Trilobites, Mountains and Marine Deposits - Evidence of a flood?

So I'm listening to the interview. And it seems that Niel is saying that long ago, when the planet formed, lighter density rocks floated to the surface.

Which, of course, is true. But this means that there would be an essentially even distribution of granitic rock across the surface of the earth. The earth certainly does not have that today, with mountainous regions having a crust at least twice as thick as that of continental crust on average (itself thicker on average than oceanic crust).

Now why would that be? How could that happen? Oh, gee, I don't know, maybe collision? Since granitic rock doesn't really subduct, it crumples and a divergent zone is produced elsewhere. This produces oceanic crust.

What's so difficult about that? Granted, I have quite the simple model, but still.

Jazzns writes: I would be quite shocked if this was something we could observe in "live" action in the same way that we don't ever really observe plates moving in that way. It just plain happens too slowly. We can measure things over semi-longer periods of time though such as the elevation of the Rockies and Everest and the distance of the plates with respect to each other. Plotted over time you get your movement.

Back in the late 70s I took a little 1 unit class called geology field trip and one of the exhibits was a set of bleachers in Hollister built directly on the San Andreas fault (the actual boundary between the Pacific and North American Plates) in the late 50s. Well by the late 70s, the bleachers had moved about 18 inches along a diagonal right on through the whole setup, displacing the bench seats.

Now conceivably if one set up a very slow motion camera, say a frame every few days to a week, and one made sure the camera itself did not move in the rather frequent earthquakes, one would be able to directly observe the bleachers being moved on the film when speeded up to the usual 32 frames per second, or thereabouts.

Just a thought. Seems to me that plate movement can be observed, just not on the regular human timescale. It would be like those movies of buildings or bridges being erected, to deny the movement between the plates would be the equivalent of denying the building or bridge exists.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis Bacon

The more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

Just a thought. Seems to me that plate movement can be observed, just not on the regular human timescale.

Exactly.

You could also mention the physical scale. Subduction in particular doesn't happen at a location that could be "filmed". It happens over massive distances and at quite some depth.

Also, if I can recall correctly, on top of the subduction boundary will be a pileup of material that essentially gets scraped off the top of the plate as it gets subducted called an accretionary wedge (forgive my spelling). So even if you wanted to "watch" the subduction it is in fact buried beneath a vast amount of tons of ... well ... stuff.

Again IIRC, Indonesia itself is an accretionary wedge so these things can be quite big.

I think plate tectonics is on topic in the sense that it is the reason for the mountain building, so I guess demonstrating that it does happen by talking about subduction is okay, but we may be slightly stepping into different territory.

The take home point is, crazy Batman guy aside, plate tectonics does happen AND is sufficient to account for mountain building. That is a fact that needs to be accomodated by any model claiming to accuratly describe the history of the earth.

Even if someone wants to argue about forces and equations and such, which seems pretty easy to debunk, although I am not sure it has been done yet comprehensivly enough, which I will leave to the physics minded folks; mountains building regions correspond directly with convergent plate boundaries. Either that is a coincidence or someone's math is wrong.

Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

Actually Jazz, I recall watching a video back in school where some organization took a robot sub down, left it therefore a month and had a time lapse showing the tiny movement between the two plates in the Mid Atlantic ridge. But that was a long time ago.

Edited by obvious Child, : No reason given.

I think the plate tectonics discussion looks pretty good. It, however, is pretty marginal to this topic and would be better served by a specific to plate tectonics topic. Hint: Someone propose such - Put a quality topic title on it and link back to a good place in this topic.

This topic seems to have long ago run its on-topic course. Closing it down. If someone has some fossils on mountains point they wish to pursue further, it's also new topic time.

Closing this one down in about 15 minutes.

Adminnemooseus

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The mid-atlantic ridge is a divergent plate boundary. No subduction occurs there.

