In May 2017, with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), I had to file a lawsuit against the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) and the National Park Service for worldview discrimination because the GCNP was habitually refusing to grant me a research and sampling permit to collect 53 fist-sized rock samples. Within six weeks, the lawsuit was settled. With the permit granted, in early August 2017, we launched a research raft trip through the Grand Canyon to collect those 53 samples. You can read the full story of how that all happened in the Answers magazine article on “The Fight for 53 Rocks.”1 Here, I’ll recount some of that background and condense many of the findings.
The quest to explain the many geologic features within the Grand Canyon never ends, so geologists continue to derive explanations according to their beliefs about the past. But conclusions can never be final, as no one was there to observe the forming of the rock layers that make up the walls of the canyon or the canyon being carved.
Evolutionists puzzle over how and when the plateau was uplifted and how the canyon through it was carved. Within the plateau and at its eastern edge, all the horizontal sedimentary rock layers have been bent (folded), even dramatically in some places. The enigma is that the layers have been bent smoothly. But when it’s bent, solid rock should shatter. So how were these layers folded?
Evolutionary geologists claim that the earliest of these fossil-bearing sedimentary layers, the Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Formation, and Muav Formation, were deposited slowly 499–508 million years ago. Over the next 450 million years, these sand, silt, and lime mud layers were compressed and hardened as more than 10,000 feet of other sediment layers were deposited on top of them. Then 50–60 million years ago, these layers were bent as the plateau was pushed up, along with the Rocky Mountains, as the North American and Pacific tectonic plates shifted slowly. Their view requires that the hardened sandstone, siltstone, and limestone be made flexible by the pressure and heat of the deep burial and the subsequent slow earth movements so they would bend smoothly. This pressure and heat should have metamorphosed the original sedimentary rock layers, changing the minerals, their crystal shapes, and the rock textures.
On the other hand, flood geologists would argue that the Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Formation, and Muav Formation were laid down rapidly in the first month of the biblical global flood cataclysm, only about 4,350 years ago. The more than 10,000 feet of other sedimentary layers were then deposited rapidly through the rest of the flood year. All these layers would have still been wet and relatively soft after about a year under the floodwaters when they were then uplifted to form the plateau. In this short time, the layers bent smoothly without shattering and only subsequently dried out and hardened.2 If this is the case, we should see no metamorphic changes in the rocks.
Did the layers bend slowly under heat and pressure after the sand, silt, and lime mud were deposited and then harden over more than 500 million years? Or did the layers bend less than a year after these sediments were deposited rapidly and then harden at the end of and soon after the yearlong global flood cataclysm only about 4,350 years ago? Each possibility has far-reaching implications regarding our view of earth history. Which possibility matches the data we observe in the rocks themselves?
Which possibility matches the data we observe in the rocks themselves?
To answer these questions, the sampling strategy was crucial. Samples were not only collected from the bends of the folds but also from the closely adjacent limbs of those folds and the same beds miles away from the folds. If the bending had required heat and pressure to make the already-hardened rocks plastic like play dough, then there should be noticeable differences between the samples in the bends of the folds and those samples collected miles away. Conversely, if these rock layers were still soft and wet when the bending occurred, then all the samples should essentially look the same, with the cement that holds the grains together, forming as the rocks dried out and hardened, being undisturbed.
After the August 2017 research trip, the 53 samples were dispatched to the Calgary Rock and Materials Services, Inc., laboratory in Alberta, Canada. There, our colleague Ray Strom followed standard procedures with observable and repeatable tests. First, he cut small pieces off each sample, crushed them, and put them in an X-ray diffractometer, where X-rays pass through the grains’ crystals and scatter (diffract) according to the various minerals. Through this process, we determined both the mineral content of each sample and the amounts of those minerals.
Then, from each sample, Ray cut thin rock slices that he glued to glass microscope slides and ground down until those slices were paper thin and light could pass through them. These thin sections were sent back for me to examine under a geological microscope to identify the mineral grains, their shapes, and the rock textures.
I spent 2,500–3,000 hours systematically examining each thin section, recording details in writing and on photographs from a camera mounted on the microscope, and checking the details against the X-ray diffraction results. Geological research microscopes were also used to obtain high-quality images of selected minerals and textures for publication.
