Stromatolites Before the Flood?

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If you take a notion to go hiking in an area of the eastern Grand Canyon, you might come across a line of big fossils. Erosion in the Grand Canyon made them visible. Dr. Andrew Snelling says they look like fossilized giant toadstools. How did those get there?

According to biblical creation science, the Genesis Flood was exceptionally violent. (The Hebrew word מַבּוּל (mabbul) is only used about the Flood; other floods have different words.) It tore up everything, and we have jumbles of fossilized organisms from different habitats found together.

Stromatolites like these in Shark Bay, Australia are living fossils that give rise to speculations by secularists and creationists alike. These were actually buried before the Flood.
Stromatolites in Shark Bay, Australia, Flickr / Paul Morris (CC BY-SA 2.0)
But these stromatolites (which are living fossils, since a few exist today) are nice and orderly. In fact, they look like they were buried before the Flood (as indicated by the layers and erosion). It greatly puzzled this child how something like this could be buried, but the answer is quite simple.
When God finished creating everything and declared it “very good” (Genesis 1:31), we know the world must have been incredibly beautiful. Even after Adam disobeyed God and brought a curse on creation (Genesis 3:17–19; Romans 5:12), it must have remained a beautiful place, exploding with a variety of life forms.

. . . 

But we’re not limited to clues from Flood fossils. In a few rare places, we find organisms buried sometime before the Flood. These unusual findings give us an added window into the undersea environments that once flourished but are no longer around today.

You can read (or hear the audio) about how they are formed and some creationist speculations by heading on over to "Stromatolites—Rare Reminders of a Lost World." Also of interest, take a look at "Stromatolites — Living Fossil Testimony of the Genesis Flood."