Day 3

DAY 3 - Paleozoic and Mesozoic[Early Cretaceous] Eras (580-100 Ma)

9 And God saith, `Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land be seen:' and it is so.10 And God calleth to the dry land `Earth,' and to the collection of the waters He hath called `Seas;' and God seeth that [it is] good.11 And God saith, `Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree (whose seed [is] in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth:' and it is so.12 And the earth bringeth forth tender grass, herb sowing seed after its kind, and tree making fruit (whose seed [is] in itself) after its kind; and God seeth that [it is] good;13 and there is an evening, and there is a morning -- day third. (Genesis 1:9-13 YLT)

Premise: Genesis 1:1-2:4 records a divinely-revealed history of the Earth describing some of God's miraculous interventions by which He transformed an uninhabitable and uninhabited world into a habitat in which human beings could thrive. God creates each human being as His image bearers and uniquely endows them with an eternal, morally-obligated spirit.

Chronology

The ICS formally defines the Paleozoic Eon as beginning at 541 Ma.

580-100 Ma: current best fit for what could be called the Paleo-Mesozoic Yom (Day 3). 

Critical Transformations: Global glacier melt allowing dry land to appear, true plants cultivate land, seed plants inhabit dry land, fruit trees expand across globe.

Termination: Radiation of fruit trees and cooling global climates. 

In the Ages of Joy Creation Model, the Third Day represents the transformations of the Earth's biosphere that began at the advent of the Phanerozoic Eon, which literally means the age in which visible life appears on Earth.  In the scientific definition, visible life refers to individual living organisms large enough to see without a microscope.  Prior to the Phanerozoic, life on Earth was visible in some sense: cyanobacteria would assemble in layer upon layer forming large stromatolite formations, but each individual member was a microscopic organism.  It appears that there were no, or extremely rare occurrences, of any larger organisms.

Currently, the transition from the Precambrian to the Phanerozoic is set at 541 million years ago, because of the sudden, abundant appearance of hard-body (shelled) Cambrian fossils at that time.  However, over the past decade or so, an earlier proliferation of life has been discovered by finding and examining a growing collection of soft-body Pre-Cambrian fossils.  The sudden appearance of shell-less animals constitute what is referred to as the Avalon Explosion or alternately the Ediacaran Biota.  The time frame for this is estimated to begin at 575 million years ago and marks the true beginning of the Phanerozoic.  Whether or not geologic naming conventions will be updated to reflect this is somewhat academic.

Because the text regarding the Third Day in Genesis 1 mentions seas, land and plants, the connection to the appearance of macroscopic (visible) life forms in the seas is typically overlooked.  They are not "land plants" after all.  However, the dramatic and sudden appearance of complex sea animals after three and a half billion years of only microbial life begs some serious investigation.

Why would God, in revealing His creative handiwork through "collecting waters in to one place", "letting dry land appear", and "bringing forth plants", not mention the proliferation of animal life in the seas and then later on land?  Sea and land animals, including birds, are of course associated with the Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation.  Is it the case that the order of events in the Bible simply doesn't line up with the sequence of events captured in the geologic record?  Here I will try to demonstrate otherwise.  Genesis 1 is an amazingly structured yet brilliantly succinct account of the history of life on Earth.  In order to keep the account succinct, God appears to have revealed the highlights of his creative handiwork that are most relevant to people throughout history.  On the other hand, by structuring Genesis 1 so brilliantly, we can draw parallels between what God did one Day of creation with what He may have done on other Days of creation.

To begin, we know that God is the Creator.  We should infer that wherever and whenever life has appeared and flourished on Earth, God had His hand in it.  He is the One with the master plan in mind of just what kinds of life He wanted to appear, when, and for how long.  His ultimate goal was to populate Earth with human beings and everything He did along the way supported that objective.  Secondly, we know that He created life on Earth in stages.  There are six days of creation, not just one.  And each Day had many things happen, not just a single event.  Similarly, there many ways to subdivide the geologic record into larger or smaller sets of events.  There is no inherent conflict between God deciding to describe the history of the origin of life on Earth in Six Days and geologists pursuing a very fine-grained view of identifying as many geologic periods as seems helpful from an academic standpoint.  Even geologists group the periods into a few larger periods of time.  At Ages of Joy, the goal is to identify the geologic periods that best correspond to the Days of Creation.

The following chart shows a set of parallels.  To the left are significant geological occurrences next to the text of Genesis 1 pertaining to the Third creation Day.  To the right are seemingly parallel concepts from creation Day 5 and Day 6, along with additional significant geological occurrences.

