Old Earth Creationism

   The fourth division consists of strata and erosion surfaces representing erosion and deposition as floodwaters retreated during the last half of the Flood year.  These deposits (so-called "Mesozoic strata") are poorly preserved at the rim..."¹

     In this book about the Grand Canyon, Austin is referring to the YEC model for the deposition of the Canyon rocks.  In the Canyon itself, there are no Mesozoic rocks, and no dinosaur fossils or poop. (The top layer of the Canyon is the Kaibab Limestone, which is Permian in age).

     So let's speculate.  How could the YEC model account for dinosaur poop (and fossils).  I've heard several possibilities from YEC's.  First, I have heard YEC's use what I would call the floating body model.  As the bodies floated around, they gradually sank, giving us the fossil record we see today.  However, let’s consider the poop.  Even if the dinosaurs floated until the same time and then sank, how is it that their poop sank at exactly the same time as the bodies?  How come NO dinosaurs, nor their poop, are in the early and mid-Flood rocks, which are represented by the layers of the Grand Canyon?  I smell something foul here. 

     Another claim I have heard is that the waters came and went during the flood, temporary exposing land, so that dinosaurs could poop, lay eggs, etc, during the middle of the flood. However, this sounds like you would need a lot of dinosaurs who were good at treading water for a few months.  This idea  is also foul smelling.  

     Finally, I have heard that the high grounds, such as the Western US (where many dinosaur fossils are found), were covered by the floodwaters last, therefore the dinosaurs were some of the last to die in the flood.  This argument completely ignores the fact that the rocks the dinosaurs were standing on, and those under them in the Grand Canyon, were supposedly laid down by the Flood.  Again, this doesn't smell good.

     For the person considering old-versus-young earth creation, they must consider…why do we have dinosaurs laying down all this poop, right in the middle of sediments deposited by the receding waters of Noah’s Flood?  By the young earth Flood model, all the animals died within the first forty days of the Flood, so why do we have massive amounts of coprolites in late-Flood sediments?  The facts don’t add up to the young earth model for the flood.  And, if we had dinosaurs living just before the flood, it stands to reason that dinosaur poop would be found in the earliest rocks of the flood as well.  However, looking at the Grand Canyon alone, we have at least a mile of sediments laid down by the flood, with no dinosaur poop at all!  (All Grand Canyon sediments are stratigraphically underneath the dinosaur fossil-bearing rock layers of the Mesozoic period.)