The Flood was one facet of a larger global-scale tectonic cataclysm. A key aspect of this catastrophe was the rapid sinking, in conveyor belt fashion, of the pre-Flood ocean tectonic plates into the earth's interior. The energy required for the process was derived from the earth's gravity acting on the excess weight of these cold ocean plates relative to the hotter and less dense mantle rock into which they slid. Decades of laboratory experiments attest to the fact that, under stress, mantle rock, at temperatures estimated for the earth's interior, can weaken by factors of billions or more.

The granite at the Grand Canyon is at the base. The power of water that is carrying rocks and boulders increases it's power of velocity. We cut steel plates with water. If you add grit, it becomes incredibly powerful.

When did all this happen?

The Earth was formed approximately 5 billion years ago.

The roots of the ancient mountain range that now lies at the bottom of the Grand Canyon were formed about 1.7 billion years ago.

There is then an unconformity of about 450 million year in which the rocks are missing.

At 1.25 billion years ago the first sedimentary layer, the Bass Formation, was laid down. Ancient coastal dwelling colonies of algae known as Stromatolites are preserved within this layer and indicate that the area was coastal at that time.

At 1.2 billion years ago the sea retreated leaving mud flats behind which eventually became the Hakatai Shale.

At 1.19 billion years a similar layer was deposited which is known as the Dox Formation. This was again formed of mudstones and shales and contains ripple marks as well as other features that indicate that it was close to the coast.

Between 1.25 and 1.1 billion years ago there was also some volcanic activity with the region of the Grand Canyon and this is when the Cardenas Basalts were formed.

Between 1 billion and 825 million years ago additional coastal and shallow sea formations, which are now classified as the Chuar group, were deposited.

There is then another unconformity of about 250 million years in which new rock layers were probably laid down but were completely eroded away.

The Tapeats Sandstone was then deposited around 550 million years ago along long vanished coastline. There are places in the Canyon in which in which off shore islands have been found imbedded within this layer.

The Bright Angel Shale was deposited around 540 million years ago and indicates that the ocean was again advancing.

The Muav Limestone was deposited around 530 million years ago at the bottom of a shallow sea.

The thick layer of Redwall Limestone which began to deposited around 330 million years ago indicates that the land was submerged for a great deal of time.

The Supai Group which rests atop the Redwall is dated at 300 million years ago and indicates that it was formed in an above water and coastal environment.

The Hermit Shale which was deposited around 280 million years ago contains many plant fossils which indicate that it was also above water.

The Coconino Sandstone represents the remains of a vast sea of sand dunes which was blown down from the north around 270 million years ago.

The layers found within Toroweap Formation contains both sandstone and limestone, indicating that it was sometimes coastal and sometimes submerged. These layers date to around 260 million years.

The top layer of the Grand Canyon, the Kaibab Limestone, contains many marine fossils which indicate that it originated at the bottom of the sea. This layer is around 250 million years old.

Rock layers younger than 250 million years have been eroded away and no longer exist in the immediate vicinity of the Grand Canyon.

The Rocky Mountains begin to form 60-70 million years ago and at some point later the Colorado River is born.

At this point there are at least two popular theories which describe what happens next:

Around 20 million years ago the Colorado River begins to carve into the Grand Canyon at its eastern end, Marble Canyon, and probably exiting via Kanab Canyon.

At 17 million years ago the Colorado Plateau begins to uplift and causes the river to cut deeper.

Around 5 million years ago the uplift ceases and another river working its way northward along the San Andreas fault and eastward along the western Colorado Plateau captures the Colorado River.

OR


Around 35 million years ago the Kaibab Plateau begins to uplift and diverts the ancestral Colorado, which was already established on a course very similar to that of today, to the southeast. The cut-off western portion, now named the Hualapai Drainage System, contines to drain the western region.

About 12 million years ago the Colorado's path to the sea is blocked and a huge lake, Lake Bidahochi, is formed.

Eventually the Hualapai cuts back through the southern portion of the plateau and recaptures the Colorado. Lake Bidahochi is drained and becomes the Little Colorado River.

Those ages are a joke. Dating methods are not reliable and are based on several assumptions.

Our understanding of the shape and pattern of the history of life depends on the accuracy of fossils and dating methods. Some critics, particularly religious fundamentalists, argue that neither fossils nor dating can be trusted, and that their interpretations are better. Other critics, perhaps more familiar with the data, question certain aspects of the quality of the fossil record and of its dating. These skeptics do not provide scientific evidence for their views. Current understanding of the history of life is probably close to the truth because it is based on repeated and careful testing and consideration of data.

