Evolution Impossible (21 page)

The reader may recall from chapter 5 that Hutton used the rates of sedimentation in river deltas to propose the long ages for the formation of the vast sedimentary rock deposits and the fossils they contain. We now have much more accurate data on erosion and sedimentation rates. So let us examine what these research findings indicate.

Plants and animals need water to survive. On the continents, water is provided by falling rain and snow. The excess water drains off the mountains into rivers that enter lakes or oceans. As this rainwater flows, it carries particles of eroded materials from soil and rocks that eventually find their way into rivers. By repeated sampling of the sediment content of river water at its mouth, we can make estimates of the amount of sediment being carried away and the rate at which the nearby topography is being eroded. Sedimentologists have made such estimates for a number of the world’s rivers and mountain regions.
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Some of these results are in Table 9.1.

In many of the assessments in Table 9.1 the river measurements have not taken into account the bed load in the river — that is, sediments rolled or pushed along the riverbed by the flow of water and not readily observed in the gauging stations. Also, the measuring procedures do not readily account for the extra transport of material that occurs during catastrophic events such as major floods. So actual long-term erosion rates will probably be much faster.

Table 9.1 Average Lowering of Drained Topography (inches and millimeters per 1,000 years) by Major Rivers

Let us consider what these erosion rates imply. For example, from table 9.1 we see that around the Colorado River we can expect the topography to be eroded about 4 inches (100 mm) per thousand years. The Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon, which is up to around a mile (1.6 km) deep and contains fossil-bearing strata going back a supposed 500 million years, with the oldest rocks claimed to range up to 3 billion years old.
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However, on the basis of the current erosion rate, the area should have eroded away in less than 20 million years. So how can the fossil strata be hundreds of millions of years old?

One explanation that could be offered is that these older rocks were buried under younger rocks that have eroded away. Since the rocks at the top of the Grand Canyon are supposedly 240 million years old,
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and given an erosion rate of 4 inches (0.1 m) per 1,000 years, they would have to have been buried under about 15 miles (24 km) of sediments to have survived erosion up to the present time. That represents overburden almost three times the height of Mount Everest spread over a vast area of what is now the United States, which would have to have been ultimately eroded away and carried into the ocean.

Alternatively, we could use in our calculation a more widely used estimated average erosion rate for continents of 2.4 inches (60 mm) per 1,000 years.
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Using this value, the thickness of overburden would have to be around 9 miles (14.4 km) or almost twice the height of Mount Everest and have extended over a vast area of the North American continent.

This is not a new conundrum for geologists. Since the 1950s, a number of geologists have pointed out that based on estimated erosion rates, the North American continent, which has an average height of around 2,030 feet (620 m), could erode away in just ten million years.
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Yet on the basis of radiometric dating, the continents supposedly formed more than 2,500 million years ago.
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How can the fossil strata on the continents be so old if we observe such rapid erosion? Cambridge geologist B.W. Sparks points out that the Yellow River (Hwang-Ho) erosion rates could erode away an area with an average height of that of Mount Everest in just ten million years.
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Rates of erosion are even higher in the mountains, with some reported rates shown in Table 9.2

We know from the fossil records that there were lush forests and massive amounts of vegetation that became the coal deposits we find around the world. To produce such vegetation, the climate requires much rainfall, which is typically associated with higher rates of erosion such as in the 315 and 750 inches per 1,000-year values given in Table 9.2. During catastrophic events such as those that buried the dinosaurs and forests, erosion rates would have been enormous. This means that the overburden required to preserve the supposedly hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old strata until the present day would be unrealistically thick — many tens of miles or more.

This overburden of younger deposits would have to eventually end up in the oceans. However, 5- or 10-mile (8- or 16-km) thick layers of sediments are not found on the ocean floor as the result of hundreds of millions of years of erosion. Instead, the average thickness of the sediments on the ocean floor is only about 1,500 feet (450 m).
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From this observation we can conclude that the continents could not have been eroding for hundreds of millions of years and the fossil layers cannot be up to 500 million years old. Instead, the evidence strongly suggests that the fossil-bearing sedimentary strata found around the world must be relatively recent.

