El Capitan Limestone Reef Formation

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Yes, I'm with NosyNed, I have an idea of what you said, but I'm not sure what that means as far as proving how the reef was built. A translation/summarization would be nice.

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Basically, most of the El Capitan reef consists of reef breccias transported downslope from the erosional zone. Much of a reef complex also consists of fine carbonates as Hangdawg suggests. In most limestones, the actual reef facies is not substantial. Factoid: one parrot fish can eat, digest and excrete on the order of a ton of coral per year. I'll try to find the actual numbers.

edge, I'm not a geologist so not sure I understand what your saying, I'm saying that the earth was floating in space covered in ice, but that the earth itself was emitting heat, so like does limestone need critters to form, meaning could your limestone of formed pre-Creation event over hundreds of millions of years, under the ice on the surface of the earth, like Europa, a frozen world of ice, but is it frozen through, likely not, likely the heat of all the elemental isotopes decaying were generating a whole lot of heat, if so then limestone could of been forming before the Creation Event 13,000 years ago, under the frozen surface of the earth, by the water currents, volcanic solutes, generating limestone precipitates beneath the ice, when the Creation Week began sun started to shine, it was after day 2, 2,000 years that God caused the corals to grow, man was created 6,500 years, so the flood would of happened around 5,500 years after the coral multiplied exponentially, it all supports the bible, if one is not ignorant that one day is as a thousand years, etc...This message has been edited by whatever, 09-06-2004 11:55 PM

The earth covered in ice? Why? Do you mean like totally encased in ice?
If the earth was emitting heat, why didn't the ice melt?lfen

Except that the majority of limestones even in the Pre-Ediacaran show obvious signs of being formed by living creatures. But I'll give you a B+ for imaginative solutions to the "problem."This message has been edited by Coragyps, 09-07-2004 11:54 AM

A dejargonization of my previous post, as requested: "Talus" is the broken-off bits - from wave action and perhaps grazing by critters with ecological roles like today's parrotfish. "Breccia" is a rock made up of chunks of previous rocks which were broken off of their original location and then stuck together (by more limestone in this case) to make new solid stuff. "About 1500 feet" thickness of this stuff would 1) require a reef at equal or higher elevation to supply its components and 2) not be too likely to form in a year. Or a millenium or two. A 1200 foot thickness of reef-forming critters - largely sponges in the Permian - are not going to grow atop the remains of their ancestors, fossilizing in the spot in which they grew, in a short period of time. This 1200 foot thickness, remember, is just a fraction of all that grew there - two-thirds of the present structure was derived from the pieces that broke off, and much, much more ended up in the Delaware basin to the south of the present reef. This is speaking of the talus to the south of the reef. Horizontal beds of debris from the reef built up over time on the slope that bordered the basin itself - the sea that was there back then. On occasion, little underwater mudslides carried portions of this sediment down that slope - the "wedge-shaped masses" mentioned. Then, the same deposition of horizontal beds buried these wedges. Again, tough to visualize as a quick process.Does this help?

Why did not the ice melt, is because God had not caused the sun to shine as a star until the start of the 1st day, but appears though the amounts of limestone formed by critters is explained after God caused the sun to shine on the beginning of Day 1, 13,000 years ago, giving the corals 5,500 years to multiply after God created them 11,000 years ago on the start of day 3, 2,000 years after he caused the sun to shine, this all makes sense if one is not ignorant of kjv 2 peter 3:8, which would make Adams exodus from the Garden of Eden 7,500 years ago, with the biblical flood happening approximately 5,800 years ago giving civilization time to multiply after the flood, until Christ was born 5,500 years after Adam and Eve Exodus from the garden, approximately 2,000 years ago, etc...P.S. The heat given off by isotope decay was not enough to melt the ice, just look to the moon europa, the earth likely looked a lot like europa before the Creation Event, because the sun wasn't believed to have started shining until day one(when God said let there be light), doubt there were rivers of water above the ice, as they believe they are seeing on Europa, the bible says God raised the earth above the waters on day 3, including creating the corals, algae, trees, grasses, herbs, explaining El Capitan, why its so thick, buried beneath the flood sediments, and the flood explains its rising above the oceans, supported by psalm 104, so the waters would not again cover the entire earth, etc...I realize you won't accept this, to explain El Capitan, its quite interesting that El Capitan is just more physical evidence supporting the book of genesis, too me, (answers in genesis 1, and psalms 104), etc...http://www.findarticles.com/..._m1200/is_n4_v151/ai_19084146

