Amber Fossils: Comparing Explanations

Explaining a fossil’s history is not an observation;
it is an inference from assumptions

 

 

Animals trapped in amber: they are among the most stunning of all fossils. They seem to give us windows into the past. One can imagine a beetle, fly or even a lizard or bird becoming trapped in the sticky ooze of tree sap. The resin hardens over time, leaving the actual creature imprisoned in its translucent prison.

The observer, however, is not looking at the past. He or she is looking at a present object, because photons from the amber are impinging on the retina of the observer in real time. The past is being inferred. Every reasonable observer believes that the fossil had a history; that is not at issue. The question is what was the history. For that, inferences must be made, and those will depend on assumptions: how long ago did the fossil form? What were the environmental conditions at the time? Were those conditions the same as now, or very different?

Additional observations can be brought to bear on the inference:

• Where the fossil was found
• Where similar fossils are found around the world
• Nature of the rock strata above and below the fossil
• How similar the creature is to modern, living creatures
• The chemistry of the resin compared to resin from living trees
• Whether the type of tree can be determined from its resin
• Isotope ratios in the resin compared to those in fresh resin
• The behavior of amber in different environmental conditions (e.g., it floats in seawater, but not in freshwater)
• Tests of how long it takes for tree sap to harden
• Statistics about the diversity of organisms found in amber inclusions
• Observations of modern creatures becoming stuck in tree sap

From such observations, one can constrain the set of reasonable inferences. One can never recreate the history exactly, though, because that history has flowed under the bridge of observation. The best way to convince others of one’s explanation is to honestly acknowledge one’s starting assumptions, and to debate the explanation with others who have different explanations.

Today we will do that with explanations of amber fossils. We will look at a newly published paper that explains them with assumptions of millions of years of evolution, then consider a drastic alternative: that amber fossils formed in one year in a global flood only thousands of years ago. Readers can judge which explanation is most reasonable at explaining all the observations.

Amber and the Cretaceous Resinous Interval (Delclòs et al., Earth-Science Reviews, Aug 2023 issue). Evolutionists rule the secular journals, so they get free rein in publishing their ideas without having to consider alternatives. This paper with 38 co-authors, mostly from Spain, argues for the existence of a “Cretaceous Resinous Interval” (CREI), a period they judge to have been 54 million years long, during which the bulk of amber fossils formed. We’ll look at their supports for this time frame, but it raises the question of why amber fossils are lacking before and after that interval. That question is asked in a press release:

Why do we find so much amber in Cretaceous rocks? (University of Barcelona, 7 July 2023). This article, featuring first author of the paper Xavier Delclòs and colleague Enrique Peñalver, weaves a story about what the earth was like during the presumed CREI. Unsurprisingly, evolution is a key part of the explanation. Since skeptics of Deep Time are censored, the two can speak glibly about millions of years without fear of challenge. Nevertheless, the evolutionists seem mystified by some details.

The Cretaceous, a period extending from 145.5 to 66 million years ago, represents a time of rapid evolutionary change and diversification of organisms. Today, the dominant conditions that in the Cretaceous allowed the mass formation of abundant resin deposits all over the planet are not present, nor is it known why there was, at the time of the dinosaurs, such an extremely abundant production of resin.

“For about 54 million years, and for the first time in Earth’s history, there was a mass production of resin by plants, and we still don’t know why“, Delclòs and Peñalver point out. “Production quantities that could have formed fossil resin deposits of what we know today as amber had never been reached. From the Barremian to the Campanian [about 58 million years within the Cretaceous], and thanks to the conditions existing on the planet, certain groups of conifers were able to originate large deposits of fossil resin that open a real window to the ecosystems of the past and today provide very important palaeobiological information. We have called this time span the Cretaceous Resinous Interval (CREI)”.

