Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

WmScott,Howdy. I'm a geology buff like yourself. I've been reading your discussion on diatoms. Frankly, I think you are quite confused on this issue, and the evidence does not demand, suggest, or even imply a "Noah's Flood" transport mechanism. I will explain why either friday or saturday. After that I'd like to discuss problems with the rest of your theory.Till then,Patrick

One more point for the moment, WmScott. As Percipient pointed out, you either misread or misrepresented the article you cited above. The authors are arguing FOR aeolian transport.Patrick

The following is from:
Davida E. Kellogg and Thomas B. Kellogg, 1997. Diatoms in a South Pole ice core: Serious implications for the age of the Sirius Group, Antarctic Journal of the United States, v. 32.
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/nsf97160/cover1.htmKellog and Kellog note:"Diatoms are a small but pervasive constituent of snow falling at the South Pole (and at Siple and Taylor Domes), although in a patchy pattern through both space and time (figure 2). Over 40 marine and nonmarine taxa were recorded (table). Abundances are extremely variable, ranging from nil to over 260 specimens in individual samples.""Figure 2. Diatom abundance fluctuations (specimens per liter) and percentage of nonmarine specimens in the South Pole core. Ages are calendar years based on correlation with the adjacent 1981 core at South Pole (Gow personal communication).

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34 percent contain more than 75 percent marine specimens,
4 percent are more than 75 percent nonmarine,
35 percent have intermediate mixtures of marine and nonmarine taxa, and
the remainder are barren or are dominated by species of uncertain provenance

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"Diatoms are extremely light and easily transported by winds (e.g., the well-known diatom deposits in the equatorial Atlantic derived from Saharan Africa; Folger 1970), and winds in Antarctica are known to reach very high velocity. The antarctic surface windfield is dominated by katabatic flow, outward and down from high ice domes toward the sea (Parish and Bromwich 1987). Storms tend to track around the continent. Occasional large storms break through the circumflow and penetrate to the South Pole (Bromwich and Robasky 1993). Our diatoms were probably carried by these episodic events, which occur today at most a few times annually. An alternative transport mechanism, stratospheric return (poleward) flow, is unlikely because most of our diatoms are antarctic endemics whereas most stratospheric particles are entrained in tropical areas. Terrestrial sediments containing marine and nonmarine diatoms probably serve as the most important diatom sources. We envision diatom entrainment as episodic, perhaps occurring only a few times in a decade, and responsible for the low background level of less than 20 diatoms per liter of melted ice typical for approximately 70 percent of our samples." Marine diatoms in soil hardly require a global flood. A strong wind will do just fine. As Kellog and Kellog and others demonstrate, marine diatoms are transported all the way into the antarctic interior by wind today, throughout historical time, and prior to historical time.You might also want to check out:Burckle, L.H., and N. Potter, Jr. 1996. Pliocene-Pleistocene diatoms in Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary and igneous rocks from Antarctica: A Sirius problem solved. Geology , 24(3), 235-238.Kellogg, D.E., and T.B. Kellogg. 1996. Diatoms in South Pole ice: Implications for eolian contamination of Sirius Group deposits. Geology , 24(2), 115-118.Kellogg, D.E., Kellog, T.B., 1996. Glacial/interglacial variations in the flux of atmospherically transported diatoms in Taylor Dome ice core, Antarctic journal of the United States, 1996, 31(2), p.68-70.Patrick

