Seashells in the Mountains

Leonardo da Vinci went on a hike in the Italian mountains. He discovered huge banks of sea shells. He concluded that the bible must be wrong. How do modern scientists explain this?

There are great continental tectonic plates that move very slowly, floating on the molten core of the earth. When two plates smash into each other, they push up and form a mountain range. The process is very slow, but with satellite laser surveying, it can be measured. Areas that were once the bottoms of seas are sometimes thrust up to become mountains.

On the bottom of the sea, each year, creatures living that year fall to the bottom and a tiny fraction of them fossilize. The process may continue over a million years or so. During this time the creatures change, according to evolutionary pressure. That is why you find the layers finely sorted in evolutionary order.

How do Christians explain this? They say Noah’s flood washed the shells to the top of every mountain. There are three problems with this.

  1. You don’t find shells at the top of every mountain.
  2. It does not explain why the shells at the top of mountains are layered precisely in evolutionary order.
  3. It does not explain why the Burgess Shales got millions of trilobites, but no seashells.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)