basalt layering and flood deposits

Dear Friends,The Young Earth creationist article about the Columbia River Group by John Woodmorappe (a pen name of Jan Peczkis) and Michael J. Oard, "Field studies in the Columbia River basalt, north-west USA," is a failed attempt at doing field geology, which involves numerous errors of fact and interpretation. The article can be found at: Field Studies in the Columbia River Basalt, Northwest USA | Answers in Genesis Unfortunately, because of the lack of time, it is impossible to document in any detail the misinformation, blatantly incorrect field observations and simplistic misinterpretations that occur in this article. However, I can take the time to illustrate a number of them. As I have suggested to a good friend of mine, maybe a detailed analysis of this article would make a good article for the Talk.Origins Archives or, even the Journal of Geoscience Education.One example of a blatantly incorrect geological observation is illustrated when the article stated:"At another location, Ginkgo Petrified
Forest State Park at Vantage, WA, we
observed many petrified logs. However,
the term 'petrified forest' is misleading
because none of the trees appeared to
stand in place as if in a forest."Having visited Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, I found the claim that "none of the trees appeared to stand in place as if in a forest" to be grossly incorrect. Having been there, I know that is quite true that a number of the logs were at various angles from horizontal to horizontal. However, I also saw a considerable number of in place, rooted stumps. They are protected from vandals and souvenir hunters by metal cages and clearly marked by metal signs that provide the names of the tree that make them quite visible to even the average tourist. In fact, as noted below, the stumps are even associated with a well-defined paleosol, which Woodmorappe and Oard and his associates also failed to find. In case of the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, as with other field observations, the field observations made by Woodmorappe and Oard about the "apparent" lack of in place stumps is obviously wrong even though these stumps are clearly marked and can be easily found by tourists visiting the park.In addition, there are in situ petrified stumps present elsewhere within sedimentary deposits lying between some of the basalt lava flows of Columbia River Group. Some of these were discussed in:Orsen, Mar J., 2003, Biostratigraphy of
the Columbia River Basalt Petrified Forests.
Session No. 226, The Columbia River Flood
Basalts: New Insights into the Volcanism,
Petrology, and Tectonism of a Large
Igneous Province: Dedicated to Peter
Hooper on His Retirement, Geological
Society of America Seattle Annual Meeting
(November 2-5, 2003).
http://gsa.confex.com/...3AM/finalprogram/abstract_59603.htmIn the above abstract, Orsen (2003),"Three major petrified forests are recognized
on the basis of in situ stumps, forest litter,
soil horizons and abundance of logs. These
forests correspond to and help define temporal
lulls in flood basalt activity: Umtanum
Petrified Forest at the Umtanum unit/Sentinal
Bluffs unit of the Grande Ronde Basalt
(~15.6 mya); Ginkgo Petrified Forest at the
Vantage interbed/Ginkgo flow of the Wanapum
Basalt (~15.5-15.4 mya); and Saddle Mountains
Petrified Forest at the Roza flow/Priest
Rapids flow of the Wanapum Basalt (~14.5 mya).""Destroying intervals of 'geologic time'"One telling remark in this section was,"Nowhere did we observe anything resembling
a valley, or boulder bed, between successive
lava flows."This remarkably incorrect observation also grossly misrepresents the stratigraphy of the Columbia River Group. The fact of matter, as mapped by real geologists, it contains several major unconformities, often including deeply cut valley systems filled with fluvial sediments and younger lava flows. The fact that Woodmorappe and Oard were unable to find them further illustrates the extremely superficial and careless nature of their "field study." The lack of any discussion in this article of such features documented in the abundant literature published on the Columbia River Group also shows either that they failed to completely research it for this article or simply filtered out the knowledge / observations that contradicted the case they were making in this article."Flood depositional history"In this section, Woodmorappe and Oard completely contradicted their above claim about the lack of valleys and erosional conglomerates by discussing and illustrating examples of them. For example, in figure 9, they illustrated