Summations Only

Place names of geography and formation names of geology don't always match up exactly. The name of the Kaibab Plateau seems to apply from the Grand Canyon northward. South of the Grand Canyon the region is called the Coconino Plateau. But as you can see from RAZD's topographic map, the Kaibab Uplift extends a bit south of the Grand Canyon.That being said, I don't think you need to precisely identify the boundaries of the Kaibab Uplift. The point is that the Colorado River runs directly through the uplift, and through another uplift further west. Since water doesn't run uphill, this needs to be explained. Here's RAZD's image: This paragraph raises so many questions. We'd like to see the evidence "spelled out" as per the request in the thread's opening post:

• What evidence dates the uplift as coincident with the end of the Flood 4500 years ago?
• What evidence indicates that there were two miles of sedimentary layers atop the Kaibab 4500 years ago?
• What evidence indicates that the Colorado River followed the path of cracks created by tectonic forces?
• Why does the Colorado River have a number of meanders if it followed the path of tectonic cracks?
• What evidence indicates that some of the chunks of upper strata washed into the canyon only 4500 years ago, since they should still be there?

--Percy

Since the video I presented was of the 2011 Japanese tsunami, obviously I live on planet Earth. The question is better directed to yourself. There are meanders east of the canyon, in the canyon, and west of the canyon. If the canyon is "mostly cut by this time," if the course of the river is already incised into the landscape, then it is too late for a stream to form meanders. Simple logic.--Percy

No one gave you a serious response, so I'll attempt one. The illustration Moose provided was of a transgressing sea creating a sequence of sand, silt, clay, mud, calcareous ooze and limestone layers. It does not show how the landscape of your Permian illustration became preserved in the stratigraphic record. The Hermit Shale could be such a layer, but it is fossil poor. For fauna there are only occasional fossil amphibian and reptile tracks, but no fossils of skeletal remains (so much for fossil abundance).A much better candidate is the Wichita Group, terrestrial strata in the Texas Red Beds where Permian fossils of early reptiles like the Dimetrodon are found. Your image looks pretty typically Permian according to what we see in the strata, low lying swampy regions probably also networked with rivers and lakes. The swamps are depositional environments, and the borders of the swamps no doubt migrated about the landscape - Walther's Law in action. The Wichita formation is about a thousand feet feet thick and contains a number of formations (for a list see List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Texas).My own idea of how the Wichita Group formed (and it would be nice to get feedback from Edge and Moose) is that this extensive swampy region was one of net deposition. As it accumulated sediments their weight caused subsidence, allowing the region to accumulate more sediments. There must have been an eroding mountain range, probably to the west, supplying these sediments.The Wichita Group is overlain by the Clear Fork Group, which includes a great number of paleosols, which as you recall are lithified soils that you declared impossible. The creatures whose fossils are found in these layers had no trouble surviving a deposition rate that was unlikely to exceed inches per century. If, for example, in a given year the landscape accumulated an average millimeter of sediment and the landscape in general subsides a millimeter, it would not have affected the life living there one bit. But the depositional environments of swamps, rivers and lakes gradually accumulated a buried trove of deceased life that become more and more deeply buried with time. This has been answered many times. Why do you keep asking the same questions? The landscape never went away. The surface of the landscape merely accumulated more and more sediments, and life lives on, above and beneath the surface.Let's say that each day you take a walk down a path through the woods, and that each year that path and the surrounding woods accumulates sediments making it a millimeter higher. Would you ever notice? Say you live 100,000 years (just pretend that's possible) during which the elevation of the woods rises 328 feet but also subsides about 328 feet because of the additional weight of the sediments. Trees would grow and die and new trees would grow and die, but still the woods is there year after year for a hundred thousand years. But 328 feet beneath you the soil you walked on a hundred thousand years before is now under a great weight, and it is being slowly lithified into rock. That's the landscape life once lived on, including yourself.You say you're bad at math. Are we talking "can't balance a checkbook" bad at math, or is addition, subtraction, multiplication and division okay, along with unit conversions? As has been pointed out to you many times, the very slow accumulation of sediments is not in any way a hindrance to life. Of course not. An accumulation of a millimeter of sediments in a year isn't even going to be noticed, let alone make the area uninhabitable. The common case for terrestrial fossils is that land creatures become buried in the depositional environments of water, i.e., swamps, rivers, lakes, etc. Land creatures fall or are swept or dropped into the water at the boundaries between land and water. It's also possible for a creature to become buried on land by events like landslides or earthquakes, but falling into water and becoming buried has got to be much more common. What's absurd is the number of times this has been explained to you. Not only do you obviously not understand it (and as I've said many times now, we're well past expecting you to accept it, we just want you to understand it), you don't even seem to remember it was ever explained, not just from thread to thread, but even from day to day in the same thread. You just keep repeating the same objections over and over again as if introducing them for the first time.--Percy

