Folded Rock Layers

If the global Flood, as described in
Genesis 7 and 8, really occurred,
what evidence would we expect
to find? Wouldn’t we expect to find
rock layers all over the earth that are
filled with billions of dead animals
and plants that were rapidly buried
and fossilized in sand, mud, and lime?
In these sometimes folded rock layers that’s exactly what we find.

The fossil-bearing geologic record
consists of tens of thousands of feet
of sedimentary layers, though not all
these layers are found everywhere
around the globe, and their thickness
varies from place to place. At most locations
only a small portion is available
to view, such as about 4,500 feet
(1371 m) of strata in the walls of the
Grand Canyon.

Uniformitarian (long-age) geologists
believe that these sedimentary
layers were deposited and deformed
over the past 500 million years. If it
really did take millions of years, then
individual sediment layers would
have been deposited slowly and the
sequences would have been laid down
sporadically. In contrast, if the global
cataclysmic Genesis Flood deposited
all these strata in a little more than a
year, then the individual layers would
have been deposited in rapid succession,
one on top of the other.

Do we see evidence in the walls of
the Grand Canyon that the sedimentary
layers were all laid down in quick
succession? Yes, absolutely!

The previous article in this series
documented the lack of evidence for
slow and gradual erosion at the boundaries
between the sediment layers.
This article explores evidence that the
entire sequence of sedimentary strata
was still soft during subsequent folding,
and the strata experienced only
limited fracturing. These rock layers
should have broken and shattered during
the folding, unless the sediment
was still relatively soft and pliable.

Solid Rock Breaks When Bent

When solid, hard rock is bent (or
folded) it invariably fractures and
breaks because it is brittle (Figure 1).1
Rock will bend only if it is still soft
and pliable—“plastic” like modeling
clay or children’s Playdough. If such
modeling clay is allowed to dry out,
it is no longer pliable but hard and
brittle, so any attempt to bend it will
cause it to break and shatter.

When water deposits sediments
in a layer, some water is left behind,
trapped between the sediment grains.
Clay particles may also be among
the sediment grains. As other sedimentary
layers are laid on top of the
deposits, the pressure squeezes the
sedimentary particles closer together
and forces out much of the water. The
earth’s internal heat may also remove
water from the sediment. As the sediment
layer dries out, the chemicals
that were in the water and between
the clay particles convert into a natural
cement. This cement transforms
the originally soft and wet sediment
layer into a hard, brittle rock layer.

This process, known technically as
diagenesis, can be exceedingly rapid.2
It is known to occur within hours but
generally takes days or months, depending
on the prevailing conditions.
It doesn’t take millions of years, even
under today’s slow-and-gradual geologic
conditions.

Folding a Whole Strata Sequence Without Fracturing

The 4,500-foot sequence of sedimentary
layers in the walls of the Grand
Canyon stands well above today’s sea
level. Earth movements in the past
pushed up this sedimentary sequence
to form the Kaibab Plateau. However,
the eastern portion of the sequence (in
the eastern Grand Canyon and Marble
Canyon areas in northern Arizona)
was not pushed up as much and is
about 2,500 feet (762 m) lower than
the height of the Kaibab Plateau. The
boundary between the Kaibab Plateau
and the less uplifted eastern canyons is
marked by a large step-like fold, called
the East Kaibab Monocline (Figure 2).

It’s possible to see these folded sedimentary
layers in several side canyons.
For example, the folded Tapeats Sandstone
can be seen in Carbon Canyon
(Figure 3). Notice that these sandstone
layers were bent 90° (a right angle),
yet the rock was not fractured or broken
at the hinge of the fold. Similarly,
the folded Muav and Redwall Limestone
layers can be seen along nearby
Kwagunt Creek (Figure 4). The folding
of these limestones did not cause
them to fracture and break, either, as
would be expected with ancient brittle
rocks. The obvious conclusion is that
these sandstone and limestone layers
were all folded and bent while the sediments were still soft and pliable, very
soon after they were deposited.

Herein lies an insurmountable dilemma
for uniformitarian geologists.
They maintain that the Tapeats Sandstone
and Muav Limestone were deposited
500–520 million years ago3;
the Redwall Limestone, 330–340 million
years ago4; then the Kaibab Limestone
at the top of the sequence (Figure
2), 260 million years ago.5 Lastly, the
Kaibab Plateau was uplifted (about 60
million years ago), causing the folding.6 That’s a time span of about 440
million years between the first deposit
and the folding. How could the Tapeats
Sandstone and Muav Limestone
still be soft and pliable, as though they
had just been deposited? Wouldn’t
they fracture and shatter if folded 440
million years after deposition?

The conventional explanation is
that under the pressure and heat of
burial, the hardened sandstone and
limestone layers were bent so slowly
they behaved as though they were
plastic and thus did not break.7 However,
pressure and heat would have
caused detectable changes in the minerals
of these rocks, tell-tale signs of
metamorphism.8 But such metamorphic
minerals or recrystallization due
to such plastic behavior9 is not observed
in these rocks. The sandstone
and limestone in the folds are identical
to sedimentary layers elsewhere.

The only logical conclusion is that
the 440-million-year delay between
deposition and folding never happened!
Instead, the Tapeats-Kaibab
strata sequence was laid down in rapid
succession early during the year of the
global cataclysmic Genesis Flood, followed
by uplift of the Kaibab Plateau
within the last months of the Flood.
This alone explains the folding of the
whole strata sequence without appreciable
fracturing.

Conclusion

Uniformitarian geologists claim
that tens of thousands of feet of fossiliferous
sedimentary layers have been
deposited over more than 500 million
years. In contrast, the global cataclysmic
Flood of Genesis 7–8 leads creation
geologists to believe that most
of these layers were deposited in just
over one year. Thus, during the Flood
many different strata would have been
laid down in rapid succession.

In the walls of the Grand Canyon,
we can see that the whole horizontal
sedimentary strata sequence was
folded without fracturing, supposedly
440 million years after the Tapeats
Sandstone and Muav Limestone were
deposited, and 200 million years after
the Kaibab Limestone was deposited.
The only way to explain how these
sandstone and limestone beds could
be folded, as though still pliable, is to
conclude they were deposited during
the Genesis Flood, just months before
they were folded.

There is only one explanation for the
folded rock layers in Grand Canyon—Noah’s Flood. Uniformitarian explanations
cannot adequately explain these features.

This geology series documents that, when we accept
the Flood of Genesis 7–8 as an
actual event in earth history, then we
find that the geologic evidence is absolutely
in harmony with the Word of
God. As the ocean waters flooded over
the continents, they must have buried
plants and animals in rapid succession.
These rapidly deposited sediment
layers were spread across vast
areas, preserving fossils of sea creatures
in layers that are high above the
current (receded) sea level. The sand
and other sediments in these layers
were transported long distances from
their original sources. We know that
many of these sedimentary strata were
laid down in rapid succession because
we don’t find evidence of slow erosion
between the strata.

As expected, the evidence in God’s
world totally agrees with what we read
in God’s Word. “Thy word is true from
the beginning,” the psalmist tells us
(Psalm 119:160).

SourceThis article originally appeared on answersingenesis.org

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