Young-earth "proof" #4: There are no fossil meteorites in the geologic record. If the latter were laid down over billions of years we would expect to find at least a few fossil meteorites in the geologic strata. Therefore, the geologic record was deposited rapidly.

4. Meteorites are hard enough to find on the surface of the earth when they are fresh and "obvious" -- unless one happens to know about a choice site in advance such as a fresh fall. Randomly select and search an acre of land in the United States and see how many meteorites you will find. I suspect that you won't find a single one even if you repeated the search a thousand times on a thousand different acres.

How much more difficult it must be to find a meteorite embedded in ancient strata. Most meteorites landing on the continental areas, no doubt, suffer much erosion before eventual burial. Those which fall into the ocean are likely to be subducted with the oceanic plate into the earth's mantel or metamorphosed and thrust up in a mountain chain. Most people who drill or dig in the earth are not looking for meteorites and would not recognize one if it fell into their lap. After a little erosion, a stoney meteorite looks just like any other pebble or rock; iron meteorites would likely have rusted out long ago. Thus, it would be a truly rare meteorite to survive initial erosion and chemical decomposition, to be uncovered by erosion, and, finally to have some rockhound stumble upon it and identify it. If you ask yourself how many people in the world can identify an eroded, stoney meteorite, you'll have some idea of the problem.

After reviewing such difficulties, geologist Davis Young (1988, p.127) tells us that, "The chances of finding a fossil meteorite in sedimentary rocks are remote. It is not to be expected." G. J. McCall, in Meteorites and Their Origins (1973), said on page 270, "The lack of fossil record of true meteorites is puzzling, but can be explained by the lack of very diagnostic shapes and the chemical nature of meteorites, which allows rapid decay..."

I once saw a large, circular orange splotch of rust stain embedded in the white chalk near Lompoc. For all I know that might have been the remains of an ancient iron meteorite, but I certainly couldn't legitimately count it as such. The "fossilization" of iron meteorites seems most unlikely.

It may surprise you, therefore, to hear that, against all odds, we do have such a find! Two Swedish scientists made the first positive identification of a fossilized stoney meteorite (Astronomy, June 1981). Per Thorslund and Frans Wickman reported in Nature that a 10 centimeter object found in a limestone slab from a quarry in Brunflo, central Sweden in 1952 is really a stoney meteorite as demonstrated by microscopic examinations and other properties. It has a terrestrial age of about 463 million years. The object had until recently been mistaken for something else. If the odds were not bent enough, it appears that the meteorite hit an Ordovician mollusk which is fossilized in conjunction with the meteorite! (Spratt and Stephens, 1992, p.53)

In 1930 a fist-sized piece of nickel-iron was said to have been recovered from a bore hole at a depth of 1,525 feet, from the Eocene. This "Zapata County" Texas iron has since been lost (Nature, January 22, 1981).

Fritz Heide mentioned that "The iron of Sardis, Burke County, Georgia, was found in 1940, in strata believed to be of Middle Miocene age." (Heide, 1964, pp.118-119.)

We may conclude, therefore, that it is not true that fossil meteorites don't exist in the geologic record. However, recovering and identifying them is extremely rare.

A much better test is to look for the remains of giant meteorite impacts. Although their craters are not always a snap to identify, due to erosion and burial, we can at least expect to find some if, in fact, they fell. Given their present impact rate, we would not expect to find any in the geologic record if the latter were laid down in a year's time by a great flood.

Thus, we have a most excellent test between the two viewpoints. If the earth's geologic record is the result of many hundreds of millions of years of slow accumulation, then we would expect a fair number of "fossil" craters. On the other hand, if the geologic column was laid down in a mere year by Noah's flood, then it would be extremely unlikely to find even one "fossil" crater.

Well, I won't keep you in suspense. The geologic record contains at least 130 positively identified "fossil" craters, and they are found from the Precambrian (2 billion years ago) to Recent times.

R. A. F. Grieve and P. B. Robertson (1979) list the known meteorite craters. Since 1979 a considerable number of fossil craters have been found, but a portion of their list will do just fine. With one exception, all of the following are larger than Meteor Crater in Arizona.

Precambrian .....Vredefort, South Africa.............1.97 billion years
Precambrian .....Sudbury, Ontario, Canada............1.84 billion years
Precambrian......Janisjarvi, Russia..................0.70 billion years
Cambrian ........Kelly West, N.T., Australia..........550 million years
Cambrian.........Holleford, Ontario, Canada...........550 million years
Cambrian ........Kjardla, Estonia.....................500 million years
Ordovician.......Saaksjarvi, Finland..................490 million years
Ordovician.......Carswell, Saskatchewan, Canada.......485 million years
Ordovician.......Brent, Ontario, Canada...............450 million years
Silurian.........Lac Couture, Quebec, Canada..........420 million years
Silurian.........Lac La Moinerie, Quebec, Canada......400 million years
Devonian.........Siljan, Sweden.......................365 million years
Devonian.........Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada...........360 million years
Devonian.........Flynn Creek, Tennessee, USA..........360 million years
Carboniferous....Crooked Creek, Missouri, USA.........320 million years
Carboniferous....Middlesboro, Kentucky, USA...........300 million years
Carboniferous....Serpent Mound, Ohio, USA.............300 million years
Permian..........Kursk, Russia........................250 million years
Permian..........Dellen, Sweden.......................230 million years
Permian..........St. Martin, Manitoba, Canada.........225 million years
Triassic.........Manicouagan, Quebec, Canada..........210 million years
Triassic.........Redwing Creek, North Dakota, USA.....200 million years
Jurassic.........Vepriaj, Lithuania...................160 million years
Jurassic.........Rochechouart, France.................160 million years
Jurassic.........Strangways, N.T., Australia..........150 million years
Cretaceous.......Sierra Madre, Texas, USA.............100 million years
Cretaceous.......Rotmistrovka, Ukraine.................70 million years
Cretaceous.......Chicxulub, Yucatan, Mexico............65 million years
Paleocene........Kara, Russia..........................57 million years
Oligocene........Mistastin, Labrador, Canada...........38 million years
Oligocene........Wanapitei L., Ontario, Canada.........38 million years
Miocene..........Haughton Dome, N.W.T., Canada.........15 million years
Miocene..........Karla, Russia.........................10 million years
Pliocene.........New Quebec Crater, New Quebec, Canada..5       m.y. 
Pliocene.........Aouelloul, Mauritania..................3.1     m.y.
Pleistocene......Bosumtwi, Ghana........................1.3     m.y.
Pleistocene......Lonar, India...........................0.05    m.y.