Thanks for the explanation. This makes sense. The only part I'm unclear on is how you can tell the difference between limestone boulders that have been re-cemented together by more limestone, and limestone that has formed as one mass. IOW, looking at a face of solid limestone in the reef core, is there a change in texture or composition in between the chunks of old rock to show that the new limestone face is in fact breccia? Is it not possible that these critters originally grew over a wider surface and were piled up on top of each other to these thicknesses? This makes sense, but I'm not 100% convinced the reef couldn't be built during a large scale flood within a year. Especially if this was near a pre-flood reef.I'm still wondering what held the reef together under the waves. Was Delaware basin a fairly sheltered bay that allowed these tiny sponges to hold together in relatively light wave action? I'm also wondering where all the CaCO3 came from since much of it precipitated directly from the water.I'm still wondering about those surfaces on the ponds in Carlsbad Caverns too. Yep. Thanks very much for your research.

In message 16, edge wrote:"Basically, most of the El Capitan reef consists of reef
breccias transported downslope from the erosional zone.
Much of a reef complex also consists of fine carbonates
as Hangdawg suggests. In most limestones, the actual reef
facies is not substantial. Factoid: one parrot fish can
eat, digest and excrete on the order of a ton of coral
peryear. I'll try to find the actual number."This is true, however, the El Capitan reef has a substantial reef core of in situ material that lies at the crest of the reef with broad layers of reef talus / breccia extending seaward and downward from this core into the former Delaware Basin from it. The proportion of reef breccia / talus in the El Capitan Reef is about same as seen in modern coral reefs. This can be seen in James et al. (1983).A good summary of the composition and stratigraphy of the strata comprising El Capitan can be found in "An Introduction and Virtual Geologic Field Trip to the Permian Reef Complex, Guadalupe and Delaware Mountains, New Mexico-West Texas" at:http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/staff/scholle/guadalupe.htmland in "NMBGMR Staff - Peter Scholle - El Paso-Carlsbad Geologic Roadlog" at:http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/staff/scholle/ep_csbd_roadlog.htmlIf a person look at the figure in "Delaware Basin Startigraphy", which is part of the "Virtual Geologic Field Trip to the Permian Reef Complex" they will find that the stratigraphic units containing the main reef core are the Goat Seep Dolomite and Capitan Limestone. Both of these units consist of "barrier reef boundstones and associated fore-reef debris aprons." A boundstone is "a type of carbonate rock in the Dunham Classification System that is composed of sediments bound together by a framework of organisms (corals, bryozoans, sponges, stromatolites, etc.)" as noted in "Geology & Soil-Science Glossary" athttp://raymondwiggers.homestead.com/GeologyGlossary.htmlBy definition, boundstone consist of carbonate that could have formed by the in situ growth of organisms. In additional in "Depositional Patterns", it is clearly stated:"The major framework organisms in the reef complex include
calcareous sponges plus Tubiphytes (a possible hydrocoralline);
phylloid algae locally form a subsidiary framework. These
organisms, commonly still found in living position, are
encrusted by possible red or blue-green algae
(Archaeolithoporella, Solenopora, Collenella, and others)
and are arranged in a consistent pattern of subfacies which
probably reflect changing environmental conditions passing
up the slope and onto the shelf (Babcock, 1977; Toomey and
Cys, 1977)and"The work of Newell et al. (1953), Babcock (1977), and
Babcock and Yurewicz (1989) has established the existence
of consistent faunal zonation within the Capitan reef
(Fig. 14) and has demonstrated that much of the fauna is
still in living position, at least in the few areas of
exceptional exposure which were studied."The core of El Capitan is clearly autochthonous / in situ contrary to how some Young and Old Earth creationists have misquoted and misrepresented what conventional geologists have directly observed in the field.James et al. (1983) also presents examples of other ancient reef trends that have a core, which clearly accumulated in place. An example that is the size of the El Capitan Reef is the Devonian Napier Range Reef complex in western Australia. This reef was about 630 miles long. Go look at "The Devonian 'Great Barrier Reef".References cited:Babcock, J. A., 1977, Calcareous algae, organic boundstones,
and the genesis of the upper Capitan Limestone (Permian,
Guadalupian), Guadalupe Mountains, west Texas and New Mexico,
in Hileman, M.E., and Mazzullo, S. J., eds., Upper
Guadalupian facies, Permian reef complex, Guadalupe Mountains,
New Mexico and west Texas (1977 Field Conference Guidebook):
Midland, TX, Permian Basin Section-SEPM Publication 77-16,
pp. 3-44.Babcock, J. A., and Yurewicz, D. A., 1989, The massive
facies of the Capitan Limestone, Guadalupe Mountains, Texas
and New Mexico, in Harris, P. M., and Grover, G. A., eds.,
Subsurface and Outcrop Examination of the Capitan Shelf
Margin, Northern Delaware Basin: Tulsa, OK, SEPM Core
Workshop No. 13, p. 365-371.James, N. P., 1983, Reef Enviroment. In P. A. Scholle,
D. G. Debout, and C.H. Moore, pp. 345-462, Carbonate
Deposition Environment. AAPG Memoir, no. 33, American
Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma.Newell, N. D., Rigby, J. K., Fischer, A.G., Whitemen,
A. J., Hickox, J. E., and Bradley, J. S., 1953, The
Permian Reef Complex of the Guadalupe Mountains Region,
Texas and New Mexico: San Francisco, CA, W.H. Freeman
and Co., 236 p.Toomey, D. F., and Cys, J. M., 1977, Rock/biotic
relationships of the Permian Tansill-Capitan facies
exposed on the north side of the entrance to Dark Canyon,
Guadalupe Mountains, southeastern New Mexico, in Hileman,
M.E., and Mazzullo, S.J., eds., Upper Guadalupian Facies,
Permian Reef Complex, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico
and West Texas (1977 Field Conference Guidebook):
Midland, TX, Permian Basin Section-SEPM Publication
77-16, p. 133-150.Best Regards,Bill

