The Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky is literally built on trillions of dead things. This fact would seem to support Ken Ham’s popular response to what we would expect had the world been subject to a global flood: “Billions of dead things in rock layers…” But the fossils that form the foundation of his Ark park tell a different story.
The rock that is exposed at the surface of the 800 acres that the Ark Encounter occupies is Ordovician Period limestones and other marine deposits. These same rock types are exposed over an area from central Kentucky up into southern Ohio and a bit of Indiana. And it contains fossils. Lots and lots of fossils! Below I estimate at least 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) macrofossils and uncountable numbers of microfossils are preserved in the rock underneath the Ark Encounter theme park alone.
When I visited the Ark Encounter in July of 2016 I took some time to examine some of the outcrops of bedrock in the park and freeway road-cut nearby. Below are a few pictures I took of some of those rocks showing the types of fossils that the contain.
Many rocks on the Ark Encounter property are loaded with brachiopods.
Bryozoans are also very plentiful.
This rock has a very high density of a mixture of brachiopods, bryozoans and crinoids.
This rock is composed almost entirely of fossilized shells, most of which are broken pieces. Such a composition is typical of what one might expect near a shoreline in the tidal zone, where massive numbers of shells tend to accumulate.
The rock layer directly beneath the Ark Encounter is limestone. This limestone consists of countless tiny shells from microorganisms (Forams vs diatoms: testing the young earth flood geology hypothesis)and larger fossils. Over 1000 feet of limestone rock underlie the Ark Encounter, but our focus will be on the fossilized shells (brachiopods), crinoids, sponges, bryozoans, and trilobites present in the upper 300 feet of this limestone formation, which is exposed in the northern Kentucky region.
Above is a longitudinal cross-section of a geological formation called the Cincinnati Arch which brings the Ordovician Period rock formations to the surface in central Kentucky up into southern Indiana and Ohio. In places there is several hundred feet of Ordovician fossil-bearing limestones and other marine rocks exposed in road cuts and river valleys. But even below the Ohio River there is over 1000 feet of additional Ordovician Limestone. Much of this rock contains fossils as well. Below this rock is the Knox Super Group with is dolomitic rock which contains many fewer fossils.
This Ordovician limestone can be found buried deep below the entire Midwest region and all the way out into the plains states. But let’s just focus on the area where the rocks are exposed at the surface in the Cincinnati Arch and where the fossils in them are exposed for everyone to see.
Macrofossils below the Ark Encounter property:
Just how many fossils are there beneath the Ark Encounter? If we consider the microfossils that constitute much of the limestone, the numbers would indeed be astronomical. It’s conceivable that septillions upon septillions of organisms are represented in the rock beneath the Ark Encounter. However, we will confine our estimate to macrofossils (those 1/4-inch or larger).
The Ark Encounter occupies 800 acres of land. With one acre equaling 43,560 square feet, 800 acres total 34,848,000 square feet.
To estimate the number of fossils in the rocks below the Ark Encounter, we’ll begin with a rock layer that has a moderate density of fossils. In one square foot of rock with moderate fossil content, I estimate there to be 40 small fossil shells, crinoids, and bryozoans distributed horizontally. Vertically, the fossils primarily lie flat, with at least 20 layers of fossilized shells discernible within a foot of thickness.
This analysis reveals that there are 400 fossils within one cubic foot of space. The region features a 30-foot-thick layer of fossil-rich rock, extending across the entire area, topped by an additional 100 to 300 feet of rock layers. Some of these layers contain locally dense fossil deposits. A highly conservative calculation suggests that at least 40 feet of medium-density fossil-bearing rock lies beneath the Ark Encounter site. This translates to 800 shells per cubic foot, multiplied by 40 cubic feet, or 32,000 shells for every 30 cubic feet. Multiplying this figure by the Ark Encounter’s surface area (34.848 million square feet) yields 1,115,136,000,000 shells. Thus, we round this number down to a total of approximately 1 trillion fossils.
In conclusion, the Ark Encounter is built upon a foundation containing over 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) macrofossils, alongside innumerable smaller fossils.
It’s crucial to note that the fossils found here are not a random assortment of organisms; they exclusively represent marine species, all of which are now extinct. This includes entire groups of organisms, such as trilobites, which are no longer in existence. This detail is significant because the Ark Encounter promotes the belief that a cataclysmic, worldwide Flood engulfed all animals and plants, burying them in sediment to rapidly fossilize them.
However, the fossil record beneath the Ark Encounter contradicts this narrative. There is no evidence of any mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, or even plants being preserved within these rocks. The question arises: How could a global flood, purportedly covering the entire Earth, deposit trillions of shells, layered hundreds of feet deep, while completely excluding all land-dwelling organisms?
How many fossils are preserved in regional Ordovician rocks?
If there are a trillion fossils beneath an 800-acre property, how many might there be in the upper Ordovician rocks of central Kentucky, southern Indiana, and Ohio? I estimate the area of exposed Ordovician period rock in this region to be approximately 80 x 100 miles, or 8,000 square miles. Given that there are 5,280 feet in a mile, squaring this figure yields 27,878,400 square feet per square mile. Multiplying this by the area where Ordovician rock is exposed (8,000 square miles) gives us a total of 223,027,200,000 square feet for the region. For conservatism, let’s round this down to 200 billion square feet.