You and Mod are raising the same objection, so this reply is also to Mod's Message 225. Just so we're on the same page, here's a drawing of a simple braided river: The simplest form of a braided river is a river with an island in the middle. As you add more braids you get more islands.At its widest portion The Grand Canyon has many "islands" of plateaus, as shown here: This suggests the region was once crisscrossed by a braided river.--Percy

Quoting Emil:

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Well, I knewand all karstologists knowthat the surface of limestone terrains above caves changes dramatically in short periods of time.

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Why does Emil think this is true? Luray Caverns, Mammoth Caves, they're pretty much the same today as a couple hundred years ago.

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The Vancouver Island speleothems have yielded radiometric ages of between 12 and 18 thousand years.3,4 That creates a problem and causes confusion. According to various geological evidences, the island was covered by ice, so the speleothems should not have grown at this time.

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Why does Emil think that a hiatus in deposition would affect radiometric dating? And since there is often water beneath the glaciers, why does he think there would be a hiatus anyway?--Percy

As has been explained to you many times now, everyone here, including you, believes that sedimentary deposits occur over spans of time. It's just a question of whether it's hours or eons. We look to the evidence for answers. Edge did not introduce lithostratigraphy and Chronostratigraphy as solutions to a problem. He noted them as additional topics you don't understand contributing to your confusion. Gee, I think I've heard this before. I wonder if there's any evidence behind it.--Percy

I don't think you quite grasped the issue, but I'll respond anyway. Yes, of course - I referred specifically to the erosive structures of the American southwest: Your image is of an relatively small erosive structure in the Painted Desert, not a mountain. To give you an idea of just how small these things are, here's a panoramic photo of the Painted Desert. Blow it up then pan around and you'll see what I mean: These are not mountains. They are badland type structures - look it up. Here's a similar area in South Dakota known as, appropriately enough, The Badlands: Orogeny (mountain building) is not thought to occur through erosion, so I'm still seeking to understand what Edge meant. Gee, this looks familiar, just like the same stuff that has been answered so many times. I don't think this needs to be answered yet again. Go find another sucker.--Percy

