Rise of Oxygen Over the Past 205 Million Years
TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information
An American team of geologists and paleontologists uncovered more evidence for the supernatural creation of animals by establishing dramatic changes in the oxygen content of Earth’s atmosphere over the past 205 million years. Their analysis of the abundance of carbon-13 in several marine sediment cores showed that oxygen in the atmosphere increased (with some dramatic oscillations) from 10% 205 million years ago to 17% 50 million years ago. For the past 40 million years the oxygen level has varied from 20-23%. The team demonstrated that the appearance of large-body-sized, high-metabolic-rate animals in the fossil record strongly correlated with the dramatic increase in atmospheric oxygen 50-40 million years ago. The team attributed this appearance to natural evolution. However, given that large-body-sized, high-metabolic-rate animals manifest the slowest (virtually zero) rates of natural evolution, and given that it would take a superintellect to realize that oxygen levels would stably remain above 20% after 40 million years, it seems much more reasonable to attribute the appearance of such creatures to the Creator God of the Bible.
- Paul G. Falkowski et al., “The Rise of Oxygen Over the Past 205 Million Years and the Evolution of Large Placental Mammals,” Science 309 (2005): 2202-04.
- https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5744/2202/DC1
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