Evidence that the Great Unconformity did not Form Before the Strata above it

Yes, the picture shows a point in time where, during sedimentation, a exotic rock dropped out of the water and into soft sediments. If you are careful, you can find the exact point, as recorded by the sediments, when this happened (in a relative sense).The whole reason for bringing up dropstones is that they have a unique interpretation for their motion. Saying that a basement gneiss has moved upward due to some unknown force along some invisible faults or folds, and may or may not have disrupted the upper sediments and created some kind of bedding-plane shear is not a problem with dropstones. They are fairly easy to visualize for most of us. The only force is gravity, and there is no connection to a deep source of uplift. Is this making sense? If the sediments draped over the rock were there prior to its emplacement, they would be disrupted.One of the interesting facts here is that this particular event occurred well before the Cambrian Period and is almost certainly due to glacial rafting of the cobble... and we are back to the snowball earth, glacial planation of pre-existing rocks and 'straight, flat unconformities... Yes, during this sedimentation, glaciers were eroding the continents.

I'm still curious about what you meant.

Here's what she said in Message 889, in response to me pointing out the consilience of the data:

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I don't believe there is any consilience of data, it's all subjective interpretation. Of COURSE it all fits together. Sort of.

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By "coincidence", she means that scientists have set up the consilience through their subjective interpretations and that it isn't actually real to begin with.

It took me a while to arrive at what I think you really meant. Am I correct in thinking that you're describing a hypothetical here? Would it be a correct rephrasing to say, "Had the sediments that in the image are draped over the rock already been in place when the rock fell then they, too, would have been deformed downward. But they're not deformed downward, so therefore they were deposited upon and around the rock after it fell."

Yes, in fact, they would be broken.

I'm still curious as to what you mean by coincidence here.CatSci thinks that you believe that there isn't any match just that subjective looking at it makes some geologists think that there is one. Is that it?How can measurements made of age of rocks (independently of anything else to do with sea floor motions) be "subjectively" made to match with the positions of formations (like the Hawaiian islands) and the currently measured speed of the ocean floor?Is the speed of the floor measurement wrong?
Are the locations of the Hawaiian islands wrong?
Did someone change the dates to make the match happen?If any of these happened why haven't the "scientists" of the CRI exposed these errors by measuring correctly?Since it seems crazy to think that any of those things could be wrong and come up with the match I have to assume you mean something else other than what cat sci says. You don't like others saying what you mean so perhaps you can explain in more detail.

Not if they were soft enough to stretch, just as the bottom layer did, and the appearance of softness of both top and bottom looks identical.My objection to the interpretation is the usual: loose sediments would not form a layer over the rock but would butt into it.

Except that the rock would have to pass through the upper layers in your scenario, completely disrupting, not bending them.And yes, the various layers were probably comparable in strength. So, what?They are not deformed to the same degree, nor in the same sense of deformation (up versus down). Well, clearly they didn't. And you have no argument that the rock went through the upper layers to get where it is.Is this as obscure to most people as it is to Faith?

No, in fact it is so glaringly obvious that I keep thinking there must be some weird misunderstanding going on here (from one side or the other), but once again, I can't figure out what it is.HBD

I don't think it's really obscure to Faith, but more that she has a different scenario so firmly in mind that she doesn't see the one you're attempting to describe. It does feel to me that it should be possible to supply sufficient additional clarity to get your point across. It might help to explain what "disrupt" means in this context. What should "disrupted" layers look like? Several times I've been expecting that you might confirm my own expectation that the layers above the rock could not possibly have been deflected upward as the rock passed downward through them, but you haven't done that, instead preferring to describe them only as "disrupted." Is my own understanding at fault?Also, I expected that the layers where the rock passed through the layers above that they would no longer exist in the distinct form that we see in various images. A little ways above the rock the layers appear completely undisturbed, but like a nail fired too fast through layers of plywood or a bullet passing through a book, it seems like there should be a very distinct record of its passage. When Faith said that the layers above and below the rock appeared equally soft, I think she meant that in the sense that during the flood the layers were incompletely lithified and still soft, to the point where objects like rocks could pass easily through them. I think some more detail concerning the implications of the differences in deformation of the layers above the rock versus the layers below might be helpful.It might help if Faith were willing to comment on the case where a rock has fallen from a melting glacier, impacting on the sedimentary layers of the sea bottom. How would she tell the difference between these two scenarios:

• The rock becomes buried about halfway along its diameter upon impact, and then was gradually covered over by additional sedimentation over the following centuries;
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• The rock passes through the sedimentary layers of the sea bottom coming to a stop some meters down, instantly completely buried.

You think that more information would satisfy Faith, somehow? Or are you talking about everyone else?Normally, I would expect people to ask questions if there is something that they don't understand. Oh, well... From MW Online:1 a : to break apart : rupture
b : to throw into disorder I will explain things more completely in the future. I'd go with that. Apparently. But I'm not sure why that makes any difference.ABE: I think HBD explained this pretty well. The lower layers are folded downward, while the upper layers are folded upward. How does this happen? Did the rock grow in place? If so, why more deformation downward when up would be the best way to relieve over-pressures of a growing rock?Edited by edge, : No reason given.

I just want to make sure we are all talking about the same thing. Here is the order of events we see in this dropstone image: Sediment was deposited to the level of the red line in roughly horizontal layers. A stone fell from above, distorting the layers that were already there. Finally, the red layers were deposited on top of the older layers and the stone.The layer marked with yellow "X"s was not there at this time. You are not suggesting they were elastic are you? So they would go back to their original shape after deforming? They stretched down and then sprang back up over the stone? This doesn't really have much meaning. What does "soft" stone look like? The bottom is deformed down, the top is deformed up. So what would you do to demonstrate this is true? I have shown you how and why loose sediment will stick to an incline. We know it happens in sand dunes, even in underwater dunes. Why would it NOT form small slopes on either side of the stone that is projecting above the present layers?HBDEdited by herebedragons, : typo

Here's another one that seems even more obvious. I'm struggling to think of any way that doesn't represent a heavy object falling into semi-solid layers of sediment, then new layer forming above it. The layer denoted by the arrow seems to have been almost liquid.One thing that is certain - that object was not pushed up from below.It's the sort of thing you could easily model using layers of different coloured sand and dropping a marble into it, then adding more layers.

Since so many have been denying the original horizontality of strata, which I had thought was a well-established principle of Geology (and still do -- the denials are absurd and so destructive of reason it is painful), here's a page that defines strata , and makes clear that Steno's laws were all addressing strata and only strata, and no other kind of geological formation, strata being that stack of originally-horizontal rocks of various sediments we've mostly been discussing on this thread:

Yup, that's what Steno came up with. And they still are mostly true, but not in all cases. As geologists have learned in the centuries since Steno.But strata are not defined as horizontal today, because we know better.Stratum Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster:

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stratum: noun stratum \'stra-t?m, 'stra-\
a sheetlike mass of sedimentary rock or earth of one kind lying between beds of other kinds

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Stratum Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com:

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Geology. a single bed of sedimentary rock, generally consisting of one kind of matter representing continuous deposition.

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Just a moment...:

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(usually plural) any of the distinct layers into which sedimentary rocks are divided

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Stratum - Wikipedia:

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a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers.

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and there's lots more. So your "I'm saying the definition of strata is that it deposits horizontally" is false. It's your own private and erroneous definition, and you are insisting that the geologists who use their definition are wrong.(Not even going into the fact that "horizontal" is poorly defined and never strictly seen in the field).