a "remnant of an intracanyon basalt flow, which trapped exotic quartzite and basalt boulders below it..." and in figure 10, they illustrated a picture of "thick boulder conglomerate near Lower Monument". They then contradicted themselves further by discussing "thick gravel deposits are frequently found between flows of the Columbia River basalts". Thus, in this article, the authors completely contradicted themselves by stating "The lava flows themselves consist of monotonously thick layers. Nowhere did we observe anything resembling a valley, or boulder bed, between successive lava flows." and later discussing and illustrating actual examples of such valleys and conglomerates. In this discussion of the conglomerates and entrenched valleys. Woodmorappe and Oard also incorrectly concluded that the valleys and conglomerates are limited to the upper part of the Columbia River Group. In fact, a competent review of the published literature would have clearly demonstrated that valleys cut into older lava flows and filled with fluvial sediments and younger lava flows occur throughout the Columbia River Group."Ancient 'weathered horizons' and 'fossil soils'"Contrary to what Woodmorappe and Oard claimed, the bauxites and laterites are indeed buried ("fossil") soils and these and other "fossil" soils, called "paleosols" by geologists, have been found within the Columbia River Basalts / Groups. A paleosol is an ancient soil that formed in the relatively stable surface of an ancient landscape during the geologic past. Paleosols ("fossil soils") have distinctive and often unique, morphological features, i.e. root molds and traces, krotovina, soil horizions, soil peds, and cutans that were created from the alteration of the parent material, in which it has developed, by soil-forming processes. These features can be used to unequivocally identify any well-preserved paleosol. Two major implications of the presence of a paleosol is that either very little or no sediment accumulated during the period that it formed and the surface, in which it has developed, was dry land, except for very brief seasonal flooding during the time it formed. The presence of a paleosol is prime proof that the area was neither underwater nor being rapidly buried during the time it formed.A paper that discusses ancient paleosols (fossil soils) and illustrates their characteristics is:Therrien, F. O., and Fastovsky, D. E., 2000,
Paleoenvironments of Early Theropods, Chinle Formation
(Late Triassic), Petrified Forest National Park,
Arizona. Palaios, 2000, vol.. 15, pp. 194-211.Page Not FoundIf a person both knows what they are looking for and takes the time examine the outcrops with an open mind, he or she can find numerous examples of paleosols as discussed in examples 1, 2, and 3 given below.Example 1, "Geology 101 Spring Field Trip"
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~meinert/Fieldtrip.html"Stop #2 Lake Interbed This roadcut exposes an
ancient lake bed. The Columbia River basalt
flows did not all come out at once. The time
between individual flows ranged from days to
millions of years. Thus, for some flows there
was time for substantial erosion, development
of paleosols, river drainage, and lakes.
These features were then buried and preserved
by subsequent flows. The roadcut at this
stop exposes thinly bedded lake sediments
which have been preserved in between two
basalt flows. The shale and mudstone layers
contain numerous fossil fragments of fish
and leaves. Split open some of the mud layers;
you might be lucky enough to find a perfectly
preserved fossil."Example 2. "F383 Global Climate Change 2002
Fall Meeting Cite abstracts as: Eos. Trans.
AGU, 83(47), GC61A MCC: 133 Saturday 0830h
Carbon Cycle and Climate: Past Present, and
Future I"http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm02/fm02-pdf/fm02_GC61A.pdf"GC61A-05 0940h
Were CO2 levels and climate coupled
during the middle Miocene climatic
optimum?Nathan Sheldon (541-346-5992)
Department of Geological Sciences,
1272 University of
Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403The middle Miocene climatic optimum was
a transient warming event 16 Ma before present.
Recent workers have cited isotopic (Pearson
and Palmer, 2000, Nature 406:695) and
stomatal index (Royer et al., 2001, Science
292:2310) evidence to suggest that this
climatic warming occurred without a significant
increase in atmospheric pCO2 from near-modern
levels, and that CO2 levels were decoupled from
climatic change.The Picture Gorge Subgroup, of the Columbia
River Flood Basalt in Oregon, preserves interflow
paleosols that record the climatic warming.