The rejection of the validity of fossils and of dating by religious fundamentalists creates a problem for them:

Millions of fossils have been discovered.They cannot deny that hundreds of millions of fossils reside in display cases and drawers around the world. Perhaps some would argue that these specimens - huge skeletons of dinosaurs, blocks from ancient shell beds containing hundreds of specimens, delicately preserved fern fronds — have been manufactured by scientists to confuse the public. This is clearly ludicrous.
Some skeptics believe that all fossils are the same age.Otherwise, religious fundamentalists are forced to claim that all the fossils are of the same age, somehow buried in the rocks by some extraordinary catastrophe, perhaps Noah’s flood. How exactly they believe that all the dinosaurs, mammoths, early humans, heavily-armored fishes, trilobites, ammonites, and the rest could all live together has never been explained. Nor indeed why the marine creatures were somehow ‘drowned’ by the flood.
Rejecting fossil data cannot be supported by proof.The rejection of dating by religious fundamentalists is easier for them to make, but harder for them to demonstrate. The fossils occur in regular sequences time after time; radioactive decay happens, and repeated cross testing of radiometric dates confirms their validity.
Fossils occur in sequences
Fossil sequences were recognized and established in their broad outlines long before Charles Darwin had even thought of evolution. Early geologists, in the 1700s and 1800s, noticed how fossils seemed to occur in sequences: certain assemblages of fossils were always found below other assemblages. The first work was done in England and France.

Fossil hunting began by accident in England around 1800.Around 1800, William Smith in England, who was a canal surveyor, noticed that he could map out great tracts of rocks on the basis of their contained fossils. The sequences he saw in one part of the country could be correlated (matched) precisely with the sequences in another. He, and others at the time, had discovered the first principles of stratigraphy — that older rocks lie below younger rocks and that fossils occur in a particular, predictable order.
Stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, led to paleontology, the study of fossils.Then, geologists began to build up the stratigraphic column, the familiar listing of divisions of geological time — Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and so on. Each time unit was characterized by particular fossils. The scheme worked all round the world, without fail.

From the 1830s onwards, geologists noted how fossils became more complex through time. The oldest rocks contained no fossils, then came simple sea creatures, then more complex ones like fishes, then came life on land, then reptiles, then mammals, and finally humans. Clearly, there was some kind of ‘progress’ going on.

All became clear, of course, in 1859 when Charles Darwin published his “On the origin of species”. The ‘progress’ shown by the fossils was a documentation of the grand pattern of evolution through long spans of time.

Accuracy of the fossils
Fossils prove that humans did not exist alongside dinosaurs.Since 1859, paleontologists, or fossil experts, have searched the world for fossils. In the past 150 years they have not found any fossils that Darwin would not have expected. New discoveries have filled in the gaps, and shown us in unimaginable detail the shape of the great ‘tree of life’. Darwin and his contemporaries could never have imagined the improvements in resolution of stratigraphy that have come since 1859, nor guessed what fossils were to be found in the southern continents, nor predicted the huge increase in the number of amateur and professional paleontologists worldwide. All these labors have not led to a single unexpected finding such as a human fossil from the time of the dinosaurs, or a Jurassic dinosaur in the same rocks as Silurian trilobites.

Scientists now use phylogeny, mathematics, and other computations to date fossils.Paleontologists now apply sophisticated mathematical techniques to assess the relative quality of particular fossil successions, as well as the entire fossil record. These demonstrate that, of course, we do not know everything (and clearly never will), but we know enough. Today, innovative techniques provide further confirmation and understanding of the history of life. Biologists actually have at their disposal several independent ways of looking at the history of life - not only from the order of fossils in the rocks, but also through phylogenetic trees.

Phylogenetic trees are the family trees of particular groups of plants or animals, showing how all the species relate to each other.

Phylogenetic trees are drawn up mathematically, using lists of morphological (external form) or molecular (gene sequence) characters.

Modern phylogenetic trees have no input from stratigraphy, so they can be used in a broad way to make comparisons between tree shape and stratigraphy.

The majority of test cases show good agreement, so the fossil record tells the same story as the molecules enclosed in living organisms.