Wmscott,
You seem to be having a problem understanding the evidence I am presenting. For instance, you wrote:First off the deposit is not found on ice or a glacier, but in a dry valley type environment.Obviously you did not read the Kellog and Kellog article I recommended. Diatoms are found both in the ice caps, at multiple levels, *and* in the surface of the exposed Sirius tills. Kellog and Kellog again (pay attention):"Diatoms are a small but pervasive constituent of snow falling at the South Pole (and at Siple and Taylor Domes), although in a patchy pattern through both space and time (figure 2). Over 40 marine and nonmarine taxa were recorded (table). Abundances are extremely variable, ranging from nil to over 260 specimens in individual samples."And their Geology article later that year states:Marine and nonmarine diatoms occur throughout a South Pole ice core spanning the past 2000 yr. Similar diatoms occur in East and West Antarctica at Siple and Taylor domes. Because there are no local diatom sources at these locations, diatoms must have been carried by winds from coastal or extra-Antarctic sites. Our data demonstrate widespread historical eolian transport of diatoms to the Antarctic ice sheets, supporting the view that Sirius Group sediments were contaminated by late Neogene diatoms long after they were deposited. If so, there is no reason to postulate a Pliocene deglaciation event in East Antarctica.And again, here is Kellog and Kellog's illustration, showing the flux of diatoms into ice deposited over the past 2000 years.Graph from:
David E. Kellogg and Thomas B. Kellogg, 1997. Diatoms in **a South Pole ice core**: Serious implications for the age of the Sirius Group, Antarctic Journal of the United States, v. 32.
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/nsf97160/cover1.htmSubsequently Kellog and Kellog documented the atmospheric flux of diatoms to Antarctica over a much longer time scale:After finding eolian-deposited diatoms in an ice core drilled at South Pole (Kellogg and Kellogg 1996), we were anxious to determine whether wind-blown diatoms are routinely incorporated into ice at other remote antarctic locations. Specifically, we were interested in determining how widespread these diatoms are, how diatom assemblages and abundance patterns differ between the east and west antarctic ice sheets, and how diatom flux varies down long ice cores, especially across glacial/interglacial transitions. We hope to use this information as input into climate models to reconstruct past storm tracks over Antarctica and determine how atmospheric circulation changes across climatic transitions.As their ice core data from Taylor Dome shows, diatoms have been transported to Antarctica and incorporated into the ice over at least the past 160,000 years.From:
D.E. Kellogg and T.B. Kellogg, Glacial/interglacial variations in the flux of atmospherically transported diatoms in Taylor Dome ice core, Antarctic Journal of the United States Review 1996, LAND-ICE STUDIES AND GLACIAL GEOLOGY.Are we clear on this now? Eolian transport of diatoms to the poles is a fact, and has been occurring for at least the past 160,000 years?Wmscott wrote:
They then go on to state why wind depositing is a problem.

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" If the microfossils arrived by eolian processes, they should occur in surface deposits of disparate origin but of unknown age, both glacial and nonglacial, given the ability for the deposit to trap fine-grained, wind-blown material (McFadden, Wells, and Jercinovich 1987; Wells et al. 1995)."I'm happy to report that this is exactly what the Burkle and Potter paper, published later the same year in the journal Geology, demonstrated. This is precisely why I recommended the paper in the first place. Their abstract reads:Burckle, L.H., and N. Potter, Jr. 1996. Pliocene-Pleistocene diatoms in Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary and igneous rocks from Antarctica: A Sirius problem solved. Geology , 24(3), 235-238."There are two competing scenarios on the behavior of the East Antarctic ice sheet during the late Tertiary. In one scenario, the ice sheet was very dynamic and underwent major drawdown and renewal as late as the Pliocene. In the other, the ice sheet was relatively stable during the late Neogene. The presence of marine diatoms in Sirius Group sedimentary rocks in East Antarctica is at the center of the disagreement. One side regards the diatoms as the major piece of evidence to support the drawdown and renewal hypothesis and infers that they were introduced into the Sirius during renewed glaciation of East Antarctica; others suggest that these diatoms were likely introduced into the Sirius by atmospheric (largely eolian) processes.

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"We propose a simple test of the eolian hypothesis. If diatoms were introduced into the Sirius by eolian processes, then they should also be present in older (Paleozoic and Mesozoic) sedimentary and igneous rocks. Samples from two units of the Beacon Supergroup (Devonian to Jurassic) from Beacon Valley, East Antarctica, were analyzed: the Beacon Heights Orthoquartzite (Devonian) and the Feather Conglomerate (Permian-Triassic). Also examined was sediment found in cracks of Paleozoic and Mesozoic (Devonian to Cretaceous) igneous rocks from Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica. Largely Pliocene-Pleistocene planktonic marine diatoms were found in all sample sets. Because neither Beacon Supergroup sedimentary rocks nor igneous rocks from Marie Byrd Land are Pliocene-Pleistocene in age, such findings strongly suggest that diatoms were introduced into them by eolian processes. This same scenario can be applied to Sirius Group sedimentary rocks."Now, I want to make sure we both agree that wind transport of marine diatoms is a well-established before moving on to my next point. If you agree, then I want to move on to your arguments against eolian transport for the diatoms you've found in soils.Til later,PatrickPS- Geology is published by the Geological Society of America. Abstracts are available at Geological Society of America , full-text at your local university.

