Recolonization Flood/Post-Flood model

Thanks for your reply, Percy.

Hi Edge,Thank you for your reply, too. Okay. I think I may have posed the question a little vaguely. Within most fine-grained, fossil-containing sediment layer, does the evidence usually point to a mini-catastrophe causing the fossils in that layer?(And just out of curiousity, and only if you don't mind my asking...what exactly do you do for a living? It sounds quite interesting!) Okay. I guess I asked about faster-moving marine creatures because I figured they might be able to escape SOME mini-catastrophes that a trilobite might not...but, really, I don't think that matters too much.However, since you've mentioned these as examples of creatures in fine-grained sediments...does the evidence indicate that the majority of these fish fossils in Green River were quickly buried by some mini-catastrophes? Or does it appear more like the fish are simply surrounded by fine-grained sediments? May I ask what are generally the characteristics of layers rich in land animals? Are they not usually fine-grained? (I was under the impression most land-animal fossils were found in sandstone...but I don't know why I have that impression). Do the layers containing land-animal fossils usually indicate local catastrophes caused the fossils and/or layers?What do you mean by "mixed-up fossil environments"...marine and terrestial fossils mixed together?--Jason

Hi Roxrkool,Thanks for the reply and the link. For some reason, I can't get the link to work, though.--Jason

No. In general, the finer-grained sediments do not indicate catastrophic deposition. We see them being deposited today under normal circumstances and they still will contain fossils. It may be a catastrophe to an organism that dies there, but it seldom has much to do with the actual rate of sedimentation. I don't usually advertise, but I am a working geologist, presently consulting to a coal mine. I do not do coal geology per se, but I see a lot of rocks. There are all kinds of catastrophes, so this isn't a very good criterion. Rapid burial is good to have, but is not an absolute necessity. Even during slow deposition, the remains of an organism can be around long enough to affect the composition of the enclosing sediments to produce a fossil. Remember, even an imprint of a fish is still a fossil. Furthermore, there are some chemical environments that can aid in preservation and reduce decay or predation. This is really a bad argument for YECs because it shows that they do not understand the process of fossilization. Usually they are somewhere near base level in lakes and streams. Geologists can interpret these environments quite well, especially since they are of economic importance as well as scientific and have received a lot of attention. I think this is generally true. Sandstones are not considered fine grained by geologists. They indicate normal processes that we see going on today. NOw, if you consider a spring flood or a storm event to be catastrophic in the sense you are thinking, then certainly there are millions of them in the geologic record. For insance: a slumping stream bank... Is that a catastrophe? Well, it is to any creature living there; but is it a biblical disaster? I hardly think so. I knew that would be confusing. I just didn't have time to reword it. I'm talking about when yhou have one environment of deposition temporarily interrupted by another.

