CPT Q. 036: Was all the land together in one place at the end of creation week?

Q. 36. Was all the land in one place at the end of creation week? If so, then how and when did it come to be in its current configuration? What role do Rodinia, Pannotia and Pangea play in this history?

Response: As to whether or not all the land was together in one place at the end of creation week, I have a moderate level of confidence that the answer is yes. Genesis 1:9 seems to suggest a single body of water, which could also possibly imply a single connected body of land. But to me the text by no means requires this inference. I note that Genesis 1:10 uses the word ‘seas’ (plural) to describe the gather of the waters. So while I hold as a working hypothesis that there was a single connected body of land at the end of creation week and at the beginning of the Flood, I recognize that Scripture does not explicitly demand it. Similarly, the geological observations seem to suggest that all the continents were joined together within a single landmass which some refer to as Pannotia at the time when the early Cambrian fossils abruptly appear in the sediment record. On the other hand I acknowledge that the observational data on which this Pannotia reconstruction rests is fraught with uncertainty.

As to when the continents came to be in their current configuration, it seems clear to me that the only interval in the Biblical account of earth history that such a dramatic change could possibly take place is during the Genesis Flood. As to the how, given the many persuasive lines of evidence the current basaltic ocean crust is younger than a large fraction of the continental fossil-bearing rocks, in addition to compelling evidence from seismic tomography and many other indicators that vast amounts of ocean lithosphere have subducted into the mantle and presently reside there, I conclude that there must have been rapid recycling of ocean lithosphere into the earth’s interior and an associated migration of the continental blocks to their present locations during the Flood.

As to the roles of Rodinia, Pannotia, and Pangea play in this scenario, let me refer to my answer to question 24, where I include a sequence of twelve maps of Ron Blakey, emeritus professor of geology at Northern Arizona University. These maps present Blakey’s reconstruction of continent motions over the interval from Pannotia to the present. In that answer, I pointed out how in my assessment the case is strong that Gondwana, comprised of what is now Africa, Arabia, India, Australia, Antarctica, and South America, remained intact from the time of Pannotia until Pangea broke apart, that is, throughout the entire Paleozoic. I also gave my reasons for concluding that Pannotia was likely centered, not near the South Pole as shown in Blakey’s reconstruction, but instead near the equator.

It is important to appreciate that as one moves backward in time these reconstructions are constrained by less and less by observational evidence and therefore become more and more subjective and speculative. One notable reason for this state of affairs is that ocean floor older than early Mesozoic simply does not exist today. Reconstructions for the plate motions since the breakup of Pangea near the middle of the Flood rely heavily on clues from the modern seafloor. By contrast, reconstructions for the earth’s history prior to that point in earth history must rely entirely on clues preserved in the continental rocks.

One type of clue is paleomagnetic inclination, or dip, which, if accurately preserved in an igneous rock, can constrain the paleolatitude (but not paleolongitude) of the rock when it cooled through its Curie temperature for the last time. But the magnetic properties of a rock can be altered or reset completely if the rock undergoes heating due to deformation and metamorphism. Such clues thus become less reliable the further back in earth history one goes. It is not surprising therefore that only weak consensus exists in the uniformitarian community regarding the details of Rodinia, which is dated by most in that community well before the abrupt appearance of multicellular life in the sediment record. Because I currently identify the onset of the Flood with the Great Unconformity in the continental stratigraphic record, I choose Pannotia, which coincides in time with the Great Unconformity, as representing the arrangement of the continental blocks at the onset of the Flood. Earlier continent arrangements, including Rodinia, I interpret to have existed briefly during creation week, prior to the end of Day 3, as God was actively forming the material earth and before He created life upon it.