Why do you think this an appropriate analogy?Here's a much better analogy. Not perfect, but much better. Take a stack of rubber mats like this: Now tilt the three or four mats at the bottom without affecting the mats above. It can't be done.Now grab the mat at the bottom and yank it out. This can't be done, either. Here's what you said in Message 156: Dr. Karl Karlstrom likely misspoke when he said the Laramide Orogeny was responsible for the uplift of the region.
The Laramide Orogeny was responsible for the Rocky Mountains (and much else), but not for the current elevation of the region. Elevating the region, from the Rocky Mountains (which when originally formed were at a lower elevation) through the states to the east and right out through the Great Plains, came later.You also apparently misunderstand what you're wrong about regarding tilting. Everyone knows the region uplifted without much tilting. Where you're wrong is thinking the Supergroup layers were originally horizontal when the Paleozoic layers were deposited atop them, and then they tilted while not affecting the overlying Paleozoic layers. That's impossible.The Kaibab Uplift is unrelated to the Laramide Orogeny - they occurred tens of millions of years apart in time. The Kaibab Uplift also occurred much after the general elevation of the region. When Dr. Karlstrom was talking about uplift he meant the general uplift of the region, not the later Kaibab Uplift. I think the real problem is that you've got an aversion to facts, particularly when they don't conform to your personal Biblical interpretations. Ideas unconnected to facts are just imagination. You've described your ideas, you admit you have no evidence, so I'd say you're done. You first said, "As it starts draining the uppermost layers break up." Tomorrow it'll be something else. Why do you think it possible? So all we have to do to check this possibility is look for a big underground reservoir of water with a volume several times that of the ocean. Given all the offshore drilling, given all the seismic studies, how do you imagine we've managed to miss finding it yet? This is a cockamamie idea. Water levels dropping at only 1.5 inches/minutes is not going to generate enough flow to carry sediments no matter what you do. But responding anyway, so if now you need obstacles to amplify the force of flow, that means you're back to chucks of strata instead of loose sediments. You need to make up your mind and stick with one story. It's impossible to follow the scenario because it keeps changing. You make up some crazy idea, then you refuse to give it up until finally even you can see how goofy it is, then you make up some other crazy idea.--Percy

What do you imagine needs cleaning off? They're just sediments. About contacts, some are sharp, some aren't.Strata are not uniform in composition, particularly terrestrial strata. Here's a description of the Claron Formation from Wikipedia:

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Meandering streams flowed slowly over the resulting broad and almost featureless plains. Periodic but extensive floods inundated large areas perhaps once every 1,000 years; spreading mud, cobbles and fine silt over the plains.[4] Erosion incised these deposits between flood events and plant growth was abundant. Oxidation of the iron in the mud and silt turned the soil into hematite, giving it a pink and red hue. These sediments were later lithified into the up-to- 700 feet (200 m)-thick Pink Member of the locally Eocene-aged Claron Formation (previously called the Wasatch Formation).[4] Channelized conglomerates of this member can be easily seen in Red Canyon along State Route 12 while its silt and mudstones compose most of the park's fragile and colorful spires called hoodoos.

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It talks about floods across plains spreading mud, cobbles and silt. Where it mentions channelized conglomerates it means stream or river channels that eventually filled with cobbles (pebbles and stones), silt and mud These are usually lowland/coastal areas, so there aren't going to be any valleys. Low areas will fill with water and become ponds and lakes which will gather sediments. Eventually they fill in and move elsewhere, as will rivers and streams.Hills aren't likely to be preserved in the geologic record because they stick up from the landscape and experience the most erosion, eventually disappearing.Soil isn't likely to be preserved, either. Usually it ends up as sediments in ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, swamps, lagoons and seas. Animals romp on the surface. Should the surface accumulate sediments and form a new surface, animals will romp on that. Sediment accumulation rates are, on average, very slow. Animals are in no danger of being buried. Strata begin as sediment deposited on the surface and only become rock after becoming deeply buried. You are absolutely correct. While animals and plants are living on the soil and sediments of the surface, the soil and sediments will not turn to rock.--Percy

I already answered this in Message 279. This is not a mountain: Compared to actual mountains it's a low feature in the Painted Desert. It just badland stuff, though very pretty.You found the image at BlogSpot with no context, which is why you thought it was a mountain, but it actually comes from the North American Desert article at Britannica.com. You can also check out the Wikipedia article on the Painted Desert, which runs the same photo as the Britannica, and is also where that panoramic photo came from.About how mountains form, Edge has posted me some "if you think about this from a certain perspective" type stuff that I haven't had a chance to think about yet, but I think you would be best served continuing to think of mountain orogeny to be the result of plate tectonics pushing up and tilting strata, not erosion.--Percy

And would you say also material from the Shinumo Hills, some of which survived?--Percy

I considered a "rising sea" scenario but had trouble working out how that could happen without just obliterating the terrestrial landscape in a Walther's Law transgression kind of way. Thanks for this explanation.--Percy

