What was the pre-Flood world like thousands of years ago?^1,2 With the advent of unearthing soft tissues in fossils,³ creation scientists continue to construct a picture of the world before the Flood.

Metabolomics is the study of chemical processes involving small molecules that were part of fats, proteins, amino acids, and nucleic acids. It is a field in biological research that has only occasionally been applied to fossils. In one recent occasion, an evolutionary website reported finding “thousands of preserved metabolic molecules inside fossilized bones millions of years old.”⁴

The team of scientists in New York used mass spectrometry, an analytical technique that converts molecules into ions (charged particles) for identification. They analyzed bones sampled from excavations in South Africa and Tanzania—supposedly dating from 1.3 million to 3 million years ago.

Like soft dinosaur tissue, the researchers evidently ignore just how these biomolecules could last such extreme ages. But their research speaks for itself: “Tiny chemical clues trapped inside ancient bones are revealing what animals ate, the diseases they carried, and the environments they lived in.”⁴ Creationists applaud this investigation because the biomolecules demonstrate these fossils cannot be millions of years old, and their research is providing a glimpse into the pre-Flood world.

The emerging picture is not a strange, ancient, prehistoric environment but a pre-Flood world existing just thousands of years ago that is surprisingly similar to the world we see today.

True to the creation model, “Thousands of metabolites were identified, many of which closely matched those found in living species.”⁴ This is hardly surprising if the earth is young and animals didn’t evolve from one type to another. In fact, fossilized bone of a Tanzanian ground squirrel showed evidence of infection by Trypanosoma brucei, a single-celled parasite that causes sleeping sickness in humans and animals that today ravages some parts of Africa.

Not only has the physical evidence of metabolites revealed secrets of the pre-Flood world, but scientists have also found “ancient” fluid inclusions in rock salt in northern Ontario. Biologists writing in Gondwana Research reported their analysis of the earth’s atmosphere that was enclosed in halite crystals. The samples were analyzed by mass spectrometry.⁵

Those trapped fluid inclusions contained air bubbles revealing, in fine detail, the composition of early Earth’s atmosphere. The crystals were buried in sediment, effectively sealed off from the rest of the world for 1.4 billion years, their secrets unknown.⁶

Like the organic material found in fossils formed by the Flood 4,500 years ago, creationists suggest that the scientists made an analysis of the atmosphere of the world before or during the Flood year.⁴ The evolutionists reported,

The readings show that the Mesoproterozoic atmosphere contained 3.7% as much oxygen as there is today, a surprisingly high number, high enough to support the complex multicellular animal life that wouldn’t arise until hundreds of millions of years later. Carbon dioxide, meanwhile, was ten times as abundant as it is today.⁶

The scientists were surprised at the elevated oxygen content, asking, “One question that naturally arises: if there was enough oxygen to support animal life, why did it take so long to finally evolve?”⁶ The answer is those extreme ages never existed, nor did the slow evolutionary progression of trillions of ethereal intermediate creatures. Instead, God created people, plants, and animals thousands of years ago during the creation week. They existed and proliferated in environments very much like today. Indeed, another study found, “Our results point to an Earth system state characterized by a moderate climate with sufficient O₂ for early animal respiration.”⁷

Evolutionists expect the public to believe that these rock salt inclusions could survive enclosed in sedimentary rock for 1.4 billion years.⁶ Such a suggestion is laughable. Sedimentary rock is generally softer than igneous or metamorphic rock, and the earth is quite dynamic. Diffusion in and out of the salt crystals over that much time would likely have altered all of the trapped gases, possibly allowing much of the original O₂ to escape. This may even have happened in just a few thousand years, since the Flood. Additionally, uplift and erosion from earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, windstorms, meteorites, and plate tectonics would most likely have totally rearranged the earth’s surface many times over 1.4 billion years, destroying or maybe leaving only a hint of any of the original rock salt inclusions.

The researchers reported that “it was a very different world than the one we know today.”⁶ But other than a possible difference of the ratio of atmospheric gases, it seems the pre-Flood world was pretty similar to the world we see today: both in its inhabitants and environment.

1. Clarey, T. and D. Werner. 2020. The Pre-Flood World Resembled Pangaea. Journal of Creation 34 (2): 8–11.
2. Thomas, B. What Was the Pre-Flood World Like? Acts & Facts. 45 (1): 20.
3. Thomas, B. Dinosaur Soft Tissue Issue is Here to Stay. Acts & Facts. 38 (9): 18.
4. New York University. Fossilized bones are revealing secrets from a lost world. ScienceDaily. Posted on sciencedaily.com January 3, 2026.
5. Park, J. G. and M. F. Schaller. 2025. Constraints on Earth’s Atmospheric Evolution from a Gas-Aqueous Partition of Fluid Inclusion Volatiles. Gondwana Research. 139: 204–215.
6. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Scientists Crack Ancient Salt Crystals to Unlock Secrets of 1.4 Billion-Year-Old Air.  Phys.org. Posted on phys.org December 23, 2025.
7. Park, J. G. et al. 2025. Breathing Life into the Boring Billion: Direct Constraints from 1.4 Ga Fluid Inclusions Reveal a Fair Climate and Oxygenated Atmosphere. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 122 (52).

* Dr. Sherwin is a news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.