chapter that repeats the table is Baumgardner's alone; the four-author paper is the one cited here for authorship. ↩

Vogel, J. S. et al.  “¹⁴C Background Levels in an Accelerator Mass Spectrometry System.”  Radiocarbon 29(3):323–333.  1987.  A laboratory study by the Simon Fraser University and McMaster accelerator group, which measured the background of its own system using anthracite coal, a material that should contain no carbon-14.  The authors took the preparation line apart step by step and measured what each step adds, using 15 µg to 20 mg of carbon; the paper predates the RATE project by fifteen years and is not a reply to creationists.  The article uses it because the authors found that their coal became contaminated through handling or pretreatment.

1. 34a.

   Page 327:  “The total system background concentration for large samples was, on average, 0.48 ± 0.16% modern (equivalent to 43 kyr ¹⁴C age) and did not vary with sample size.  The anthracite we were using must have become contaminated through handling or pretreatment before combustion. … The source of this coal contaminant is still under investigation, and we speculate that standard pretreatment procedures may not be adequate for coal to be used as a background material for AMS ¹⁴C determinations.”  Table 1, page 326:  The machine background: unprocessed graphite at 0.00128 ± 0.00056 of modern, about 0.13 pMC.  The authors write:  “We have assumed that our machine background was ca 55 kyr.”  Page 327:  On small samples, the authors' fit found this:  “The best fit of the data to a linear inverse mass relation showed that total contamination equivalent to 2.2 ± 1.1 [µ]g of modern material was added during processing.”  Table 2, page 327:  Table 2, on the same page, itemises where the contamination comes from: adsorbed gas on Vycor 1.5 ± 1.0 µg, the graphitization memory effect 0.36 ± 0.19 µg, and smaller contributions from copper oxide, storage and handling. ↩