Biostratigraphy

David Campbell (bivalve@mailserv0.isis.unc.edu)
Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:13:28 -0400

>Biostratigraphy is just not all that important to me, compared with
>lithostratigraphy. Because of my position on Asteroid impact catastrophe,
>I can't help but think that whatever ordering that there appears to be is
>mostly apparent and not real. There has been alot of discussion of ID here
>on how one can (or cannot) recognize intelligence. I think the same
>applies to the application of ordering onto the fossil record. I feel that
>the fossils found thus far represent too small of a sample to make claims
>of ordering.

Try looking online for DSDP or ODP data. Over thirty years of drilling
cores throughout the oceans has generated a rather large sample, which also
matches data from on land as to the sequence of microfossils and
macrofossils.

The sequence of macrofossils has been studied for over 200 years and is
also rather well-established. Certainly, new species turn up all the time,
and must be fit into the record, but they fit the established patterns. In
fact, apparently anomalous fossils frequently are anomalous-if a published
record does not fit the pattern from other parts of the world, it often
turns out to be a mistake. The beginnings of biostratigraphy were
established before it was realized that there was a chronological problem
with a young-earth interpretation, so it cannot be dismissed as the product
of old-earth assumptions (much less evolutionary).

David C.