Dawg, I'm sure that Mr Birkeland will correct me if I am off base, but from my amateur geology: One way that I'm sure you could tell is if your boulder had its sponge skeletons, etc, upside-down or sideways relative to their growth positions. I'm sure that texture of the rock is important, too, but I don't know specifics to give an example. They're pretty fragile little buggers - the ones that were up in the surf apparently all ended up as talus. The ones below wave base are likely the only ones we find in growth position. And what mode of transport would you suggest? The sea that made the Delaware Basin was apparently a smallish sea, but still a couple of hundred miles across, at least. Like I said above, only critters that lived below wave base and were buried there were likely the ones preserved in situ. The sea was connected, at least part of the time, to the oceans by a shallow sill, and was fed by rivers from the north, so there was a +/- continuous supply of calcium. That supply problem would get pretty critical in a one-year or one-thousand-year scenario, though. You can only get so much calcium and bicarbonate into water before it falls out - just ask my house's hot-water pipes. You and me both.

Dawg! A hypothesis just struck me, or maybe it's only a speculation at this point.... I'll have to go to the caverns and look to see if it's even plausible. This may not translate real well into the written word, but I'll try.Dawg and I have both wondered about pools in Carlsbad Caverns. Some of them look like an empty or partially empty pond that had frozen an inch deep all around its banks, and then beed drained of part/all of its water - except that the "ice" remaining attached to the banks is limestone, not frozen water. It's an astoundingly pretty sight, and all you Yankees and Brits and Ozlanders need to come see "the caves" - I'll buy you a beer while you're here.Anyway, Hangdawg had wondered, and got me wondering, how these formations came about. My speculation goes like this: the present "ice rim" is at the highest level at which the "bowl" of the pond below can reach. I posit that the pond will overflow, or at least leak off into rubbly rock, when the water gets to this level. Water level can, however, fluctuate widely below this maximum depending on supply and rate of evaporation.When the pond is full to this rim, water can either overflow or evaporate to escape from the bowl. If it evaporates, it will leave a crust like the one we see. If the pond is less than full, it can lose water only by evaporation. If it stayed long at any one level, a rim would build up there - but if supply varies year to year, the pool will rise and fall from some low level clear up to, but not beyond, the overflow level. Rims that get immersed as the level rises will tend to dissolve, and their limestone will be carried up to the overflow level where some will redeposit on the topmost possible rim - the one at overflow level.Ya think? [/somewhat off-topic diversion]

I had been thinking exactly the same thing! But this I had not thought of. That would explain why the banks below the highest surface are rounded off and have no shelves. I think you're probably right.BTW I'll try and get back to reply to yours and Mr. Birkland's other posts later.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 09-11-2004 01:08 AM

