Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the concept which earth has been affected in the by short-lived, sudden violent events, maybe worldwide in scope.Geological thought throughout the Middle Ages was dominated by biblical tradition. This was based on Genesis and in particular the story of Noah's Universal Flood. During the 15th and 16th centuries, this began to change as European explorers brought back news of previously unknown areas of the world, but the influence of the Genesis Flood continued.

Most catastrophist and creation science books highlight the following as a link between the Flood and the basic order of strata as seen in the geological record:

• A large proportion of the fossil record is associated with life, deposi­tion, and preservation in water.
• The lowest and therefore the oldest rocks contain marine sediments, particularly deep-sea sediments. The sea that existed prior to the flood contained the most primitive marine life forms and therefore equate to the geological sequences from the Cambrian to the begin­ning of the Devonian in geological terms.
• Many of the books say that hydrodynamic selectivity ensured that the more streamlined denser animals would be deposited first, i.e. trilobites and brachiopods, which are found in the lowermost stratigraphic horizons.
• As sea levels rose, other more advanced marine-based life died and are preserved as fossils in overlying rocks.
• Due to the selective nature of deposition in water, there are con­centrations of particular animals at particular levels, hence we find index fossils (specific fossils that can be used to relatively date spe­cific rocks sequences).
• As the water level continued to increase, more mobile "advanced" animal life forms were able to stay out of trouble. This, they say, accounts for the higher life forms such as vertebrates with pelagic (open ocean) habits, such as the Devonian fish "graveyards" in sandstones and the coal measures, which were brought down by torrential streams and rivers into the sea.
• With the continuing rise of sea level, even higher-order animals were trapped, such as amphibians, reptiles, and finally mammals, depending on local circumstances, hence these are only found in rocks near the top of a geological sequence.
• The above accounts for the apparent development of life as seen in the fossil record

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