Because they formed in situ, the chemical
composition of the protolith is well-constrained.
As a result, it is possible to model weathering
of the basalt and soil formation under a variety
of atmospheric pCO2 conditions and to compare
those results with quantitative studies of the
actual paleosols."...rest of abstract deleted...The article also stated," Black and white photography does not do
justice to these 'weathered' surfaces. Consider
Figure 7. In color, the overlying basalt is
the usual gray-black, but the underlying
'laterite' layer, occurring below the grass-
covered basalt layer, is a bright, fire-truck
red. When broken by the hammer, the allegedly-
weathered basalt displays a somewhat-friable,
dull pink-orange texture."Many of these layers have been studied in great detail by conventional geologists, and shown to have all of the characteristics, e.g. horizonization, ped morphology, root traces, and the presence of terrestrial gastropods, of paleosols. This evidence clearly refuted Woodmorappe's and Oard's contention that that these paleosols are layers created actually by hydrothermal reactions. In fact, they completely overlooked the fact that "palagonite-like products" can be created not only by high-temperature hydrothermal reactions by also weathering reactions involving ground water. Unlike features, such as horizonization, ped structures, which are unique to and diagnostic of fossil soils, the clay mineralogy fails to be either unique to or proof of, as is claimed it to be, hydrothermal alteration.That many of the "Reddened clay-rich horizons between basalt flows" are indeed paleosols has been demonstrated by research such as:Sheldon, Nathan D., PEDOGENESIS AND
GEOCHEMICAL ALTERATION OF COLUMBIA RIVER BASALT
LAVAS, Session No. 140 "Traces" of Soil Ecosystems
through the Phanerozoic: New Insights into
Terrestrial Paleoecology, Paleohydrology, and
Paleoclimate, GSA Annual Meeting, November
5-8, 2001 Boston, Massachusettshttp://gsa.confex.com/...1AM/finalprogram/abstract_22337.htm
http://gsa.confex.com/...2001AM/finalprogram/session_845.htmIn part, that abstract stated:"Reddened clay-rich horizons between basalt
flows have historically been identified as
"baked zones" or as zones of lateral groundwater
movement. The reddening has been attributed to
thermal or chemical alteration of the permeable
portion of the basalt flow. However, many of
these zones are paleosols that record significant
hiatuses in basalt flow emplacement. Paleosols
were identified in the field on the basis of
features such as horizonation, ped morphology,
and root traces. A small number of terrestrial
gastropods were also found. ...."The presence of well-developed paleosols within the basalt lava flows of the Columbia River Groups is documented by numerous publications, such as:Geologic Map of the Scotts Mills, Silverton,
and Stayton Northeast 7.5 Minute Quadrangles,
Oregon By Terry L. Tolan and Marvin H. Beeson,
U.S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 99-141.http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of99-141/geol.txt
http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of99-141/geol.ps."... The vesicular flow top of the Sentinel Bluffs
flow is often moderately to deeply weathered with
the glassy groundmass between vesicles altered to
clay. This decomposition often imparts a cream to
yellowish white bleached appearance to the
Sentinel Bluffs flow top and gives it the outward
appearance of a sedimentary rock. This relatively
severe weathering is the result of a substantially
longer period of exposure to subaerial weathering
(>200,000 years vs. 10,000 to 30,000 year hiatus
between emplacement of older Grande Ronde flows)
before being covered by the next CRBG flow
(Beeson and others, 1985, 1989; Beeson and Tolan,
1996)."This hiatus in CRBG volcanism permitted
soils to develop on Sentinel Bluffs flow tops and
rivers and streams to reestablish drainage systems
across areas inundated by Grande Ronde flows.