in Message 24 of 26, Coragyps quoted Hangdawg13 as saying:"The only part I'm unclear on is how you can tell the
difference between limestone boulders that have been
re-cemented together by more limestone, and limestone
that has formed as one mass."The different processes, which form limestone, create different types of limestone. Each of these types of limestone consists of distinctive types of sedimentary structures, grains, matrix, and cement, which are specific to the environment, in which a certain type of limestone formed. Thus, in a conglomerate composed of limestone boulders, the limestone cementing the boulders will differ in texture of the limestone, the mineralogy of the calcite and other minerals, and typically even in color from the limestone comprising the boulders because they formed in different environments. Because of these differences, it is typically quite easy to distinguish between the limestone sand, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders in a bed and the cement the cement binding them together as a rock as they just look different. In many, cases, the sand, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders of limestone in an outcrop will weather differently from the limestone cement binding them together making their recognition and differentiation quite obvious. Also, these differences can be seen a microscopic level using petrographic thin sections or acetate peels. Such limestones, depending on the size of the limestone particle composing them are called calcarenites and calcirudites. It is quite obvious any outcrop of any size whether or not a bed of limestone is a single bed or composed of " limestone boulders that have been re-cemented together by more limestone". The variations and great differences in textures, sedimentary structures, mineralogy, matrix, and cements that occur between different environments is discussed and documented in great details in many publications including:Scholle, P. A., Debout, D. G., and Moore, C.H. 1983
Carbonate Deposition Environments. AAPG Memoir, no. 33,
American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa,
Oklahoma.Scholle, Peter A., 1976, A Color Illustrated Guide To
Carbonate Rock Constituents, Textures, Cements and
Porosities. The American Association of Petroleum
Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma.Tucker, M. E. and Wright, P. V., 1990, Carbonate
Sedimentology. Blackwell Science Ltd.Walker, R. G., and James, N. P., 1992, Facies Models -
response to sea level change. Geological Association
of Canada.Interesting lecture notes on carbonates and carbonate environments can be found at:http://www.earlham.edu/.../Geol355/Graphics/26Carbonates.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/...Geol355/Graphics/27Carbonates2.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/...Geol355/Graphics/28Carbonates3.pdfAn example of calcirudite and calcarenite can be seen at:http://www.uniurb.it/ISDA/Campo2/1giorno.htmLook at "Calcirudite" at:Pagina di Redirect 404Here, a person can clearly see the difference between pieces of limestone and the limestone enclosing them because of differences in the texture, mineralogy and other characteristics. In this picture, the fragmental texture of this limestone conglomerate is quite obvious.One problem is that a person has to have a relatively fresh outcrop to see all of this. Because calcium and aragonite are readily altered by pedogenic and other surface processes, they often create a thin to very thick surface layer or crust of altered or precipitated carbonate on the surface of limestone outcrops over time. As a result, all a person often sees in many exposures is an amorphous, massive, fine-grained coating of caliche that completely obscures the physical characteristics of the limestone underlying it. Often, in order to see what a limestone looks like, a person has to whack off a piece of the exposure. This is why carbonate geologists often take five-pound sledge hammers with them in addition to rock hammers when they do field work.Coragyps replied:"One way that I'm sure you could tell is if your boulder
had its sponge skeletons, etc, upside-down or sideways
relative to their growth positions. I'm sure that texture
of the rock is important, too, but I don't know specifics
to give an example."This is also, an important point. The sponges in the blocks of limestone be randomly oriented in respect to each other.Hangdawg13 asked:"Is it not possible that these critters originally grew