Table 9.2 Reported Rates of Erosion in Inches and Millimeters Per 1,000 Years in Mountain Regions

The relatively thin layer of sediments on the ocean floors can provide us with new clues as to the age of the continents. Oxford and Cambridge University–educated geographer and retired government consultant Dr. Colin Mitchell has estimated the rate at which sediments enter the oceans. Using data for suspended solids carried by rivers and glaciers, contributions from volcanoes and windblown dust, and correcting for solids removed in sea spray, he has calculated that about 26.8 billion tons of solids enter the oceans each year.
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Mitchell uses an older reported value of 3,000 feet (900 m) for the average thickness of sediment on the ocean floor, and calcul
ates that it would take only about 28 million years to deposit the sediments we now find on the ocean floor.
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Marine biologist Dr. Ariel Roth reports a similar ocean sediment deposition estimate of 24,108 million tons per year, which he obtained from the average of 12 ocean sedimentation rate studies reported in the literature between 1950 and 1993.
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Using this result and the more recent average ocean sediment thickness value of 1,500 feet (450 m), together with an ocean area of 139.4 square miles (360.9 million square km), and a sediment bulk density of 1.7 tons per cubic yard (2.3 tonnes per cubic meter), the calculated time to deposit the ocean floor sediments is only 15.5 million years. Additionally, the rapid transport of massive amounts of sediment during the catastrophic conditions that buried the animals and plants in the fossil strata would greatly reduce the time taken to accumulate the ocean sediments we observe at the present time.

Material released by volcanoes provides further dating clues. It has been estimated from data from volcanic eruptions between 1940 and 1980 that at the present time volcanoes around the world release on average about one cubic mile (four cubic km) of material onto the earth’s surface per year.
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However, given the much larger number of now-dormant volcanoes, we can estimate that volcanic activity was much greater in the past. Also, some volcanic eruptions have emitted much larger volumes.
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For example, the Tambora (Indonesia) eruption in 1815 ejected an estimated 25–70 cubic miles (100–300 cubic km) of material, and the Lake Taupo (New Zealand) eruption released an estimated 260 cubic miles (1,100 cubic km) of material. However, assuming the modest average value of one cubic mile (four cubic km) of material per year, if the continents are really over 2,500 million years old, then during that time 2,500 cubic miles (10,000 million cubic kilometers) of volcanic material should have accumulated. That is enough to have covered the entire surface of the earth (oceans included) to a depth of 12.2 miles (19.6 km).

However, it has been estimated that the surface of the earth has only 33 million cubic miles (135 million cubic km) of sediments of volcanic origin.
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Using the modest one cubic mile (four cubic km) per year deposition rate, these sediments would be deposited in less than 34 million years. With more frequent and larger volcanic eruptions occurring in the past, this time period would be substantially reduced even further. Again we can see that strong evidence is accumulating that the continents cannot be anything like 2,500 million years old as indicated by the radiometric dating methods. Instead, they have to be less than tens of millions of years old, which greatly reduces the time available for evolution to happen.

There are many other clues suggesting that life on earth is much younger than ages calculated by radiometric methods. For example, we have discussed in chapter 5 how scientists have discovered soft, fresh-looking tissues in dinosaur remains purportedly 80 million years old.
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These protein-based tissue structures are not expected to survive more than tens of thousands of years due to the natural breakdown of the large molecular chains. The discovery of intact protein sequences is quite strong evidence that the dinosaur remains are only thousands of years old, not millions of years old.

For similar reasons, viable bacteria isolated from salt crystals in Permian strata claimed to be 250 million years old strongly suggests that these strata are only thousands of years old in reality.
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We have also discussed previously how mutations are notoriously harmful to the DNA in living organisms. For example, some years ago it was discovered that human DNA has a high mutation rate and is deteriorating at an alarming rate.
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This means that if humans and their ancestors had existed for as long as evolutionists claim, we should have degenerated to the point of extinction long ago. Calculations based on the accumulation of detrimental mutations in just the mitochondrial DNA genome alone suggest that the evolutionary ancestral line leading to humans would have become extinct after 20 million years.
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