Creationist organisations in the United States and Australia divide the geological record into pre-Flood rocks (the Archaean and most of the Proterozoic), Flood (the rest of the Proterozoic to the end of the Cretaceous or later) and post-Flood (the small fraction remaining). Animal fossils are understood to be the remains of pre-Flood animals that perished in the inundation. This view has problems as severe as those which undermine the evolutionist view – not least the fact that deposits attributed to the Flood include no human fossils.

• Archaean rocks – interpreted as supernaturally formed at Creation – have every appearance of having originated from the mantle, either directly (volcanic rocks) or indirectly (sedimentary rocks). Nearly all of them formed under water. Their nature is impossible to reconcile with an instantaneous origin, or with the emergence of dry land from the waters gathered together on Day 3 of Creation. New land in the Archaean
• The supposition that all animal fossils formed during the Flood has the consequence that Proterozoic rocks must have formed either in Creation Week or in the interval between the Creation and the Flood. Well-preserved sequences are kilometres thick. However, they contain no fossils of shellfish, fish, sponges, worms etc, and clearly cannot be equated with a single creation event or with the remains of successive pre-Flood seafloors.
• Likewise, Proterozoic rocks fail to disclose any evidence of normal terrestrial ecosystems.
• To attribute the last part of the Proterozoic and nearly all the Phanerozoic to the Flood is to postulate a vast amount of erosion and consequently a dramatic, global erosion surface immediately beneath this package. No such global discontinuity exists.
• There is also no discontinuity in radioisotope dates. From the Archaean up to the present, dates become progressively younger and are uninterrupted by any hiatus representing the removal of a great thickness of rock from the antediluvian surface and its redeposition above the hiatus. The Phanerozoic itself yields progressively younger dates as one passes up through it. It cannot all have formed in one event. Terrestrial crust formed by a process of accretion, sometimes gradually, sometimes episodically, over the entire span of time from the Archaean up to the present day.
• To put it another way, terrestrial crust formed by a process of accretion, sometimes gradually, sometimes episodically, over the entire span of time from the Archaean up to the present day. It was not the result of a single creation event at the beginning of time.
• There is no geological interval after the Archaean when the whole Earth could have been under water. While there were times when sea-levels were high, the evidence is overwhelming that at least parts of the continents were above water.
• No part of the present oceanic crust is older than Jurassic. The ocean floors formed progressively as a result of spreading from mid-ocean ridges (discussed in Plate tectonics (‘continental drift’)).
• Although the whole purpose of the Ark was to preserve representatives of terrestrial life so that the earth after the Flood could be recolonised, the vast majority of fossilised terrestrial animals are extinct: they have no recent counterparts. For example, not one pelycosaur, pterosaur or dinosaur is known to have survived even into the Eocene, let alone the present day. The supposed pre-Flood world and the world which succeeded it are discontinuous.
• There is no gap near the top of the fossil record representing the world immediately after the Flood, barren of terrestrial animals and vegetation.
• Burrowing (‘bioturbation’) is a common feature of marine sediments of all ages, indicating that seafloors were being inhabited under fairly normal conditions. Sometimes beds have been so bioturbated that the original layering is no longer visible. Fossilised roots of plants in growth position are less common (terrestrial sediments generally are less common) but where they do occur they show that the enclosing sediments did not form catastrophically. The photograph right shows roots from a marl bed that formed in an estuarine environment during mid Jurassic times.
• Dinosaur and mammal bones do not appear until relatively late in the fossil record. They are accompanied by abundant signs (tracks, burrows, coprolites) that the animals themselves were living at the same level. As the sediments beneath them cannot be interpreted as ‘pre-Flood’ sediments, their presence at these levels, alive and going about their normal business, disproves the notion that they died in the Flood.
• The same point may be made in relation to complete reef systems (which cannot be argued to have been transported from some pre-Flood seafloor), to hardgrounds encrusted with sealilies and oysters and drilled by boring organisms, to termite nests, millipede tracks, etc. They are all remains of animals once living at those levels.



• The fossil record is capable of being divided into very fine subdivisions. Species typically have a vertical range of 2 million years or less, including species that are geographically widespread and very common. Part of the explanation must be that organisms were changing over time. It is not possible to explain the phenomenon in terms of a global flood.
• It is equally not possible to explain the order of first appearance of animal fossils generally (marine invertebrates and vertebrates, amphibians, land-dwelling reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals and birds, and finally humans).
• Although most higher taxonomic groups are already well diversified when they first appear, they also typically show patterns of continuing diversification (new species arising from existing species) after their first appearance.
• Species can be seen responding to chronologically well defined crises in the geological record by, for example, a decrease in body size. This is inconceivable in the context of a global Flood.

In short, creationism has no more explanatory power, sad to say, than flat-earthism. Its ruling idea is that the world is less than 10,000 years old, something the world itself contradicts. The so-called ‘Flood’ is intended to cut the Gordian knot presented by the successive geological periods, but it ends up being contradicted by the very thing creationism claims to be defending. Instead of being a cataclysmic judgement on humanity, the creationist Flood allows animals to carry on going about their normal lives, from Cambrian strata right up to the Cenozoic, while human beings are conspicuous by their absence. There are no traces of pre-Flood civilisation (ruins of buildings, artefacts, graves) in the Precambrian and no human fossils either there or in whatever rocks are assigned to the Flood period. Sustained though it is by an overwhelming desire that it might be true, the theory does not work.