I used to take students
into this particular region. And so there are rocks
all over the place that contain fossils
of other parts of those trees that we saw…. Right. …before. This rock right here
is… has got some fossils of the roots of those trees. You have the root structure here
coming off of it — rootlets. There is a second root here, with rootlets coming
off of that. Rootlets going off
in that direction. So we've got roots, we've already seen bark;
if you search around you'll find all sorts of other kinds
of parts of plants here. For example, we've
got fossil leaves. They're not the same kind
of plant as these. This is a different type
of plant from that same forest, but in the process
of… see the shiny stuff is actually the actual
leaf material… oh my goodness, …preserved. You got the leaves going in all
sorts of different directions. So it's a different
type of leaf, but you… you're
getting pictures, if you wish, of not just the lycopods
that made the floating mats, but all sorts
of other kinds of plants. Yeah. When you put all this
together — all sorts of plants of different types — you begin to get a picture of the ecosystem that
these things were formed in. So this is a picture
of that Ante-Deluvian world. Right. And the… either the lushness, or whatever that is,
these are plants from that time. Yes, yes. What else do we know
about that world from a plant perspective? Well, there'd be
some plants that were — I love these fossils; they look very much
like fern fossils, or fern leaves — and they'd be laid out like you would put
these plants into a book, and it's flattened
and really, really nice. And these fossils —
they're not bent, they're not broken. They're not even folded
over in themselves. They're just as
flat as could be. How does that happen? Well, that's an
interesting question because … like this is
a plant — a fern — here. How do we get the fern to be
perfectly flat on a surface? It doesn't grow that way, even. So what do you do? You dump mud on top of it, and smash it down; you're going
to get things folded. Right. You're going to
get things broken, but if you look at these fossils
they're not that way. They're all spread out
just flat as can be and with great intricacy. Okay, so this is a mystery. How in the world
did this happen? It's a mystery. And I didn't understand
it for a while, until actually I was
in college and learned about… learned a little bit about plants and something
called turgor pressure. We've all had plants
in the house that have… we haven't watered in a while and we should have
and the little plant goes [sound effect]. Right. And then you put
water in the thing and it straightens back
up again; it gets stiff. The reason for that is because plants are built
differently than animals in a variety of ways. One is around each cell — which doesn't exist
in an animal — is a cell wall. It's kind of a hard cubicle
that the cell is in. And if the cell pulls in a bunch
of water and swells up and pushes against the side
of that cubicle, it stiffens the whole plant. If the cell shrinks
because it's lost water, it pulls away from those cell
walls, so walls get weak and it turns over. Turgor pressure is where the water comes in
and stiffens the whole plant so it can straighten up. Turns out that you could, for example, take one
of these leaves and break it off and toss it into water, and it won't do it immediately, but in time these leaves
will flatten out. And then, if it happens
to get water logged and fall down to the bottom, it's going to be
this very flat structure. Now what happens if a dead leaf
— it's already dead — falls off the tree
and goes into the water? That never flattens out. Why is that? Because the cells
have already died. Oh. The cells have burst, and turgor pressure
doesn't work. So that water does not move
inside the cell. So you can't take dead leaves and create
these beautiful flat leaves. That means…. They have to be alive. …that these leaves
have got to be alive at the time they're ripped
off of their origin. They've got to be floated
for a certain amount of time — for at least hours — in water and then deposited in water to end up
so flat as this. So we've got… we're now
starting to get a picture of the process necessary to get
this… the leaves to this state. We are destroying an ecosystem
by water — Biblical Flood — carrying those plants
over a great distance, and depositing them into this… kind
of an environment like this. Then what kind
of plants do we find? We find a strange set of plants. We are looking at this…
these roots here, and these roots are hollow roots
with hollow rootlets and hollow stems. These are trees
that are only made of bark. Very strange trees. Yes. The trees are designed, it seems, to actually
float in water. This led to Joachim Scheven
in the early 80s to suggest that the coal plants
were actually part of a floating forest that existed on a large body
of water before the Flood, and that they were
destroyed in the Flood. Now I didn't know anything
about his particular theory. I was kind of interested in another issue
which is not just the fossil, not just the trees, but all the fossil plants
because in the fossil record, it turns out, that when I went
through school — learning about paleontology, about fossils — I was told
by evolutionists the order of the fossils in the record
corresponds to evolution. Right. And so one of the
first things I did, when I had the opportunity,
was test that hypothesis. What is the order
predicted by evolution, and what is the order that you actually find
in the fossil record, specifically of when the order
that the kingdoms come in, the order that the phyla
come in, the order that the classes come in, the order of the orders… that
the orders come in? And I found that for shallow, marine invertebrates —
which is 95 percent of the fossil record —
the record doesn't correspond… major groups of organisms don't
appear in the fossil record in the order evolution predicts. Ninety-five percent of the time
there's no correlation. So in science, usually, when we say we've explained
95 percent no need to go any further,
we've explained enough. But for a… for a while
I was wondering about that other 5 percent. What about the ones
that actually do, and what, actually,
is in the right order? The things that turn out to be in the right order
are the best example. If I was an evolutionist
I'd jump on the plants. The major groups of plants — 12 of the 13 are in exactly
the order evolution predicts. Order in the fossil record? Fossil record. They come into the fossil record
as groups of plants in the order evolution
would say they should come if they arose by evolution. So I became intrigued with that. What could explain this
in terms of a Flood? I'm not believing in evolution. How do I get that order? And I I remembered as
a kid having an experience on a quaking bog, which is a mat of vegetation
that grows over water. Okay. And… I was 12 years old
at the time; it was really cool. We got out of the car. We walked through the forest
and, man, we were walking up the steep paths and down
and all… up and down, up and down, and all of a sudden
the path got really flat. It was a sudden transition from…
but still the same woods, same trees, all
that sort of thing, but very, very flat. We walked down about 100 feet
into this flat stuff. The guy that was with us said,
okay now everyone grab hands. So there are 12 or 13
of us there, we all grabbed hands. What in the world
is this guy doing? And he says, okay now we got to get
this all in sync: everybody's got to jump up
and down at the same time. Like what is he doing? So it took quite a while to get 13 people to jump
up at the same time and land at the same time. So like a big jump rope I guess. But when we got into sync, I realized I hit the ground
and the ground moved. The ground went down, and when I went up,
I pushed off — the ground continued to go down. When I went up, I came back down —
the ground was on its way up. And I met it, and I realized we're pushing
the ground up and down. It was bouncing. We're in a circle
so it was creating, basically, a wave — if you throw
something into water and you see those round
waves move away from it. Every time we push down
and then came up, that hump where produced
would move out from us, like a wave through water —
through the ground! Okay. And as it did, these plants, which were standing up straight,
would sway as it moved. And it got to trees
and the trees would move. And I realized
as we're continuing to move up and down — we've got
these concentric circles — we must be on water. Right. This must be a forest sitting
right on top of water. It's called a quaking bog. If you look at a quaking
bog it's something that grows away from the shore
— grows out into open water. There are certain types
of plants which go out first, which are little guys. And then there are bigger plants
that grow after them, and bigger ones, and bigger ones; and they get thicker
and thicker layer of peat, there, that they're growing on. We continued that walk from there; as we went out
towards the center of — what I didn't know at
that time was actually a lake…. it got thinner and thinner. So you didn't need
the whole group; you could individually…
you could create these waves. Get a little bit further
and you realize each… each step was pressing the ground. It's like, uh…. That'd be weird. … I'm a little … I'm a little
concerned about this. Right, yeah. And I realize at some point
this is a little too mushy. I'm a bipedal organism. I don't think it's good for me
to… You don't belong here. …to be in this position, so I got in my hands and knees
to spread my weight out, and even my elbows
are moving… Get out further, and the trees are gone
and now we're talking about shorter bushes
— tall bush cranberries — then we got into short bush
cranberries and and blueberries, and this sort of thing. By now I am flat. I'm afraid I'm going to go
through and, you know, I can never find my way back up. Eventually, I got to where I'm
not going on any further. This is getting thinner —
open water out there. This is something
that grows out over water, small plants to large plants. And you can actually
float entire forests. So I realized, when I looked back
at the fossil record, what if you had a huge floating
forest — not growing out over the land but actually
floating — on the ocean? And that these
various strange plants that we have
in the fossil record — these hollow trees that are designed
to be light enough to float — what if they make up
the center portion, the old portion of the forest? And then you have smaller plants
designed to… Right. ...to grow out at concentric
circles away from it. And I realized that if there was such
a thing before the Flood, the floodwaters with
the big waves would begin to destroy the forest
from the outside in; it would first destroy
the little guys, and then the bigger ones,
the bigger ones, and finally destroy
the center portion with the big trees. And what that would show
underneath the forest — at the bottom here — is you'd
first have the little plants…. Right. …and then the bigger plants
and the bigger plants. You'd have that order. And so when you look
at the fossil record of the plants — those 13 groups of plants
— it turns out two things. Their design is such that
as you go up the column, they are more and more
independent of standing water. The ones… the first
ones you get need standing water to reproduce. They actually have sperm
and eggs that swim towards each other. And as you go up you
get to drier plants. You also go from small
plants to big plants. And the thing that always
mystified me about the plants: you find them in marine sediments mixed
with marine organisms. Like why in the world
are plants — I asked my professors why
in the world are plants — found with marine organisms? Well, they must have floated
down the rivers in the creeks and ended up in the ocean. I said I'm having
