Summations Only

The way I arrive at the idea of animals losing habitat is simply from the fact that their landscape or habitat which sustains them, has to go away to become the rock in the strata. Presumably that landscape provided for their needs in many ways from shelter to food, so when it goes away all that also goes away.Of course it takes time, lots of time, during which they can go on living, but eventually it ALL Has to disappear to become the rock in the strata. This I see as a necessary event in the process of getting from landscape to rock. The landscape would normally be destroyed by being buried, the deeper the better if it is to utterly disintegrate into sediment and get lithified. To my mind this is a NECESSARY process that results from following out my puzzle.All the rocks in the stratigraphic column that are the remains of many such environments or landscapes, end up one on top of another with the most minuscule clues that they ever were part of such an environment. So you assume the environment and now figure out how it got from that state to the rock that represents it. And one of the consequences as I think it through is that when the environment is completely buried there is no more habitat for the things that once lived on it. There are MANY consequences, I'm merely focusing on this part of the scenario for now.Remember the rock in the column is a huge flattish slab that may extend for hungreds or thousands of square miles. That would presumably be the extent of the environment that formerly existed there.It's not just a matter of them living on higher and higher levels of sediment, it's that they've lost the ecological system in which they survived. If it was marine they lost the water and the living things in the water they needed for survival; if it was terrestrial they lost the plants and trees and other creatures they fed off. If the environment was buried in sediment then sediment is now all they have to live on. Absurdly people try to say that sediment is enough, but not if what they need to live on is the whole ecoloiogical environment with its plant and animal life.This scenario can be taken further of course but I'm going to stop here because I just want to make this one point for now: it's the process that gradually turns the landscape into the rock in the stratigraphic column that orphans the living things that had lived in that habitat. Long time spans allow them to live a while but there always comes the point when there is absolutely nothing left to sustain them.AT THIS POINT where do they go, what do they do? Do they all just die?Please don't assume I'm not aware of all the other things that have to happen to grow the whole stratigraphic column. I'm merely stopping here to make this one point and inquire about the NEXT STEP IN THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS from environment to rock.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well so far in the billions of years the Earth has been around the point when there is absolutely nothing left to sustain them has simply never happened and there is absolute proof that the a fact. There are still things living on Earth today. That sows with a probability of 100% that never in the past has there been a point when there is absolutely nothing left to sustain them.What happens is that life moves, evolves, adapts.It really is that simple.

I reject the standard Geological timescale, jar, so your declaration of loyalty to it does nothing to answer the puzzle. If you want to prove that the standard understanding is correct you have to do it by addressing the conditions posed by the puzzle, not by merely pledging allegiance to the status quo.

But Faith, the conditions posed by your fantasy simply never existed.You need to show the actual evidence that there was a point when there is absolutely nothing left to sustain them and so far you have utterly failed to do so.If someone claims to have shot and hit a target there MUST be evidence that the target was hit. Please produce that evidence.AbE:If your fantasy were factual Faith there would be a very definite piece of evidence seen; there would be no life on Earth.Edited by jar, : see AbE:

No, you are just being willfully obtuse. Just follow the logic, it's all there. The environment defined by the rock extends across the area now occupied by the rock. The environment provides the sustenance for the living creatures. For that environment to end up in the rock or as the rock as it now exists in a stratigraphic column, there is no more environment left, just the rock itself, the environment all has to go away, all buried deep. While some of it remains some of the living things can remain but the more the environment shrinks the fewer living things will remain and in any case it ALL eventually has to become the rock in the column. It's perfectly logical. Obviously you have no answer to it and I will no longer address any of your foolish irrelevancies.ABE: THE RESULTANT STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN is always the point of reference here. EVERYTHING has to end up in that column. There can't be any extraneous soil, there can't be any remaining elements of the environment the rock points to, because those things do not exist in the stack of rock, they are all gone. We can call this current environment #1 and its resultant rock #1 and when we introduce other environments and rocks we can number them accordingly to keep things more or less straight. Right now environment #1 is buried by sediments which will not end up in the column so they are going to have to be eroded away at some point. All that is to end up existing in the column is rock #1 with rock #2 on top of it and so on. /abeEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

Once again Faith, reality shows that what you consider perfectly logical is simply another of your fantasies. A logical fantasy but fantasy still.The problem that you face is that the rest of humanity can look at what is actually happening and see that the scenario you imagine does NOT and has not yet ever happened (came damn close a few times but none of those involved getting buried under dirt).Let us return to a lesson covered several times in this thread, the center of what became North America. We have absolute conclusive irrefutable evidence that the environment that is now at over 8000 feet above sea level was once below sea level. It was an inland ocean. But if a core is dug at a location that is now 8000 feet above sea level we find that below the geological samples that are marine environment there are terrestrial environment samples.That fact, and it is a fact even if you reject it Faith, shows that a given location went from a terrestrial environment to a marine environment and in turn the marine environment was replaced by another current terrestrial environment.We also know for a fact, and it is a fact whether you reject the fact or not, that there is absolute, conclusive irrefutable evidence that life existed in all of those different environments; there are fossils and the fossils exist and were found in the locations where they were found.So live existed and still continues to exist. And the fossils confirm the geological evidence, marine fossils are found in marine geological formations and terrestrial fossils are found in terrestrial geological formations and in the terrestrial environment that exists today we find terrestrial life forms.It's perfectly logical BUT, and this is an important BUT, it is also supported by all of the evidence.

