Fossil Record Explorer

One column of rock, read as one Flood

Textbooks read the rock layers as a calendar of hundreds of millions of years. Read them instead as the record of the year-long Flood of Genesis 6–9, and see whether the fossils fit. Move down the column, zoom into any layer, and open the fossils buried there.

Every fossil image on this page is in the public domain.

In plain English

  1. The layers are real, and so is their order. Trilobites are found low down, dinosaurs in the middle, and mammoths near the top, all over the world. Any explanation has to account for that.
  2. The textbook explanation is that each layer took a long time to form, and the fossils show life slowly evolving from simple to complex.
  3. The explanation explored here is that most fossil-bearing rock was laid down quickly in the Flood. The order reflects where creatures lived and how they behaved as the water rose: sea-floor life first, then coasts and lowlands, then the uplands.
  4. How to use it. Click a layer to open its panel, which gives the Flood reading, the weak points of the evolutionary account, and the mainstream view in its own words. Zoom in to see the fossils and open each one. The red ! marks are critique hotspots. Switch on the sorting overlay to see the mechanisms.

Scroll or drag to move through the column · ⌘/Ctrl + scroll, pinch or double-click to zoom · click a layer, a fossil or a ! for detail

Soil & alluviumGlacial tillSandstoneMudstoneChalkLimestoneRed bedsShaleTilted strataCrystalline basementCoal

Right: first appearance of major groups. Each bar starts where the group is first found, and blue bars are vertebrates. The red ? marks where an ancestor should connect and none is found.

Reading the column

How this explorer is built

  • A composite column. No single place on earth has every layer. Like the textbook column, this one stacks the standard systems in their usual order. The Grand Canyon, for example, preserves the lower part, and the Grand Staircase of Utah the part above it.
  • Not to scale. Layer thicknesses are schematic, so that each can be clicked and read.
  • Two sets of labels. The Flood view names each layer by its phase. The standard view gives the conventional system and its age in millions of years (ICS chart). Those ages are shown as the claim being examined, not as findings this site accepts.
  • The model. Flood phases follow published Flood-geology work, especially the megasequence model of Clarey & Werner (2018, 2023), built on Sloss's (1963) sequences, and the ecological zonation idea of H. W. Clark (1946) and Whitcomb & Morris (1961).
  • Disagreements flagged. Flood geologists disagree among themselves, for example on where the Flood ends (near the K–Pg boundary or late in the Cenozoic), and on whether the Ediacaran organisms are pre-Flood. Those disagreements are marked where they apply.
  • The other side stated fairly. Every panel gives the mainstream reading in terms its proponents would accept, as the rest of this site does (see How we grade).

Continue with Pillar 2: The Fossil Record: the Cambrian explosion, transitional series and stasis.

Image sources

Public-domain plates and photographs

Every image was checked against its licence on Wikimedia Commons. All are public domain or CC0 (dedicated to the public domain), mostly plates from 19th- and early 20th-century monographs and US government surveys. Credit is given even though none is required.

  • Ammonite · Paul La Vergne (drawing), Michael van der Gucht (engraving), for John Morton, 1712 · Public domain · source
  • Anomalocaris · Wilson44691, 2009 · Public domain · source
  • Archaeopteryx · Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), 1862 · Public domain · source
  • Basilosaurus · Ernst Stromer, 1912 · Public domain · source
  • Brachiopod · A. H. Cooke, A. Shipley & F. R. C. Reed (1895), 1895 · Public domain · source
  • Cephalaspis · Henry Alleyne Nicholson (1844–1899) (drawn after Page), 1877 · Public domain · source
  • Coelophysis · Friedrich von Huene, 1915 · Public domain · source
  • Crinoid stems · Jim Conrad, 2008 · Public domain · source
  • Dickinsonia · Susan H. Butts, 2021 · CC0 · source
  • Dimetrodon · Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1917 · Public domain · source
  • Eusthenopteron · Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray); Ridewood, Walter George., 1908 · Public domain · source
  • Ichthyosaurus · William Conybeare (paper and drawing), 1824 · Public domain · source
  • Iguanodon teeth · G. A. Mantell, 1825 · Public domain · source
  • Knightia · Wilson44691, 2013 · CC0 · source
  • Leanchoilia · Charles Doolittle Walcott, 1912 · Public domain · source
  • Lepidodendron · Wlodzimierz, 2007 · Public domain · source
  • Woolly mammoth · Wilhelm Gottlob Tilesius von Tilenau, 1800s · Public domain · source
  • Mastodon · John Collins Warren, 1852 · Public domain · source
  • Giant deer · Othenio Abel, 1919 · Public domain · source
  • Megalodon tooth · Daderot, 2014 · CC0 · source
  • Merychippus · Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 1901 · Public domain · source
  • Ogygopsis · Daderot, 2011 · Public domain · source
  • Opabinia · Charles Doolittle Walcott, 1912 · CC0 · source
  • Orohippus · Smithsonian NMNH, 2014 · CC0 · source
  • Pecopteris · Woudloper, 2008-01 · Public domain · source
  • Placodus · H. Alleyne Nicholson, 1876 · Public domain · source
  • Plesiosaurus · William Conybeare, 1824 · Public domain · source
  • Polystrate tree · Unrecorded (19th-century engraving) · Public domain · source
  • Polystrate tree · Jstuby at English Wikipedia, 1998 · Public domain · source
  • Pterodactylus · Richard Lydekker (1888), uploaded by Necrophorus · Public domain · source
  • Sabre-tooth cat · TheUltimateGrass (photo, La Brea Tar Pits Museum), 2025 · CC0 · source
  • Stegosaurus · O. C. Marsh (1896), US Geological Survey, 1896 · Public domain · source
  • Stromatolite · Charles Butts, USGS, 1945 · Public domain · source
  • Triceratops · O.C. Marsh, 1896 · Public domain · source
  • Trilobites · Joachim Barrande, 1852 · Public domain · source
  • Tyrannosaurus · Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1917 · Public domain · source
  • Uintatherium · Smithsonian NMNH, 2010 · CC0 · source