The paper, being open access, can be checked for reasonableness of the “scenario” they present. One must guard against reifying the CREI, though, because it is a function of the assumptions made. It exists only in the imagination of the authors, based on their worldview. Giving it an acronym does not make it historical.

To explain why amber is not found throughout the rock record, they have to account for special conditions in the proposed CREI. Some of those explanations of unique conditions seem forced. For instance, conifers are abundant today as they were then, so why propose that “certain groups of conifers were able to originate large deposits of fossil resin” during the CREI but not now? Postulating conifers at higher latitudes does not help, because many of the most abundant deposits, as in Myanmar, are at temperate or equatorial latitudes. One cannot always tell from the chemistry of amber which species produced them. They discuss existence of amber fossils after the CREI in the so-called Cenozoic Era, but can only offer suggestions as to why the CREI was a time of uniquely massive amber production. For example, based on charcoal associated with amber deposits, they infer the existence of volcanoes and wildfires during their “scenario.” But surely wildfires and volcanoes continue into the present.

“In the atmosphere there were high levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) due to intense volcanism, but also of oxygen (O₂) due to the great extension of forests to latitudes now covered by ice, a feature that also enhances large-scale fires“, Delclòs and Peñalver note.

In this scenario, the CREI emerges as a global phenomenon, with amber outcrops distributed everywhere during the Cretaceous, and concentrated especially in Laurasia and the northern margin of Gondwana. Environmental factors may have affected on a global scale, while biological factors — interaction between plants and arthropods, etc. — may have acted on a regional scale.

So the conditions were global, they agree. The paper lists eight possible reasons for exceptional amber production during the CREI (see quote at bottom*). The trouble with multiple causation, though, is one never knows which one is the most important, and it gives the impression of “covering the bases” because no one cause seems sufficient on its own. That’s why they begin, “The potential causal factors for the CREI are complex and interrelated.”

At the end of the paper, they leave the reader on a less than confident note, hoping that “understanding” will be delivered in the next shipment of futureware:

Our multidisciplinary approach will hopefully stimulate future research efforts aimed at elucidating past dynamics between the geosphere and the biosphere. Increased knowledge of when, how and why the CREI occurred will shed light on its global impact for Cretaceous terrestrial ecology and the establishment of modern terrestrial ecosystems. The exceptionally preserved record trapped in resin during the Cretaceous Resinous Interval is crucial to unravel the evolutionary history of many key terrestrial lineages, including plants, arthropods, and vertebrates, and for understanding life in a moment of critical change for terrestrial ecosystems at the transition from the Mesozoic to the Cenozoic.

The authors do admit, however, some facts amenable to a global flood explanation. They know that amber floats in seawater, and that some of the massive deposits of amber on four continents (New Jersey, Myanmar, Brazil, Congo) appear to have formed in “high salinity conditions” when oceans were warmer than they are today. They also note that “The association of amber-bearing deposits with coal (lignite) or other rocks rich in organic matter suggests episodes of inland environments flooded by marine transgression.” Speaking of floods, they also state, “Extensive regions were flooded, which produced the remobilization of abundant resin stored in the soils due to erosion resulting from the transgressions, establishing new areas of shallow deposition, reducing terrestrial biotopes, and increasing flooding stress.”

Speaking of Floods

At CEH we do not normally analyze creation publications, but to give the evolutionists some challenges they should have considered, take a moment to look over some publications that argue for amber deposits being young, and formed as a consequence of Noah’s Flood.

Startling fossils in amber defy long-age dogmas (Creation Magazine, CMI, 2020 October). Writer Philip Robinson elaborates on five reasons the amber fossils defy evolution but are best explained by the global flood described in Genesis. One reason involves the special conditions required to turn resin into amber. Since resin floats in seawater, if it was oozing out from trees caught up in large floating rafts of vegetation ripped up by the flood,  then rapidly buried away from oxygen, would that not explain the known extensive deposits of amber in certain locations, associated with coal beds?

