|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
EvC Forum active members: 64 (9164 total) |
| |
ChatGPT | |
Total: 916,766 Year: 4,023/9,624 Month: 894/974 Week: 221/286 Day: 28/109 Hour: 1/3 |
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Fossils, strata and the flood | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Hi Vacate,
I remember reading about the discovery of what appear to be sedimentary layers on Mars, and I had seen the image you linked to before:
But I also have a vague recollection that one the Mars rovers lucked out into wandering by an outcrop that showed evidence of sedimentary layers. Does that sound familiar at all, or am I maybe misremembering? No, I think I'm right. I just poked around on the net a bit and this Wikipedia article appears to allude to this in passing: Gusev (Martian crater). Couldn't find the rover image of the layers. --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Hi Flyer75,
The author of your article (Should Fragile Shells Be Common in the Fossil Record? by John Whitmore) misunderstood Olszewski's paper. I'm not sure why he misunderstood it because he quoted the portions of Olszewski's paper that make clear what he was actually saying. Olszewski was addressing the mystery of why we find shells that are "10s, 100s, or even 1000s of years old" in settings where they should have been destroyed. The shells he's talking about aren't fossilized shells that are millions and millions of years old. They're just shells in what he calls the TAZ, the "taphonomically active zone," which he defines as "the interval where shells are likely to be destroyed." This is a higher layer than the DFB, the "depth of final burial," which he defines as the level "below which shells can no longer be reworked into the TAZ." So a shell in the TAZ level should apparently be destroyed in a period less than years, while a shell that makes it lower down into the DFB level is protected and should get fossilized. The mystery is why some shells in the TAZ level are so old. Old in this context doesn't mean the millions of years common for fossilized shells that have had the good fortune to be buried deeply and quickly enough to have suffered little or no destruction. Old means from 10s to 1000s of years. Just as on land, fossilization is uncommon. The fate of most organisms is recycling back into the environment through being eaten, scavenged, eroded, weathered, dissolved, and so on. Only in rare circumstances is an organism buried deeply and quickly enough after death to be preserved. If fossilization were not extremely rare then we would be awash in fossils. But rare as fossilization is, there are far more fossils than the most number of creatures that have ever been alive all at the same time. The flood couldn't have created all the fossils because the Earth couldn't sustain that much life all at once. --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Flyer75 writes: I think what he's asking is, "if these shells can't last along time, even 10 to 100 years, then why do we see fossils of them at all if according to theory, it takes tens of thousands or more years to fossilize?" What am I missing here? A TAZ level is a destructive environment. Shells that spend any significant time in TAZ levels are unlikely to survive, which I would expect is true of most shells. Shells that become buried in DFB levels, which are preservative rather than destructive, have a much better chance of becoming fossilized. It would be quite a conundrum if shells had to spend significant time in TAZ levels before reaching DFB levels, but that's not the case. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Spelling, grammer, typos - sheesh!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Faith writes: It is what MUST have happened if you actually LOOK at the depth of the strata all over the earth, their neat horizontality and parallel form, and then THINK for a change. Relative to your belief that strata all over the Earth exhibit "neat horizontality and parallel form," here are some images. Click on them to enlarge. First, just to make sure you understand there's no claim that there's no such thing as horizontal and neatly parallel strata, here's an image of strata from the Grand Canyon. Obviously these strata are largely undisturbed by tectonic forces:
Now here are some images of strata that do not exhibit "neat horizontality and parallel form" and that have been greatly affected by tectonic forces like uplift, faulting, shearing and so forth:
Perhaps we could discuss this picture evidence and its implications for the viability of flood geology. --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
So many errors, so little time, so I pick this one:
Architect-426 writes: "I read a bio of Hutton too...." What is even more pathetic than this so called science of geology, which has its roots in evolution... Hutton and the science of geology preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution:
Darwin took Lyell's books with him on the Beagle before he'd even thought of evolution. --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Hi Architect-426,
Though I'm curious about the origin of your beliefs, such as what evidence leads you to chose "intense volcanism" as responsible for the formation of the British Isles, perhaps we should return to the original topic. What evidence in the geological layers leads you to see a flood as responsible for the particular distribution of fossils we find in the geological strata? By the way, since you're an architect, what do you think about the possibility of multi-story reed structures such as those on the ark? Perhaps you can help out Greentwiga over in the That boat don't float thread. --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
roxrkool writes: It's obvious you have not read much about geology as this "simple fact" is known by all. Rocks on the surface/near-surface tend to behave in a brittle manner. However, rocks subjected to increased temperatures and/or pressures will often behave in a ductile manner. Try Googling "brittle-ductile transition zone." Rhetorical question: How could a real architect be unaware of such simple facts about the strength of materials? Combine this with the known inverse relationship between confidence and knowledge and what do you get? That's rhetorical, too. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
I'm going to let Architect address whether architecture curriculum coursework covers the strength of materials (which includes the effect of temperature), and why he didn't retain any of that information himself.
--Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Architect-426 writes: The dessication of this material can clearly be read in the topography of the Highlands as these mountains were formed by intense volcanism; ballistic and intrusive and are NOT a plate tectonic crumple zone. The fact that there is very little topsoil on these monoliths is evidence of a recent event. Your use of the term "monolith" makes me uncertain what you're referring to, but if you mean mountains then you do realize, I hope, that mountains are areas of net erosion, not deposition? That in general the higher you go on a mountain the less topsoil you'll find? And that the topsoil on the sides of a mountain is in the midst of a slow journey to the valley below? And that the rivers flowing through upland valleys are carrying the topsoil further downstream and eventually to the sea? --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Hi Architect,
At one point you dismiss the possibility of millions of years ago because there were no witnesses, but what about this:
Architect-426 writes: These plutons are massive remnants of powerful eruption processes and typically rise after intense episodes within or near a volcanic epicenter. There were no witnesses of this, either. How do you know when it happened? --Percy
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
And if you read Geikie's forward you'll see that he doesn't argue for a volcanic origin for the British Isles. His book is about the role of volcanoes in the geological history of Great Britain. He doesn't propose that volcanoes formed the British Isles. He also knows that the volcanoes he writes about occurred millions and millions of years ago, and he knows the difference between volcanic basalt and sedimentary layers.
In other words, Geikie is one of us, or would be if he were still alive. --Percy
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024