Okay, TB, so far you’ve proposed the closest thing to falsifiable YEC that I’ve heard, and that’s a compliment. I’m usually harsh with you guys, today I was criticized by an administrator for such behavior. But you clearly have a grasp on scientific principles, and I’ll grant you the respect of a carefully thought out response (not to sound pretentious or anything).א. The argument of Noah’s ark is a very difficult one to defend genetically. I’m sure you are all familiar with the basic arguments concerning that. However, have you considered the chromosomal difficulties? Even with no species change in an ideal YEC model, the genetic load from such a genetic bottleneck would be huge for survivors, and not just in the sense of deleterious mutant genes but also in Multilocus Equilibrium (ME). For those not familiar with this concept, ME deals with the relative position of genes on a chromosome and how they are transferred to next-generation offspring in meiosis. When chromosomes cross over they exchange genes. Genes separated by large tracts of space are easily transferred equally, in equilibrium. However, genes close together are often bundled as genetic packages. As a result, you would expect to see certain traits passed uniformly to each generation. After all offspring have been knocked out by genetic depression following intensive inbreeding, most major phenotypic traits would necessarily be transferred in groups. We can see this process in Cheetahs and Bananas, as each species has undergone a genetic bottleneck and has subsequent generations looking like, well, clones of each other. Shouldn’t all animals exhibit this effect, and shouldn’t such chromosomal admixture resulting all species on the planet showing low phenotypic variability (in addition to genetic). Also, shouldn’t the vast majority of genes be expressed in such a manner?ב. Lets now look at the literal interpretation of the bible, literally! Remember that the core tenants of science are falsifiable, so let’s look at the bible in a falsifiable manner. As such, I do think the following two points have merit in the Science forum. The book of genesis (orבראשית in Hebrew) is affected by an entirely different language and system of grammar than that of English. In particular, the time. I’m sure your familiar with the history of YEC as started by Archbishop James Usher in 1650 with the famous date of the world’s genesis on the evening before October 23rd, 2004 BC. This was created by summing up the years mentioned in the bible, from the days of chapter 1-2 in genesis and the mammothly large life spans of Adam and his first few generations of offspring. Let’s look at a specific passage, Genesis 5:27: ויהיו כל-יםי םתושלח תשע וששים שנה ותשע םאות שנה ויםת (Hebrew is read right to left). Now, this is literally translated as vaihaeu kal-imae metushelach, I’ll spare you the rest. But in the common English translation we get All the day sof Methuselah came to 969 years; then he died. Take note of 969 years, because that is from English, not Hebrew. Hebrew is a bit more odd concerning this statement of number. Now, let me preface the following statement by saying that I am only a beginner at Hebrew, and I’ve only read through to chapter 7 of Genesis in Hebrew, and I’m sure that there are specific Hebrew meanings to the words in the sentence, but that won’t matter for two reasons. First, modern Hebrew is not the same as biblical Hebrew, the construction of sentences is different and secondly, it doesn’t matter what the interpretation is, because the words should stand on their own with no anachronisms. Whatsoever. So, the word שנה means year, ששים means 60, and תשח means to multiply or divide by 9 WHAT!? The passage literally says Came Methuselah (multiply/divide by 9) and 60 years and (multiply/divide by 9) 9 Did Usher know this? If a fluent Hebrew speaker can correct this for me, I will gladly step back, but as it stands it is just as logical to assume that to the original authors of this document it could have been a much lower number (0.740) or higher (4680)? I know that this is a constructive way of giving numbers, but that is only in modern Hebrew, what reliability to we have in the original intent? Could the world have been created as late as 1540 AD using such a chronology? Or be pushed back to 40,000 BC? As I said, this is a highly debatable point, but it does illustrate the more general principle of a literal interpretation of the bible, particularly in its mathematical systems.ג. Along the same lines, in Genesis (English) it says that God created the world. At the same time, in Hebrew it says אלהים, or Elohim as is commonly known. But אל means strength, power, God, deity), aka in the singular. The plural form of any known in Hebrew is ים_ (im). So could the same passage mean Gods in Hebrew? Also, the word אלה in Hebrew means to cudgel, club or alternatively oath, curse, imprecation. That would represent the plural of cursing. Could God be as frustrated in building the Earth as we are in repairing our houses? The point is, once again, literal Hebrew can mean many things, as literal English can. I’m sure that Elohim is plural to show great strength but shouldn’t the bible be judged literally? Remember, in science, we must first see if this withstands refutation as a falsifiable hypothesis. As this is the primary evidence for YEC, we must look at it as well.ד. Concerning the rapid tectonic movement of a post-Pangaea flood (to use the YEC paradigm), wouldn’t that be two disasters? The resulting damage would be tremendous. The December 26th earthquake in the Indian Ocean was a horrendous catastrophe, do you suggest that is exactly what happened across the entire Earth for centuries after the flood? What could have possibly survived? The argument for an inner-continental Pangaea is simply not satisfactory, because tectonic activity reveals itself through fault lines and volcanoes as well. The condensed tectonic activity would simply be, well, catastrophic to a level that YEC has yet to fully comprehend. Ecologies in the coastal margins could not exist under such pressure. I can’t imagine a wooden boat doing so well either.ה. There’s a lot of talk floating about accelerated radioactive decay. Demonstrate it. We have laboratories, develop a research plan. Read Liddy’s paper when he came up with C14 dating, because he went through all of that. Don’t just address it as a possibility and then build a planet out of it, you need empirical evidence or else every word past that will bricks in a castle upon sand.ו. The argument that dinosaurs have higher fecundity rates for mammals does not work. First, we have no T-rex nests. The dinosaur nests we do have do show variable levels of offspring, from 6-7 of Oviraptor nests to almost 24 in Psitticasaurus clutches (we actually have preserved babies from one). This falls well within mammalian levels, look at mice and rabbits!ז. Triassic bird footprints reference the article. Show us your source. I don’t find it surprising, it is splitting hairs to separate Dinosaurs and birds as birds are a sub-group of dinosaurs. This only proves that theropods were prevalent in the Triassic, but we already know this with Compsthygnasus and Coelophysis. What about the Ordovician, Silurian or Cambrian? Kinda odd that birds show up so late if they are specifically mentioned to be on Noah’s Ark.ח. You argue that large assemblages of Dinosaur bones (known as bone beds), are common, and you are absolutely right. But these are intermixed with more single-deposits. The Allosaur site I used to run was situated on a ledge just above a huge Sauropod bone bed, which in turn was just below another singular occurrence of a young Apatosaur. You could literally walk down the road and run into 7 Dinosaur sites, with one bone bed, 4 single animals and 2 sites with at least two individuals of the same species in an isolated setting. The problem is, catastrophe is intermixed with daily life in large tracts of geological strata. Even at that, there are large layers of shed teeth above these sites, revealing years of feeding with no dead animals. it complicates the picture.ט. Explain lithification and permineralization in a YEC setting. I’ve heard of Most dinosaur bone contains most of the original bone (from Missing Link | Answers in Genesis ), but it does not work, I’ve held them myself, nothing I dug was made of any real dinosaur bone. If it was, we would have dinosaur DNA readily available. There are a few isolated instances, but they are just that, a few isolated instances.Well, that’s all I have for today. I’m being torn from this computer by young twins demanding a Dungeons & Dragons game. Once again, I’ve included some biblical stuff in a falsifiable setting, it stretches the boundaries of this forum a bit but I do think it is relevant to question the YEC source materials if they wish to enter it into the postulate-hypotheses-theory ring.Au revoir,
TheusP.S. all my Hebrew definitions came from Ben Yehuda’s Pocket English-Hebrew, Hebrew-English Dicitonary, 1947, 1951 G&C Merriam Co.

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Veri Omni Veritas

The Green River fish are largely fine-grained sediments, the organisms were deposited in a large lake system of over-lapping lakes, principly known as Lake Gosiute and Uinta (Fish Fossils Green River Formation ). Interestingly, some Eocene Rhinos and Otters are present too, though undescribed (comercial paleontology, grrrr...).As far as sediments go, it's up for grabs. The BB site on the Warm Springs Ranch contains 4-5 juvenile Apatosaurs and Camerasaurs, but it seems to be a gradual accumulation in sandstone (not fine-grained). The same ranch also contains site BS (hold laughter), which is actually 3 sauropods, one Apatosaur and two Camarasaurs that are in a fine silt that seems to have undergone rotting. Site SI has footprints of multiple taxa left in a caliche layer (leftover from a lake) which contains one camerasaur and one diplodocid with intermixed bones packed in a caliche bedstone so close that it is hard to tell where one site ends and the other begins! Finally, there is site TYA, which has the remains of 2-3 Allosaurs (mostly cranial remains) in a soft calcareaus-siltstone with large minerals suggesting soil development (tentative at this point).The kicker: all of the above sites are within a quarter mile of each other, and three (SI, TYA, and BB) are within 75 yards! That is incredible geological diversity; caliche lake, soil horizon, point-bar deposit(?), respectively. In fact, the entire "Hill" contains 50+ known dinosaur sites on both sides, and that is a very, very conservative count as it only looks at exposed bone, and says nothing for the volume. All are at different stratigraphic levels as well, revealing environments that differe considerably.So, outside of a zoo, where do you find such tightly-packed climactic and taxonomic variability?Cheers,
Theus

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Veri Omni Veritas

Hi, Theus. Welcome. I have a question... great posts by the way. What did the rotting appear like?

Hi edge,Right now (as far as this discussion is concerned) by "catastrophe," I guess I mean anything that can kill and bury a particular organism -- so, for a very small organism....storm-churned sediment probably qualifies. For an apatosaur...maybe a landslide or something. I don't mean the Flood because I want to get the evolutionists' view, which doesn't include THE Flood...though it can include local floods.Thanks for your responses.

Hey roxrkool,Well, I can't divulge too much because the research project for that is up in the air, but I can tell you what is "official". The study of permineralized rotten bone is scant, and difficult to find in the literature. Lot of opportunities in it. It is a study of Taphonomy, basically what happens to an animal after it dies.At this site in particular we can see that the environment had a high organic concent, as the sediments are dark (not a litmus test, but reliable enough), and also contain small sulfer deposits. Lignite is common (Low grade coal - aka plants), and of course the dinosaurs. The site is known as a curse as there are many dino-fragments found scattered throughout it. These are all bone marrow, almost perfectly round, apparently excreted from bone. Then there are partial bones found, the most famous is the "exploding femur", which is a femur bone that should stand at about 3.5 feet from top to bottom. But... it's in several pieces and has gradually been discovered piecemial over the past 5-6 years.Additionally, because of the marinating effects of rotting bone, they are twisted, torn, etc.As I said earlier, this is a fairly unexplored area of taphonomy, so I can only tell you what led to our conclusions.Hope that was satisfactory,
Theus

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Veri Omni Veritas

Hi Theus,I appreciate your response.If you are able (allowed?), could you tell us whether the silty sediments are thought to have slowly covered up the rotting bones...or is it currently thought that the bones were covered up fairly rapidly?"Rapidly"...that term is a bit subjective, I guess...is there a way to determine an upper limit for how long it took for the sediments to deposit around the bones?Is there evidence that the bones were covered up a little bit at a time...or, does it look more like they were completely buried in a fairly short period of time...say, within a year or less? *Is* there a way to tell such things?IOW, does the site show evidence of catastrophic formation? Or, does it look like the result of normal death, erosion, deposition (uniformitarian-type processes).--JasonThis message has been edited by TheLiteralist, 08-08-2005 07:51 PM

Ummmm, why not both? You create a false dilemma here.

Very interesting, Theus. This is definitely not something I've ever heard about. Thanks.If you can answer: Are the sulfur deposits native sulfur? What's the depositional environment - specifically the seds containing the decayed dino bones?Abe: Warm Springs Ranch dinos are hosted in Morrison Fm. I found out.This message has been edited by roxrkool, 08-08-2005 09:43 PM

I can give you my experience and the various discussions with my former co-workers, but bear in mind that this information is not peer-reviewed.Technically, you can tell one of two things about the deposition of a dinosaur if you are lucky. A rapid burial, or a long, slow, tedius burial. This is based on the surface of the outer bone (unfortunately, periosteum is difficult to tell). If it is in smooth condition, chances are strong that it was deposited safely in sediments after a reasonable amount of time, say one summer. Alternatively, heavy wear can show that the bones have been out for a few years, and have subsequent damage to them. The bones at site BS exhibit that sort of deposition, almost to an extreme. The "matrix", or surroundings of the bone, are often concreted (that is a literal term), and difficult to remove. Many times in the lab we would have large portions of the bone come of with the concretions, causing a small heart attack. Then, a few swipes of the brush and/or pneumatic, we find that there is more sediment underneath! We had been beaten to the punch by mother nature in damaging the bones!Of course, the above two conditions are ideal conditions. Often, such bones are mixed. Imagine one new skeleton washing over an old skeleton, or one half of the quarry being exposed to mother nature and the other half well preserved. Add diogenetic effects, bio-turbation, and you have a mixture of animals that may/may not have interacted with each other, even though they share the same grave! That is why there is a single important view when looking at any assemblage of dinosaur bones:THEY DO NOT TELL YOU HOW AND WHERE THE DINOSAURS LIVED. THEY TELL YOU HOW AND WHERE THEY DIED!!!!!!!!!!!Problematic? Yes. You have to be able to demonstrate a lot of evidence to even begin considering any social behavior in these animals. But I digress. The important thing is, TheLiteralist, is that we don't have catostrophic sites or uniformiatrian sites. We have small plots of preserved ground with records of their habitants that happened to be fossilized.I can see where you are going with this, and I have to gently reply "No" to the question that these could have possibly been laid here by a single, worldwide flood. Too many diverse environments in a compact setting (swamp, pointbar, etc.), all showing geological evidence of varying rates of deposition.Finally, to add something new, given the complex processes of taphonomy (post-mortum -> permineralization) and diogenesis (permineralization -> discovery), there are many opportunites for a world-wide flood to show itself. There should be a line drawn in the sand (pun intended), that demarcates when the flood waters (high energy deposits) and then uniformiatrianism. There isn't any. Just normal, uncorrelated regional deposits. And no change in diogenesis or taphonomy due to the introduction of foreign minerals and pressures as the flood surely must have done if it existed.All the best,
Theus

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Veri Omni Veritas

Hey!Warm Springs Ranch deposits are Sundance, Morrison, Cloverly/Lakota, and Thermopolis shale. They have preserved remains of multiple taxa from marine to terrestrial environments.And yes, the sulfur was within the rock, and seems to be reminiscent of organic decay coupled with some additional minerals, but a thorough chemical analysis has not been performed.Au Revoir,
Theus

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Veri Omni Veritas

Hi Theus,Thanks again for informed and thoughtful replies. Okay. I get the rapid burial. But the slow, tedious burial escapes me yet.When I say "evidence of slow burial"...I must differentiate between bones that rotted for a long time and then were buried rapidly and bones that were buried slowly rotting more and more while being buried more and more. Does that make sense?In other words, if a bone rotted for a good while and then became buried suddenly...or suddenly the soil it was already buried in became suitable for preservation...then *I* would expect a fairly uniform rotting or condition of the bone.OTOH, if a bone were covered a fraction of an inch per year, *I* would expect increasing decay in the direction of deposition. Or, if bones rot more rapidly in soil than in air (which, now that I think about it, they probably do), then increasing decay in the direction opposite that of the deposition of the containing sediments.Is increasing decay in one direction something you have observed in the field? Frequently? Usually? Sometimes? Never? Or, are my expectations off-base somehow? (they may well be).Finally, you say, "the deposition of a dinosaur"...that strikes me odd. Do you consider most dinosaur bones to have been "deposited?" If you do, I realize you will not mean by Noah's Flood. I myself am able to envision non-Flood methods.--Jason