I took a look at that Wikipedia article. So you mean the dendritic endpoints represent streams and creaks flowing in from the surrounding landscape? Why dendritic and not braids? Is there something about the pattern of the "islands" that says one rather than the other? Don't rivers on level landscapes change often between braided and meander paths? I need help with this one. The definition of "culmination" I found was "The highest antiformal point (see antiform) of a *crest line along all non-*cylindroidal folds."So would it be correct to say that this widest part of the Grand Canyon was once a level area where a great deal of water flowed in from streams and rivers from the surrounding area, but that the flow was very slow and created occasional meanders that were influenced somewhat by a pre-existing fracture pattern.--Percy

My understanding of geology isn't to the point where I'm able to perform analogs to jazz improvisations. I can imagine buttes but not mountains. There seems nothing in the underlying strata that would contribute to erosive formations that resemble mountains in shape.--Percy

Most people call them sharp contacts, not tight. A tight contact to me implies one that has no spaces or interstices, which describes almost all contacts in the geological record. Lake and sea bottoms are pretty flat. The abyssal plains in the oceans are among the flattest places on Earth. Again, this is not a mountain. It is in the Painted Desert, a badlands area. If it's much more than a hundred feet high I'd be surprised. According to Wikipedia these erosive structures are part of the Chinle Formation, so the strata formed from lakes and streams. The structure in your image appears to represent accumulating sediments on a lake bottom, though given how small it actually is it could possibly represent a broad river. Edge's opinion would be better. Yes, Mesozoic, specifically the Upper Triassic according to Wikipedia. It has been explained to you many times that this is definitionally impossible. Repeating a thousand times that the moon is made of green cheese won't make it true. You may as well hope the definition of truth will change. What evidence would that be? None of that has anything to do with the geologic column being "over and done with." The Grand Staircase region is not an area where "they are ALL there." There were layers above the Claron that are now gone. There are unconformities, i.e., gaps in representation of the geologic column. There is the Great Unconformity representing about a couple hundred million years of the geologic column. You've got the wrong reason that the geologic column is conceptual. It isn't because it doesn't exist exactly the same in any one place. It is conceptual because it doesn't exist in any place. It is a framework within which stratigraphic columns can be interpreted. There you go with pronouns again. By "they" do you mean stratigraphic columns? I'll assume you do. Not bad, but it isn't clear what you're excepting angular unconformities from, and strata do not always have "tight contacts" (the correct term is sharp contacts). It's a description of some of the things that can happen to strata, not evidence. What is your evidence for rapid deposition? What is your evidence for the flood? What is your evidence against the geologic timescale? I doubt there's any place in the world where there's a stratigraphic column that fully represents the geologic column. I bet every stratigraphic column is partial Stratigraphic columns have lost their upper strata to erosion in all periods of world geologic history, not just whenever you think your "Big Continent-splitting Tectonic Bash" happened. World history has seen the breakup of multiple supercontinents, such as Pangaea, Gondwana and Rodinia. Yes, your evidence is lacking - completely lacking. And again, I very much doubt there are any complete stratigraphic columns. If you're trying to say that Smith drew a stratigraphic column for England where the full geologic column was represented, then that would be wrong. Are you thinking of something like this? This particular image puts Smith's stratigraphic column on the left and modern data on the right. It only seems to go back as far as the Jurassic: You haven't described any evidence - not any. None. Zilch. Nada. Zero. Diddly-squat. Zippo.Why are you claiming now that you've described evidence when in other very recent posts from the past few days you've conceded that you have no evidence while hoping it will be found soon. Are you perhaps trying to say that you've presenting some reasoning for why the geologic column can't be millions of years old? I could understand you thinking that more than I could understand how you think you've presented any evidence. But while you have managed to say some things that are true, they don't argue against the geologic column, they don't seem to support a young Earth, and they don't seem to support a global flood 4500 years that was responsible for all the world's geology that we see today.--Percy