The standard approach to looking at fossils in the geological column is to assume that lower is older. Since the geologic column represents millions of years of Earth's history, then obviously the fossils in each of the layers must be the same age as the layer that they are found in. What is especially interesting is that the fossils do appear to show a progression from the most "simple" of organisms, such as single celled creatures like bacteria, to the most "complex" organisms, such as vertebrates, mammals, and of course humans.

This evolutionary progression seems to be clearly demonstrated in that certain kinds of creatures in the upper layers are rarely if ever seen in lower layers. Many of the layers also show a certain specialization. Some layers contain mostly fish fossils while others contain land-dwelling creatures such as dinosaurs. Since each of these layers seems so specialized it is easy to conclude that one type of creature gave rise to the next type of creature over the course of whatever time it took to form the various layers between them. Radiometric dating and many other techniques are used to support the idea that this transformation process took tens and hundreds of millions of years ...

Surprisingly there are quite a few problems with the geologic column itself being a representation of millions of years of Earth's history. Much of the evidence available seems to point more toward the rapid formation of much of the column. Of course popular science disagrees stating that these layers represent millions of years of history and that the fossils they contain are likewise millions of years old. However, there are just a few problems that might suggest another interpretation ...

Time itself destroys soft tissues as well as DNA and proteins in short order. Current real-time observations suggest that bio-proteins could not remain intact more than a few tens of thousands of years - 100,000 years at the very outside limit of protein decay. The fact that such proteins are found, intact, in bones supposedly older than 65 million years is simply inconsistent with such an assumed age - by many orders of magnitude ...

The fossil evidence clearly supports a catastrophic interpretation for much of the geologic column. In fact, "catastrophists" are becoming the norm, even in mainstream scientific circles that were once staunchly in support of "uniformitarianism." The uniformitarian notion of slow deposition over millions of years of time is no longer accepted by scientists. It is now believed that magnificent catastrophes formed much of the geologic column with the millions of years passing between these catastrophic episodes of deposition ...

Such "current" orientation is found throughout the fossil record, with orientation of fossils being observed over vast areas, sometimes hundreds of thousands of square miles. Although not all fossils show current orientation, a sizable percentage do show such current orientation. Clearly, such orientation on such massive scales as are found throughout the fossil record are not consistent with slow sedimentation and burial, but rapid burial by the heavily silted currents of a large and sometimes massive fluvial event or series of closely spaced events.

Yet another interesting finding concerning petrified trees, is that many of them extend vertically through millions and millions of years of sedimentary rock ...

Another unique fact is that for many land animals, excluding birds and mammals, their footprints are not generally located in the same layer that their bodies are found, but in lower layers.56 Did the footprints evolve before they did? The footprints of dinosaurs, for example, are almost always located in lower levels than the actual fossilized bones of the dinosaur itself ...

As far as the fossilized bones of large animals, such as the dinosaurs and large mammals, they are also generally oriented in the same direction for any given layer, and this is true the world over. Did these animals position themselves in the same direction as they died? ...

Sometimes a large species of dinosaur will be found in a particular layer with almost nothing else in the same layer with this large meat-eating dinosaur. 1 What on earth did the dinosaur live on for millions of years? ...

It seems like the Morrison Formation is, "practically barren of plant fossils throughout most of its sequence." And yet, some of the preserved remains are from very large plant eating dinosaurs. For example, the dinosaur Apatosaurus is thought to have consumed about 3 or 4 tons of vegetation on a daily basis. The relative lack of preserved vegetation makes one wonder how such massive beasts survived in this environment ...