Newly Discovered Sixth Extinction Rewrites

Geology
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Geology students memorize the rock system names found on geologic column diagrams, learn
age assignments, typical fossils, and the five worldwide animal extinction events. Now, secular
researchers reveal a sixth extinction near the top of Earths rock layers, and it coincides with
three other large-scale features all poised to reshape the way biblical geologists think about the
Genesis Flood.

Publishing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international science team analyzed the ever-
growing fossil information on the freely accessible Paleobiology Database.1 Plenty of
paleontologists have poked through pockets of fossils at individual sites, but this new team of
scientists asked a global question. How many animals went extinct according to Cenozoic fossils
around the world?

Cenozoic rock layers are widespread and quite thick in some areas. They often lie above
dinosaur layers. In many places, Cenozoic layers have Paleocene deposits at the bottom, then in
ascending order, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene. Geologists long ago
used supposedly unique fossils to identify each layer.

Bible-minded geologists agree that the Ice Age superstorms deposited the uppermost
(Pleistocene) layers after the Flood, but they disagree over when the other five Cenozoic systems
were deposited. Perhaps Noahs Flood waters draining off the continents deposited most of the
Cenozoic layers. Genesis 8:13 says, And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the
first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth. The new
extinction results may help identify which layers represent that dried earth.

The Nature Ecology & Evolution study authors wrote:

Until now, disappearances of Pliocene marine megafauna species were thought to represent
isolated examples within a broader assemblage that remained largely intact. Our results
show that these extinctions, which peaked in the late Pliocene, were part of a hitherto
unrecognized global loss of marine megafauna biodiversity.1

The report showed an unexpectedly high extinction rate of 15% in upper Pliocene fossils. The
other five Cenozoic rock systems show just nine or fewer percent extinction rates.1 By far most
of those megafauna (large animals) lived in coastal waters.

What caused this sixth extinction?

The study authors speculated that violently changing sea levels, including a dramatic reduction in
coastal habitat, contributed to the global megafauna decline. But what could cause such dramatic
sea level changes? Surely some processes much more powerful than what occur today must have
happened back then.

Comparing this sixth extinction to the other five might shed light on its cause. The five global
extinction events that geology students memorize roughly coincide with five megasequences.
Each megasequence can have sedimentary rocks thousands of feet thick, and they can span
whole continents and beyond. They have larger-grained rocks, often sandstone, at the bottom and
finer sediments like chalk or siltstone at the top.

Creation geologist Andrew Snelling attributed each megasequence to a major advance and
temporary retreat of tremendous Flood water surges. He wrote, This megascale cycle of
depositing packages was repeated, as renewed surges of ocean waters rapidly rose to again
cover the continent. And the same mass extinctions are repeated, too, all across the globe,
deposited by unimaginably powerful ocean currents.2

A secular geologist long ago named the uppermost megasequence the Tejas.3 It includes the
Cenozoic rocks that reveal this sixth extinction. Therefore, five of the six megasequences are
now associated with a global extinction of mostly marine creatures. Slow, stable, gradual
processes explain none of this, but it fits the global wreckage that the Genesis Flood could have
wrought.

Creation geologist Tim Clarey described what hundreds of outcrops and drill cores with
correlated rock types are beginning to show in his global rock layer surveys:

Finally, both Africa and North America simultaneously record what appears to be the
receding phase of the Flood event in the sixth and final megasequence (Tejas
Megasequence, Cenozoic stratigraphic units). The sediments of this megasequence show a
major shift in depositional pattern, reflecting more extensive offshore sedimentation as the
floodwaters drained from the continents into the new ocean basins.4

So, animals went extinct globally in Pliocene layers that a continent-covering water surge
deposited. Was anything else going on geologically at that same time? An exhaustive survey of
mountain origins, published in 2000, revealed that the high mountain ranges in the world have
all undergone several kilometers of vertical uplift since the beginning of the Pliocene.5 Then
they all suddenly stopped rising into the sky.

Bible-believing geomorphologist John Baumgardner attributed the end of this mountain building
to a time when the catastrophic driving processes shut down.5 Those catastrophic driving
processes included ocean crust plummeting beneath continental crust, new ocean crust quickly
forming from mid-ocean fissures and sliding along the ocean basins, continental crust thickening
and bobbing, and back-to-back massive volcanic eruptions.

With new ocean basins forming, changing sea levels, rising mountains, huge offshore
sedimentation from widespread watery surges flowing off continents, no wonder a mass
extinction happened at the close of the Pliocene. Noahs Flood accounts for all these mega-
calamities, including a sixth extinction.
References

1. Pimiento, C., et al. The Pliocene marine megafauna extinction and its impact on functional diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution. Published
online on nature.com before print, June 26, 2017.
2. Snelling, A. Five Mass Extinctions or One Cataclysmic Event? Answers Magazine. Posted on answersingenesis.org February 12, 2017,
accessed June 30, 2017.
3. Sloss, L. 1963. Sequences in the Cratonic Interior of North America. Geological Society of America Bulletin. 74 (2): 93114.
4. Clarey, T. 2015. Reading African Strata. Acts & Facts. 44 (9): 9. Also see: Clarey, T. 2017. South America Shows the Flood Progression. Acts
& Facts. 46 (3): 9. Figure 6 shows the extensive basal Tejas offshore deposition in South America that appears to represent sheet erosion from
Floodwater runoff.
5. Baumgardner, J. 2005. Recent Rapid Uplift of Todays Mountains. Acts & Facts. 34 (3).

Article posted on July 17, 2017.

*Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.