Within the map area, a thin (0.3 to >3 m-thick)
interbed overlies the Sentinel Bluffs flow. This
interbed ranges from a paleosol developed on the
Sentinel Bluffs flow top to fluvial volcaniclastic
and siliciclastic siltstones and sandstones. ...""Subaerial or subaqueous?"Woodmorappe and Oard also failed to understand the different possible origins of the pillow lavas and palagonites. It is true that pillow lavas and palagonites can be found in the Columbia River Group. However, what Woodmorappe, Oard and the other "geologists" involved in this study seem to be completely unaware of the fact that pillow lava and palagonites will form when basaltic lava is either submerged under or flow into any body of water. Regardless of whether basaltic lava becomes submerged / flows into in a lake, an ocean, an estuary, or bay, the cooling of basaltic lava by water will create pillow lava and palagonites. The simple presence of pillow lava and palagonites in a package of strata cannot be used to infer the type of water body in which it formed.Being denser than unconsolidated water-saturated sand and mud, basaltic lava will sometimes sink into them instead of flowing over them. The sinking of basaltic lava into a water-saturated sediment will also produce pillow lava and palagonites within the floodplain of a river without any standing body of water being present.This is all discussed and documented in detail by:Cas, R., and Wright, J., 1987, Volcanic
Sucessions: Modern and Ancient, Kluwer
Academic Publishers Group, 544 pp.Because the lava flows blocked innumerable rivers and streams as they flow flowed across the Columbia Plateau, including canyon eroded into older lava flows during periods between eruptive episodes, large and deep lakes were created in front of the lava flows. As a result, there was plenty of opportunity for pillow lava and palagonites to form when lava flowed into these lakes. That such lakes existed is confirmed by the presence of fossiliferous freshwater lake deposits interbedded within the basalts of the Columbia River Group. Thus, minor beds of pillow basalt and palagonites,as found in the Columbia River Group, can easily be formed within nonmarine / non-Noachian Flood environments . In fact in figure 4 of the article by Woodmorappe and Oard, the change from subaqueous to subaerial environment, as a shallow lake was fill in by a lava flow, can be seen in the change from pillow lava to colonnade structure of the flow. This figure shows that, in this case the depth of water body, into which the flow entered, was quite shallow and nowhere as deep as the Noachian Flood this article postulated. Rather figure 4 shows the body of water that this flow entered was a very shallow body of water, even for many lakes.Woodmorappe, Oard and their fellow associates also overlooked the fact that the pillow lava and palagonite comprise a relatively minor, almost insignificant amount of the Columbia River Group. They occur almost entirely as isolated beds within lavas that clearly cooled on dry land. In making their claims about the Columbia River Group, they ignore the fact that the bulk of the lava flows have the characteristic structure of basalt lava that cooled on dry land. This observation in itself refutes the thesis that the Columbia River Group accumulated underwater during a mythical Noachian Flood.I could go on with many such examples of the rather inept scholarship and bogus observations to be found in this article. However, I have much better things to do with my time than bore people with the further details of an incredibly sloppy piece of alleged research, which is full of faulty observations, misinterpretations, and overlooks huge amounts of contrary evidence that has been documented in the published literature.Yours,Bill Birkeland
Houston, TXP.S. For more information about fossil soils, paleosols, a person can go look at: 1 Radiometric Dating, Paleosols and the
Geologic Column: Three strikes against
Young Earth Creationism by Joe Meert at:Paleosols
http://baby.indstate.edu/gga/pmag/paleosol.htm2. Weathering mantles and the Age of the Earth
http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/sap.htmThe best book for understanding paleosols is:Retallack, Greg J., 2001, Soils of the Past
Blackwell Publishers, 404ppPictures of various paleosols can be found at:http://www.uoregon.edu/...i/retall/Paleoclasses/geol435.htmlOther figures can be found at:http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/retall/soils.html[This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 09-17-2003]