Accuracy of dating
Dating in geology may be relative or absolute. Relative dating is done by observing fossils, as described above, and recording which fossil is younger, which is older. The discovery of means for absolute dating in the early 1900s was a huge advance. The methods are all based on radioactive decay:

Fossils may be dated by calculating the rate of decay of certain elements.Certain naturally occurring elements are radioactive, and they decay, or break down, at predictable rates.
Chemists measure the half-life of such elements, i.e., the time it takes for half of the radioactive parent element to break down to the stable daughter element. Sometimes, one isotope, or naturally occurring form, of an element decays into another, more stable form of the same element.
By comparing the proportions of parent to daughter element in a rock sample, and knowing the half-life, the age can be calculated.
Older fossils cannot be dated by carbon-14 methods and require radiometric dating.Scientists can use different chemicals for absolute dating:

The best-known absolute dating technique is carbon-14 dating, which archaeologists prefer to use. However, the half-life of carbon-14 is only 5730 years, so the method cannot be used for materials older than about 70,000 years.
Radiometric dating involves the use of isotope series, such as rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead, all of which have very long half-lives, ranging from 0.7 to 48.6 billion years. Subtle differences in the relative proportions of the two isotopes can give good dates for rocks of any age.
Scientists can check their accuracy by using different isotopes.The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. Since then, geologists have made many tens of thousands of radiometric age determinations, and they have refined the earlier estimates. A key point is that it is no longer necessary simply to accept one chemical determination of a rock’s age. Age estimates can be cross-tested by using different isotope pairs. Results from different techniques, often measured in rival labs, continually confirm each other.

There is only a 1% chance of error with current dating technology.Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines. Older dates may change by a few million years up and down, but younger dates are stable. For example, it has been known since the 1960s that the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, the line marking the end of the dinosaurs, was 65 million years old. Repeated recalibrations and retests, using ever more sophisticated techniques and equipment, cannot shift that date. It is accurate to within a few thousand years. With modern, extremely precise, methods, error bars are often only 1% or so.

Conclusion: The strict rules of the scientific method ensure the accuracy of fossil dating.Conclusion
The fossil record is fundamental to an understanding of evolution. Fossils document the order of appearance of groups and they tell us about some of the amazing plants and animals that died out long ago. Fossils can also show us how major crises, such as mass extinctions, happened, and how life recovered after them. If the fossils, or the dating of the fossils, could be shown to be inaccurate, all such information would have to be rejected as unsafe. Geologists and paleontologists are highly self-critical, and they have worried for decades about these issues. Repeated, and tough, regimes of testing have confirmed the broad accuracy of the fossils and their dating, so we can read the history of life from the rocks with confidence.

© 2001, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Educators have permission to reprint articles for classroom use; other users, please contact editor@actionbioscience.org for reprint permission. See reprint policy.

Michael Benton, Ph.D., is a vertebrate paleontologist with particular interests in dinosaur origins and fossil history. Currently, he is studying certain basal dinosaurs from the Late Triassic and the quality of different segments of the fossil record. He holds the Chair in Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Bristol, UK, in addition to chairing the Masters program in paleobiology at the university. He has written some 30 books on dinosaurs and paleobiology, ranging from professional tomes to popular kids’ books.
http://www.gly.bris.ac.uk/people/mjb.html

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Accuracy of Fossils and Dating Methods
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Fossils and evolution
Michael Benton wrote another article, Evidence of Evolutionary Transitions, for this website which explains how fossils support the stages of evolutionary history.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton2.html

Stratigraphy and the succession of rocks
» The geologic time scale — basics and history, and the latest standard time scale.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/contents.html
» The stratigraphic column: explanation and graphic illustration.
http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/geology/stratigraphic_column.html
» A fun kid’s site about geologic time.
http://www.zoomwhales.com/subjects/Geologictime.html
» Learn the names of the divisions of geologic time.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibit/geology.html
» A basic outline of geological time and links.
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/timescale/timescale.html
http://www.es-designs.com/geol105/timescale/
Quality of the fossil record
Data bases and software for studying the quality of the fossil record.
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/cladestrat/cladestrat.html

Radiometric dating methods and their quality
» The basics.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/radiometric.html
» Good overview with response to critiques by religious fundamentalists.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html
Read a book
Michael Benton has written over 30 books on dinosaurs and paleobiology. Two suggested readings are provided — the first for adults, the second for children:

» Vertebrate Palaeontology (Stanley Thornes Pub., 2000) traces the history of the vertebrates for amateurs as well as professionals, and explains how research scientists obtain paleobiological information.
» Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Factfinder (Kingfisher Books, 1998) is a resource for youngsters who are serious about dinosaurs, with illustrations that are detailed and colorful and hundreds of different creatures profiled in depth (written with Ralph Orme).
getinvolved linkslearn more references top
Where to see dinosaurs
An online directory of dinosaur exhibits fro around the world.
http://www.dinodirectory.com/index.php?t=sub_pages&cat=8