720 - 579 MYA	Snowball Earth	And there was evening and there was morning — day second.	Parallels to the Fifth and Sixth Creation Days	Cryogenian and Glaciations
		Day 3. And God saith,	Day 5. And God saith,
579 MYA	Melting glaciers drain into super-ocean enriching it with nutrients needed for life to flourish	`Let the watersunder the heavens be collected unto one place,	`Let the watersteem with the teeming living creature,	Avalon Explosion of soft-bodied sea animals	575 MYA
550 - 100 MYA	Super Continents of barren rock become rich with soil and plants.	and let the dry land be seen:'	and fowl let fly on the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens.’	First flying bird-like creatures	160 MYA
		and it is so.
100 MYA	Modern continents are formed	And God calleth to the dry land `Earth,'	`Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas,	Seas teem with ancient fish and repiles
100 MYA	Modern oceans are formed	and to the collection of the waters He hath called `Seas;'	and the fowl let multiply in the earth:'	Ancient species of birds and pterosaurs
		and God seeth that [it is] good.
		And God saith,	Day 6. And God saith,
480 MYA	First land plants	`Let the earth yield tender grass,	`Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind,	Insects	480 MYA
319 MYA	First seed plants	herb sowing seed,	cattle and creeping thing,	First Herbivors	330 MYA
130 MYA	First Fruit Plants	fruit-tree (whose seed [is] in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth:'	and beast of the earth after its kind:'	Dinosaurs	233 MYA
		and it is so.	and it is so.
		And the earth bringeth forthtender grass,	And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind,
		herb sowing seed after its kind,	and the cattle after their kind,
		and tree making fruit (whose seed [is] in itself) after its kind;	and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind,
100 MYA	Flowering Trees greatly diversify and spread	and God seeth that [it is] good;	and God seeth that [it is] good.
		And there was evening and there was morning — day third.
100 - 66 MYA		The Fourth Day	Earth's rotation slows to 24-hours per day.	Seasonal climates develop.
66 MYA	K-T Extinction Event	And there was evening and there was morning — day fourth.	Extinction of virutally all four-legged animals with adult sizes greater than 55 lbs in size. 75% of all species on Earth died out, including many kinds of fish, all the great sea monsters, and virtually all bird-like creatures.

Please observe the chart above carefully.  What it demonstrates is the parallels between the two phases of Day 3 and Days 5 and 6.  The first stanza of Day 3, regarding the formation of the seas and the land, parallels Day 5 in which the seas are populated with life and the land with birds.  The second stanza of Day 6, regarding the formation of three broad categories of plant life, parallels Day 6 in which God forms three broad categories of animal life.

The point of this parallel is that God always creates life to teem in the environments which He forms. When He created the land and the seas, He also willed them to teem with life.  Does this imply that Days 3, 5, and 6 actually occurred in parallel, chronologically?  No, not really.  What it does imply is that God's creative handiwork of Days 5 and 6 had an earlier parallel in which He also created the ancient life forms that filled the Earth in long ago Ages.  We don't know this directly from  Scripture alone, but we can infer it from the scientific record and from Scripture as follows:  where and when life exists, God is its Creator.

What can we learn about the plants of Day 3 in contrast to the fish, animals, and birds of Day 3?  During Day 3, God created mosses, seed plants, and fruit trees with which to bless the creatures He would form on Days 5 and 6.  At the K-T extinction event, 75% of all fish, animals and birds went extinct, including all dinosaurs.  All creatures with adult sizes greater than 55 lbs., other than crocodiles and sea turtles, went extinct.  This includes virtually all birds and bird-like creatures.  Day 5 would usher in a complete overhaul of the life that dominated the oceans.  In contrast to the complete change of fauna brought about by the K-T extinction, the flora, plant life, flourished.  The fruit trees that were the crown jewel of Day 3 expanded rapidly during Days 4, 5, and 6.

In other words, God highlighted the creation of plants on Day 3, because the major kinds of plants He created on Day 3 are still with us.  On the other hand, the kinds of animals He created on Day 3 are no longer with us.

Thus, we can see that there is no conflict between the geologic record of life during the Third Day and what Scripture reveals.  By seeing God as the prolific creator of all life, both ancient and modern, we can better see that Genesis 1 reveals the true history of life on Earth.


Science Updates:

March 16, 2020 Earlier Than Expected Brain Evolution: Based on research conducted on the lamprey eel's brain, the cortex region of the brain is now thought to have originated more than 500 million years ago, 200 million years earlier than previous estimates.  "These findings are crucial to our understanding of how the brain evolved and how it has been designed through evolution." - Sten Grillner, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

AOJ Take on this article: designed through evolution is a key phrase.  Although the mechanism of design might be evolution, the Designer is God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. The sudden emergence of the complexity of the brain cortex is a hallmark of the intentional work of a Designer.

March 23, 2020 Fossil of Ancestor of All Animals: At least 555 million years ago, during the Ediacaran Period, tiny, rice-grain sized bilateral animals, named Ikaria, burrowed through oxygen-rich sand on the ocean floor.   These creatures are reportedly un-related to the other Ediacaran creatures such as the Dickinsonia, which is considered an evolutionary dead end. "Burrows of Ikaria occur lower than anything else. It's the oldest fossil we get with this type of complexity." - Mary Droser, UC Riverside

AOJ Take on this article: The sudden appearance of complex, though tiny, animals with no known evolutionary ancestor demonstrates the handiwork of the Creator.  Based on the early emergence of the brain cortex, they might have been kind of smart, too.  These ancient creatures can be thought of as parallels to those created on the Fifth Creation Day which began after the demise of the dinosaurs. These ones were created by God near the beginning of the Third Creation Day.  These are not the modern creatures God would later create, but rather part of the Third Day ecosystem.

January 28, 2021 

Fossil data support a pre-Cretaceous origin of flowering plants

Quotable Quotes:

"No evolutionary event in the colonization of of the land by vascular plants is of greater significance than the appearance of the seed habit." (Dec 1983)  T. A. Steeves. The evolution and biological significance of seeds. Canadian Journal of Botany.61(12):  3550-3560. https://doi.org/10.1139/b83-404