Large amounts of the resin were then deposited and buried rapidly under huge quantities of sediment, which provided the pressure and heat required for its chemical transformation into amber. This Flood scenario also explains why we find amber in such large deposits, quite different from what would be expected by a tree here and there oozing resin in a normal situation.

Pioneering ¹⁴C Dating of Wyoming Amber and Its Implications for a Young Earth and Global Catastrophism (Miller et al., Creation Research Society Quarterly). This paper reports detection of measurable radiocarbon in amber at a deposit in Wyoming where dinosaur bones are found. Due to its short half-life, there should be zero radiocarbon after 100,000 years. This report by itself rules out the Cretaceous dates of millions of years, and demolishes the proposed CREI. Curiously, the authors of the secular paper discussed carbon isotope ratios as support for past climate change, but never mentioned any tests for radiocarbon.

For more creation and flood explanations, check out the search results at the Institute for Creation Research on the keyword “amber.” Several articles were written by Dr Brian Thomas.

Search also for previous entries about amber here at CEH, including articles about secular reports of modern-looking animals found in amber supposedly dating from the time of the dinosaurs. For starters, here are articles from 2019, 2016, 2014 Aug, 2014 Jan.

We want our readers to develop critical thinking skills, and to hear both sides of issues. That’s why we routinely go to the secular journals and show you their very best arguments. This allows our readers to learn how to evaluate explanations and read between the lines by noticing what they are failing to say, as well as what they do say. When they don’t even look for evidence (like radiocarbon) that could falsify their whole “scenario,” what does that tell you? So go ahead; read their best material, but with open eyes.

Here’s a quick test for reliability of an explanation. Those who seriously consider both sides of an issue deserve to be heard. Dogmatists and propagandists do not do that. What we find in the Big Science and Big Media sources is most often one-sided material aimed at making Charley look good. They do not even acknowledge the existence of alternatives. All their references are to other Darwin-friendly sources. Sometimes they will critique each other, but they never step outside their box and consider the possibility that Deep Time is wrong and that Darwinism has fundamental flaws, either evidentially, logically, or both. They assume both things without question.

By contrast, look at the creation resources. They routinely quote secular sources and analyze their arguments, as we do here. And yet creation material is summarily censored. When one side of a debate only wishes to engage in ridicule and censorship, and behaves in a totalitarian way, you have a good clue that something is amiss in their worldview.

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*Quote from the paper about potentially unique causes for the CREI:

The potential causal factors for the CREI are complex and interrelated. Abiotic conditions potentially related to massive resin production and accumulation during the CREI include: (1) increased global average temperatures, including SST, with the consequent reduction in albedo due to the absence of icy poles, (2) reduced latitudinal temperature gradients, which allowed the development of forests at high latitudes, (3) higher levels of greenhouse atmospheric gases (carbon dioxide, methane) and oxygen, which promoted changes in the growth and development of the biota, (4) increased volcanic activity, which promoted an increase in temperature and changes in the composition of atmospheric gases, (5) moderate or relatively high average rainfall that could favor the development of large forests and the production of resin, (6) enhanced wildfire activity due to volcanism and high O2 levels, (7) transgressive sea level periods and overall trend, which reduced terrestrial land area but led to the filling of large areas of lowlands and formation of resin deposits, and (8) increased storm and hurricane activity that could have promoted wildfires and/or destruction of large areas of forest, and consequently resin production. Biotic factors partially explaining the CREI at a more localized scale could include arthropod damage, pathogenic activity due to high temperatures and humidity, and the emission of insect-attracting compounds by resins. Future studies on the CREI will need to focus on elucidating the relative importance of each of these abiotic and biotic factors, enhancing the spatial and temporal resolution of the succession of paleoevents, increasing prospective efforts −particularly in the Southern Hemisphere−, and improving taphonomic understanding of Cretaceous amber deposits.

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Notice that many of the abiotic conditions listed above would have accompanied Noah’s flood.