09-15-2003 11:39 PM
roxrkool quoted from the paper by Jan Peczkis (under the pen name John Woodmorappe) and Michael J. Oard:"Although pillow lavas clearly indicate
underwater deposition, it cannot be
overemphasized that lavas can be extruded
subaqeously without producing pillow
structures.26"roxrkool also noted that footnote 26 referred to;"26. Williams et al., An introduction to
the geology of Verde Valley: a different
perspective, CRSQ 36(2):86, 1999. Welded
tuffs can also cool underwater without
producing pillow structures."roxrkool asked:"I wasn't aware that tuffs EVER produced
pillow structures... seeing as they are
not exactly lava flows. Am I missing
something?"You are not missing anything here. It is just another example of the incredible lack of understanding exhibited by many Young Earth creationists of basic geology. Apparently, neither Woodmorappe nor Oard understand the simple fact that ash-flow tuffs and basaltic lava flows are very different types of volcanic deposits. A lava flow consists of molten lava that has flowed across the land and cooled. In contrast, a fluidized mixture of very hot gas and ash, called pyroclastic flows, deposit ash flow-tuffs. An ash-flow tuff doesn't solidify as lava flows do. Rather, the ash is deposited as the gas escapes from the gas - ash mixture. In some cases, the ash is cool enough that it simply forms a bed of unwelded friable ash. If the ash is hot enough, it will be still plastic, but not molten, and will stick together, "weld", and deform under it's own weight. This welding occurs only within the lower half, which remains at maximum emplacement temperature the longest. The upper part remains unwelded, friable ash because the ash cools quickly. The base of an ash-flow tuff is often unwelded because contact with underlying soil or rock also cools it quickly. A pyroclastic flow is analogous to a duststorm, while a lava flow is analogous to a river. The mechanics of formation of lava flows and ash-flow tuffs so different that it is rather foolish, if not completely silly, for anyone to use one to interpret the environment of accumulation for the other.A starting reference about ash-flow tuffs is:Ross, C. S., and Smith, R. L., 1961, Ash-flow
Tuffs: Their Origin, Geologic Relations and
Identification, Professional Paper no. 366,
United States Geological Survey, Reston,
Virgina.The claim that basaltic lava flows can cool underwater and create the internal features exhibited by the Columbia River Basalts is unsubstantiated by either any real world observations or any detailed theoretical model. It can only be characterize as desperate wishful thinking on the part of some Young Earth creationists that lacks any scientific basis. A person can see the various characteristics of Columbia River basalts in the pdf file "Appendix A Examples of Columbia River Basalt Group Flow Features" at:http://www.netl.doe.gov/...s/asc98FT30602%20appendix%20A.pdfThe source of the above PDF file is:Richland, WA, 2002, Natural Gas Storage
in Basalt Aquifers of the Columbia Basin,
Pacific Northwest USA: A Guide to Site
Characterization,. Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory, Richland, Washington.It can be found at:http://www.netl.doe.gov/...mission/ngs/asc/asc98FT30602.html(NOTE: Numerous maps showing the distribution of individual flow units within the Columbia River Group can be found in "Identification of Columbia River Basalt Group Flows", which is part of the above report and available at:http://www.netl.doe.gov/...s/asc98FT30602%20appendix%20G.pdf )The entablature, colonnade, and rubbly or vesicular flow tops zones shown in "Appendix A Examples of Columbia River Basalt Group Flow Features" are features that can only form above water given the very different mechanical and chemical processes involved in the cooling of molten lava on dry land and under water. In addition, figure A.8 shows an underwater to above water transition within a Columbia River lava flow that occurred when the shallow body of water, into which the lava flowed, was filled by lava and the remaining part of the lava flow cooled above water level.An excellent reference to look at for an understanding of lava flows, ash flow tuffs, and other volcanic deposits is:Cas, R., and Wright, J., 1987, Volcanic
Sucessions: Modern and Ancient, Kluwer
Academic Publishers Group, 544 pp.,
ISBN: 0412446405A detailed explanation of how these features are created can be found in "Northwest Geology: Inside a Basalt Flow" by Stephen Reidel at:http://www.pnl.gov/agg/whatsnew/CRBcolumns.docOther web pages are:Columbia River Basalt
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/columbia/basalt.htm[PDF]Microsoft PowerPoint - Lecturer 4
Volcanic Structures
http://www.geo.umass.edu/...%204%20Volcanic%20Structures.pdfroxrkool commented:"Definitely an embarrassment to good scientists
- no wonder Woodmorappe uses a pen name, I'd
be hesitant to put my real name on that paper,
too."I don't believe it is a matter of embarrassment as she is quite proud of all of the papers that she [he :-)] has published as John Woodmorappe. One unproven hypothesis about why she uses a pen name is that she, under her real name, has published papers that accept both evolutionary and an ancient Earth as the truth and she doesn't want to have to explain why in one set of papers she accepts evolution and an ancient Earth and other papers express an anti-evolutionary, anti-ancient Earth, and anti-geology agenda. Other people have hypothesized that she fears losing her job as an Illinois high school science teacher. This is suggested by the emphasis given in the article that she has written justifying the use of pen names to the phrase "or to keep separate their vocation and avocation" in Pseudonyms: A Long, Honorable Tradition" by John Woodmorappe, MA Geology, BA Geology" athttp://www.trueorigin.org/ca_jw_01.aspThere is nothing unethical about using "John Woodmorappe" as a pen name. The unethical practice here is the policy of an alleged peer-reviewed scientific journal to accept articles written by authors using pen names. It is quite unscientific for any journal to publish articles where the author uses a pen name instead of his real name. If a journal is truly promoting science and trust, it would only accept those articles, in which the authors were willing to use their real names.Look for "John Woodmorappe" in the "The Anti-Evolutionists" web page atComing soon page | Register your own domain at GKG.NETand on p. 88 ofTom McIve, 1988, Anti-Evolution: A Reader's
Guide to Writings before and after Darwin.
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,
Maryland, 408 pp. ISBN: 0801845203If a person wants to learn more about the "John Woodmorappe" controversy, they can go search USENET posts posted to the talk.origins newsgroup using the "Googles Advanced Group Search" at:Error 404 (Not Found)!!1A person should use the keywords "Peczkis" and "Woodmorappe" for the search.Any more discussion of the use of the "John Woodmorappe" as a pen name should be done in a separate thread.Yours,Bill Birkeland
Houston, Texas[This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 09-16-2003]

09-17-2003 10:52 AM and message 15, Randy asked,"Do you find this a bit surreal?"Getting back on topic, a surreal aspect of "Field studies in the Columbia River basalt, north-west USA", by "John Woodmorappe" and Michael J. Oard, and published in Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal. vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 103-110, was pointed out to me by someone interested in eventually writing a formal Talk.Origins FAQ on it.This item occurs in "Subaerial or subaqueous?", in which Woodmorappe and Oard wrote:"There are a variety of additional evidences,
which indicate that most, if not all, of the
Columbia River basalts were extruded underwater.
These include marine fossils (such as sponge
spicules, diatoms, and dinoflagellates)
between lava flows, and numerous areas of
well-rounded, exotic quartzite gravel,
cobbles, and boulders locally interbedded
with the flows (but mostly lying above the
basalt).27-29."The footnoted references are:"27. Barnett, J. and Fisk, L.H., Palynology
and paleoecology of a sedimentary interbed in
the Yakima Basalt (Miocene), Palouse Falls,
Washington, (4):259-278, 1980. Northwest
Science 54""28. Coffin, H.G., Columbia River basalts:
rapid submarine deposition (unpublished
manuscript), 1996; (cited with permission
of the author).", and"29. , Where is the Flood/post-Flood
boundary in the rock record,
(2):267-273, 1996. Oard, M.J.
CEN Tech. J. 10"NOTE: the complete reference to Oard (1996) is:Oard, M. J., 1996, Where is the Flood/
post-Flood boundary in the rock record.
Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal.
vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 267-273.Reading Barnett's and Fisk's "Palynology and paleoecology of a sedimentary interbed in the Yakima Basalt (Miocene), Palouse Falls, Washington" article was a surreal and revealing experience. Woodmorappe and Oard cited it in the footnotes along with Oard's and Coffin's research, as if Barnett's and Fisk's paper also presented evidence for the accumulation of the Columbia River Basalt Group on the ocean bottom in a marine environment, which they argued was associated with the Noachian Flood.A friend sent me a copy of Barnett's and Fisk's paper that he had gotten from the local research library for his purposes with the comment that I had to read this paper to believe it. He found a surreal contrast between Barnett's and Fisk's conclusions and the arguments being made by Woodmorappe and Oard in of "Field studies in the Columbia River basalt, north-west USA" because their conclusions were so different. Barnett and Fisk (1980) did find "diatoms, and dinoflagellates". However, they were freshwater diatoms, and dinoflagellates. In addition to these fossils, Barnett and Fisk found freshwater aquatic plants and freshwater alga, Pediastrum, which Woodmorappe and Oard apparently didn't see fit to inform their readers about. In short, Barnett and Fisk found freshwater alga, aquatic plants, diatoms, and dinoflagellates, which in terms of specific genera and species present, instead of supporting Woodmorappe's and Oard's ideas about the Columbia River Basalt group accumulating under deep, marine water, refuted them. It is rather surreal that a study, which contradicted their hypothesis, should be cited as if it supported it.In short, Barnett and Fisk concluded:The Palouse Falls palynoflora reflects reasonably
well the regional climatic conditions as evidence
by the related floras of the Columbia Plateau.
The presence of planktonic forms, aquatic
macrophytes, and marsh plants indicates that
deposition of the sediments took place in a body
of water, probably a pond or lake. This
interpretation is supported by the presence of
abundant diatoms. The general decrease in aquatic
plants and increase in forest elements upward in
the section suggest a shallowing or infilling of
the pond or lake, perhaps due to increased
volcanic activity and erosion of ash from the
surrounding region. Supporting this view is the
presence of thin bands of lignite near the top
of the section, with a 1-10 cm coal layer just
underlying the capping basalt."Thus, the paper by Barnett and Fisk failed to provide any evidence of marine fossils. Instead, their paper discussed freshwater palynomorphs from either a pond or small freshwater lake with 25 to 30 cm (10 to 12 inches) of sediment at its bottom when it was buried by a lava flow. It is quite surreal that their paper clearly contradicted the argument being made by Woodmorappe and Oard instead of supporting it and, still, Woodmorappe and Oard cited it as if this paper supports their arguments. It is totally surreal that people, for which English is their native language, were incapable of conprehending the fact that Barnett and Fisk are discussing freshwater fossils instead of marine fossils.Being unpublished, Dr. Harold Coffin's paper is unavailable for review and comment. Thus, it hardly serves as proof of anything. As pointed out by the same person, Coffin, in his book "Origin by Design" concluded that the presence of pillow lava and "pelagonite", diatomaceous earth, and acritarchs indicates that the Columbia River Basalt Group were extruded subaqueously during the Noachian Flood. However, as noted in previous discussions, the occurrence of of pillow lava and "pelagonite also form in lakes. Thus, they aren't diagnostic of deep sea / marine environments as Dr. Coffin erroneously believed. As in case of pillow basalt and "pelagonite", Dr. Coffin apparent didn't know that diatomaceous earth can also accumulate within shallow freshwater lakes and, thus, useless without a detailed analysis of the genera and species of diatoms present within them as evidence of marine or deep water conditions. Finally, acritarchs are ""an informal utilitarian, 'catch-all' category without status as a class, order or other supragenieric unit" comprised of "small microfossils of unknown and probably varied biological affinities..." As a result, the presumption made by Coffin in "Origin by Design" that acritarchs are marine dinoflagellates is an invalid assumption. Also, the simple presence of unidentified