over a wider surface and were piled up on top of each
other to these thicknesses?"The sponges are relatively fragile animals. Any transport of them prior to incorporation into solid framework reef boundstone would have reduced them to unrecognizable carbonate mud. Thus, what you propose here is physically impossible. Also, also, even it sponges could survive physical transport, this simply couldn't replicate the textures and structure that happens when sponges and algae grew together to form reefal boundstone.When transport and redeposition happens to more resistant organisms, i.e. corals, a person still recognizes them as coral but the resulting limestone is quite different. The pieces of corals found in this limestone are recognizably fragmented and oriented either randomly or in some fashion with the currents that last moved them. They are certainly not in life position and not bound together by growth. Rather they are quite clearly fragments that have been eroded, transported, and redeposited. This limestone, unlike reefal boundstone, often will exhibit some type of cross or graded bedding indicative of deposition by water currents. Simply, different processes create very different types of limestone even when the same material is involved just as cutting a pine tree with a saw will leave different cut marks then cutting a pine tree with an axe. A hundred years later, a person can look at the cut end of a log and know how it was cut. The fact of this matter is that there exist vast and recognizable differences between calcirudite and calcarenite (limestones) created by the erosion, transported, and redeposition of corals, or any reef-forming organisms and boundstone (limestone) created by the in situ growth of the same organism. These differences are well illustrated and discussed by:Scholle, P. A., Debout, D. G., and Moore, C.H. 1983
Carbonate Deposition Environments. AAPG Memoir, no. 33,
American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa,
Oklahoma.Coragyps replied:"They're pretty fragile little buggers - the ones that
were up in the surf apparently all ended up as talus.
The ones below wave base are likely the only ones we
find in growth position. And what mode of transport
would you suggest?"In this case, the only reason they ended up as talus was because the growth of other sponges and algae and formation of carbonate cement encased individual sponges in solid boundstone. The sponges not encased in boundstone were reduced unrecognized powder by any current action.Hangdawg13 asked:"Was Delaware basin a fairly sheltered bay that allowed
these tiny sponges to hold together in relatively light
wave action? I'm also wondering where all the CaCO3
came from since much of it precipitated directly from
the water."The claim that "much of the CaCO3 in the El Capitan reef precipitated directly from the water" is incorrect. As noted in the sources that are found in message 23 of this thread would find that in addition to sponges, phylloid algae were also precipitating calcium carbonate to create the El Capitan reef. They also contributed a significant part of the El Capitan reefs. Second, much of the so-called "mud found in the El Capitan reef consists of microbial micrite. This micrite, which precipitated in association with microbial biofilms, didn't precipate spontaneously from water, but rather precipitated as the result of microbes living on hard surfaces on the reef. Finally, mud was produced as the result of sponges and phylloid algae being chewed and ground up by animals feeding on them and the boring of bivalves and worms into the reef framework.An interesting web page is "Hypothetical views of the Delaware basin" at:http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/...phics/permdiagr/SLStandModels.htmlTwo final web pages of interest are "Fossil Reefs, Flood Geology, and Recent Creation" at:http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/roth.htmand "Reefs and Young-Earth Creationism" at:http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/reef.htmIt goes into detailed discussion of some Young Creationist arguments about the El Capitan reef.Yours,BillP.S. I just fine-tuned some wording and corrected a typographic error or two.This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 09-14-2004 12:44 AM

Thanks to Mr. Birkeland and Coragyps for your information. I've read it and it all pretty much makes sense to me. I don't have time to look up anything to try and debate and learn any more about it right now though.Thanks again.