We have already calculated a minimum number of fossils preserved immediately below the Ark Encounter in the Ordovician limestone. This number is 32,000 fossils, the size of a small shell per square foot, based on a modest estimate from extracting fossils from a core sample of one square foot.
Having observed fossils in numerous road cuts across southern Ohio and northern Kentucky, I can confirm that the fossil density at the Ark Encounter site is not unusual. Numerous cores taken across the region for geological surveys have also shown dense layers of fossils throughout the limestone. Therefore, it’s reasonable to extend our per-square-foot estimate of fossils beyond the Ark Encounter location.
By multiplying the total area (200 billion square feet) by the number of fossils per square foot (32,000), we arrive at 6.4 quadrillion macrofossils. I believe this estimate is conservative, and it would not be surprising if there were tens of quadrillions of fossils in these rocks.
Imagining quadrillions of fossils is daunting. To provide some perspective, the Earth’s surface is approximately 197 million square miles, or about 5.5 quadrillion square feet. Thus, the Cincinnati Arch limestone could cover the Earth’s surface with at least one shell-sized fossil per square foot. While this might initially seem unimpressive, considering the quadrillions of fossils in Kansas, the quintillions in Wyoming, and so on, it becomes evident that the fossil record’s density suggests an average of thousands of fossils beneath each square foot of the Earth’s surface.
What are the implications of this number crunching exercise?
Fossils are incredible abundant! In fact, far too abundant for the young-earth narrative of earth’s history. As we saw in an earlier post looking at fossils in Wyoming (Quadrillions, Quintillions and Beyond: The Vast Fossil Record Refutes the Global Flood Narrative). Can the implications of such vast numbers of fossils be any more clear? And it isn’t just the number of fossils but the distribution pattern of these fossils that the young earth narrative can’t explain. The quadrillions of fossils here are not very diverse. There are a limited number of species and what is not found here is also important. For example, there are no diatoms in these Ordovician limestone (Diatoms: Tiny Organisms Highlight Big Inconsistencies in Young Earth Flood Geology). These and other missing fossils can’t be explained by a global flood.
If you are stunned by these numbers because you have believed a global flood was responsible for all the fossils you are probably wondering, what is the creation science response to this? Some YECs will posit that the enormous number of shells are the remains of organisms that lived and died between Creation (6000 years ago) and the Flood (4350 years ago) and all got deposited together in the Flood. They may also suggest that growing conditions were better before the Flood resulting in more rapid growth of crinoids and bivalves. Even if this was a plausible explanation- which it isn’t – for the fossils found under the Ark Encounter these hypotheses fail to explain the the rest of the fossil record such as the belemnites in Wyoming (Wyoming Fossils: Coming to Grips with the Absurdity of the Flood Geology Model).
The big picture
Putting it all together, I am confident that I have significantly underestimated the number of fossil shells from the Midwest region. It seems that the fossils in this area likely represent only a tiny fraction of the total fossil shells found in rocks worldwide. Considering that many of these organisms might have lived and died before a global flood, it is difficult to comprehend the abundance of these organisms living and dying within only 2,000 years. Moreover, it is puzzling why they would all be found in such abundance in discrete layers of rock, particularly above dolomite, which contains far fewer fossils.
Taking the volume of fossil estimates further, one estimate I encountered suggests that the total carbon in Earth’s limestone is 6.42 x 10^22 grams. This figure is staggeringly higher than the estimated 3 x 10^17 grams of carbon in all living things within the entire biosphere, being 214,000 times more. Even if this estimate is exaggerated by a factor of 100, it would still mean there is 2,140 times more carbon in limestone than currently exists in the biosphere. Consider the sheer amount of living matter today, and then imagine there being 2,140 times that amount. It is truly astonishing. Furthermore, this discussion pertains only to limestone, not including the vast quantities of oil, countless diatoms in rocks, or any other animal deposits.
The fossil record, with its abundance of shells and other fossils, cannot be adequately explained as having originated in the brief period between creation and a global flood, according to the Young Earth Creationism (YEC) chronology. The existence of these fossils, their types, and their stratigraphic positions directly contradict the narrative of a recent global flood. Consequently, it is not surprising that Christians seeking to reconcile their faith with scientific understanding have explored other Biblically-consistent interpretations of these fossils.
I will conclude with additional images of fossils I collected from a road-cut, just a few hundred yards away from the Ark Encounter property.
The article was originally published on Nov 11, 2016.
Naturalis Historia 
When it comes to the extensive fossil record of marine fossils, I assume flood geology would say that most (not all) of the individual creatures that died and were fossilised since Earth was formed would have been killed during the flood – Genesis 7 stating “On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights” (maybe – like the floodgates of rain – the springs were bursting for forty days though it’s not crystal clear; the Bible implies that during the next 110 days or indeed the rest of the flood ‘year’ the weather was either dry or not continually wet).
From this blog post and others it would appear that there are probably way too many marine fossils for this to be the case (and if the flood is the main cause of the fossil record it also somehow took marine fossils hundreds of miles inland to eg the Himalaya).
