Could the Ark have held all the animals? Easily. [See Figure 41.] A small number of humans, some possibly hired, could build a boata large enough to hold representatives of every air-breathing land animal—about 16,000 animals in all. Sea creatures did not need to be on the Ark, nor did insects or amphibians. Only mammals, birds, reptiles, and humans. The Ark, having at least 1,500,000 cubic feet of space, was adequate to hold these animals, their provisions, and all their other needs for one year.b
Since the flood, many offspring of those on the Ark would have become reproductively isolated to some degree due to mutations, natural genetic variations, and geographic dispersion. Thus, variations within a kind have proliferated. Each variation or species we see today did not have to be on the Ark. For example, a few wolflike animals were probably ancestors of the coyotes, dingoes, jackals, and hundreds of varieties of domestic dogs. (This is microevolution, not macroevolution, because each member of the dog kind can interbreed and has the same organs and genetic structure.) Could the Ark have held dinosaurs and elephants? Certainly, if they were young.
What about plants? As the flood began, the powerful fountains of the great deep scattered throughout and even above the atmosphere seeds and spores that settled to earth for years afterward. Fortunately, the 46,000-mile-long fountains were at almost all latitudes. Had they followed an east-west (latitudinal) path, such as along the preflood equator, many plants we now have would have become extinct. [See pages 111–147 for details.]
This dispersion seems to explain the wide distribution of a few rare plants. As one of several examples—previously explained as “a giant fluke”c—the same unusual tree is on two tiny, mountainous islands on opposite sides of the globe: the acacia tree on mountains of Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean is genetically identical (except for one mutation) to the koa tree on mountain tops of Kauai, Hawaii. Had the seeds floated in seawater anywhere between those distant islands, they probably would not have germinated.d Had humans transported the seeds or plants, they should be growing near shorelines, not on mountain tops.d If a bird transported the seeds, one would not expect the seeds to survive the 11,400-mile journey; either they would have been digested internally, eliminated, or dislodged if carried externally.e
We have seen evolutionists use the “giant fluke” explanation hundreds of times—disguised in many forms:
a. “Yes, thousands of components of living things are incredibly complex; each was a giant fluke.”
b. “Yes, we can’t imagine how xyz could have happened, but over millions of years giant flukes could happen.”
c. “Yes, what we have discovered in outer space staggers the imagination; it must have followed a big bang—the biggest fluke of all.”
Beware of scientific explanations that are not based on (1) the laws of physics and chemistry, and (2) verifiable, physical evidence (measured or observed). What follows in Part II—an explanation for a catastrophic global flood—fulfills both requirements. The evidence is startling. Read slowly and carefully.