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Abstract
The ICR Column Project team has mapped out the sedimentary rock record of the global Flood across five of the world’s continents using extensive data from petroleum industry wells, rock outcrops, seismic data, and published cross-sections. Thus, detailed sedimentary rock data along with megasequence boundaries across every nearly every continent have been documented, including the continental shelf. These data confirm the reality of a global geologic column created by the global Flood. This monumental and unprecedented project has shown that the global Flood and it’s corresponding megasequences are represented by the same stratigraphic profiles on every continent that’s been evaluated; North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Not only does the overall stratigraphic sequence of the Flood record correspond globally, but the data also show that the Flood transpired in a series of progressive inundations corresponding to each megasequence. These inundations were caused by a series of violent tsunami-like waves over the yearlong period of the Genesis Flood. These progressively higher ebb-and-flow events began their sediment and fossil deposition in the lowest regions of the continental shelf (shallow seas on the continental crust near land), proceeded to the edges of landmasses (lowland coastal regions), and then moved increasingly upward onto land until finally the entire pre-Flood landscape was under water.
During this violent global catastrophic process, aided by rapid tectonic plate movement, the original pre-Flood mega-continent split apart into the global configuration of the various continents we see today. Then in the latter stage of the Flood, many of the newly separated continents experienced mountain range uplift as the floodwaters receded. This final stage of the Flood was characterized by vast amounts of water and sediment draining across and pouring off the continents. Much of this sediment deposition took place in large basins on land next to the uplifting mountain ranges and offshore in the deepening oceans.
Now that an accurate geological model of the global Flood has been developed, it’s important to begin integrating the fossil data with the stratigraphic data. The many thousands of meters of Flood sediments across the globe contain countless amounts of fossils as a further testament to the Genesis Flood record.
Using four basic interpretive principles, we progressively integrated the fossil record, starting with the initial fossil-rich layers of the Cambrian (Sauk megasequence) and then sequentially moved upwards, in accordance with each successive megasequence. The basic principles of the fossil record used to document this progression were 1) sudden appearance of taxa, 2) stasis (similar taxa as living or later appearing taxa in the rock record), 3) marine mixing (a predominant feature throughout the rock record), and 4) burial by ecological zonation (sequential feature of the progressive flood).
In addition, our earlier reconstructions of the pre-Flood world were used to determine likely global paleogeographic settings. This allowed documentation of the inundation of each ecological zone as the Flood progressed upward. It also allowed systematic and sequential correlation of the biostratigraphic record to the corresponding megasequences, explaining why certain types of fossils are only found in particular megasequences.
A study of the global stratigraphy was an essential first step in this model. Our careful correlation of the fossils to the megasequences is a second major step in unlocking the patterns of the Flood. Tying the details of the fossil record with the global stratigraphic record is an important contribution to a comprehensive Flood model. The progressive nature of the Flood better explains why the fossils exhibit sudden appearances, stasis and sudden disappearances, as each new ecological zone was destroyed in turn by the higher and higher waves.