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Considering the truly vast numbers of fossils in the region of the Ark Park, it is interesting that after 150 years of collecting Ordovician fossils in the area by thousands of geologists and amateurs, not one fragment of a teleost fish, reptile, amphibian, or mammal has ever been found in these rocks. Not the teeniest, tiniest morsel of any terrestrial vertebrates has ever been found. Clearly, conditions for the preservation of hard parts like teeth or otoliths were excellent. Yet they are absolutely missing. Further, there has never been found any specimen or fragment of any species alive in today’s oceans. Lastly, there are no traces of any terrestrial life of any kind. No leaves, seeds, insects, or even a single grain of pollen. If there had been a global maelstrom as described in the bible, and if the land at the time of this incredibly powerful and destructive flood was inhabited by people and animals and plants familiar to us today, the flood would have rained pieces of all of those things down on the ocean sediments and at least fragmentary evidence would have been preserved. If one takes a sediment core from the floor of the modern oceans, even from 100 miles out to sea, evidence of terrestrial life is common. Pollen is found in almost every core, clear evidence of land plants. If all of the Ordovician fossils were deposited by the “Noachian Deluge” as claimed by Answers in Genesis, the rocks would be full of evidence of terrestrial life. However, none exists… not one iota. In other words, there was no terrestrial life on Earth when the rocks of the Cincinnatian were deposited, and none of the species alive today were alive back then. This is incontrovertible evidence that the Bible is not literally true and that the flood described therein never happened.
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Very well put. The diversity of fossils in the Ordovician is very limited and so even if you just consider marine organisms there are so many missing groups here. Missing pollen is absolutely evidence against a global flood. I find the lack of diatoms to be similarly strong evidence. I didn’t even mention that this same Ordovician limestone flora can be found on most continents and they all lack all the elements you suggest so that makes the flood scenario even more unbelievable.
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“Like” all the above – and the big numbers are clearly & overwhelmingly explained. I would add that the amount of carbon (as carbon dioxide) in Earth’s pre-Flood ecosystems (atmosphere & oceans) just waiting after Creation to be trapped to make coal & oil in the AiG scenario (and marine shells) would have made for a too-acid ocean and a Venus-hot atmosphere. This is INcredible – sad to say.
You might want to help me explain this to the guys at: Lutheran Science Institute (which see). Their blog of October 17 would have it that fast burial (in Flood time) could explain the perfect preservation of Grube Messel fossils – a volcanic lake ecosystem in Deep Time. It’s on Wiki, and already in the February 2000 National Geographic. Even main-line YECs have oped for a post-Flood subtropical Germany before their ice age kicks in, but LSI walks alone here. So now I’m asking them: What did such creatures eat in the time that it took to hike here across blasted land (in your scenario) all the way from Mt. Cudi (NNW of Mosul) to get buried at the Messel Pit? And why no C-14 in the mix?
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As for the large quantities of CO2 you mention, please understand that Carbon was trapped in biologic systems over a lot of time. So the life forms themselves can show that the CO2 levels were not hugely different than what we see now. However, when CO2 went up a lot, something was always around to make use of it.
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There’s also the problem that the Ark is covered in bitumen pitch. The same peculiar term that appears in the Gilgamesh epic, and which refers to the bitumen found bubbling up to the surface in Mesopotamia, is used in the Genesis story as well. However, this bitumen was produced by ancient buried algae deposits — which Creationists would have us believe didn’t exist until the Flood.
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Not to mention it’s only marine organisms. Even assumed the flood carried them there, where are the remains of all those terrestrial creatures supposedly drowned in the waters?
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There’s a minor error or two in the paragraph beginning, “Taking the volume of fossil estimates one step further,”…
The “less minor” one is a missing factor of 10 in your arithmetic: 100 x 214 = 21,400, NOT 214,000; if the “estimate is overestimated by [only!] a whopping 100 times”, the carbon content of the earth’s limestone would be 2,140 times that of the biosphere today!
The very minor error is one of notation. Exponents should be indicated by carets (^) rather than underscores (which rather indicate subscripts), so “6.42 x 10_22” & “3 x 10_17” should be “6.42 x 10^22” & “3 x 10^17”. ;)
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Thanks for catching those. I will make the corrections.
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How old are the fossils? I find it curious that no where do you mention that.
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Hi, thanks for pointing that out. I talk about the fossils all being in Ordovician Period rock but should have put the ages of those rocks for those that don’t know the geological column. Those rocks are considered to be 485 million to 443 million years old but conventional dating methods.
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Another small error –
” So that would be 800 shells per cubit foot x 40 cubit feet or 32000 shells per 30 cubic feet. ”
I got a chuckle, but I think you meant CUBIC feet, not CUBIT feet.
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Ha yes. Thanks for that catch. Will fix. Must have been thinking about the Ark dimensions at the time:-)
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“That gives us 400 fossils in one cubit foot”.
Love the Egyptian unit of measure that crept in there.
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ah, yes, I must have had the ark dimensions in mind as well. That is the second place I did that. Will fix, though maybe I should just leave that one there.
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