Dinosaur expeditions
Many natural history museums and universities worldwide offer public participation programs in dinosaur events, such as fossil hunting or fossil cataloguing. No experience needed in most cases! The list is too long to mention here, so a couple of examples are provided to get you going on your search for programs in your area:

» Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada
http://www.cd.gov.ab.ca/enjoying_alberta/parks/featured/dinosaur/flashindex.asp
» The Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction
http://www.museumofwesternco.com/dino-digs/
Discovering fossils
Explore U.K. fossil collecting locations that are detailed on this site. Also includes info on how fossils are formed, the “cleaning, preparing, & repairing” of fossils, and other useful resources.
http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/

Educators: Classroom lessons
» Deep Time interactive lesson
This lesson informs students about the dating methods that enable science to have a high level of confidence in the geological ages of an old Earth. At the same time, it discusses how pseudoscience can misrepresent geological dating. Also check out the link to an online interactive tutorial on half-lives, Carbon 14 dating, and how isochron dating is done.
http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/deep.les.html
» Creating a stratigraphic column
Grades 7-12 Earth Science activity “to enable students to construct a stratigraphic column of an outcrop and understand sedimentary depositional processes.”
http://www.chipr.sunysb.edu/eserc/SummerEducationalInterns/Linda/index.html
» Microfossils: The Ocean’s Storytellers
Download this poster, which shows several different images of microfossils, taken through microscopes. The microfossils were found in cores recovered by the scientific ocean drilling vessel, JOIDES Resolution. When a core is brought up on deck, scientists look at these slides to identify the microfossils found in cores, and they determine the age of the sediment, as well as something about Earth’s past climate. The activities on the back of the Microfossils poster simulate the identification and use of these microfossils to examine past climate change and Earth history. Appropriate for all age levels.
http://joidesresolution.org/sites/default/files/microfossil_poster.pdf
» Fossil Dating and the Geological Timeline
Several “activities and information about dating fossils and placing them in the context of the history of life on Earth.” Includes background information for teachers. For grades 5-8, but activities can be easily modified for higher grades.
http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/BIOL/classes/bio302/Pages/TKpage2.html
articlereferenceslearn more get involved top
General references:

» Benton, M. J., Wills, M. and Hitchin, R. 2000. “Quality of the fossil record through time.” Nature 403, 534-538.
» Benton, M.J., David A.J. Harper, and David Benton. 1997. Basic Paleontology. Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
» Jackson, Julia ed. 1997. Glossary of Geology, 4th ed. American Geological Institute.
» McClay, Ken. 1991. The Mapping of Geological Structures. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
» O’Brien, M.J. and R.L. Lyman. 1999. Seriation, Stratigraphy, and Index Fossils - The Backbone of Archaeological Dating. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
» William Smith’s biography: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/smith.html

The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere affects the amount of 14C produced and therefore dating the system. The amount of cosmic rays reaching the Earth varies with the sun's activity, and with the Earth's passage through magnetic clouds as the solar system travels around the Milky Way galaxy.

The strength of the Earth's magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from the Earth. Overall, the energy of the Earth's magnetic field has been decreasing,so more 14C is being produced now than in the past. This will make old things look older than they really are.

Also, the Genesis flood would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc., lowering the total 12C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere—plants regrowing after the flood absorb CO2, which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation). Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels (it comes from nitrogen). Therefore, the 14C/12C ratio in plants/animals/the atmosphere before the flood had to be lower than what it is now.

Unless this effect (which is additional to the magnetic field issue just discussed) were corrected for, carbon dating of fossils formed in the flood would give ages much older than the true ages.

Creationist researchers have suggested that dates of 35,000 - 45,000 years should be re-calibrated to the biblical date of the flood. Such a re-calibration makes sense of anomalous data from carbon dating—for example, very discordant “dates” for different parts of a frozen musk ox carcass from Alaska and an inordinately slow rate of accumulation of ground sloth dung pellets in the older layers of a cave where the layers were carbon dated.

Also, volcanoes emit much CO2 depleted in 14C. Since the flood was accompanied by much volcanism (see Noah's Flood…, How did animals get from the Ark to isolated places?, and What About Continental Drift?), fossils formed in the early post-flood period would give radiocarbon ages older than they really are.

In summary, the carbon-14 method, when corrected for the effects of the flood, can give useful results, but needs to be applied carefully. It does not give dates of millions of years and when corrected properly fits well with the biblical flood.

Chief please read the article.

