Footprints in Stone

Dear Jon.

Thanks for keeping me on the Creation in the Crossfire mailing list.

I'm still trying to figure out how all those footprints and trails got into the sediments at the height of Noah's flood. Berthault doesn't seem to address that detail. I've asked several creationists and the answer is always the same--BIG SILENCE! Should you come across any answers in your studies I'd certainly appreciate your passing them on to me.

Dave E. Matson

Dear Dave,

Thank you for limiting the horizon of your inquiry. Your earlier letters were too long and contained too many subjects to reprint in Crossfire. This makes it easier for me. Your letter serves as an excellent introduction to the article for this month.

You seem to be asking how animal tracks could be preserved in the various strata during a worldwide Flood. As you know, not many animals were capable of making tracks at the height of God's Flood when the highest mountains were under twenty to thirty feet of water. so most of the fossilized animal tracks must have been made before the Flood destroyed "all flesh in which is the breath of life."

By Jon A. Covey, BA, MT(ASCP)
Edited by Anita K. Millen, M.D., M.H.P, M.A.

Anita and I saw a fossilized animal trackway in sandstone on the Kaibab Trail in Grand Canyon and took pictures of it. We found these tracks about 10 feet away from an official display of animal fossil tracks (ichnofossils) found on the trail in the Grand Canyon (see photo). This rock must have fallen recently because it showed little weathering on the surface, unlike the one at the display site. The claw marks point about 75 degrees away from the direction of the trail, which means the creature was probably moving crosscurrent to a stream. It looks like it was making one inch forward for every five inches transported by the water flow. Possibly the animal had been caught in a flash flood (or the beginning stages of a global Flood) and was running for higher ground. It could have been salamander just fooling around underwater in a stream.

The important point is that tracks erode easily, and in order to be fossilized they must be buried soon after they are made to be protected from water or wind erosion. The sign at the official Grand Canyon display disagrees with this.

In his guidebook on Grand Canyon [Austin, p. 133], Dr. Steve Austin asks:

'' Why trackways without body fossils? ''

He says that there are numerous vertebrate trackways in Grand Canyon strata, but no corresponding vertebrate body fossils in the canyon. This observation would seem to be at odds with the uniformitarian view of Grand Canyon strata being laid down according to the rate and magnitude of present processes. If the strata represent geologic ages, we would expect the bodies of the animals that made the tracks to be found in the same layer as their tracks because their lifetimes don't span geologic ages. However, Dr. Austin reports that Leonard Brand surveyed the geologic literature and discovered that worldwide the strata containing the body fossils of amphibians and reptiles tend to overlay the strata containing their trackways. (Brand) Brand suggested that the trackways were made by animals fleeing the onslaught of the Flood and were immediately buried by Flood-generated sediments which preserved them. According to Brand, either the animals survived long enough to be buried in the strata laid down over the layers containing their tracks, or they, drowned soon after making the tracks, became bloated and floated, and then were finally buried in superposed sediments.

In Origins by Design, Drs. Harold Coffin and Robert Brown write about animal tracks:

"Some animals have truly made tracks in the sands of time, especially in the southwestern part of the United States. Research on hundreds of tracks in the sandstones has turned up the fact that nearly all of them head uphill. Did creatures make them on sand dunes as paleontologists usually claim? The marks appear in trackways on 20 to 25 degree slopes in crossbedded sandstone. One theory attempts to account for the absence of downhill tracks by suggesting that the animals obliterated their tracks when they walked or slid downhill. Unfortunately for this theory the slopes do not appear steep enough.

"Animal tracks produced in dry sand do not much resemble the fossil ones in the Southwest. Experiments done by Brand indicated that tracks made under water best duplicate the fossil examples. Modern salamanders often walk under water. Paleontologists occasionally find tracks that show the animal heading one way (as seen by the direction the toes are pointing) and the trail of foot prints going in another [as was the case with the tracks I photographed]! How could animals walk in one direction but face toward another? The most reasonable explanation is that a water current was drifting them as they walked up the sand slopes to get out of the water and avoid the sand settling rapidly around them. Some tracks change from total foot to toes and claws, to claws only, and finally disappear completely, a situation suggesting that a swell or wave had lifted the animal off the sand as it scrambled along. The same tracks may commence again a foot or two to one side.

"If the animals lived in a desert, they also would have died there. Yet we seldom encounter bones with the tracks themselves. A flood model provides a simple explanation. Where the tracks are, the animals were alive and left no bones, but where we observe bones, the animals were dead and could no longer make tracks! Altogether a picture of major flooding, animals attempting to escape, and eventual burial emerges from this research." [Coffin, pp. 30-31]

Dr. Henry Morris, considered the dean of creationism, wrote about animal tracks in his book The Genesis Flood.