a hard time understanding how that works. Maybe they were there
in the beginning. But if, in fact, it's a marine system
of a whole — I'm going to suggest a continent-
size floating forest…. Wow. …that existed — the size
of North America, let's say — floating
on the ocean before the Flood, with all these plants
that seem so weird to us. They're mostly extinct today. And thinking about it, if the Flood destroyed
it there's no way that forest could regrow on
the oceans following the Flood because they're too uneven — they're too… it's too choppy. So once it's destroyed,
it's destroyed. So the reason that most
of these plants are extinct is because that ecosystem
could never rebuild itself. And that began a series of investigations
on my part to say, if that ecosystem was unusual
before the Flood, is it possible there are others? And I began to realize that just about
everywhere I turn, I'm looking at groups
of organisms that are unique. Oh, and by the way, the fun thing about
the floating forest that I didn't realize
right away — I didn't think about
the animals at first because I was trying to explain
the fossil record of the plants. And then I thought,
wait a minute! What about the… what
about the animals? And I remembered crawling
around on that mat? Thinking, what kind
of organisms would God create that would be especially
designed for that mat? I don't think bipedal organisms
are best designed. I think we need organisms that can spread
their weight out, that sit low to the ground. And, in fact,
maybe at the edge of this, where it's much too thin
for anything to be on top of it, what if you had an animal
that could float, keep… buoy its body up by water
but actually have little legs that it could run
around on this… that would be perfectly
designed for it. Now if the Flood destroyed
the forest from the outside in, it's going to des … it's going to bury
these animals in that order. So you'd expect
fish to be outside where the forest isn't, and the edge of the forest going
to have maybe fishopods — fish that can actually swim but they've got
these funny little legs — that can run around on this thin mat that nothing
else could run around on. And then further in you'd have a very broad…
which you could, potentially, have very large but
broadly distributed weight of an amphibian, which… what we find
is labyrinthodont amphibians which are really big, but low-lying in
their weight spread. And so you'd have a sequence of animals that corresponds
to the sequence of plants, and all of a sudden we've
explained the fossil record…. Right. …of the… what looks like evolution of fish
to fishopods to amphibians to pure land animals, but in fact is explained
by this… the destruction of this floating forest. So we have an ecosystem, first of all looking at plants —
and a very strange one for us today, but a big floating
continent of forests; but it has all kinds
of plants in it. And that, then, corresponds to an ecosystem
of animals as you're saying. Well, that… so… that would mean that we have
these unique communities, then, that are part
of this antedeluvian world. Yeah, we have a dinosaur
community, for example. So there's a special set
of animals and plants that make up a biome —
an ecosystem made of both plants and animals —
a huge biome that's unique; that's different from
all the others. Kurt, this sounds like this antediluvian world
here was remarkable. I mean it had… it was lush. It had all of these biomes. That's a reflection
of the creation even though it's now
past the period of the fall. Yeah. What I see as I've discovered more and more
biomes is I'm understanding that this world before
the Flood was more diverse than the present world. It's… we have a God who as the Triune God —
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit —
who loves variety and he just creates
a variety of things. So I'm beginning to understand that he's probably created
not just one continent before the Flood, but multiple continents: each continent having
a different biome, and just all sorts
of really cool biomes that we just don't have today. One of them is
this floating forest — which is certainly unique — but I've speculated
on some others like a hot spring biome
with bacterial reefs, reefs not of corals
and that sort of thing, but of bacteria of all things. It's just wild things. So the world seems to be
one of great variety and what happened
in this incredible event of the Flood is, it seems to have picked up
entire biomes and carried them great distances, and then buried them together
so that you get the plants and the animals that live
together, buried together, and in the… So you end up
with these sequential layers with different biomes, not different times
in earth history, with different… You're right. …plants and animals, but you're actually looking
at different places on the same world. So go through a traditional
natural history museum and you're getting
these dioramas of, supposedly, different times
in earth history. No, just rethink it. This is a different place on that world that existed
before the Flood — "the world that then was, it being overflowed
with water perished." So that when you go
into the various rooms of such museums and see
these different snapshots, different places in the world —
a travelogue of the world that existed at
the time of Noah, not a history of the earth. As you just said, that just is so
reflective of a God who is so not only creative, but even within his own nature
bears this diversity and yet unity — all bound up
in these wonderful biomes. What a great picture! So that's the picture
of the pre-Flood world. What about the picture
of the world after the Flood? Well, that period that follows the Flood —
that recovery period — we've got a little bit
of evidence of it here, but there's a place
I'll show you which has got… it's a little more obvious. Okay. We can talk about that period
following the Flood. All right. So let's take a gander at that. All right. I'm on your six again.