Meanwhile, in his Calgary lab, Ray took further pieces of selected samples, mounted them, and covered them in a very fine coating of gold for insertion under an electron beam in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Whereas a geological microscope views the rocks in two dimensions, the electron beam scanning the samples’ surfaces produces magnified three-dimensional images of them. These images were crucial for studying the rocks’ cements.
I also meticulously researched extensive literature, obtaining copies of every paper, abstract, book chapter, or report written about these rock units and the folding to see what features should be evident in these rocks if they had been slowly bent while they had been made plastic under heat and pressure.
Finally, after three years, it was time to begin collating this voluminous information and write several technical papers to present the research results. In total, seven papers have been published over several years in our online Answers Research Journal, one on each of the three rock units and one on each of the four folds.3
As far as I am aware, there have been few comments from evolutionists. While two critics have jointly written brief web articles that deal unconvincingly with some of the technical issues, most comments have been aimed at my scientific credibility rather than engaging the research results accurately. Perhaps their derogatory comments will increase now that all these papers have been published and the results of this research have appeared in documentaries (for example, Mountains After the Flood) and an upcoming Answers TV program series.
What I saw in Grand Canyon’s outcrops and through the geological and scanning electron microscopes confirms the biblical account. The evidence points to the sand, silt, and lime mud layers being deposited rapidly at the beginning of the global flood and bent when they were still wet and soft at the end of the flood year. What was most astounding was what was seen in the Muav Formation limestone that is bent in the Matkatamiba fold.
The Matkatamiba Fold with the author for scale
Thin limestone beds in the Muav Formation
Worm trails on a limestone bed’s surface
Cross-section through megaripples
Muav limestone under microscope showing the quartz and K-feldspar grains set in the calcite cement (stained pink)
Muav limestone under microscope showing thin edge-on muscovite (mica) flakes, some being bent
SEM image of Muav limestone showing a wedged thin edge-on muscovite (mica) flake
SEM image of Muav limestone showing the interlocking calcite cement grains
Conditions in the history of these limestone layers have not been different during their bending in the Matkatamiba fold compared to the same beds distant from the fold.
All the macroscopic features in the Matkatamiba fold have all been readily replicated by bending soft and wet sediment layers in laboratory experiments. This includes only isolated evidence of minor localized sliding between two laminae, with no surface scratches that should be there if the laminae were cemented hard before such localized sliding. The minor cracks are due to shrinkage when the limestones dried out.
Thus, there is no macroscopic or microscopic evidence consistent with the conventional explanation that this fold was produced by ductile (plastic) deformation under low-pressure, low-temperature metamorphic conditions over millions of years some 450 million years after deposition and cementation of the Muav Formation.
None of the evidence supports the evolutionary idea that the folding occurred 50 million years ago, 450 million years after these sediment layers were deposited and cemented. Instead, it is overwhelmingly consistent with the layers being deposited rapidly at the beginning of the global flood cataclysm year. The bending of the still-wet, soft layers occurred only months later at the end of the flood year when the plateau was uplifted. The layers cemented to hardened rocks as they dried out at the end of and after the flood. Furthermore, no evidence points to any metamorphic changes in the layers or their mineral grains, either in the folds or miles away from the folds. Thus, at least 500 million years of claimed geologic history are eliminated.
This research has confirmed convincingly that the Grand Canyon’s layers were deposited violently during the yearlong global flood cataclysm only about 4,350 years ago.
After a four-year battle with GCNP and seven more years of painstaking research, was it worth all that time and work? Absolutely! This research has confirmed convincingly that the Grand Canyon’s layers were deposited violently during the yearlong global flood cataclysm only about 4,350 years ago, and it demonstrates the short time between the deposition of the layers and the folding—eliminating the possibility of 500 million years.
Flood geology research may be painstaking, but the dividends provide a powerful apologetic to defend the truth of God’s Word. These findings thus remove stumbling blocks to the presentation of the everlasting gospel to those who need rescuing from the judgment they face when they meet their Creator (Hebrews 9:27).
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