Since ancient times, people have noticed that fossils existed of animals that did not resemble living species. 
Also, seashells could be found in the strangest places, even on the tops of the highest mountain ranges. The ancient Greeks were aware of these fossilized remains of creatures, and Heredotus (484-425 BC) suggested that they came about as a consequence of changes in the positions of the sea and land. These changes were even associated with considerable time periods, and Aristotle believed that they took place so slowly that they could not be observed today.
Many theories regarding fossils have been propagated, ranging from Lusi naturae "jokes of nature" to prehistoric animals buried by catastrophic events (adherents of this view included Robert Hooke who discovered cells and Cuvier the French comparative anatomist). 
Fossils were recognized as extinct species whose place has been filled by the creatures living today. The catastrophic model was also accepted by Bible-believing scholars, who attributed the fossils to the destruction of animals during the Noachian flood described in Genesis.
But as more and more people accepted the idea of long ages of time as an explanation for what we see in the world, numerous questions also grew concerning the validity of the Biblical account.
How did all the animals get into the ark?
Why is there a particular order in the fossil record?
How did the animals get to the various continents from the ark?
The fossil record is today considered to be the severest blow to all anti-evolutionary ideas. But is it?
Ironically, the scientific views on the question of origins have a tendency to go full circle. Although catastrophism was rejected by exponents of the theory of evolution, many scientists are today returning to catastrophism and even to the Biblical account of the flood to explain many of the features of the geological column and the fossil record.
But the universality of the flood is the one feature that is still often met with incredulity by the modern scientific mind. The idea is often scoffed at that God would have destroyed the whole world by a flood and that the life forms existing today are the descendants of the sea creatures that survived the catastrophe whereas land creatures are the survivors of the animals that entered the ark.
But it is not only the Bible that speaks about a worldwide flood, but virtually every society on every continent has the story of a worldwide flood in its folklore. (Herbert S. Robinson & Knox Wilson, Myths and Legends of All Nations. New York, Bantam Books, 1950.)
There is indeed evidence in the geological column that there was a universal total covering of the earth by water - compelling evidence that cannot readily be ignored. This includes:
- Massive fossil graveyards with evidence of plants and animals being washed into position.
- Huge sedimentary deposits (nearly three quarters of the earth's exposed surface is covered with sedimentary rock deposits) speak of large-scale coverage by water.
- The vast coal and oil fields of the world are further evidence of a vast flood catastrophe. No process occurring today can even remotely approach the magnitude of the catastrophe necessary to account for such a vast scale of universal burial of plants and other organic material.
- The chalk deposits of the world are universal. Chalk is formed from the skeletons of marine unicellular protozoa and algae, and can only settle out of relatively shallow water. In deep oceans, the calcium carbonate shells dissolve on the way down to the ocean floor. The chalk deposits are thus an indication of worldwide coverage of a relatively shallow sea. Chalk deposits of the same age are found in many areas of North America, Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa, and all of these deposits are resting on the same type of glauconitic sandstone. (Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record, 2nd ed. London MacMillan Press Ltd., 1983) For these factors to be so universal, the same conditions must have existed universally.
by Professor Walter J. Veith Phd.