I think I am quoting wehappyfew.
Actually, there are quite a large number of fossils in the earth. There are almost a trillion synapsid fossils in the Karoo Formation in South Africa, for example.
I was interested and frankly skeptical about this number.
It turns out that the estimate was of about 800 billion vertebrate fossils, made by the famous South African paleontologist Robert Broom, in 1932. This estimate has been cited by creationists as evidence for the flood, with the argument that a flood is required to bring all those fossils together.
By far the best and most detailed discussion of Broom's estimate which I have found is by the creationist John Woodmorappe, in an article from
CEN Technical Journal, 14 14(2) 2000, on-line at . Woodmorappe notes that the number is consistent with reasonable densitites of 800 individuals per hectare over a region about the size of present day sub-equatorial Africa, and proposes that the flood collected and concentrated the fossils into one region.
Woodmorappe gives a substantial extract from page 309 of
The Mammal-like Reptiles of South Africa, by Robert Broom (published by HFG Witherby, London, 1932) which shows how this very rough estimate was obtained.
Woodmorappe has performed a useful service by tracking down and quoting the estimate. My criticism of his model is that it fails to explain how the flood sorted out synapsids from all the other animals, and managed to leave a huge deposit with billions of Permian and Triassic reptiles unlike anything living today, but not a single modern mammal fossil, or other modern species. The most distinctive feature of the fossil record, first noted back in the eighteenth century long before Darwin, is that fossils species are distinctive of particular strata. Woodmorappe's discussion does not touch upon this crucial feature of the Karoo fossils.
I do not know if Broom's estimate still has good standing.
Here is an excellent link on the Karoo formation, and the synapsid fossils, for those interested: