Noah's Flood on North America

Genesis Apologetics

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Take a look at our North American continent. You see anything that might indicate a catastrophic past?

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One of biblical proportions? A catastrophe so massive that it pushed up mountain ranges that cover many states today?

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One that was so intense that it resulted in 13 states being filled with billions of fossils, including hundreds of thousands of dinosaurs, mixed with marine creatures?

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The markers of a worldwide flood that covered North America are obvious and are clearly still seen today.

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Let's go back in time to see if we can reconstruct just what happened during the biblical flood of Noah's time.

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Before the flood began, North America was different, much different. You couldn't even put boundary markers around what we now call

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California and much of the West Coast. South America was pressed up against North America. Most of the high hills did not even exist, at least not yet.

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The environment was much different and large creatures roamed the lush green landscape, thriving in what was intended to be paradise.

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But when human wickedness became unrestrained and every thought of the human heart was only evil continually,

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God decided to wipe this rampant wickedness from the face of the earth. Genesis 6 records that God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me for the earth is filled with violence through them.

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And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. The process you're about to see unfold will show you just how life on earth was extinguished with the earth, save those on the ark.

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The Bible records that this fearsome display of God's wrath began when all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were open.

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When this happened, the North American continent began a major transformation. Animals living in rich pre -flood habitats were about to be rapidly buried and entombed by tsunamis, mud flows, and volcanic ash.

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As the fountains of the great deep split apart, catastrophic oceanic rifting quickly spread around the globe.

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The scars of this rifting remain today with some 40 ,000 miles of mid ocean ridges visible on the ocean bottom.

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This rapid rifting caused oceanic plate to plunge or subduct beneath the North American continent.

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Just as today, ocean plates plunging into the earth generated earthquakes and tsunamis.

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However, because of the speed of this process, the tsunamis were hundreds of feet high. Nothing on the continent could withstand these massive surges.

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Early in this unfolding cataclysm, the Sauk, Tippecanoe, and Kaskaskia megasequences of fossil -bearing sediments were deposited over North America.

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Seawater rose globally as a result of new seafloor formation and increased thermal expansion.

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However, because only a small portion of the global seafloor had been replaced by new, warmer, more buoyant seafloor, these first three megasequences were mostly affecting the shallow marine realm, as the sea level was not high enough to inundate the

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North American interior. It was not until the later Absarica sequence, when sea level was higher, that we see the first coal seams and land animals mixed in with marine animals in the fossil record.

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Once the Pacific and Farallon plates began forming in earnest during the Absarica phase, subduction began along the west coast on a massive scale.

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The weight of the subducting slab along the western edge of North America caused that region to be depressed and the

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Zuni megasequence began. This rapid plate tectonic process and subsequent sedimentation buried the pre -flood lowlands first in the southwest, what we call the

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Triassic today, New Mexico, and West Texas. This was soon followed by the

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Jurassic system rocks across Utah and Colorado and then the Cretaceous system across Wyoming and Montana.

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Although the Farallon plates subducted initially at a steep angle beneath western North America, it appears to have been carrying along one or more large volcanic oceanic plateaus.

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When these plateaus reached the subduction zones at the edge of the North American continent, they acted to resist the subduction and caused the

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Farallon plate to begin moving horizontally beneath North America instead of at a steep angle.

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As the Farallon plate begins moving horizontally, it begins to interact strongly with the North American plate above it.

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That interaction first strips away the denser bottom part of the North American plate west of the current

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Rocky Mountains, shoving it off to the east. Simultaneously, the horizontally moving

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Farallon plate also drags warm, weak, and buoyant lower crustal rock of the North American plate along with it, doubling the crustal thickness beneath where the

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Rocky Mountains are today. Moreover, as the Farallon plate moves beneath western North America, its extra weight pulls down the land surface above temporarily to form the

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Western Interior Seaway, in which huge numbers of both sea and land animals can be found entombed today.

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A considerable area of North America was covered by the Western Interior Seaway. This increase in oceanic coverage means that the amount of North American Cretaceous sediment is greater than Jurassic or Triassic sediment.

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This partly explains the greater known diversity of Cretaceous dinosaurs. As the flood continues, the spreading ridge marking the western boundary of the

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Farallon plate gets overridden by the North American plate. This allows the Farallon plate to detach and sink into the deeper mantle beneath, where remnants of it are even seen today.

