Summations Only

It's impossible to conclude a crack model from this diagram. It shows just a tiny part of the canyon. As Edge says, the canyon's shape is sinuous - here's a Google Map view of it: Nothing about this shape suggests it is following fractures in the rock. And if the Kaibab Uplift caused these supposed fractures, how did water continue to flow through the uplifted area? Why would these wet and malleable (your words) upper strata develop fractures? Why did none of these fractures propagate down to the Kaibab and below so they'd be included in the diagram? And didn't you finally decide the top strata were still loose sediments? How would a thin sheet of water only a few inches thick and water levels lowering at a rate of an inch and half per minute be enough to carry chunks of strata? How big are chunks of strata anyway? If the etching of the Grand Canyon began in layers above the Claron, then why didn't the widening canyon drain all the water off the plateau and halt the erosion? We do. The plain was at one time much lower in elevation and filled with rivers and streams snaking back and forth across it that gradually eroded the upper layers away. This is something we see taking place around the world today.--Percy

There's that amnesia flaring up again. Just read the thread and refresh your memory. I liked Edge's word of "sinuous." The canyon follows a sinuous course, including through the Kaibab Uplift, and not along anything resembling a fracture or fault. You called these strata wet and malleable - why are they fracturing? So if you drop a wet and malleable blob of clay on the floor, you expect it to crack because it's soft? Not going to happen. If you really want something to crack I suggest you drop a coffee cup. You've got everything backwards. Wet and malleable things bend and flex and twist. Hard things fracture. You're imagining fractures in wet and malleable things where they're not possible, and in hard layers like the Kaibab where fractures are possible we don't see any. You mean the water started receding at the same time that the Kaibab Uplift occurred? Since the water had to be at a height above eventual sea level to cover Mount Everest at 29,000 feet, the Kaibab Uplift at an elevation of only about 8000 feet would have had 21,000 feet of water (4 miles) above it when it began receding. Since the upward forces were uneven, concentrated as they were just under the Kaibab Uplift but not over the rest of the region, why is the whole stratigraphic column pushed upward instead of just some of the bottom layers tilting, like what you think happened with the Supergroup. You're repeating yourself, so so will I. Why do you think wet and malleable strata capable of bending and flexing would experience fractures? Did you ever play with Play-Doh? How do you fracture Play-Doh? Which is wet and malleable and would just bend. That's what causes bends. If they were soft then they wouldn't fracture. And not to forget, I thought you decided the upper strata were still loose sediment. Finally, something true. How does water break up strata that are wet and malleable? Just how many fractures are we talking about here? You seem to be imagining the entire stack of layers above the Kaibab, a region of tens of thousands of square miles and a volume of rock of more than twenties of thousands of cubic miles of rock, being fractured into chucks small enough to be carried away by a thin sheet of water a few inches thick. Again, the water level is dropping at the rate of 1.5 inches/minute. That's not going to generate any meaningful flow of water, especially not miles beneath the surface. Even a stratum of loose sediments wouldn't be affected. There is nothing to widen the fractures that wouldn't form anyway in wet and malleable strata. Are you actually imagining that when the water level reaches the surface that there is already a canyon? Well, we certainly wouldn't expect to see any evidence of the impossible, and we don't. This has been explained many, many, many times. Go find one of those explanations. The site is littered with them. You're imagining a problem that doesn't exist. Downcutting during uplift is a well understood process. This has been explained. Read the thread.--Percy

Looks like you never went back to reread your message. The claim of complete stratigraphic columns came from your Message 284, where you claimed they existed several times: So it looks like you did say what we said you said, it was incorrect, and then you compounded the error by trying to retroactively claim you were saying something different, and that it wasn't important anyway. Face it, you were wrong, then you falsely denied it. No worries, your points not only don't approach "detailed perfection," they lack evidence, rationale, coherence, consistency, and are constantly changing.--Percy

I think the word formation is fine, or landform. It's still a relatively low feature of a badlands region probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred feet high. Here's some people walking around on one of these things. They're not that big: Or maybe this image will give you a better idea of how small these things are compared to mountains: If you have good evidence and reasons that it is absurd then by all means call it absurd, then provide your evidence and reasoning. Just keep in mind that if you have no evidence and reasons then calling it absurd won't go over well. And given all the evidence and reasoning from the other side, most of which you ignore or deny without explanation, you then open yourself up to ridicule and derision.I've read ahead in the thread and you seem to say several times that you're making an effort not to be insulting, but you ignore most of what people say, and most people find being ignored more than a little insulting. You've replied to less than 50% of the posts to you, and when you do respond you usually ignore most of what was said. You instead repeat yet again your own account of events while declaring that you have no obligation to provide any evidence or reasoning of your own.So if those strata can't be lakebeds, explain why they can't be lakebeds using evidence that is true because everyone can see it and understand it, instead of trying to browbeat people into submission with repeated declarations about things you know nothing about and that you have no evidence for. If no lakebed is flat, then why is the lakebed of this drained lake flat: Why are the Bonneville Salt Flats, which is the lakebed of a dried up lake, flat, so flat that world land speed record aspirants go there to test their 600 mph vehicles. The Black Rock Desert is another very flat lakebed used for setting land speed records.If sediments in lakes don't generally accumulate flat and horizontally according to Steno's Principle of Horizontality, then why do you claim sediments in your flood accumulate flat and horizontally? Isn't that contradictory? Here are a couple images of flat plains again. What do you want people to see that will make it apparent to them that these are not as flat as strata: (You're also ignoring that it was also explained, at length, why these fields and plains are unlikely to become strata, but that's a separate topic.)Here's a 49 second video on the abyssal plains confirming that they are among the flattest places on Earth: And what have you got to rebut the evidence before our eyes, and the reasoning that sediments tend to accumulate flat and horizontally, first filling in low areas to create flatness where it didn't previously exist, such as stream beds filling in. All you've got in rebuttal is, "No no no, the strata are way too straight and flat, no no no, those don't work and really it should be easy enough to see that, I keep being amazed that it isn't." That isn't evidence or reasoning. It is incredulity. If that's all you've got then you've got nothing. Stop ignoring what people say, which is very insulting I don't think arguing that geology professors put their students under a spell is going to fly. A much more likely explanation is that you're a religious fanatic who has been seduced into believing that facts should be subordinated to a book written by ancient nomads. You need evidence and reasoning if you're going to prevail. Again, no evidence or reasoning, just a bald declaration. You keep making the declaration that the geologic column is "over and done with," but you never provide any reasoning for how that could be true, and you've ignored the explanations for why definitionally it must be false. There's that use of pronouns again that you like so much. What does "they" refer to? You've presented no evidence, just expressed incredulity and made bald declarations. That's not evidence, so "they" certainly couldn't be evidence. More bald declarations, no evidence. All stratigraphic columns are incomplete representations of the geologic column, something that wouldn't be true had the Flood created the strata in a process of continuous deposition. No, they don't make up the entire geologic column. The Great Unconformity all by itself represents a missing 200 million years. Why are you offering obviously incomplete stratigraphic columns as if they were complete? Why do you even think there are stratigraphic columns somewhere in the world that fully represent the geologic column? More generally, why do you think so many things that are so obviously false. No, the William Smith cross section is not a complete stratigraphic column. There are no complete stratigraphic columns. The Smith cross section I presented only goes back to the Jurassic, and there are unconformities that represent missing time periods (you didn't respond to the message where I originally posted this image - if you'd read the information posted to you then you could avoid repeating the same simple errors over and over again, which would be most refreshing for everyone else since we wouldn't have to keep reposting and reposting the same rebuttals of your repeated and obviously false claims): Of course you haven't made a dent in geology's views. You haven't done anything but express incredulity and make bald declarations. You've presented no evidence, you've made no rational arguments for your viewpoint. But if you look at the Entrada Sandstone a bit closer up it doesn't look like a sharp contact at all. In fact it has a lot of gradations and crossbedding: "Tight contact" is not a term of geology. You mean sharp contact. You keep mentioning sharp contacts and seem to think they are evidence against geological views. Everyone agrees sharp contacts exist and that contacts between strata tend to be flat (though that hoodoo topped butte in the foreground has a bunch of wavy strata), but if they're evidence supporting your viewpoint then you're going to have to explain how that is. Just declaring that there's nothing as flat in the current world is not going to fly because there are so many examples showing you're obviously wrong.--Percy

More evidence that you don't read posts, and the ones you read you don't remember. Way back in Message 203 we had this exchange: And Edge reiterated this in the very next message: You even acknowledged this information in your Message 208, saying, "OK but that is not shown on the photo." RAZD then reiterates this in his Message 287: Yet here you are asking the same question all over again.--Percy

When first considering this I figured that erosion at the plateau edges was just a form of incision and recession. I thought the plateau edges would gradually recede north, expanding whatever plateau is south of the Colorado Plateau. But after a little thinking I realized that you're probably saying that the Mogollon Rim is an example of an orogeny that requires erosion for exposure. Sounds, weird, but do I have that right? You're killing me. Like Faith I know that certain things are true, like that the Rocky Mountains were thrust into the sky by an orogeny to stand high and gleaming above the surrounding landscape, but unlike Faith I can go to Wikipedia and disabuse myself of misconceptions like this. After reading the geology section of the Wikipedia article on the Rocky Mountains I'm just confused. First it says the southern Rocky Mountains were thrust up through overlying Pennsylvanian and Permian layers, then it says the Rockies were once a high plateau like Tibet and that erosion gradually exposed the mountain range. How does unevenly thrust up underground rock cause a flat plateau at the surface? Is it that the orogeny is slow, and so any high spots created at the surface are worked on by the forced of erosion, thereby maintaining a flat surface? Something else?Checking the Himalayas, I see they formed pretty much the way I thought, colliding plates thrusting up mountains, but you have destroyed my illusions about the Rocky Mountains. I was fond of them. Geez, just as I'm getting familiar with Arizona you change states on me! But aren't Mount Evans and Pikes Peak unique as mountains, unassociated with any orogeny? Even if we had draped a giant canvas over the Pikes Peak area to protect it from erosion during uplift and after, wouldn't it still tower over the nearby landscape, just covered with the less resistant rock that used to be there?--Percy

My misimpression developing from looking at images taken from the canyon rims, but looking at this from above it becomes obvious that the "islands" are definitely not parallel with the Colorado: Ah, yes, of course, seems so obvious now. Right, we're all trying to explain the width of the canyon at its widest point, and the explanation has to include why the canyon is so wide here and not at other places. Faith's explanation is that the river was at one time 18 miles wide at this widest point, but of course rivers flow fast in narrow portions and slowly in wide portions. To have the deepest erosion at the widest point where the river was most quiet is impossible.But why so wide here and not elsewhere? Why is the Grand Canyon so much wider than Marble Canyon or the western reaches of the canyon? If the amount of slope retreat is a function of time, then that suggests that the widest part of the canyon is also the oldest, but somehow I think that isn't true. The section on geology in the Wikipedia article on the Grand Canyon is frustrating because it contradicts itself. First it says this:

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The Grand Canyon is part of the Colorado River basin which has developed over the past 70 million years, in part based on apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry showing that Grand Canyon reached a depth near to the modern depth by 20 Ma.

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So the Grand Canyon was a mile deep by 20 Ma. But then later it says this:

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The base level and course of the Colorado River (or its ancestral equivalent) changed 5.3 million years ago when the Gulf of California opened and lowered the river's base level (its lowest point). This increased the rate of erosion and cut nearly all of the Grand Canyon's current depth by 1.2 million years ago.

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This seems to say that erosion of the Grand Canyon began 5.3 Ma and reached its current depth of a mile by 1.2 Ma.I don't know that I believe either one. Any opinions?--Percy

Sure you do, all the time. Most recently you keep changing back and forth between whether the top layers were loose sediments or not.But you continue to ignore my advice to quote what you're replying to so that you have it in front of you and do not misspeak, as you do here once again. There was nothing in the post you're replying to about you changing your story. My post was about you repeatedly asking whether the top erosion resistant layer of the Coconino Plateau is really Kaibab Limestone. In case you forgot again, yes, it is really Kaibab Limestone.This isn't the only area where your memory's a problem. You can't remember the posts about meanders. You keep introducing issues as if for the first time even though they've been discussed many, many times here. Can you post this map again, or link to the post where it appears? Obviously unsatisfied with being wrong about something just once, you insist on being wrong about it over and over again. There is no stratigraphic column in England (or probably anywhere in the world) completely representing the geologic timescale from the Cambrian to the Holocene. I don't think you really meant to say this. You just said that all the erosion and tectonic disturbances occurred after the Holocene, and since the Holocene is the current epoch, after the Holocene is the future starting now. Bald declarations are not evidence. How do you not get this? The geologic timescale has no more come to an end than the Holocene has come to an end. Sediments continue to be deposited atop stratigraphic columns, growing those stratigraphic columns and continuing the geologic timescale on into the future. Time would have to stop for you to be correct. Bald declarations about erosion and tectonics are not evidence. You have no evidence of rapid deposition, which is impossible anyway given the fineness of many sediments. Again, you mentioned not a scrap of evidence against the geologic timescale. The erosion and tectonics that began after the Holocene in the future mark the end of what? Congratulations - another evidence-free post.--Percy

You're getting your conversations with Modulous and Edge mixed up. Since Edge mentions salt he's obviously commenting about salt flats, not formations in the Painted Desert.But even if you leave off his last sentence and assume he's talking about the Painted Desert, what he said still makes perfect sense. If that were the context then the meaning is that the layers in the Painted Desert formations are lake bottoms that accumulated sediments of limestone and volcanic ash, both very common layers of the Chinle Formation out of which the Painted Desert formations eroded.--Percy

Hi Moose,I got the general idea of the point you were making but wasn't able to follow the chain of logic. I mean that I think I understood the technical points, but not how they fit together into an argument. Here's my attempt at putting the pieces together:You first explain that the particular qualities of the garnets at the top of the Vishnu Schist required an overburden of about 6 miles in order to form. Then you quote Faith insisting that there were only three miles above the schist.You rebut this position by saying that there cannot be high grade metamorphic rock on one side of a contact and low grade metamorphic or unmetamorphosed rock on the other side unless that contact is a nonconformity or a fault.In context that would seem to be a reference to the Vishnu Schist//Tapeats contact, and your rebuttal then becomes an argument that this contact really is a nonconformity, and that deposition of the Tapeats must have taken place after the Vishnu Schist had already metamorphosed and cooled, else the Tapeats would itself have been metamorphosed though lower grade.So whether right or wrong that should help you understand how I read your post. Please correct as necessary, because I think it would be a helpful point for Faith to understand.--Percy

You're conceding the very obvious. You've been honest about how poor your eyesight is, so we know any claims you make of being able to see something are false. No one else sees what you claim to see, and that's because it's not there. You're seeing what you wish was there but is only in your own mind. You couldn't see how flat the Bonneville Salt Flats are, and you obviously can't see how flat anything else is, either. You also have no measurementsMuch strata *is* pretty flat, but not all. Here are some recent examples from this thread alone of how non-flat strata can be: This is false. What you said in Message 320 that Modulous was replying to was this: Mod called it pontification, but a more accurate characterization is that it is false and without merit. Sand is only about 60% as dense as sandstone, so sandstone is only 60% as thick as the sand from which it formed. The question Mod posed and your answer are true Flood or not. The depositional environments we observe around the world today distribute sediments very evenly on lake and sea floors, which we know have large expanses of flatness that can be seen and measured. It would be much more likely in your chaotic Flood of waves and tides to get uneven deposition.That strata are as flat as they are says they formed from the same kind of depositional environments we see today.--Percy

I'm going by your own words from Message 286: So reading your above words we can see that you were claiming that fractures in strata two miles above the canyon deepened and eventually became the Grand Canyon. But nothing about the sinuous shape of canyon suggests following fractures in the rock, which tend to be straight. But you've said the Kaibab Uplift began at the same time that the water started receding. The water was still four miles above the surface at that point in time, and the water level was dropping at only 1.5 inches/minutes, far too slow to create any flow of water four miles below the surface. By the time the water level dropped enough to be at the surface the Kaibab Uplift would have been a fait accompli. Water would have flowed down the sides of the uplift, to the east on the east side, to the west on the west side, and to the south on the south side where the Grand Canyon is. The North Rim is about a thousand feet higher than the South Rim. Where the Grand Canyon is today the water would have flowed south off the uplift, not east/west. But no fractures. And let's not forget that wet and malleable rock is your made-up idea anyway. If the canyon was the result of these fractures then that just reinforces what I said above, that the sinuous shape of the canyon is not in any way suggestive of following fracture lines.But directly addressing your argument, why would these fractures occur only where the canyon is and nowhere else on the uplift? So loose sediments can't fracture, and wet and malleable rock can't fracture (you said it stretches just above). So where are these fractures coming from? Thin sheets of water running across a plateau do not create meanders, and water levels dropping at only 1.5 inches/minute are not going to create a significant flow of water anyway. Also, this contradicts your other claim above that fractures in the strata two miles above is what created the channel for the Grand Canyon. Could you describe these stages? Exits? Now you're imagining some kinds of natural dams were in place that needed breaking through? What is your evidence?Your story continues to be contradictory, contrary to the way water, sediments and rock behave, and completely lacking in evidence.--Percy

Actually, you seem to have pictured it pretty well. With the canyon drawing in a great deal of water, why doesn't erosion of the Kaibab reflect this flow of water toward the canyon. An even better question is why there is any flow toward the canyon at all, since the water level is still a few inches above the top of the canyon? You don't seem to realize you have a significant problem - how do you get a significant flow of water in a channel that is completely submerged? Especially with the diminutive flow of water that could be driven by dropping water levels of only 1.5 inches/minute. This is a strange thing to say. The Grand Canyon is part of the Grand Staircase. Were you trying to say something like the water at Bryce Canyon didn't get anywhere near the Grand Canyon? If so then I agree that would probably be true in your Flood scenario if we just go by the contour of the land shown in our favorite Grand Staircase diagram, but I was only referring to water on the Kaibab Uplift around the Grand Canyon. Yes. That plain was at one time much lower in elevation and filled with rivers and streams migrating across it, gradually eroding the upper layers away. We see this happening at many places around the world today.--Percy

But you've never been able to explain how it is wrong. How could the geologic timescale be at an end unless time is at an end. We're currently in the Quaternary period, which extends from about 2.5 million years ago to the present, so the Quaternary, part of the geologic timescale, exists today. Tomorrow will still be the Quaternary, so the geologic timescale will still exist tomorrow. Next week will also still be the Quaternary, so the geologic timescale will still exist next week. Same for next year, and the year after, and the year after that, and so on into the future. The geologic timescale has not come to an end and will not come to an end until we're at the end of time.So you are, by definition, wrong. I anticipate you'll again respond, in effect, "No, you're wrong," but just as you were unable to explain how I'm wrong in this post, you won't be able to explain it in your next post either, because it's definitionally true. Later on you define block as a "unit of neatly demarcated strata," but this is pretty ambiguous. And it isn't clear what "what strata are present are present in blocks and eroded as blocks and deformed as blocks" means. But anyway, why do you think this is evidence that the geologic timescale has ended? Why do think this is evidence of rapid deposition? But what is true of the Colorado Plateau is not true of the rest of the world, not even of the regions adjacent to the it. As the USGS webpage on the Colorado Plateau says:

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One of the most geologically intriguing features of the Colorado Plateau is its remarkable stability. Relatively little rock deformation (ex. faulting and folding) has affected this high, thick crustal block within the last 600 million years or so. In contrast, the plateau is surrounded by provinces that have suffered severe deformation. Mountain building thrust up the Rocky Mountains to the north and east and tremendous, earth-stretching tension created the Basin and Range Province to the west and south.

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There is no stratigraphic column anywhere in the world where the entire geologic timescale is represented. No, unconformities are not irrelevant to the point you're making. You're arguing that the Grand Staircase region is a complete representation of the geologic timescale. It isn't, because periods of the geologic timescale are not represented. You don't need to say GC/GS because the GC is part of the GS region. Just GS is fine.You're using pronouns ambiguously again. You use "it" three different times referring to two different things. The last use of "it" refers to the geologic timescale, clear from context. What do your other uses of "it" refer to?The geologic timescale is not over and done with. Geology continues to happen, and time has not come to an end. It would be nice if you cared about getting anything right. Stratigraphic columns are incomplete everywhere. Thank you. You said this earlier, and it still isn't clear. You define "block" ambiguously. What does "eroded as blocks" mean? What does "deformed as blocks" mean, particularly if you define just a part of a stratigraphic column as a block? It's easy to tell apart strata units at different angles, but if you're dividing stratigraphic columns into blocks, what is your criteria for the division between blocks? Why can't you just use standard geology terminology? I can't find anything definitive, like a geology glossary that defines "contact" let alone "sharp contact", but if you enter "'tight contact' geology" into Google Images you won't find any images showing anything like what you're thinking of. If you instead enter "'sharp contact" geology" you'll find precisely what you're thinking of. "Tight contact" is a valid geological term, but it seems to refer to how tightly fragments (like clasts) making up a stratum are in contact with one another. Maybe Edge or Moose will comment. No, it isn't evidence. What you said in Message 284 was this: This isn't evidence. It's just an inexact and skimpy statement of a few relatively simple things about geology. You didn't even attempt to make any connection between this statement and your claims, some of which are actually true of the Colorado Plateau, such as the lack of tectonic disturbance. What you did is like saying, "Planes fly people between cities, and that's evidence I flew from Albuquerque to Flagstaff yesterday." Nothing has changed that would make rapid deposition a feasible possibility. Tiny sediments falling out of suspension is an extremely slow process even in quiet water, and in the active water of your waves and tides and inundations tiny sediments would not fall out of suspension. The unconformities are time gaps between layers. You don't seem to be describing anything real. In your mind, what would "VISIBLE time gaps, spaces where erosion should have occurred and didn't" look like? You're repeating yourself. Again, there is no evidence for any of this. Much of what you call evidence isn't even possible, and you haven't yet explained what you mean by visible time gaps where erosion should have occurred but didn't. None of this is even true, and you don't explain how, even if it were true, it would be evidence against the geologic timescale. Today we're in the Quaternary, and tomorrow we'll still be in the Quaternary. It will always be true, at least for the next few million years, that tomorrow we'll still be in the Quaternary. The geologic timescale has not ended. It cannot end unless time ends. The geologic timescale can never be partial. It's conceptual and spans all the time of Earth's existence from 4.6 billion years ago to the present. Naturally you can focus your attention on just some part of the geologic timescale, but the timescale itself is not partial. A stratigraphic column with strata from the Cambrian to the present with missing periods is not complete, for two reasons. First, it has missing periods. Second, it's missing about 4 billion years of the geologic timescale before the Cambrian. I think what your trying to describe is a stratigraphic column that includes strata from each geologic period from the Cambrian to the present. That's not a complete stratigraphic column. If you only mean that the processes of deposition and lithification are over and done with for sedimentary rocks then sure, we agree, but that's just an obvious fact of geology, not evidence. Obviously by definition any sedimentary rock has been deposited and lithified, and I don't know why you bothered saying this. It's just a fact, and certainly not evidence for anything you're pushing.And don't forget that that doesn't mean nothing could happen to the strata in the future, such as erosion, faulting, folding, intrusions, etc., so obviously things aren't "over and done with" for these strata. Given the unconformities, no, the entire stratigraphic column of the Grand Staircase region was not deposited continuously with no intervening erosion. It is true that the region was tectonically quiet during deposition, but this is only true of the Grand Staircase region, not the rest of the world. You're like one of the blind men in the story of the blind men and the elephant. You examine one small portion and think it represents the whole thing. The Grand Staircase region, and especially the Grand Canyon portion, receives a great deal of attention because the exposed strata make it so easy to study, not because it's geologically representative of the whole world. Not clear what you're saying here. If you're saying that erosion of the "highest remaining strata", which if we're talking about the Grand Canyon region would be the Kaibab, did not occur during the time period when it was originally deposited, then yes, this is true. It's self evidently true and needn't be said, and it certainly isn't evidence for anything in your scenario. It's also self evidently true that the Kaibab couldn't be eroded until the strata above it were eroded away so that it could be exposed to erosive forces.I dont' know what "exposed 'time period' rocks" are, so if it's important to your point you'll have to tell me what they are. I again suggest you use standard geology terminology instead of making up your own. No, you misunderstand. I meant that the processes of erosion have always operated on exposed strata throughout world geologic history, not just during your "Big Continent-splitting Tectonic Bash," for which there is no evidence. Why do you think deposition wouldn't continue unbroken during the breakup of Pangaea? This assumption seems unjustified. You conclude this based on flawed reasoning and Smith's rough diagram: Smith characterized strata according to the material he was able to find. In the absence of mines he was forced to rely on material he found at the surface. The strata underlying London is not clay - that's just a surface deposit. There are strata labeled Sand and Blue Marl and Red Marl, all unconsolidated sediments, and they are just the materials Smith found at the surface - he couldn't dig down and see what the strata were actually made up of. The tilting (which is exaggerated in Smith's diagram) occurred during the Alpine Orogeny of around 50 million years ago. Tectonic activity doesn't cause erosion except in the sense that it can move strata in ways leaving it vulnerable to erosion. For a simple example, uplift could change a region from one of net deposition to one of net erosion. This is a very strange thing to say because it is the opposite of what is true. The geologic timescale is an amalgamation of information from all the stratigraphic columns from around the world. It is the facts about the strata themselves that is important. Again, why do you think the breakup of Pangaea would have brought deposition to a halt? Of course you can't read my chart. Your chart of Smith you can read, mine you can't. Here they both are, yours on the left. I can barely make out the writing myself, so I have a hard time believing you can see anything in either chart. You're just referencing the chart and making stuff up: Here's another Smith chart, go to town: I quoted you saying this in Message 284 in the very message you're replying to, where you refer to your lack of evidence, and also repeat your mistake about the existence of complete stratigraphic columns: You've made a number of similar statements recently about your lack of evidence. Oftentimes you don't seem to know what evidence is, other times you just throw out some random evidence completely unrelated to your argument.--Percy

I hope Faith read your post.--Percy