If you want to see subduction, I recommend looking at the Juan de Fuca plate. It is currently being subducted underneath the Cascades and should eventually vanish if plate tectonics is right. Of course, we'll have to wait a very long time for it to completely vanish, but in the meantime it should be possible to measure how much it is shrinking.

And yeah, video of it happening isn't exactly possible.

[abe: adminmoose was putting up his warning as I posted this. sorry about that.]

Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

10 minutes - Close enough.

Plate tectonics fans - See message 185.

Adminnemooseus

Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Must... log... in... as... Adminnemooseus (aka - edit to change ID)

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New Members should start HERE to get an understanding of what makes great posts. Report a problem etc. type topics: Report Technical Problems Here: No. 1 Report Discussion Problems Here: No. 2 Thread Reopen Requests Considerations of topic promotions from the "Proposed New Topics" forum Other useful links: Forum Guidelines, Style Guides for EvC, Assistance w/ Forum Formatting, Proposed New (Great Debate) Topics, Official Invitations to Online Chat@EvC

Admin writes: It really helps moderators figure out if a topic is disintegrating because of general misbehavior versus someone in particular if the originally non-misbehaving members kept it that way. When everyone is prickly and argumentative and off-topic and personal then it's just too difficult to tell. We have neither infinite time to untie the Gordian knot, nor the wisdom of Solomon. There used to be a comedian who presented his ideas for a better world, and one of them was to arm everyone on the highway with little rubber dart guns. Every time you see a driver doing something stupid, you fire a little dart at his car. When a state trooper sees someone driving down the highway with a bunch of darts all over his car he pulls him over for being an idiot. Please make it easy to tell you apart from the idiots. Source

In response to

RAZD writes: can Trilobites, Mountains and Marine Deposits - Evidence of a flood? be reopened? ICANT on Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 asks Message 495: Is there any spot on earth that has not been covered with water at one time?

Its your baby, RAZD.

From ICANT on Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1

Message 495: Is there any spot on earth that has not been covered with water at one time? What would you expect to find if it had been covered with water?

For every spot of earth that is known to be covered by floods there were other spots that were not. All known floods were local/regional floods. There are also land that was originally seabed that has been lifted up above sea level (Mt Everest for example), and they have evidence of mature marine ecosystem growth in several layers, and the periods of those growth exceed thousands of years.

I would expect to see evidence of flooding all occurring at the same time ... ie universal in the spacial-temporal matrix in the same way the evidence of a meteor impact in the Yucatan left a layer of Iridium around the world as dust from the impact settle world wide (demonstrating how massive the impact was).

I would also expect to see a mass extinction event, as was seen from this impact causing a "nuclear winter" alteration that affected most living creatures, but with all deaths associated with flooding.

See Wiki Chicxulub Crater, Mass Extinction

quote:

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The main evidence of such an impact, besides the crater itself, is contained in a thin layer of clay present in the K–Pg boundary across the world. In the late 1970s, the Alvarezes and colleagues reported that it contained an abnormally high concentration of iridium.[48] Iridium levels in this layer reached 6 parts per billion by weight or more compared to 0.4 for the Earth's crust as a whole;[49] in comparison, meteorites can contain around 470 parts per billion of this element.[50] It was hypothesized that the iridium was spread into the atmosphere when the impactor was vaporized and settled across the Earth's surface amongst other material thrown up by the impact, producing the layer of iridium-enriched clay.[51] ...

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I would NOT expect to see evidence of marine growth in the muck from such a flood, as it would not have had sufficient time to develop the mature ecology seen in shell deposits. This is discussed in detail at the beginning of this thread.

Enjoy

Edited by RAZD, : st

I recently found out that the himilaya's have been redated to only 2-3 million years old instead of tens of millions as previously beleived. So look no further for evidence of accelerated tectonic movement.I always saw exponential decline in volcanic evidence,now they have found evidence of the tectonic plates themselves moving very rapidly. 2-3 million years does'nt fit the biblical account,but it does make one skeptical over the dating methods,considering they have been saying they know they formed tens of millions of years ago.

