A recent discovery of a crocodile-size tetrapod (four-legged animal) in high latitudes has some conventional scientists baffled.¹ How could cold-blooded animals survive in cold-temperature regions? And, according to the evolutionary story, these salamander-like animals lived in the waning moments of an Ice Age, making the cold even more extreme. Previously, animals like this were found only in warm climates.¹ What changed their story?

Led by scientists from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, the authors wrote:

Here we report a new, exceptionally large, aquatic tetrapod [four-legged animal] from lacustrine [lake] deposits of the lower Permian Gai-As Formation (Huab Basin, northwest Namibia) that provides critical information about the tetrapods that inhabited high latitudes of Gondwana at this time.¹

The new species was dubbed Gaiasia jennyae for the Gai-As Formation the fossils were found in and in honor of the late evolutionary scientist Jenny Clack.

However, the twists in the story don’t stop at the claims of a cold climate. The rocks the fossils were found to contain other mysteries. In fact, even the claimed environment the rocks represent is in dispute.

The G. jennyae fossils were found in a 115-foot-thick mudstone with thin, sandy layers and some thin limestones. Previous evolutionary researchers thought the rocks were laid down in a deep-water lake.² But the discovery of scattered fossil rhizoliths (plant roots) in the mudstone has conventional scientists changing their tune. Now, they claim it was a shallow lake with mudflat islands.¹

But this still doesn’t explain the odd mixture of fossils found with G. jennyae. The Gai-As layer contains “abundant abraded shark teeth, fish scales, spines, small bones and coprolites [fossil dung].”¹ There are also complete ray-finned fish in calcareous nodules, fish hash layers and bivalve coquinas,¹ indicating high energy deposition—not very lake-like at all. And, of course, all of the ray-finned fish, clams, and sharks are claimed to represent freshwater types and not marine varieties. This is standard practice in the conventional literature. Any time a typically marine animal is found with an undisputed land animal, conventional scientists insist the normally marine animal lived in freshwater. For example, the six species of shark teeth found with T. rex and coelacanth fish fossils found with Spinosaurus are interpreted as freshwater varieties.^3,4

Creation scientists have a better explanation. First, these animals likely never lived in cold climates nor at high paleolatitudes (about 55° S). There never was a real Permian Ice Age—only a single Ice Age occurred at the end of the Flood year.⁵ In addition, Namibia was much closer to the equator in the pre-Flood Pangaea configuration, residing at about 30–35° S.⁶ And the climate was likely a greenhouse, warm and wet everywhere.⁶ A wonderful environment for large salamander-like animals.

Second, the mixing of land and marine animals is common across the globe. The claimed freshwater varieties of sharks and fish in the Gai-As Formation were instead likely marine animals washed onto the land by massive ocean waves and rapidly buried with the land animals, like G. jennyae, during the Flood.⁷

Third, the conflicting environmental interpretations for the Gai-As Formation are better explained by the Flood. The strange mixture of plant fragments, thin limestone beds (normally marine) and land and marine animals are best explained by the chaos of the Flood. There likely never was an ancient lake at the site, and many of the fossil beds show high energy transport, creating fossil hash and coquina beds.⁸ Lakes do not deposit these types of layers today. Fossils need to be buried fast and deep.

In summary, the best explanation for the rocks and fossils found in the Huab Basin is the global Flood described in Genesis. Unfortunately, most conventional scientists deliberately ignore that there was a worldwide flood. It is not even considered. Instead, they continue to struggle with puzzling discoveries and to debate one another’s conflicting and erroneous interpretations.

References

1. Claudia A. Marsicano et al., “Giant Stem Tetrapod Was Apex Predator in Gondwanan Late Palaeozoic Ice Age,” Nature 631 (2024): 577–582.
2. Harald Stollhofen et al., “The Gai-As Lake System, Northern Namibia and Brazil,” in Lake Basins through Space and Time, eds. Elizabeth H. Gierlowski-Kordesch and Kerry R. Kelts (Tulsa, OK: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 2000), 87–108.
3. Terry A. Gates, Eric Gorscak, and Peter J. Makovicky, “New Sharks and Other Chondrichthyans from the Latest Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) of North America,” Journal of Paleontology 93, no. 3 (2019): 512–530.
4. Nizar Ibrahim et al., “Semiaquatic Adaptations in a Giant Predatory Dinosaur,” Science 345, no. 6204 (2014): 1613–1616. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sci
   ence.1258750]
5. Jake Hebert, The Ice Age and Climate Change: A Creation Perspective (Dallas, TX: The Institute for Creation Research, 2021).
6. Timothy Clarey, Carved in Stone: Geological Evidence of the Worldwide Flood (Dallas, TX: The Institute for Creation Research, 2020).
7. Tim Clarey, “Dinosaurs in Marine Sediments: A Worldwide Phenomenon,” Acts & Facts, June 2015: 16.
8. Fossil hash and coquina refer to layers of rock that contain or are composed of many broken pieces and fragments of fossil shells of various kinds. Their presence indicates high energy water flow.

Stage image: Chinese giant salamander
Stage image credit: Copyright © Dong He, Wenming Zhu, Wen Zeng, Jun Lin, Yang Ji, Yi Wang, Chong Zhang, Yuan Lu, Daoquan Zhao, Nan Su, Xin-Hui Xing. Used in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holder.

* Dr. Clarey is the director of research at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his doctorate in geology from Western Michigan University.