Proposal
To help estimate the number and boundaries of created kinds (i.e., baramins) of flowering plants, the fossil record has been analyzed. To designate the status of baramin, a criterion is applied that tests whether some but not all of a group’s hierarchically immediate subgroups have a fossil record back to the Flood (accepted here as near the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary). Because of the lag time in population size and dispersal immediately after the Flood, this record is considered established if the group has fossils in Lower Eocene or lower strata. The quality of the flowering plant fossil record was found to decrease significantly below a family size of 600 species. Therefore the criterion was modified to account for small families and groups that lack a fossil record but are sister groups of so designated baramins. Depending on the classification used, the method identified between 212 and 222 flowering plant baramins, mostly families and suborders but some orders. This corroborates other baraminological criteria and significantly lowers the taxonomic level designated in studies using the unmodified criterion. Different baramins appear to contain significantly different degrees of originally designed diversity versus post-Flood diversification.
Keywords
Angiosperms, flowering plants, fossils, baramins, Flood, post-Flood continuity criterion, continuous fossil record
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Recommended Citation
Sanders, Roger W.
(2013)
"The Fossil Record of Angiosperm Families in Relation to Baraminology,"
Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 7, Article 31.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol7/iss1/31