Summations Only

So, you never read my earlier message?Perhaps you can tell my why my claims are unscientific.

Your opinion is noted. As noted by others, you have been shown a number of such photographic images in the past. As per usual, you simply denied the interpretation. I don't recall making such a statement. This statement adds nothing to the discussion.

My second statement refers to a gap in sedimentation. There are many elements that go into the rock record that are not sediments, such as faults, fossils and unconformities. A landscape (subaerial topography) is, generally speaking, not an area of net deposition. I believe Jar mentioned this quite clearly. While there are (as I have said) local basins that have been preserved within that topography, it is erosional on a regional basis. If they are on land, they have to be erosional on the continental scale. It should be fairly easy to see that some lake beds, sand bars and more rarely paleosoils are preserved. I might have misread Faith's statement, but my point still stands: a landscape is generally erosional. While rocks represent depositonal environments, landscapes represent an erosional environment. Erosion attacks rocks, sediments and soil and exposes what is beneath them. Like the Grand Canyon cutting through the Kaibab. Yes, and? So when Hutton observed soils (a livable landscape) slowly moving toward the sea, it was net deposition?What you are talking about is the slow accumulation of sediment, and organic material on the top of an existing soil. Is that correct?The ultimate disposition of that soil is still to base level. The rate may change to zero for a while, but eventually, it will reach the sea.And remember that any sedimentation that occurs in an area is necessarily related to erosion of another area. Think of loess, for instance. You can get huge accumulations of loess, so yes, it is depositional. However, that sediment has to come from somewhere that erosion exceeds deposition. If transport is slow, sure. For a while.You can think of erosion being the chemical/physical destruction and transport of a material. Soil is simply an intermediate step aided by biological activity. It's a little bit late now, but the choice of the term 'landscape' is unfortunate. I think that the definition of this term should be clarified. Again, this is a temporary and local situation. That is why terrestrial fossils are simply not as common as marine fossils.As to 'bottommost' part of a 'landscape', you need to recognize that the first step in forming a soil is to weather the rock. Because soils are products of erosion and are subject to further physical erosion and transport. They are temporary. Things that take effort and are not appreciated, usually take a back seat to nice easy insults. Frankly, I have spent many hours trying to figure out Faith's issues. Every time I present a possibility I get snapped at. That's fine, I don't really care, but it does not encourage a discussion when that happens.

However...The bedrock has little to do with the extant environment other than supplying some nutrients as it is weathered. Actually, most of it gets eroded away in all likelihood. Not really. Some will be preserved, but I'm sure that most is removed by erosion. That is the whole reason that we do not see as many terrestrial fossils as marine fossils. You have not stated why it is irrelevant. My contention is that most of the subaerial environment has been destroyed and is not in the fossil record. It's physical topography, however, is often preserved. Unless that envrionment is somehow protected from erosion. That does happen. But rock #1 will be much different from environment #1. All that is left of environment #1 is its bedrock surface most of the time. There are exceptions, such as coal beds, but if the process of erosion is allowed to go to completion, the environment is gone. Or they might if they are protected from erosion. Yes, and between them is an unconformity which may locally show clues as to the type of environment it was.

I think that Faith is having a hard time separating the depositional environment (say, plutonic) of the bedrock from the extant surface environment (like swamps, etc.), from what eventually covers the swamp (maybe a beach sand).The fact is that the swamp might be eroded way completely, or preserved by the overlying beach sand. The swamp (or soil. etc.) might reflect that environment, but in areas of erosion they are mostly gone from the record.

In a way, it is true that the landscape become uninhabitable.However, what actually happens is that the habitat is destroyed by encroaching shoreline erosion. All that is left is the topography, which I have been equating with landscape.I thought that Faith understood Walther's Law, but apparently not. What it says is that regional sedimentary deposits are created by rising and lowering sea levels, so that a particular environment (a beach perhaps) moves across the land creating a sheet-like deposit.

And my answer has always been that it doesn't.The surface environment is not represented by the rocks below it or above it.It is recorded as an eroded surface in the geological record.ETA: Is anyone else not getting this?Some pieces are preserved as lake sediments, sand bars, coal seams, etc., if they are preserved (buried) and not completely eroded away in the subaerial environment. No. The environment is not that of the existing rock. It resides on top of the rock as a land surface. As I have said. Erosional environments still have smaller basins within them collecting sediments that can be preserved by burial.That is why we find dinosaur fossils in stream sediments or sinkholes or swamps. Edited by edge, : No reason given.