Unfortunately no reference was cited for this (mis)information.

quote:

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Wiki Himalayas Geology

The Himalayan range is one of the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and consists mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock. According to the modern theory of plate tectonics, its formation is a result of a continental collision or orogeny along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The Arakan Yoma highlands in Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal were also formed as a result of this collision.

During the Upper Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago, the north-moving Indo-Australian plate (which has subsequently broken into the Indian Plate and the Australian plate[7]) was moving at about 15 cm per year. About 50 million years ago this fast moving Indo-Australian plate had completely closed the Tethys Ocean, the existence of which has been determined by sedimentary rocks settled on the ocean floor, and the volcanoes that fringed its edges. Since both plates were composed of low density continental crust, they were thrust faulted and folded into mountain ranges rather than subducting into the mantle along an oceanic trench.[6] An often-cited fact used to illustrate this process is that the summit of Mount Everest is made of marine limestone from this ancient ocean.[8]

The 6,000-kilometre-plus journey of the India landmass (Indian Plate) before its collision with Asia (Eurasian Plate) about 40 to 50 million years ago[6]

Today, the Indian plate continues to be driven horizontally at the Tibetan Plateau, which forces the plateau to continue to move upwards.[9] The Indian plate is still moving at 67 mm per year, and over the next 10 million years it will travel about 1,500 km into Asia. About 20 mm per year of the India-Asia convergence is absorbed by thrusting along the Himalaya southern front. This leads to the Himalayas rising by about 5 mm per year, making them geologically active. The movement of the Indian plate into the Asian plate also makes this region seismically active, leading to earthquakes from time to time.

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So it looks like the Himalayas began to be trust up 50 million years ago. The shells would be somewhat older.

Enjoy

msg 1 writes: There are fossil marine deposits on virtually every mountain, including Mt Everest. These fossil deposits are all of mature marine life, clams many years old, etcetera. If they are evidence of a world wide flood then: (1) the flood was much longer in duration than is the published conjecture, ...

Meaning thousands of years to build up the layers and layers showing growth within a mature marine ecology.

quote:

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Discover how Mount Everest got its name, what kind of rock is on top, and how it's getting taller every year.

The summit of Mount Everest was actually the seafloor 470 million years ago! That's right, the rock that comprises the "summit pyramid" or uppermost part of Mount Everest is gray limestone that was deposited on the northern continental shelf of northern India during the early to middle Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era, long before India began its northward journey towards Eurasia and the eventual collision of tectonic plates that uplifted the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. Called the "Qomolangma Limestone" by geologists, the summit rocks are well-bedded limestone (grainstone) with fragments of common Ordovician marine invertebrate shells, such as trilobites, brachiopods, ostracods and crinoids. The Qomolangma Limestone has been altered by heat, pressure and fluids that have altered the original limestone, so it is now a low-grade metamorphic rock. These rocks have been brought to the roof of the world through continual uplift caused by the collision of India and Eurasia (still on-going today), deep erosion of the Greater Himalaya, and fault displacement along the South Tibetan detachment that has tectonically placed the summit rocks over higher-grade metamorphic rocks below.

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Qomolangma is the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest.

... "trilobites, brachiopods, ostracods and crinoids" ... many of which are now extinct.

Brachiopods are interesting critters, the larvae are free swimming before settling to the bottom and attaching themselves to the substrate with a pedicle. They also have growth lines, and live from 3 to 30 years.