 
1. The presence of the usual geologic structures one might expect to find in an old, eroded crater.

2. The presence of igneous rocks that have recrystallized after having been melted by sudden impact.

3. The presence of greatly compressed forms of quartz (such as coesite and stishovite) that can be created only by a combination of high temperature and high pressure. Coesite requires above 30,000 atmospheres of pressure and stishovite requires over 100,000 atmospheres of pressure. They have been found in the vicinity of many impact craters.

4. The presence of "shatter cones" which are structures of quartzite that flare outward and downward, away from the direction of impact.

5. In some cases the chemical "signature" of a nonterrestrial impacting body can be identified in the material thrown out by the blast.

Various minerals known as impactites are associated with finding ancient craters. Fossil meteorites, themselves, would not likely be found in connection with a large crater because the cosmic speeds of impact for large meteorites liberate so much energy as to easily vaporize the meteorite. Such tools, as developed in recent years, are useful for distinguishing between ancient meteorite craters and volcanic craters or other natural crater-like formations.

As you can see, plenty of impact craters have been detected throughout the geologic column, from the Cambrian to recent times; three have been found in the Precambrian. Traditional geology stands vindicated. Obviously, the major strata of the geologic column has been laid down over the ages, thus allowing plenty of time for each to record the rare major asteroid impacts.

Major impacts are obviously very rare, being that none have occurred during recorded history. Creationists must conjure up a miraculous swarm of asteroids which decide to drop in on Earth throughout the year of Noah's flood. They do so without destroying the ark with mile-high waves or blast effects far exceeding that of any atomic bomb. After the flood dries up, this bunch of asteroids, which had been steadily bombarding the earth with miraculous numbers of craters, suddenly decides to pack up and go home. Thus, history knows of no large impacts in the thousands of years since that magical year. Sounds a little like a fairy tale, doesn't it?

The geologic column stands vindicated. It wins hands down.

While we're on the subject of asteroid impacts, let me point out another fatal problem for the young-earth scenario. A casual inspection of the cratered surfaces of Mars, the Moon, and Mercury make it intuitively obvious that Earth has also been battered with a massive bombardment of asteroids. Unlike the Moon and Mercury, and to some extent, Mars, the great bulk of these craters have not been preserved. Various geological processes, such as weathering and plate tectonics, have erased almost all of the early craters.

That the earth also partook in this early massive cratering is made even clearer by the use of statistics.

Start with the oldest parts of the Moon, and imagine counting up the number of craters of different diameters. On the Moon, you find that when you go down a factor of ten in crater size, the craters become more common by about a factor of a hundred. Of course this rule isn't perfect, and some crater sizes are present in greater or lesser number than this simple rule leads you to expect.

Now play the same game with craters on the ancient terrain of Mars, or on Mercury, and what do you find? Not only do you find the same overall relationship between crater number and crater size, but those particular sizes that broke the rule on the Moon break the rule to about the same extent on Mars and Mercury as well. A common interpretation of this similarity in cratering records is that all these worlds were cratered by the same population of objects... But if Mars, Mercury, and the Moon were all pummeled by the same population of impacting objects during the heavy bombardment, Earth and Venus must have been as well. (Chyba, 1992, p.31)

What does all this mean?

Any one of the largest impacts would have produced a short lived global atmosphere composed of rock vapor, temporarily raising the temperature of Earth's surface to above that of the inside of an oven. In the most extreme cases, this searing heat would have lasted long enough to have evaporated the entire ocean, sterilizing the surface of the Earth.

Scientists can use the cratering record on the Moon to estimate just how often this level of destruction took place. Statistically, because of Earth's larger gravity, something like 17 or so objects larger than the largest object that hit the Moon should have collided with Earth. If the largest object that impacted the Moon was the one responsible for the 2,500-km-diameter South PoleÄAitken basin on the lunar farside (whose controversial existence was finally confirmed two years ago by the Galileo spacecraft), Earth was probably hit about five times by asteroids or comets big enough to have completely vaporized its oceans. [A number of scientists now believe that life originated several times on the primeval earth, only to be wiped out in its first few attempts by the above impacts!] (Chyba, 1992, pp.32-33)

Creationists just haven't come to grips with the tremendous beating which the early Earth took from impacting asteroids. Most of that evidence has been destroyed on Earth and Venus, but it can still be seen on the Moon, Mercury, and the older portions of Mars. There is absolutely no way that such violence could be crammed into even a few thousand years without destroying life on Earth, let alone be confined to the year of Noah's flood.

Not only would Noah have been blasted out of the water, assuming that he wasn't sunk first by the smaller asteroids, but the ocean, itself, would have boiled away! While all that was happening, Noah, if still alive, would have had the dubious privilege of breathing hot rock vapor instead of normal air!

Creationists had better start looking for miracles, because the above scenario just doesn't cut it. The creationist young-earth scenario is a fairy tale, and like all fairy tales it needs a little magic to smooth away the hard facts.