"Related to animal tracks that have been thus preserved are the many instances of preservation of ancient ripple marks or raindrop impressions. But that such ephemeral markings could have been preserved in such great numbers and in such perfection is truly a remarkable phenomenon and one for which there is little if any modern parallel. It is a matter of common experience that impressions of this sort in soft mud or sand are very quickly obliterated. It seems clear that the only way in which such prints could be preserved as fossils is by means of some chemical action permitting rapid lithification [rockification] and some aqueous action permitting rapid burial. Some sudden and catastrophic action is again necessary for any reasonable explanation of the phenomena.

"One rather strange fact in this connection is that while there seem to be many cases known of ancient ripple marks and ancient raindrop splash marks being preserved as fossils, there do not seem to be any clear-cut cases of ancient hail imprints preserved [One reason for this is possibly because the preFlood earth was warm from pole to pole due to the greenhouse effect of the water (perhaps vapor) canopy above the earth (the waters above the firmament Gen. 1:7), and when the fountains of the deep erupted, the water they released was warm or even hot with subsequent evaporation of large quantities of warm water vapor. The overall effect would be very sporadic hail if at all--which would also set the stage for a subsequent ice age after the Flood.]. Says Twenhofel:

'Hail may make larger and deeper impressions that those made by rain, and some should be very deep and large, considering that hail as large as grapefruit has fallen and hail 2 cm. or more in diameter is common. Impressions made by hail should be common in the column [geologic], but beyond a possible occurrence in Triassic red shale of New Jersey none have been recorded.' (Twenhofel) "Would this fact imply that whatever the unknown conditions were that caused the "freezing" of ancient current ripple marks and raindrop splash marks in the sands, such conditions were inadequate to fix the much larger hail imprints or else that hail conditions (and, therefore, atmospheric conditions inducing thunderstorms) were not present when the fossil prints were formed." [Morris]

Evolutionists have assumed that the strata represent geologic ages millions of years and base their explanations for the observed data on these assumptions. Creationists believe the Flood created most of the major strata. No one knows or can know exactly how each layer was deposited in this global inundation. The individual layers were not the result of long periods of slow, gradual deposition as taught by most geologists ever since Charles Lyell popularized the now failing principle of uniformitarianism. Fossil tracks appearing in the various strata from Cambrian trilobite trackways to Tertiary mammal tracks were probably produced shortly before or during the onset and initial stages of the Flood. Let's suppose that there exists a bottom stratum containing reptile tracks and a layer or two up we find their bodies. Atop those strata we find trilobite fossils. This is easy to explain. After the reptiles made their tracks and perished, a major tidal wave carried in the first marine sediments that overlaid the reptile remains. A few layers upwards, let's suppose we again find animal tracks. This would be more difficult to explain if one assumes that the Flood destroyed all land animals during first few days.

However, the Flood didn't overrun the entire earth immediately after the ark door was sealed. We shouldn't expect all land animals and birds to get wiped out by the first encroachments of ocean water on the land. They wouldn't be as vigorous as later inundations. The Flood waters ebbed and flowed, increasing in height day by day until finally the land was submerged. Prior to that time, the deposition of marine layers over land layers would not prevent animals from running, walking, slithering or flying across the topmost layers later on. Indeed, most animals would try to escape the Flood by heading for higher ground, and animals living at higher elevations prior to the Flood would also have been spared. These would later be able to make their tracks in the mud left from earlier wave deposits.

Geologist Kurt Howard wrote about the extremely rapid formation of turbidites by fast-moving turbidity currents [see Turbidites on this web site]. We learned that 30-50% of the world's rock layers are turbidites, including those in Grand Canyon. Perhaps anything buried beneath a turbid flow could be preserved, including raindrop imprints and animal tracks. However, turbidity currents are not the only way to produce thick sediments which can cover as much as half the continent rapidly; the Dakota Formation mentioned by Dr. Arial Roth in the video, Evidences the Record and the Flood by the Loma Linda University Geoscience Research Institute is an example.

Conglomerates, sedimentary deposits consisting of gravels ranging in size from gigantic boulders to small peas, are known to cover immense areas of the world, and are clearly not the result of gradual deposition of rivers, oceans or glaciers. The Shinarump Conglomerate, 25-75 feet thick covering much of the Southwest, regularly contains petrified trees up to 40 feet long and two feet in diameter. [Coffin, p. 60] Perhaps a fast-moving mammoth wave of water and mud generated when the fountains of the great deep erupted ripped up whole forests as it washed over the Southwest, leaving in its wake the sediments of the Shinarump. There are many such formations in our country covering vast regions: Chinle, Morrison, Navajo, Madison, and much evidence that many of these wide-ranging formations were laid down in rapid succession during the Flood.

Dr. Austin gives another piece of evidence in support of this. In his new book on Grand Canyon he explains the significance of burrows left by organisms that lived within sediment. He says that many burrowing terrestrial and marine organisms disrupt layering, especially lamination in clay-rich mud.