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Widespread volcanism is also involved in this process, with massive volcanic activity escaping from tears within and along the edges of the subducting plate traveling from west to east.

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This explains massive dinosaur graveyards preserved in sediments mixed with volcanic ash.

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One section of the Morrison Formation, called the Brushy Basin Member, spreads across five states and includes over 4 ,000 cubic miles of volcanic materials.

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Without a single volcano in the Morrison Formation area, geologists believe this material had to be carried all the way from volcanoes on the west coast, volcanoes created by the magma rising from the subducting ocean crust plunging under the land.

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Today, these subduction zones form the Ring of Fire, responsible for over 90 % of our earthquakes.

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Many secular geologists agree with these general processes, but disagree with the timeline, saying it took place over millions of years.

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But think about it. If the mountains were created slowly over millions of years, why are so many of them filled with dead creatures that are buried in the mud that killed them?

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The thousands of mass bone graveyards in the Jurassic and Cretaceous layers are filled with both land and marine creatures that are entombed by the very mud that covered them, causing their death.

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In some places, this happened so quickly that only adult dinosaurs are found entombed in the mud as they were fleeing for their lives.

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Here's one massive graveyard in northern Montana that's over 1 .2 miles long and contains 30 million fossil fragments, representing over 10 ,000 adult

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Mayasaura that were simultaneously buried. In this entire collection of bones, not a single baby was found.

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Every one of these 10 ,000 Mayasaura was between nine and 23 feet long.

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Does this seem like the adult dinosaurs were stampeding away from the raging floodwaters with 100 % of their young falling behind and being engulfed in a different region?

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Many of these creatures were buried so quickly, their soft tissues are still preserved to this day.

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Finding soft tissues that are supposedly over 65 million years old is a very odd thing, especially in the case of collagen, where secular scientists have placed a maximum shelf life well short of one million years.

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In fact, over 50 peer -reviewed secular science publications have now identified 14 different bioorganic materials in dinosaur bone.

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The fact that 97 % of the dinosaur fossil record is disarticulated shows that they were catastrophically wiped out, with their bodies being strewn apart and then buried.

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And isn't it interesting how most dinosaur fossils are buried under volumes of mud, like this famous T -Rex found buried under 100 feet of sludge?

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Just how high would the water have to be to bring in this amount of mud? And it was only the later uplifts that formed the rockies that folded the flood rocks and exposed the dinosaurs for paleontologists to discover.

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It also makes sense that this happened quickly, over the year -long flood, and not over millions of years.

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Because we find similar fossils that are buried on each side of the mid -Atlantic ridge where the rapid seafloor spreading occurred.

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These creatures are found buried in the very sediment layers that formed as tsunami -like waves deposited their muddy debris as a result of the catastrophic spreading.

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This buckling had to happen while the mountain layers were still soft and pliable, being freshly deposited from the flood.

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Just like cement, which can only be bent while wet, these massive flood layers, which span many states, were bent while wet.

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They fully hardened after the flood. Another consideration needs to be made for just how they get the millions of years in the first place.

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They base it all on radiometric dating, which has three unprovable assumptions and does not even validate against rocks of known ages.

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If radiometric dating dates rocks of known ages hundreds of thousands to millions of years older than the known ages of the rocks, why would we trust it for dating rocks of unknown ages?

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The fact that 13 western states are filled with dinosaur and marine life remains that are buried with the plant life and ecosystems they were living in shows that their remains constitute a snapshot in time, not some slow burial process of various creatures over millions of years.

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As the floodwater level rose, each ecosystem was progressively inundated globally.

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Polystrate fossils found around the world also provide evidence of Noah's Flood. These fossils extend through multiple layers of strata, such as these trees in Tennessee, that are fossilized in the upright position.

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If a secular geologist saw the same layers of strata anywhere else, they would conclude that each layer was laid down slowly over millions of years through gradual deposition, then turned into stone.

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But how can a tree remain upright for millions of years while sediment slowly builds up around it, preserving it from decay?

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These types of fossils are found in many other locations around the world, indicating the extent and rapid nature of the worldwide flood.