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-25-2002]

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-25-2002]

Wmscott,Do we both now agree that a) marine diatoms are currently being deposited in Antarctica, that b) the ice core records presented by Kellog and Kellog show that marine diatoms have been transported to Antarctica for the past 160,000 years, and c) that the flux of diatoms to Antarctica has been distinctly "patchy in time and space"?And regarding the diatoms in the till, all parties agreed by the end of 1996, as far as I can see, that they were indeed deposited by wind. Reasons for the different assemblages are not at all mysterious, do not support any kind of flood event, and are explained by Stroeven, Prentice and Kleman, 1996. On marine microfossil transport and pathways in Antarctica during the late Neogene: Evidence from the Sirius Group at Mount Fleming, Geology 24, pp. 727-730. See also Stroeven and Prentice, GSA Bulletin 109, pp. 825—840. Do you know of a single researcher in this field who disagrees that these diatoms were eolian transported?Furthermore, if you look, again, at the Taylor Dome diatom record covering the past 160,000 years, you'll see the that the relative proportions of marine and nonmarine diatoms vary considerably over time, and that the assemblages change over time -- this dispatches the complaint in your last post about the different diatom assemblages, which was apparently your only argument against eolian transport for the diatoms in the Sirius tills. How you arrived at the conclusion that these could not be eolian transported is quite mysterious.Now, let's look at your arguments against eolian deposition for the samples you've looked at. As I will show in this post and my next post, your arguments do not in any way invalidate eolian deposition, nor do they provide any evidence whatsoever for deposition via a "Noah's flood."Wmscott wrote:
I have no problem with diatoms being carried by the wind. The one here that I have found were not deposited in that manner. If they had been they would be found throughout the soil or at least on the modern surface everywhere.Again, the diatom record in the Taylor Dome shows that this expectation is wrong. Wind deposition of diatoms is "patchy in time and space." Thus you should not expect to find diatoms in all soil samples, or uniformly distributed within any given soil profile. There's one "argument" down.where the surface has been disturbed have no diatoms, which if the wind was the source, they would have had them.Wrong again. This would be a valid prediction only if you assume, contrary to the evidence, that eolian deposition of diatoms is uniform in time and space. The record of diatom flux at Taylor Dome, again, shows that during many intervals, for periods lasting many thousands of years, little or not diatoms were being transported.See how easy that was? And that's your "best evidence" against eolian deposition?One more point. What, if anything, is your evidence that tiny silicate diatom tests can persist at shallow depths in soil for at least 4500 years (or 10,000 or 40,000 yrs, depending on the date you eventually pick for your flood)? Do you make any attempt to deal with diatom taphonomy in your book, or did you simply assume that diatoms could persist in a near-surface soil environment for this long?I found several papers today addressing the preservation potential of diatoms, and they demonstrate that the the breakdown of diatoms in natural environments can occur very quickly, within a few years or less! According to your 'model,' these diatoms had to have remained intact and recognizable for at least 4500 years.This should come as no surprise, given the tiny size and skeletal porosity of diatoms, and given the occurence of bioturbation, hydrolysis, shrink-swell processes, chelation and other physical and chemical weathering processes that occur in soils.soil[/I] diatoms preserved in paleosols? I've read numerous papers on paleosols, but have never heard of diatoms being preserved.Later today I will summarize some of the literature on this subject. From what I've seen so far, though, it looks like very bad news for your diatom flood "evidence."Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-26-2002]

One more point before I continue. When was your flood event, Wmscott? The paleoclimatic record of the last 10,000+ years is extremely detailed, and there should be no confusion on this point.The biblical flood was ~4500 years ago, give or take a few centuries. Yet the events you mention -- the last deglaciation, Black Sea flood, Heinrich events (marked by ice-rafted debris in Atlantic cores), Pleistocene mammal extinctions, etc. -- occurred long before this, and are themselves seperated in time by many thousands of years. In order to force all these events into a single year you'll need to ignore all the geologic evidence. So, again, when was your flood, and how do you know?Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-26-2002]

Wmscott,
I found several papers addressing the dissolution of diatoms under natural and laboratory conditions. Everything I've seen so far leads me to believe that diatoms being preserved in soils undergoing physical and chemical weathering for 4500 years is not plausible (much less 14,000 years), and that your marine diatoms therefore must have been introduced more recently.For instance, Bennet et al. (1991) illustrate the rapid dissolution of silicate minerals in a peat bog in Minnesota. The peat here is about 3m thick, and the section is dated by several 14C dates.The age ~1m from the surface is ~1165 yrs, and about 2400 yr at ~2m. The authors present SEM evidence for the progressive dissolution of silicate minerals with depth. Even at a depth of ~200cm and an age less than 2400 yr, silicate minerals show extensive etching, pitting and dissolution features. The authors dont mention diatoms, but because diatoms are much more porous and more likely to disarticulate than silicate minerals like quartz and hornblende, their effective life in the bog histosol would be much shorter than 2400 yr.Michalopoulos et al. (2000) demonstrate in laboratory experiments that diatoms are converted to aluminosilicate clays in only 20-23 months when incubated at 28C in anoxic muds. They also note that conversion is equally rapid in Amazon Delta. They write:SEM elemental mapping and TEM studies (electron diffraction, analytical electron microscopy and morphological characteristics) demonstrate that diatom frustules convert to poorly crystalline aluminosilicate phases and microcrystalline clay minerals that primarily contain K, Fe and lesser amounts of Mg. Euhedral pseudohexagonal clay mineral crystallites have formed within the converted siliceous frustules. Two types of euhedral authigenic clays were found, a dominant K-rich phase and a less-ubiquitous K-free type. Under the TEM, relics of diatom frustule microarchitecture can be discerned in otherwise converted frustules.