acritarchs, because of their varied biological affinities and environmental preferences cannot be used to make any inferences as Coffin did about the depositional environments of the sediments in which they occur without knowing the specific genera and species involved. In addition, the paper, cited by "Origin by Design" as documenting the acritarchs, described a completely freshwater and swampy flora of palynomorphs that completely refuted Dr. Coffin's conclusions. However, this did not stop Dr. Coffin from citing that paper as if it supported his interpretation. Like Woodmorappe and Oard, Dr. Coffin neglected to inform his readers, sparing them from the angst of being confused by facts contradicting his arguments, of the freshwater, even swampy, nature of the palynomorphs discussed in the cited paper. If Coffin's unpublished paper uses the same sort of simplistic, faulty, and surreal logic as found in "Origin by Design," then there is serious question as to if it actually offered any real evidence for the deep sea - Noachian Flood accumulation of the Columbia River Basalt Group. If Woodmorappe and Oard want to use it in their arguments, they definitely need to make a copy of Coffin's unpublished paper available for review.Oard's paper has been requested by interlibrary loan by other interested parties. Eventually, someone will get into looking into the validity of evidence offered by that paper.Finally, sponges are found in both freshwater lakes and marine environments. Thus, the presence of sponge spicules in sediments within the Columbia River Basalt Group cannot be used to argue that it accumulated within deep water.
Yours,Bill Birkeland[This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 09-18-2003]

lstorer, in the Great Flood, wrote"Debris and Rocks (gravel) found
around parts of the world like a
blanket, with markings that could
not be caused by Glacier Action. Any
reply welcome. This book I'm talking
about was wrote by Ignasius
Donnelly I believe."Rei in message 25 wrote:"Name your gravel site so we can
inform you exactly why it exists
Vague archaeology is of no use,
and since there's no "universal
gravel layer" in the world, there's
no way to tell what you're
referring to."The "gravel", which Donnelly refers to in his book "The Age of Fire and Gravel" consists mostly glacial till of varying ages. Within the tropics, he also included colluvial, various types of mass-wasting deposits, and even fluvial gravels within the sedeimntray deposits, whih he refers to as "gravel". Donnelly presumes that all of the sediments are all of the same age and, thus, were created by the same catastrophic event. Donnelly is sort of the late 1800's equivalent of Velikovsky.PaulK wrote:"As well as being somewhat out of
date (late 19th century), Donelly was,
I am afraid, something of a crank"Given that "The Age of Fire and Gravel" was published in 1887, a person can confidentally regard his book as being seriously out of date and quite obsolete in terms of both evidence presented and arguments used. All of the items used as evidence supporting his hypothesized impacts have now been explained by more conventional ideas. Also, an abundance of published research can be found to argue against the catastrophic origin of his "gravel".In 1887, he really wasn't a crank, but just one person in a long tradition of various authors interpreting certain sedimentary deposits within catastrophic framework based on a literal interpretation of selected parts of various religious texts, including Genesis. The real cranks are people like Rand Flem-Ath, who wrote "When the Sky Fell" in 1995, and D. S. Allan and J. B. Delair, who wrote "Cataclysm" in 1995. Unlike Donnelly's time, there is now an abundance of published research available that readily refutes their positions and, they, unlike Donnelly, really should know better.In fact, "Cataclysm" argued a thesis identical to Donnelly's using the piecemeal presentation of evidence carefully selected and edited to support their position. They ignore the overall context of their evidence, which contradicts and refutes their thesis. They simply ignore an overwhelming amount of research that repeatedly refutes their arguments and had not been existene a to contradict Donnelly arguments. Similarily, Flem-Ath, a catastrophist invoking Earth Crustal Displacement instead of cometary impacts, uses the same piecemeal patchwork of bits and pieces of unconnected evidence and a functionally illiterate misunderstanding of geology to argue for his past global catastrophes.Yours,Bill Birkeland