Lower down the mountain is a different kind of rock, not metamorphic but sedimentary, and the shells there are complete:

quote:

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Roadoceras subroadense (Zakharov and Pavlov, 1986) closely resembles R. prodromus (Ruzhentsev) and R. roadoense (Bˆse) and was recorded from the lower member of the Barabash Formation of possibly Capitanian age. This member is about 200 m thick and characterised by containing the brachiopod Anidanthus ussuricus Fredericks, Liosotella cf. licharewiana Kotlyar, Waagenoconcha krystofovichi Fredericks, Petrospirifer alatiformis Licharew and Spiriferella lita (Fredericks). It overlies the member yielding the foraminifer Geinitzina sp., Tetrataxis sp., Pachiploides sp. and the bryozoan Stenopora clapa Kiseleva.

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Perhaps some creationist can explain how you can have one layer of mature marine growth on top of another one without the water existing there for decades, if not millennia, and then add up all the layers that make up the limestone formation and other rocks to depths of 200 meters or more, adding decades (or more) for each layer ...

Let the song and dance, complete with hand-waving and wails of denial commence. Because it is always the details that flummox creationist facile "explanations" based on ignorance of the total evidence.

Enjoy

Edited by RAZD, : .

Perhaps some creationist can explain how you can have one layer of mature marine growth on top of another one without the water existing there for decades, if not millennia,

What? I read through your OP and some of the responses to it and don't get how any of this is a problem for the Flood. What you are interpreting as "mature marine growth" means what? A bunch of marine fossils collected together in a rock, isn't that all it is? "Without the water existing there" means what?

The marine fossils in rock layers at the tops of mountains suggest deposition by the Flood before those mountains existed. Then tectonic pressure pushed them up all over the earth so that all those fossils are embedded there in the rocks at the tops of the mountains.

and then add up all the layers that make up the limestone formation and other rocks to depths of 200 meters or more, adding decades (or more) for each layer ...

Where are you getting this "decades" stuff? This is just the usual situation of the deposition of limestone layers containing dead marine creatures one after another in the Flood.

Let the song and dance, complete with hand-waving and wails of denial commence. Because it is always the details that flummox creationist facile "explanations" based on ignorance of the total evidence.

Uh huh. Well, have at it.

The difference between marine fossils merely being on a mountain topic, and marine fossils being part of the makeup of the entire mountain.

There's also some idea that the more deeply embedded the fossils are the longer the Flood should have taken. Why?

If the argument is that the Flood simply covered existing mountains, that could explain the fossils ON the mountaintops, yes, but the idea is that the Flood deposited all the sedimentary layers that contain fossils, and in the case of mountains this would have happened before the mountains had been raised. After the Flood, the fossil-containing strata were pushed up to become mountains, which is why the fossils are IN the mountain and not just on it.

What? I read through your OP and some of the responses to it and don't get how any of this is a problem for the Flood. What you are interpreting as "mature marine growth" means what?

A couple of things if I can interject.

Mainly, it means that the bottom of the sea had time to go from a featureless, unpopulated surface to a community of organisms. In other words it became an ecosystem. Considering the growth layers in brachiopod shells or the slow development of coral reefs and other such features, this takes a certain amount of time, certainly exceeding year.

But even more importantly, how do you get a layered sequence of such communities one after another in the geological record if it is caused by a one-year flood?

A bunch of marine fossils collected together in a rock, isn't that all it is? "Without the water existing there" means what?

No, it is a lot more than that. It is information that tells us something about the past.

The marine fossils in rock layers at the tops of mountains suggest deposition by the Flood before those mountains existed.

Or deposition by normal marine sedimentation before mountain building.

Faith writes: There's also some idea that the more deeply embedded the fossils are the longer the Flood should have taken. Why?

For the same reason that it took longer to build the Notre Dame than it did a back yard shed. You don't get hundreds of feet of coral growth in a single year.

If the argument is that the Flood simply covered existing mountains, that could explain the fossils ON the mountaintops, yes, but the idea is that the Flood deposited all the sedimentary layers that contain fossils, and in the case of mountains this would have happened before the mountains had been raised. After the Flood, the fossil-containing strata were pushed up to become mountains, which is why the fossils are IN the mountain and not just on it.

What evidence do you have for rapid mountain building?