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| Author | Topic: Growing the Geologic Column | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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From Fission Tracks in Zircons: Evidence for Abundant Nuclear Decay (I've made the X's red:
Caption: Correlation of the Cambrian Tonto Group showing facies changes in the western Grand Canyon (after McKee and Resser [1945]; Elston [1989]). The stratigraphic position of the thin Muav and Tapeats tuff units are indicated by xxxxxx. The references are to books that are not readily available on-line.
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
As for faults, I see no reason why they couldn't form underground without reaching the surface. Yeah, you ignored Message 646 just as you ignored so much. Pathetic.
Sure, if you really believe the faults had to go to the top of whatever layer was the topmost at the supposed time they occurred. I can't prove otherwise of course, but there's no necessary reason to believe that. For this example, though, it looks that way. I just wouldn't be dogmatic about it if I were you.
A fault cannot fail to go to the top of a stack of layers, because the rocks making up the strata are heavy in the extreme. No space can ever open up in a stack of layers for more than an instant before the layer above would fall into it. Your advice to not be dogmatic about this is good scientific advice in general, but one mustn't take it too far. In this case what you're actually saying is to not be too dogmatic about gravity. Look at it this way. We have these layers that I've labeled A through H:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Now a fault occurs that extends from layer H all the way up through layer D, but no higher. Let's say the amount of slip is a kilometer or two, in other words, nothing trivial like a meter a two. Here's what that would look like:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD| Empty EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE| Space FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF|DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG|EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH|FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF ------------------------|GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG -------Basement Rock----|HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH See all that empty space of a kilometer or two between layer C and layer D on the right half of the diagram? A gap that large is impossible. If the thought of simple gravity acting on rock isn't persuasive to you then I offer validation in the fact that no gap of this size in sedimentary layers has ever been observed. As further validation I offer the frequent collapse of caves and mines (which are never anywhere close to a kilometer or two in height) when insufficient support is provided. Therefore faults must extend all the way up to the surface, and that stack would instead look like this:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA| BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB| CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD|BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE|CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF|DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG|EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH|FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF ------------------------|GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG -------Basement Rock----|HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH And there are faults to the right of that one that go all the way from the bottom to the top, that is to the Base Tertiary, which shows that all the layers were in place when those faults occurred, and there's nothing there to show that the one you mention was earlier except its shortness, which probably doesn't mean that. What you're referring to as the shorter fault must have extended up to the surface that existed at the time of the fault. Nothing else is possible.
The fault just to the left of that section of strata that lies beneath the Late Jurassic Shelf Edge, occurred with the pushing up of that whole section, leaving the very same strata on the left lower in the stack. That's all that happened there. All the strata were already in place at that time. Probably also the Base tertiary but of course that can't be proved based on the fault lines. Here's the diagram again:
The part up until the last sentence is written in a way that indicates you think you disagree with me on that point, but either I don't disagree with you or I misunderstood the point you were trying to make. But about the last sentence about the Base tertiary, it could not have been present when the fault occurred, else there would be a discontinuity at the Base tertiary boundary and the fault would be represented on the diagram as extending into the Base tertiary.
Well you're good at the OE fairy tale, I'll give you that. Of course there were no millions of years, no eroded layers of an imaginary unconformity, just all the strata laid down in sequence and faulted and deformed according to whatever forces acted upon various parts of it. These are just bare assertions with no accompanying evidence or argument. I'll ignore them.
A NOTE ON INTERPRETIVE VERSUS PRACTICAL GEOLOGY Now, all this is a perfect example of what I'd been calling "historical Geology" that is all nothing but unprovable untestable interpretations. I'm calling it Old Earthism now because that other term apparently includes more than I want to include. But the principle is quite clear. You've got the whole OE interpretive system going there without any way to verify it. Using the very same data I just answer with my own interpretive system which I think is a lot more plausible. For the purposes of Practical Geology none of this should matter, just the positions of the rocks relative to each other. If the Base tertiary was laid down before the faulting or after doesn't matter, all that matters for practical purposes is where the rocks are now. This, too, is just bare assertion, so I'll ignore this, too. Feel free to repeat these arguments when you've got something to support them with. --Percy.
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JonF Member (Idle past 189 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
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