April 1, 2021

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This article was originally published as a chapter in the book “Design and Catastrophe: 51 Scientists Explore Evidence in Nature"

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The geological record is filled with fascinating data, but it does not tell us how to interpret them. Therefore, a group of geologists can look at the same data and draw different conclusions based on their various areas of expertise, perspective, and bias. Researchers work with tools and techniques to minimize or, hopefully, eliminate bias. Publishing allows others to review, evaluate, and discuss the results of work by various researchers, and multidisciplinary projects also enhance the overall understanding of data. Scientists rely on their objectivity to mitigate the impact of their perspective, and for the most part, their dedication to this principle serves them well.

Since the spring of 1970, when I began formal study of the earth and its history, my bias has been to understand the geologic record from the perspective of a global catastrophe: the biblical Flood. We are told in Genesis that this event lasted a little over a year, but what delighted me in my studies were the multiple aspects of that Flood’s activity that I could see in the geological record today. The Genesis account describes a series of sequential events that occurred during that year, such as the breaking of the earth’s crust, erosion beginning during the first 40 days during the heavy rains, the waxing and waning of the waters continuing the depositional/erosional processes, then culminating with the drying period of the great wind. After nearly 50 years of living in the world of geology, I still ponder the signature of this global catastrophe in the rock record.

The earth is highly complex, existing in a constant state of flux. It is not possible to duplicate a global catastrophe that lasted more than a year in a laboratory or in nature. Using models, various aspects of the events can be studied. There are multiple models, working hypotheses, results, conclusions, or interpretations that may or may not accurately describe any of the events under study. However, one feature of the geological record stands out to me as a strong indicator of a worldwide process consistent with the Flood: the occurrence of numerous geological units that developed on a global scale.[1] Examples of these widespread deposits include the extensive basal quartzites of the Cambrian,[2] the well-known Devonian Old Red Sandstone, the Carboniferous limestones similar to the Redwall Limestone in the Grand Canyon, and the massive coal beds for which the Carboniferous Period is named. The list could go on, but one distinctive deposit that has grabbed my attention for years is the Permian-Triassic red beds.

B. Waugh summarized their remarkable characteristics when presenting at the 1971 International Permian-Triassic Conference in Calgary, Alberta:

One of the most remarkable features of the Permian-Triassic is the widespread development of red bed sediments, occurring throughout Western Europe, western, interior and eastern United States, and parts of Russia, China, South America, southern Africa, India, and eastern Australia. Furthermore, the general uniformity of facies types in all such regions must reflect similar tectonic settings of source and depositional area, mode of sedimentation and climate.[3]

Since the descriptions of these deposits in the late 1800s, a variety of mechanisms and climate scenarios have been used to provide interpretations ranging from marine to arid, temperate to equatorial, including nuanced variations based on site-specific data. Whether these deposits are shallow marine, fluvial,[4] eolian, or paleosols,[5] the basic sequence of rocks is consistent. Rusted deposits of clays, silts, and sands are capped by thick beds of gypsum and overlain by limestone. The fact that so many different reconstructions have been offered attests to the complexity of the endeavor of interpreting the rock record. Any interpretation, however, must acknowledge the sheer scale of these deposits, their overall uniformity, and their consistent stratigraphic placement.

The geological record is replete with catastrophes of regional, localized, basinal import, but we also find a clear global depositional signal exemplified by units like the Permian-Triassic red beds. Correlations of similar stratigraphic units across the continents and around the world do not suggest scattered unrelated events but a systematic, planetary-scale process. The globally distributed PermianTriassic red beds may seem a small part of the geologic record. However, I believe that when considered together with multiple examples of widespread deposits found throughout the rock record, they are consistent with the highly complex, world-cleansing Flood governed by our Creator.

NOTES

[1] DV Ager. The nature of the stratigraphical record. London (UK): Macmillan; 1973.

[2] SE Peters, RR Gaines. Formation of the “Great Unconformity” as a trigger for the Cambrian Explosion. Nature 2012; 484(7394):363–366.

[3] B Waugh. The distribution and formation of Permian-Triassic red beds (abstract). Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology 1971; 19(2):373–374.

[4] JJ Smith, BF Platt, GA Ludvigson, RS Sawin, CP Marshall, A OlcottMarshall. Enigmatic red beds exposed at Point of Rocks, Cimarron National Grassland, Morton County, Kansas: chronostratigraphic constraints from ura-nium-lead dating of detrital zircons. Kansas Geological Survey, Current Research in Earth Sciences Bulletin 2015; 261:1–16.

[5] ND Sheldon. Do red beds indicate paleoclimatic conditions? a Permian case study. Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 2005; 228(3–4): M.

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Elaine Graham-Kennedy is a retired geologist. She holds a PhD in Geology from the University of Southern California. Her research interests have been focused on rapidly deposited sediments in Patagonia and the United States. She has written a book for children on dinosaurs and several articles on faith and science issues, and is currently working on a geomorphology paper that is in preparation for publication.