Just address the puzzle jar. What happens after Environment #1 is buried so deep there is no habitat left for its former inhabitants? Nobody doubts the actual facts. What the puzzle is designed to find out is whether the standard geological scenarios explain them. As far as I've been able to take this particular example it appears that it doesn't.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is no puzzle Faith; they do exactly what they do today, they move. Remember the lesson above. When the lowest levels of the geological column were at the surface, it was populated by critters that existed in that environment. When the land fell or waters rose the terrestrial critters moved elsewhere and marine critters populated the areas. When the land rose and the environment became terrestrial again then terrestrial life forms populated the environment.The evidence for that is two fold, the undeniable fact that both marine and terrestrial life forms exist today and that in every geological column ever examined we find evidence of life forms adapted to the the environment of the geological sample.It really is that simple Faith.

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.

True and that is why the evidence is so important. Life still exists. The biological record does factually show evolution of the biological critters over time and spatially with the samples found lower being different than samples found higher in a geological column.In addition, the things that do get eroded away don't really cease to exist but rather get reused in a different format in a different location. Hopefully that point will become clear in How do geologist know what they are looking at really is what they say it is?.

I think Faith is saying one thing while people are answering another. Faith believes changing landscapes cause them to become uninhabitable. Since uninhabitable landscapes preserve no life if they become buried, and since there obviously *are* creatures buried in those layers, geology must have it wrong.A number of attempts have been made to explain that changing landscapes don't become uninhabitable, but it remains an open point. Common ground must be found on this point.

Faith I note that, yet again you are dealing in generalities.

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What happens after Environment #1 is buried so deep there is no habitat left for its former inhabitants?

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There are a number of possibilities, and it depends in what buries the original habitat.First, it need not be true that the burial leaves no habitat - the surface could remain inhabitable by the same life.Second, as in the case of a marine transgression or regression the habitats may be expected to "migrate", moving as the coastline does. This is the reason for Walther's Law.Third, they may migrate to other places.Fourth, if the change is sufficiently slow, adapt to the new conditions. Some species will be lost, others will not.Finally, the life may indeed die out. Indeed, we have evidence of mass extinctions where a large proportion of life on the planet died out. It can happen, so long as it does not happen everywhere. I remind you that your own Flood beliefs require a remarkably quick recovery from a great disaster, and even if you appeal to your assumed "vitality" it can hardly outweigh the vastly greater time available for conventional geology.

Don't assume anything about what I'm "having a hard time" about or not. All I've described so far is one possible scenario -- an environment that gets buried deep, and that's as far as I got with it. If you want to introduce other scenarios that's fine but it would be nice to finish up the one first.This other scenario you've brought up is apparently "gone from the record?" That is, it does not become part of the stratigraphic column:? Then there is no place for it in my puzzle. The puzzle is about how an environment ends up as a rock in the stratigraphic column.Here's the context: You all look at rocks in such a column and determine from their qualities and contents that they represent such and such a former environment. That is you postulate an ancient environment from the rock, an environment in which the creatures found fossilized in that rock once lived. Please correct the wording if it needs it. It's from this sort of observation/interpretation that the puzzle got formed to reverse the scenario to see what's involved in getting from the environment to the rock, if it's even possible.if an erosional environment does not ever become a rock in the column then it is not part of the puzzle. Please either consider the example, Environment #1, that I've already begun, or introduce another that does end up as a rock in the stratigraphic column. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As long as I'm focused on a specific Environment #1 it's not a generality, it's a specific case we can discuss through various changes. Remember, it has to become a rock in a stratigraphic column. It can remain inhabitable to some extent only until it has become that rock, when it has become a relatively smooth bare flattish surface on which nothing continued to live, which is how we find the rocks in the stratigraphic columns. All that matters to my puzzle is what finally appears in the stratigraphic column representing that particular environment. The rocks normally present a specific collection of clues such as in the features or quality of the rock itself along with its fossil contents pointing to a particular environment. If your environment moves somewhere else it isn't going to show up in the stack of rocks, only a particular environment with particular creatures in it as shown by the clues in the rock. Whatever is in the environment has to show up in the stratigraphic column, which after all is made up of rocks one on top of another at the same geographic location, not some other geographic location. This is way too general. We're talking about a stack of rocks that may cover huge spans of territory, which in itself poses a problem for any possible relocation. The whole rock represents a slice of time in which a certain environment supposedly existed with a certain array of life forms. Again, all that matters to this puzzle is what ends up in the column, not what MIGHT have happened that you have no way of demonstrating. Then show this in the result in the column. Supposedly the changes, evolution I suppose you mean, could show up in a higher layer or later time period? Are you postulating new landscapes that become such rocks or what? But what MIGHT happen isn't going to solve the puzzle. You have to show what DID happen to a particular environment in the process of becoming a particular rock in the stratigraphic column. Otherwise you are adding to what Geology says. All it says is that the rock points to particular former environments inhabited by particular living things. That's ALL It says. In the process of trying to construct how the environment got to be a rock I ran into the problem that habitat must be lost in that process, which doesn't fit with what Geology has in mind, so I conclude that there is a contradiction here between the theory and the reality. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.