The best-known absolute dating technique is carbon-14 dating, which archaeologists prefer to use. However, the half-life of carbon-14 is only 5730 years, so the method cannot be used for materials older than about 70,000 years.
Radiometric dating involves the use of isotope series, such as rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead, all of which have very long half-lives, ranging from 0.7 to 48.6 billion years. Subtle differences in the relative proportions of the two isotopes can give good dates for rocks of any age.
Scientists can check their accuracy by using different isotopes.The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. Since then, geologists have made many tens of thousands of radiometric age determinations, and they have refined the earlier estimates. A key point is that it is no longer necessary simply to accept one chemical determination of a rock’s age. Age estimates can be cross-tested by using different isotope pairs. Results from different techniques, often measured in rival labs, continually confirm each other

The "good" dates are still based on several assumptions. The evidence shows us a much younger earth. The Bible also tells us the earth is very young. Adam was created the 6th day. He lived the whole 6th day, the 7th day and many years longer. He wasn't millions of years old. Of course, you think the Bible is not true and are betting your eternity that Jesus Christ was a liar, based on what some scientists are telling you. Rassler, you are one heartbeat away from knowing the truth. It's my hope that you find that truth before then.

How accurate is carbon dating?

http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/is-carbon-dating-accurate-faq.htm

(Hint - not to . . .)

Did I miss it somewhere OR did one of you tell me how life got here in the first place?

Yes, evolution occurs. But that has nothing to do with orgins. And, evolution occurs as Chief noted, with things getting worse (ie. entrophy and decay and choas) not with things getting better.

So, where did life come from in the first place?

Colossians 1:16

Even the bible evolves!!

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41873135/ns/today-books/?gt1=43001

Rassler, can you answer this please?

So, where did life come from in the first place?

As the moderator of this forum I am kind of interested in this topic but I've grown weary of reading other peoples ideas ... i.e. clip and paste!

I truly would like to read your personal ideas that are absent all the excess verbage! In the past few years, I have turned away from organized religion but consider myself somewhat spiritual. (I believe in the golden rule and trying to do the right things)

here is a good interview with Harvard professor Andy Knoll discussing the orgins of life on earth


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/how-did-life-begin.html

Here is another interesting article

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Origins-of-Life.html

The rock layers are a very good indicator of age, even with out the use of carbon dating.

If the world were created as the Bible states then why are there no fossils of ancient man, dinosaurs, mammoths, and literally thousands of other animals, why are these not found on the same layer of rock.

Because if they did all live together then there would be all of these fossils lying on the same layer all over the world. Yet they are not.

The only way this would be possible is if the animals, plants, etc. buried themselves either before or after there death.

I believe scientists have done more than enough to prove that these creatures existed at different points in the history of earth.

Fossilization is a rare event, especially of humans who are very mobile. Since the rains of Noah’s Flood took weeks to cover the earth, many people could have made it to boats, grabbed on to floating debris, and so on. Some may have made it to higher ground. Although they wouldn’t have lasted that long and would have eventually perished, they might not fossilize.

In most cases, dead things decompose or get eaten. They just disappear and nothing is left. The 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia was a shocking reminder of the speed with which water and other forces can eliminate all trace of bodies, even when we know where to look. According to the United Nation’s Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, nearly 43,000 tsunami victims were never found.

Even if rare, it would still be possible to fossilize a human body. In fact, we do find fossils of humans, such as Neanderthals, in the post-Flood sediments.

Here, here! I agree. I was brought up without a religious upbringing. The few times I was forced to go - I hated it.

Then, for about a decade (from by mid 20's to my mid 30's) I became a black and white, Bible-quoting fundy (short for fundalmentalist). Now (for the about the past decade, I'm a 70's kind of hippie dude. Jesus is alright with me. But we can learn some cool stuff from Buddha to. I combine the East and the West and think that anyone that thinks they have a monoply on the truth is a fool. The word 'mystery' is in the Bible for a good reason . . .

Dean Welsh

You're going with that one Dean? Cool stuff? Jesus is the Truth and He is no fool.

Yeah, that is where I am honestly at now. Almost 20 years of dealing, leading and teaching fundys have led me in that direction.

I'm more opened minded now. Not less logical just less judgemental and if you are a true Calvinist - why worry about it? The Elect were saved before the foundation of the world began and nothing can be done to change that. Correct? If one takes the Calvinistic approach.

Anyway, we stray from Randy's request. Lets hear your PERSONALLY story.

I never said Jesus was a fool. Jesus was and is cool in my little humble opinion and Universe.

The fools are the ones that think they, as mere sinful human beings 'got it all figured out.' As you know Eric - many, many verses warn against that type of attitude. One word for it: PRIDE.

I'm with Randy. Tell us you personal story Chief. Everybody likes a good story!

Dean Welsh

"The highest level that thought can obtain, is to know, that you know not."

Pascal