"Modern marine and terrestrial organisms are 'biological bulldozers' which so thoroughly rework and burrow recent sediments that stratification is often completely homogenized...The intensity of burrowing in sediments on land and under the sea causes us to ask a fundamental question. How could any laminae be preserved in the strata record if sediment accumulates very slowly and is in contact with burrowing organisms for so long? Some evolutionists proposed that the deep-burrowing activity of organisms had not yet evolved when most Grand Canyon strata were deposited. (Thayer, 1979) However, this opinion was strongly challenged by more recent investigators who document deep-burrow structures even in Cambrian strata. (Miller; Sheehan, 1984)." [Austin, p. 31]

Austin says the reason the major strata are not severely burrowed is because thick layers of sediment were rapidly deposited during the Flood. This rapid deposition didn't give the burrowing organisms enough time to rework the laminations the same way they thoroughly burrow sediments now. Furthermore, in the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Shale there are two orientations of burrows: horizontal and vertical. Elliott and Martin studied these and recognized that the three types of horizontal burrows did not connect with the overlying water column and the organisms producing them did not require cessation of sedimentation. The two types of vertical burrows connected with the overlaying water column. [Elliott] According to Austin, evolutionists would interpret these burrows as the dwellings of the organisms representing the occupation levels at which marine burrowers lived. A long time period could thus be postulated.

However, Austin says an alternate explanation might fit the facts better. The vertical burrows represent escape from rapid sediment burial. Laboratory experiments show that when organisms that make vertical or horizontal burrows are more deeply buried than they will tolerate, their response is to escape by burrowing vertically. [Ronan] Indeed, two geologists admit, "...Dipolocraterion cannot be dismissed as an escape trace." (Miller, p. 41) Concerning this Dr. Austin says,

"If vertical burrows in shale are regarded as the traces of animals escaping from burial by rapid sedimentation, then the long time period needed for their formation disappears. Instead, they become evidence for rapid burial." [Austin, p. 32]

Thus, whereas evolutionists would like to see an interpretation favoring long time periods, the experimental evidence gives credence to the creationist interpretation. We don't know exactly how all the layers were deposited. We don't know how tidal forces will effect a worldwide ocean unimpeded by any land. Possibly, high velocity tidal waves would be generated, as Ian Taylor suggests. As the moon encircled the earth during those 150 days when there was no land mass to inhibit tidal waves, the waves probably did increase in velocity and tended to follow the path of the moon with respect to the earth. This would have produced complex crosscurrents of powerful tidal waves which would have generated and spread enormous mountains of sediment at devastating velocities. No doubt, in places the continental surfaces were severely eroded by plucking of high velocity flows and super-energized cavitation.

When water velocity reaches 30 feet per second, cavitation bubbles develop [Austin, p. 88]. As these bubbles implode on rock surfaces, the rock is shattered. They are even able to erode steel reinforced concrete with astonishing speed. A good example of this was at the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River just above Grand Canyon in 1983.

Michael Oard wrote several articles and letters appearing in Creation Research Society Quarterly that explains how dinosaur track imprinting and egg-laying could have happened during the Flood. While the Flood was destroying the earth, plate tectonics were especially active (See Catastrophic Plate Tectonics) and caused much crustal uplifting of land previously inundated by Flood waters. This allowed migration of fleeing dinosaurs and other animals. Hopefully, I will get a chance to condense Oard's remarks and objections to his material in the future.

Austin, Steven A, Grand Canyon--Monument to Catastrophe, Institute for Creation Research, available through Master Books, (800) 999-3777, Visa or Master Card.

Brand, Leonard and James Florence, "Stratigraphic Distribution of Vertebrate Fossil Footprints Compared with Body Fossils," Origins, 9 (1982): 67-74.

Coffin, Harold G., with Robert H. Brown, Origin by Design, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, DC 29939-0555, 1983.

Elliot, D.K., and D.L. Martin, "A New Trace Fossil from the Cambrian Bright Angel Shale, Grand Canyon, Arizona," Journal of Paleontology 61(1987):641-648.

Miller, M.F., and C.W. Byers, "Abundant and Diverse Early Paleozoic Infauna Indicated by the Stratigraphical Record," Geology 12 (1984):40-43.

Morris, Henry M., and John C. Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, (1961), pp. 166-168.

Ronan, Jr., T. E., Structural and Paleoecological Aspects of a Modern Marine Soft-Sediment Community: An Experimental Field Study (Davis, University of California, Ph.D. dissertation, 1975), p. 220.

Sheehan, P.M., and D.R.J. Schiefelbein, "The Trace Fossil Thalassinoides from the Upper Ordovician of the Eastern Great Basin: Deep Burrowing in the Early Paleozoic," Journal of' Paleontology 58(1984):440-447.

Thayer, C.W., "Biological Bulldozers and the Evolution of Marine Benthonic Communities," Science 203(1979):45 8-461.

Twenhofel, W.H., Principles of Sedimentation, 2nd ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, (1950) p.621.