I’ll try.
For entertainment’s sake assume the Biblical record is true..as far as it goes; that is, it gives us a broad outline within which we can do some speculating and filling in the story. Although much less speculating is needed now than before because of various discoveries.
The earth (I’ll stay local) is 6-10k years old judging from the creation account and moving forward by the Biblical genealogies as given in Genesis and Luke to name two accounts. The account in Luke is claimed by some to have some gaps which extend the age from six thousand to possibly ten thousand. But who’s quibbling?
It is questioned that the world-wide Flood (the pouring from above and the fountains breaking forth from below) was such a catastrophic event that the world we see post-flood is completely different than the antediluvian environment. Pre-flood, the world might have been one giant land mass— a super continent of a semi-tropical, or moderate climate, shrouded in a radiation-deflecting atmosphere (perhaps one reason the antediluvians were so long-lived (Noah didn’t start building the ark until he was three hundred years old and lived into the 600’s). Radiation decay rates of radiometric materials rate might have greatly varied and increased during this time giving us these false numbers today based on uniformitarianism — the concept underlying modern geology and which holds all things have continued on from old at the same slow rate. Another words, today’s decay rate is the same as five thousand years ago, the same as ten million years ago. That has not been and cannot be proven.
So there were no poles; no penguins for example. There were general “kinds” (Biblical term) then of much greater genetic information and much fewer in number than species now. The kinds, for example were the “bear kind”, the “dog kind” etc, which when the continents separated, and the ensuing ice age came resulted in specific species by environmental selective breeding (or survival). We can do that now selectively, artificially, in large animals, creating a different (not species) breed in several hundred years time.
So Noah didn’t have to load as many animals up as some here say. And since this was all supernaturally done anyway, God moved these creatures to the ark. Noah watched.
The ark was speculated to be barge-like as it didn’t have to sail but just float and a rectangular shape affords a much more efficacious use of space than a vessel with a tapered bow or stern.
I would suggest reading of Genesis and Henry Morris’ THE GENESIS FLOOD. Of course this is the young earth view. Not all Christians are young-earthers.
