Of Fossils and Floods

Fossils are the remains of ancient life preserved in rocks. Fossils may be the hard parts of animals (teeth, skeletons, shells, stems, and the like), impressions (trees, leaves), traces (tracks and trails), and organic chemicals (collagen as in the recent T. Rex study and others). "Fossil" fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas, are the cooked and altered remains of plants and animals.

In the early 1500's, the exact nature of fossils was a topic of much debate. There were several prevailing theories: they were creatures that lived and grew in the rocks; or, they were creatures that had perished in the Biblical flood. Another theory claimed they were marks left in the rock by Satan to vex humanity. Leonardo da Vinci thought a great deal about fossils and between 1506 and 1510 he wrote down his ideas in a manuscript that is now known as the Codex Leicester.¹ Observing that there was a mixture of large and small shells, that they showed growth lines, that there were no nutrients, and the creatures couldn't move around, Leonardo concluded the fossils were once living creatures that had been buried. This left the question of how the fossils came to be on dry land and at the top of mountains.

Leonardo dismissed the notion that fossils originated as a result of a global flood. Leonardo reasoned that if there were a global flood:

1. There would be nowhere for the water to go when it receded.
2. The rocks containing fossils would be a single layer containing a vast and jumbled mixture of shells rather than in the regular steps and layers that characterize the rocks.
3. The torrential rains of a great flood would carry fossils downhill and away from mountaintops and land.

Leonardo described oysters and corals and considered it impossible that a single flood could have carried them 300 miles inland and uphill, nor could they swim or walk there. Leonardo's reasoning was clear and simple. He concluded that fossils were creatures that once lived in the seas and the rocks formed when those seas were somehow lifted up to the mountains. This uplift wasn't adequately until the mid 20th century when Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift which was expanded into the idea of Plate Tectonics.

¹ The Codex Leicester has been scanned, translated, indexed, and produced as a multimedia CD by Corbis. Unfortunately, it is out of print and you may have to look for it at your local library (where I found a copy). Other print editions are also available.