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Secular award -winning geologist Dr. Gerard Bond published a seminal study in 1976 titled

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Evidence for Continental Subsidence in North America During the Late Cretaceous Global Submergence.

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In this study, Dr. Bond analyzes the worldwide evidence of what secular geologists refer to as the widespread late

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Cretaceous transgression, which is just technical jargon for worldwide flood.

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What's interesting about Dr. Bond's study, however, is not that it confirms a worldwide flood, but that it concludes that such a flood could not have occurred without the continents being warped, buckled, and or pushed down by some unknown process.

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Dr. Bond shows conclusively that there's absolutely no way that changes to the sea level alone could be responsible for making up the massive

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Cretaceous fossil layers around the world, especially on North America. Dr.

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Bond's study revealed that a sea level rise of 310 meters is required to flood the

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Cretaceous layers based on their current elevation. However, the maximum thickness of the fossil layers produced by a 310 -meter sea level rise is only about 700 meters.

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The challenge is that in North America, nearly 50 % of the Cretaceous layers contain strata thicker than 700 meters, indicating that the continents had to sink and or buckle during this global inundation.

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Therefore, to explain the excess thicknesses, subsidence of continental crust beyond isostatic response to sediment loading is required in large parts of North America during the transgression, even if sea level rose as much as 310 meters.

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In other words, there's just no way that rising sea levels alone can explain the fossil record in North America.

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Something much more catastrophic that warped and or submerged the continents just had to be involved.

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This finding has been confirmed by study after study since Bond's original work. During the last stages of the year -long flood, the water recedes off of the continents.

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The evidence for this is all over North America. In fact, most of the erosion of the Earth's surface took place during the runoff of the floodwater when, just as Psalms 104 says, the mountains rose and the ocean basins sank.

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The tops of the mountains were eroded off and were transported to the east, leaving massive sandstone and mud -rich deposits, such as the

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Ogallala Formations, that extends across the Great Plains states from Texas to the Dakotas.

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Much of this eroded material ended up in the Gulf of Mexico, where we find thousands of feet of Cenozoic sediment shed off the

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North American continent, providing hosts for oil -rich deposits. During the abative phase of this process, the water flowed as wide currents.

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Then, when the mountains and plateaus became exposed above the floodwater, the water began to channelize around these obstacles, leading to the dispersive phase, where the channelized flow cut away surrounding sediments.

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The eroded debris was swept off the continents and deposited where the currents slowed, in deep water at the continent margin, forming the continental shelf and slope.

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Massive submarine canyons all around North America are obvious markers that this occurred. These canyons show how huge volumes of water poured off the continents and were funneled into catastrophically carved canyons along the continental margins as a result.

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Take the Monterey Submarine Canyon, for example. This canyon is deep, really deep, nearly 12 ,000 feet below the surface, and the main channel meanders over 250 miles seaward, making it the largest submarine canyon along the coast of North America.

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It is comparable in size to the Grand Canyon, with canyon walls rising about a mile from the seafloor.

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Erosion beyond anything we can imagine today rapidly carved this canyon during the runoff stage of the flood.

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In some places, especially along the west coast of North America, erosional canyons have cut through the continental margin, and it just so happens that the deepest submarine canyons start on the continental shelf and then run at right angles away from the continents.

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This makes perfect sense for a worldwide flood. Just how much runoff did it take to carve something like the

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Monterey Canyon, which is deeper than the Grand Canyon? And these canyons are up and down the entire west coast.

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The rapid runoff stages of the flood is also evidenced by massive boulders that were transported hundreds of miles from the plateaus of northwestern

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U .S. and western Canada. Continent -wide runoff from a global flood provides a plausible explanation.

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Tremendous currents would have sheeted across the continent, transporting the massive boulders. Many of these boulders even have percussion marks indicating violent collisions during transportation.

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The evidence for the recent worldwide flood described in the Bible is all over North America. We have subducted seafloors, rapidly uplifted mountains, bent and folded but not broken sedimentary layers, similar fossils straddling both sides of the

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Mid -Atlantic Ridge, 13 states filled with dead dinosaurs mixed with marine life, massive submarine canyons, and boulders transported hundreds of miles.

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These all provide powerful confirmation of a global flood just as the