Long build up of Sediments

I think we need to recognize that we are having a problem with communication and simply give up on it, as apparently I annoy you, and I really can't see how most of what you say in answer to my posts is any kind of answer, which keeps us going in circles. But thanks for trying.

Would it all be just one kind of sediment? Would it wash down in layers of entirely different sediments, one on top of the other, which is how the geo column supposedly formed, and which are dramatically shown in the Grand Canyon and the Grand Staircase and other formations in the Southwest? Would it create the equivalent of the Redwall Limestone layer or the Coconino Sandstone or many different kinds all stacked up?Most mountains don't even reach two miles high, so how would one get a huge broad layer (say covering the territory of Utah plus Arizona) of one kind of sediment kilometers thick (edge says he believes this occurred with some layers, most of which was then eroded away).This message has been edited by Faith, 03-12-2006 05:06 PM

With a whole mountain chain I suppose you could get sediment kilometers thick, but I still have my questions. Would you get just one kind of sediment topped by another kind of sediment -- like those seen in the Southwest, say, etc?I've been told that mountainbuilding is one of the ways we get the sediments that form the strata. I don't see how you get one and only one kind of sediment out of a mountain for starters, or how you get many different kinds stacked on top of each other.I see how the rising and falling of sea level might be an explanation, at least of a stack of different kinds of sediments, although I still have trouble with the abrupt change in sediments from one to another.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-12-2006 05:37 PM

Kilometers deep you say?And are the sediments deposited by the Mississippi different sediments of the sort seen in the geo column, say in the Southwest USA, only one kind for some great depth topped by another for another great depth and so on?

Are you actually claiming that volcanic action could create the stack of separate sediments that is the geo column? Is there actual evidence of this somewhere?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-12-2006 07:35 PM

Perhaps I misread him, but then he must have misread me in the first place. Here is his original statement: I was talking about ONE layer of a million feet in my effort to pin down deposition rate. He answered in terms of "sequences" not one layer.I think I'll just give up on this thread for now. I appreciate that you have maintained an even tone but that can't be said for all the participants and then I get repetitive and the whole thing deteriorates. Best just let it rest.

OK I'm going to take a break from this thread because I don't like the way it is going but first I will answer this much. Here again you misread me and that is apparently a pattern I'm not going to be able to stop.I am not confusing erosion with deposition. The deposition is the ORIGINAL kilometers of accumulation you seemed to be saying could have occurred. The erosion is what reduced that putative accumulation to the present much smaller quantity. Got it?If so, great. If not, let's just not talk to each other any more.Bye for now.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-12-2006 11:08 PM

I am giving this thread a rest, but I have to say that your idea of what is needed, this walking me through some steps or other, is irrelevant. I don't have a problem with gigantic amounts of material, I have a SPECIFIC problem with the SPECIFIC sediments in the SPECIFIC layers of the geo column, especially if I am told they USED to be a lot thicker than they are now but got eroded down to present thickness from some rather astounding former thickness. These are SPECIFIC sediments, different kinds of limestones, shales, sandstones and so on.The question involves how these SPECIFIC sediments got there to such a depth over a broad swath of terrain and all so neatly (apparently) stacked one upon another.So far nobody has even come up with a present-day source of such a phenomenon that I can see, not to the scale of what is actually seen in, say, the area that stretches through Arizona and Utah. Sorry to keep focusing on that area but I simply have a pretty good visualization of it because of the GB thread a while back; lots of diagrams that show that the layers are consistent over that great territory. I understand that most of that was supposedly formed in a sea environment, while the idea is that other parts of the geo column may have been formed by mountainbuilding, and there was one other method given that I can not recall. And yes, I understand that although these represent specific time periods that the actual arrangement differs in different parts of the globe.But there is too much irritability on this topic so I'm just going to take my time with getting back to it.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 09:35 AM

Yes, thank you, and that is the impression I got from edge himself, although he apparently was talking about a whole stack accumulating up to kilometers and being eroded down to a lot less, while I thought we were talking about a single layer, so there is still something there that needs explaining about the supposed accumulation of individual layers.

You know, it seems to me it ought to be perfectly acceptable to pick and choose with whom I'd like to communicate on a thread that has many people posting to me. It is especially hard for me to communicate with you for some reason, so I hope you will understand if I don't respond to your points.

to parallel the GC, the sediments must be relatively pure, not mixtures, that is, must be either limestone or shale or sandstone. All you say is that first the shore of the sea was eroded and deposited, then the Mediterranean broke through and left a different deposit on top of the first. Two layers, and nothing about the sediments themselves.So, were the very deep strata of the Arizona-Utah area once an inland sea and are its edges traceable?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 12:02 PM

Yes that is one of the charts I have. {abe; In fact I have posted the link to it many times at EvC in previous discussions}What is the point you are trying to make?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 12:41 PM

The miscommunications seem to be compounding and I'm trying to give this thread a rest anyway. Since that is one of my favorite diagrams of the area and I've posted it myself many times obviously you are answering the wrong question and something is not getting understood.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 01:06 PM

I'm very aware of all that on that chart and consider it very suggestive of what happened to all the accumulated strata at the end of the flood. It appears that all over the southwest the strata built up layer by layer and then after the entire stack was in place magma pushed up from below which opened the cracks that became the canyons, and draining waters washed across the stack and eroded huge quantities of it away, leaving the Grand Staircase, leaving the Grand Canyon, and all the other odd formations of the southwest, the various pillars and so on that are everywhere. In other words massive erosion happened to the whole area at once after the whole stack was laid down. Looks to me like some massive water event laid down the layers rather neatly considering, and then at the end of it, some shift in the terrain perhaps, or just the draining of the waters away in rather a rush perhaps, removed great chunks of what had been built up.That's a different thing from the idea that each individual layer lost great quantities of its substance by erosion before the next layer was laid down. And to look at that diagram with its neatly parallel stack of layers that cover miles of territory it is hard to believe that erosion of each layer would have left such neat regular layers.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 11:44 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 11:45 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-13-2006 11:55 PM

Still looks like what it looks like.