The connection between the concept of a global flood and this book comes
from the one single truth--an animal cannot leave footprints if its body is
further from the ground's surface than the length of its legs. An animal
cannot leave footprints if it is floating in 1000 feet of water. Also,
airbreathing animals cannot remain submerged very long in order to leave a
continuous sequence of tracks.
Below are three locations and the formations which have which have various
terrestrial tracks on them.
Age Formation
Grand canyon SE Utah W. Colorado
Eocene Uinta 1500'
Eocene Green River 2000'
Paleocene Wasatch 1500'
Paleocene Ft. Union 1000'
U. Cretaceous Mesa Verde grp 1000'
L. Cretaceous Dakota Fm. Dakota-no prints in Colo. 300'
U. Jurassic Morrison Fm Morrison 500'
M. Jurassic Entrada 400'
L. Jurssic Navajo ss Navajo 2000'
L. Jurassic Kayenta Fm. Kayenta500'
L. Jurassic Wingate ss Wingate 600'
U. Triassic Chinle 2500'
M.Triassic Moenkopi Moenkopi Moenkopi 1400'
Permian Coconino 100'
Permian Hermit Shale 1000'
Penn. Supai Group Cutler Maroon Fm 4500'
Penn. Minturn Fm.6000'
~M. Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt, Dinosaur Tracks, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 6-7
The thicknesses of the various formations are not necessarily average
thickness. They are taken from GS bulletin 1200 and are only illustrative.
This pile of rocks consists of several thousand feet of sediment.
At each footprint level the flood could not be deeper than leg
depth. This means that for much of the geologic column, the waters could not
be very deep. Most of the animals the book is talking about are no bigger
than 1 meter tall and some are invertebrates like spiders and scorpions
which also left tracks.
So if the waters wre not very deep, how could the waters carry very much
sediment? Afterall the flood is conceived to be a way for the entire
geologic column to be deposited. Yet if the leg length of the various
animals proves that the flood waters were not deep, how can they deposit the
entire geologic column?
The second problem for the global flood this data presents is the fact that
the track makers at the top of each pile must have been able to survive
several thousand feet of deposition in order to then be able to leave their
tracks.
There is also lots of evidence of normal activities of life.
"Ideally, the animal must be found, quite literally, at the end
of its tracks. One famous expamle is of a Mesozoic horseshoe
crab found dead in its tracks."~M. Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt,
Dinosaur Tracks, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p.
17
The track is a spiral witht the animal spiralling in. He seems to have
rotated a bit from the track path at the very center of the spiral. It must
have been sick.
"Another Permian formation from which several tracksites
have recently been reported, for the first time, is the Cedar
Mesa Sandstone. One locality near Hite, Utah, has produced a
particularly interesting set of footprints. The trackway,
imprinted in a dune environment, shows evidence of a small animal
being consumed or snatched up by a larger trackmaker. The large
tracks are the Anomalopus type, usually attributed to primitive
mammal-like reptiles known as pelycosaurs. The small tracks
resemble the type known as Stenichnus, which, according to some
authorities, are probably attributable to a primitive reptile
(protorothyrid) or a small amphibian (microsaur). The trackway
map shows that as the larger trackmaker converged with the
smaller animal, all traces of the latter disappear near the point
where the two trackways intersect. This suggests that the
smaller animal was snapped up and eaten or carried off.
"Reports of trackways documenting attacks or 'murders' of
prey by predators are rare. Moreover, few such interpretations
are widely accepted. But the Cedar Mesa specimen is sufficiently
clear as to qualify as one of the better attack scenarios
documented to date."~M. Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt, Dinosaur
Tracks, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 55-56
and
"One possible answer may be found in an interesting slab
recovered from the Coconino Sandstone in Arizona, by Jon Kramer.
This specimen, now in the Minnesota Science Museum, shows the
trackway of a large invertebrte that ends abruptly at the point
where a vertebrate trackway crosses the slab. It is tempting to
interpret the temination of this trail as evidence that the
vertebrate ate the hapless invertebrate. If this interpretation
is correct, then this specimen could be cited as evidence that
desert-dwelling vertebrates actually fed on some of the
invertebrates responsible for making traces in the Coconino
Sandstone."~M. Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt, Dinosaur Tracks, (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 48-49
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm