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Author Topic:   fossil data superimposed on a map of pangea
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 4 of 16 (676286)
10-21-2012 12:46 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Dogmafood
10-21-2012 10:01 AM


Re: Google is your friend
Eclectic said "comprehensive".

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 5 of 16 (676287)
10-21-2012 12:56 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by eclectic1993
10-20-2012 11:15 PM


I'm interested in seeing a comprehensive record of fossils superimposed on a map of the super continent. I've seen such records on maps of our current earth topography.
Could you link us to such a map so that I can see how it was done? I'm finding it hard to visualize how this could be done well.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 7 of 16 (676306)
10-21-2012 4:49 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by eclectic1993
10-21-2012 3:19 PM


There are an awful lot of fossils, you know. I seem to remember a figure of 250,000 known fossil species. The number of specimens would, of course, be much larger.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 9 of 16 (676338)
10-22-2012 12:09 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by eclectic1993
10-21-2012 3:19 PM


And that they existed together within the same time span.
Making a map on that basis, however, would vitiate its usefulness. Perhaps you could have an option for creationists to turn these facts off --- or perhaps they could just flip the little switch in their head which allows them to ignore them, as usual.

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 Message 6 by eclectic1993, posted 10-21-2012 3:19 PM eclectic1993 has replied

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 Message 10 by eclectic1993, posted 10-22-2012 5:32 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 11 of 16 (676445)
10-22-2012 6:03 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by eclectic1993
10-22-2012 5:32 PM


I don't know you well enough to know if you're just a playful person or can't help taking jabs where you can.
Both. Mostly playful. "There was a star danced, and under that was I born."
'Jabs' are why I avoided pro-creation and pro-evolution forums in the past. I guess time will tell.
Well, I hope you'll stick around, 'cos you seem like a nice person.
My "jabs" aside, I was trying to make a serious point. If you go ahead with your map project, then the geological periods and the more precise dates to which geologists assign the fossils are important to a lot of people, such as geologists and paleontologists. If you leave these data off your map just 'cos you don't agree with them, then this will leave your map less useful than you would hope.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 14 of 16 (676723)
10-25-2012 2:24 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by eclectic1993
10-25-2012 1:56 AM


It's disingenuous to leave out data.
Well, as a YEC it would not actually be disingenuous of you to leave out data that you don't think are data. But it would make your map fairly useless to the people who think they are data.
For me, the map would be most useful if I could flip through it by time and see what was present in the Jurassic, and what was there in the Cretaceous, and so forth. If you take out the element of time 'cos of your religious beliefs, then it will be a lot less useful to 99% of the people who would otherwise be interested in it.
I spent some time yesterday thinking about the algorithm to move GPS coordinates back in time and on a round earth. My brain began to hurt as I started working out coordinate frame translations/rotations over the earth. So, now I'm thinking about a 2D map of the world as a good starting point. I think it would suffice until someone smarter came along.
You should definitely start with a spherical map, and translate it to 2D. It'll be easier in the long run.
Now, the math has been done. There's this thing called Euler's fixed point theorem which tells you how to represent rigid motions on the surface of a sphere. One of the big breakthroughs in the development of plate tectonics was when a geologist finally found out about this bit of math and used a computer to apply it to plate motions.
But if you tried to use a 2D map as your basic data, then you'd want a formula that would describe plate motions while also taking into account the deformations caused by mapping a sphere onto a plane all at once. It will be much simpler for you to apply one formula describing plate motions on a sphere, and a second formula to map the sphere onto a plane. The first bit is quite easy, and the second bit is so easy that you could in an afternoon provide the users with a choice of their favorite map projections. But trying to do both these things together in a single formula would exhaust the patience of an archangel. Don't try.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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