Nonsense. There is always and has always been land for land creatures and environments for them to live on.This is where I say that you are still enchanted by the notion that all life died in a single event, i.e. the flood. No, see above. We don't turn a habitat into a rock. We preserve a terrain by burial, and if there are pockets that are protected, we can say something directly about that environment. Just look at swamps for instance.

Okay, I think I understand what you are saying.I would however, modify it to say that the habitat is not buried, it is completely destroyed. It is only the topography that is preserved, the terrain, if you will, upon which the habitat exists.This is common. However, even where the habitat is destroyed, there are places where it is preserved (as I have said many times) in such places as lake sediments, river sediments, coal seams and sand dunes. This is also common, and that is why we have dinosaur fossils and sequoia fossils, etc.The other thing is that, though the environment is destroyed, it is NOT destroyed everywhere. In other words as a beach sand encroaches the continent (a la Walther's Law), there is always a beach and there is always a land environment behind it, so the habitat never really disappears, it just moves. There is plenty of time for plants and animals to migrate landward.The thing to remember is that the habitat existed on older bedrock, so the fossils in that bedrock do NOT represent the habitat.And later, when the habitat is overrun, it is buried by sediments which will also have fossil NOT representative of that habitat.Does this make sense?

No. A strat column includes all layered rock at a given location. No problem. In this case you are talking about marine sequences such at that in the Grand Canyon.Totally different from, say, the coal seams of the late Cretaceous in Utah. An environment for each creature has always existed. Just look at the modern distribution of shorelines, swamps, deserts, mountain ranges, etc.However, within a single sedimentary environment living creatures avoid burial by continuous sedimentation.

The layers need not be extensive or flat. The habitat is lost in one place but gained in another.Remember Walther's Law? As I have said many times: local basins, such as swamps, lakes, sand bars, sand dunes, etc. can be preserved in the geological record (and often are). They can be preserved by later burial, even though they were originally deposited above sea level.Do you deny that swamps are recorded in the geological record? If the habitat is lost, then it is lost to the geological record and only the terrain remains. However, as I've said many times before, there are some locations where that environment is preserved.So, the habitat was never really lost, though it was destroyed in many places. Yes, unless they became extinct or evolved into other species. Except that is does exist in some places. As I've stated many times, the only reason we have dinosaur fossils is that they were preserved in swamps, sand dunes and river sand bars. We have the footprints to prove it. Think of Walther's Law. As the environment moves across the contient as sea level rises, the environments move along with the shoreline. A species living in a swamp that is filling with sand will end up in another swamp in a thousand years.Your problem is not a problem.

It is common to say that something exists (present tense) within a stratigraphic record. If you have a better explanation of the rock types this would be a good time to present them. Okay so how do you interpret a geological section that has an enclosed basin with water in it? Why not? How can you say this? Have you actually mapped the geology of any location? Because they become protected from erosion by overlying material. In the real world, there is a lot more to go on than just a stratigraphic column. Plus we know something about swamps, sand dunes, etc.

I think that I have said plenty of times that net erosion is a generalization and that there some depositional environments can be preserved.Once again, I will repeat some of them: lake sediments, swamp sediments, river sediments and the occasional paleosoil. Because plants can stabilize a terrain and slopes may go to horizontal (that would mean no movement toward a stream). Erosion may slow and even go negative, but it's still an areal of net erosion over time. The formation of soil is one part of erosion. If you were around long enough and the sea rose or a river encroached on your house, the soil would eventually disappear. Well, it could be bedrock, but in this case, we are talking soil.What ever lives in and on this soil is not OF the bedrock, nor is it OF whatever comes along later (a beach sand, a mudflow, a volcanic flow, etc.).

I don't either, but when she talks about continental scale, flat sheets, she almost has to be talking about marine sediments. The key thing is that the habitats are destroyed, the bedrock topography is not. Because it's not being buried everywhere. Sure. It happens. Over the observation scale of human civilization, soils can accumulate to great depth from both the top and the bottom of the profile. This will probably sow more confusion, as usual, but here is an example of a depositional environment that, when conditions changed, became erosional. The flat alluvial plain in the center of the photograph formed by deposition above sea level in a mountain valley by the accumulation of coarse-grained materials. It was once flat and filled the valley.However, due to uplift of the Uncompahgre Plateau it is now being eroded by the same streams that formed it, and it will slowly, over a long period of time, erode away.

This is my impression. All I'm saying is that the habitat is not lost over the whole region of a species. For an individual, yes, it would either migrate or die. And, in fact many of them die anyway because that's what happens to all creatures.And if they are in a location where their habitat is preserved, we will find fossils of them. If not then the fossils will be washed away. That is also my impression. But no, they are either destroyed or preserved locally by erosion or burial in protected basins. I've been trying to figure that out for weeks.