Cheri Fields
Anoxic: without oxygen
Remember how Uniformitarians want to believe a lake can only lay down one layer of mud in a year? But, then they have to figure out a way to explain the fossils sticking up through several or even lots of these layers.
How could these animals or plants not rot away before they had a chance to turn into fossils? They’ve got a pretty good sounding answer to this problem:
Put them in water with no oxygen until the sediment builds up around them. It’s called Anoxic Preservation and we can see this happening today.
The coolest place I found where the water works like this is in Florida. There is a sinkhole called the Little Salt Spring almost full of anoxic water. Nothing lives in there now, although a lot of Ostracods [microscopic clam-like creatures] lived there up to at least 800 years ago.
We’ve learned a lot about the Ice Age people in the area from things they put or dropped into the water. There are bits of wood and even a human brain we know are 1,000s of years old. So, the water there is certainly good at preserving things!
None of them have been turned to stone, though. Even the little things buried in more than 30 feet [10 m] of sediment are still “fresh”.
There are some other places around the world where the water doesn’t have any oxygen in it. Most of these places would normally be rich in creatures because of the good flow of nutrients for things to live on. The problem is, the oxygen-using algae and stuff grow so fast, the oxygen-makers can’t keep up. If there’s not a good flow of new oxygen-rich water, you end up with Anoxic conditions especially at the bottom.
One place off the west coast of Canada has a sort of underwater bowl, keeping water from moving in and out near an inlet bringing in fresh nutrients. It is especially interesting because the sediments pile up just like they tell us in annual layers, called “varves”.
But, the only “fossils” anyone is reporting are diatoms and microfossils. Things way smaller than an annual layer’s thickness.
The Black Sea has the largest area of anoxic water. Pretty much the whole bottom is a “dead zone” of water without enough oxygen for life. So, it’s a perfect place for fish and other creatures to sink to the bottom and get preserved. Especially since the 20th Century was really hard on them.
Even there, the only preserved life forms getting scientists excited are the miniature ones. No one is talking about anything bigger than a millimeter.
What happened to the big guys?
There’s something else extra special about that Florida spring: it doesn’t have “anoxic microorganisms”. Most everywhere else, there are tiny creatures designed to fill even places like pockets at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea where there is never any oxygen. What do these things eat?
From the Role of Microbe in Ecosystems, University of Michigan: “But in shallow waters, coastal oceans, lakes and estuaries, 25-60% of the organic matter produced may settle out of the upper waters rapidly and be decomposed anaerobically.”
“Anaerobically” means done without oxygen. These little guys are busy, not much escapes them in a recognizable form!
The Baltic Sea is having a hard time with falling oxygen levels and anoxic conditions from too much algae. There are plenty of large creatures dying and sinking to the bottom. Yet, no one is claiming they can see them turning into fossils. There are too many decomposers happily digesting away.
The fossil record is full of a lot more than plankton, algae, and diatoms. Before they can expect us to believe it was anoxic conditions over a long time preserving these fossils, they need more evidence. And, it doesn’t seem the scientists are even interested in studying this out.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Genesis 1:22-23
PS According to this interview, the first people living in Florida, “”had a very well developed technology, and they took full advantage of the natural resources of their environment. The more we learn about them, the more impressed we are with their technology.”…. “There was nothing primitive about them as human beings,” [the scientist] said.”
