Long build up of Sediments

Faith writes: Faith later writes: It seems to me that you have answered your own question. If the quantity of sediments is so massive they must have had a source. Mainstream geology explains this very well in that there has been continuous mountain building since the beginning of plate tectonics to create a continuous source over long periods of time. As near as I can see, your 'prodigious amounts of sediments' have neither a source nor the time to accumulate in a flood scenario.

Faith, in the last two million years the Front Range in Colordo has experienced at least 7000 feet of uplift. And this is the third episode of uplift in the region... So, if you think that tectonism cannot produce such variation, I am sorry, but this is what the data tell us.Furthermore, accumulating sediments do not just sit there on a rigid plate. They have tremendous mass which will depress the crust, especially thin parts such as occur in ocean basins, creating room for more deposition. This is one of the facts that we have seen during the whole Katrina misadventure: the Mississippi delta is compacting and depressing the crust of the Gulf of Mexico, but we have not allowed more sediments to be deposited there for hundreds of years. It's called subsidence. Now, if we look at the average depth of the ocean and consider filling it to the brim then allowing for subsidence, several kilometers of sediment could easily be accomodated.NOw the fact that such a depositional environment can last for such long periods of time seems to trouble you. I am sorry, but the evidence shows that this is possible. I have tried to give you several examples of very slow, in human terms, change. That you cannot break out of this short-sighted viewpoint is sad, but very common among YECs. There is not solution for you, I am afraid.It is also clearly evident that the depositional environment can change relatively abruptly. There are many cases of this and there are many cases of gradational contacts as well. This is not a problem for mainstream geology and it is doubtful that you have put more time into this than geologists over the last three hundred years. Your incredulity is not evidence.

Please define for us 'discrete sediments'.Your topic may be limited, but it does not exist in a vacuum of outside data. You may be able to ignore structural, paleontological, radiometric, and stratigraphic evidence, but the geologist simply cannot do so.I could make up any number of wishful stories, if I could ignore 90% of the geological evidence on any given topic. And I could even ignore the fact that today's story conflicts with yesterday's story on a different topic. However, that goes against my training, knowlege and the work of thousands of geologists before me.

Sure. It doesn't. I thought we'd cleared that up several posts back. In my opinion, every bedding plane represents a hiatus in deposition. Do you really visualize deposition in all environments to be a continuous steady rain of sediments? That may be a convenient simplification for large periods of time, but at the scale of beds or laminae, it kind of breaks down.

I'm not sure that I can make it any simpler. Basins exist. They can be very deep. They can further subside under the weight of sediments. If you cannot even attempt to understand this, I am wasting my time. Once again, your incredulity is not evidence. I am sorry that your mind is so closed. (Sigh). Okay look at it this way: if one block is uplifted, what happens to the adjacent block? It is relatively depressed and automatically becomes a potential receiving basin... I can see this is going nowhere. As long as there is uplift above sea level and subsidence below it, there will be erosion, transport and deposition of sediments. I have given you the mechanism of plate tectonics to help explain this. Apparently you have seen fit to ignore what anyone else says on this thread. This is disrespectful and hopeless. It doesn't really bother me; you can beleive what you want, but I do feel that I have wasted my time here.One one hand we have YECs complaining that there is not enough sediment in the oceans. Here we have you telling us there is too much. Could it be that there is just the right amount?

From the way you have interpreted my post and others' here, it is clear that you read what you want to read. It is no wonder that you come up with a garbled hash of factoids that make no sense when pulled together. Perhaps I will return here later, but as others have warned me, your case appears truly hopeless. Have a good day.

Of course not. They might provide actual evidence against your position. How inconvenient. So, 'dominating sediment' would be found in 'large proportions'. Very interesting. I'm not sure I understand. They do? Please document and/or explain. Do you have the same problem with all things that happen slowly? Are you one of those who wonders why we didn't build the space shuttle hundreds of years ago? Well, no YEC has given and explanation of where the flood starts and ends in the geologic record. If they did, I would assure you that I would at least read their position. The fact that you have dismissed answers with a hand wave of incredulity suggests to me that you have not asked your questions in good Faith. YOu have betrayed the judgement that your question(s) are some of the best ever put forth on EvC by not being serious about the answers.

Well, that's what the geologic record reveals... Local? Are you saying that mountains don't occur all over the world? And just for the record, erosion doesn't require mountains, either, it just required land mass above sea level. By mainstream geology. Estimates for eroding a mountain range to sea level, I have heard on the order of 60 million years. LOts of answers, too. In many places the sedimentary section IS mixed. In fact, most of them. And mainstream geology explains it even better since repeated uplifts means even more sediments. So, where's your problem? It may be a question, but at least mainstream geology offers an explanation. In this case sediments are neatly sorted by depositional environment with high energy regimes depositing mainly coarse sediments and very low energy regimes depositing fine sediments, coral and chemical deposits. And evolution offers an explanation of the fossil ordering by suggesting change in organic communities through time. What have you got? Some vague 'sorting' mechanism that can't really be described?

Again, you confuse erosion with deposition.Also, I don't think you understood. I was referring to basins which have accumulations of sediments that thick; not formations or beds or strata. No, it was not one kind of sediment. I don't believe that I said anything about one rock type. If that was your intent, it was not clear at the time. Well, not in detail. There are a number of formations that come and go in the Colorado Plateau. For instance the Navajo Sandstone practically pinches out before arriving in Colorado.Again, it is the details that trip you up. You have a completely wrong impression of geology and geological features.

Correct. In fact, what I had in mind was the Belt Supergroup. Not a bed, or a stratum, or a formation or even a group... There are numerous rock types within the Belt, even including some volcanics. It is, however a prodigious amount of sediment, and it is mostly fine grained, as I remember. I brought this up just because Faith seemed incredulous that large packages of sediments could be deposited anywhere.

Very well, I stand corrected. However, it is not always clear what you are talking about. But your statement above is not completely true, either. Erosion is also the source of sediments for your huge thicknesses of sedimentary rocks. As such, is pertinent to your question about where all of these sediments came from.

Um, no. We are saying that erosion and non-deposition occurred during the formation of the whole package, at numerous points in the history of deposition. Even with in the layers. And your evidence for this is? Yes it is, but the evidence says that this happened in some cases. It didn't. What you are seeing is a simplification of the structures, designed to show the distribution of rock types.

This is what I was referring to in the statement about thickness of a basin.http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/...allogeny/sedex/purcell/index_e.php

A very good synopsis, hopefully distilled to the point where Faith cannot avoid understanding it. The details that we've gone into here have simply been lost...

Actually, it does. Note the inclusion of 'unusual circumstances' in Ifen's post. Also, one of those circumstances that Rox referred to is that marine fossil tend to be preferred. This makes a lot of sense. Indeed, that is what we see. In the sequence I'm working on right now, there are at least three major transgressions and regressions of the sea. And that is just one small formation in the late Cretacesous.I just drilled through a thick regressive sandstone with very sparse shell fossils, mostly fragmented and jostled. But once in a while, we see a thin shelly bed where several fossils are found neatly arrayed side by side, still mostly disarticulated, but looking like a deposit sorted by wave action. Just the way they appear on modern beaches. Please document. How strange? What was this strawman idea of the flood? How is it different from your concept of the flood? How does your idea of the flood account for faunal/floral progression? For instance, how does your flood model explain the presence of angiosperms only very late in the fossil record? I guess this should probably be done in a separate thread, but I eagerly await your explanation in the future.