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The rate of diatom conversion is very rapid and can be complete in months to 2 years. This is directly demonstrated with laboratory incubation experiments with cultured diatoms inserted into Amazon anoxic muds. After 20 months of incubation, cultured diatom cells of the genus Coscinodiscous sp. convert to authigenic phases, and on occasion to euhedral K-Fe-rich clay minerals replacing the original siliceous frustule. In addition, converted diatom particles are found in recently deposited (~ months) sediments near the sediment water interface, corroborating the rapid nature of the conversion processReyves et al. (2001) present experimental data on dissolution rates for 24 species of lake diatoms. The diatoms were incubated at 25C in distilled water for 4-7 weeks. The solution was sampled at various times to assess diatom preservation at various stages. The longest half-life of any of the taxa (time in which half are dissolved) was 1513 hours for Mastogloia elliptica (see table 1). The next closest was Nitzschia amphibia, at 811 hours. The majority have half-lives less than 500 hours under the experimental conditions.Maybe the tests of dead diatoms can somehow persist in soils for 4500+ years, but I'd like to see the evidence for that. A simple way to test this would be by examining holocene soil chronosequences. If your hypothesis is correct, soils postdating ~4500BP should not contain the diatoms, and all soils containing the diatoms should predate ~4500BP. If you search the literature thoroughly, you can probably find many well-dated soil chronosequences in your region. You want to look through USGS Open File reports, the Soil Science Society of America Journal, and the journals Catena and Geoderma.Good luck,PatrickAndrejko, M.J and A.D. Cohen. 1984. Scanning electron microscopy of silicophytoliths from the Okefenoke swamp-marsh complex. pp 466-491. In Cohen, Casagrande, Andrejko and Best (Eds). The Okefenokee Swamp: Its natural history, geology and geochemistry. Wetland Surveys. Los Alamos.Bennett P.C., Siegel D.I., Hill B. and Glaser, P. (1991) The fate of silicate minerals in a peat bog. Geology 19, 328-331.Bidle, K.D. and F. Azam. 1999. Accelerated dissolution of diatom silica by marine bacterial assemblages. Nature. 397:508-512.Lawson, D.S. D.C Hurd and H.S. Pankratz. 1978. Silica dissolution rates of decomposing phytoplankton assemblages at various temperatures. American Journal of Science 278:1373-1393.Mikkelson, N., 1980. Experimental dissolution of Pliocene diatoms. Nova Hedwigia, 33(2): 893-911.Ryves, D.B., Juggins, S., Fritz, S.C. & Battarbee, R.W. 2001. Experimental diatom dissolution and the quantification of microfossil preservation in sediments. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, vol 172, 93-113.

Wmscott,Once again, your defense of diatoms as flood-deposited is completely inadequate. Since I have satisfied myself on the main questions I had, I will limit myself to correcting a few of your latest errors.Originally posted by wmscott:
You are once again comparing apples and oranges. The reasons for the patchyness in the Antarctica glacial diatom deposits don't apply to a Midwestern temperate woodland setting. The main reason given for the diatom patchyness in Antarctica was the diatoms had to fall into cracks in the ice not to be blown away by the winds.Wrong. Diatoms do not need preexisting cracks in ice to accumulate, since they fall with snow and are subsequently incorporated into the ice. Moreover, if all the diatoms accumulated in cracks, you would not expect the record to be replicable in widely-spaced cores. Finally, if the diatoms did accumulate in cracks only, then you should find vertical sheets of diatoms and dust, similar to the "clastic dikes" found in swelled vertisols, healed mudcracks and so on, except on a smaller scale. In fact, they are throughout the ice, and sieved out after melting. Also the tendency for the ice to sublime, melt and refreeze, creep and flow, will disrupt the evenness of the diatom layers.Wrong again. The ice from the cores presented by Kellog and Kellog (the 2000 year core, not the 160k yr core) are from shallow depths showing little or no flow or disrupted layers. In order for disruption of the type you suggest to occur, you'd have to have well-developed z-folds in the core itself, at very shallow depths.Furthermore, in the older core record, covering 160k years, you can see that the diatom flux is correlated with the delta 180 proxy, which itself correlates within fluctuations of amount of wind-blown dust, air temperature and so on. This correlation is not consistent with chance preservation in cracks. Therefore your attempt to explain the patchiness in space as a result of ice flow is totally erroneous.
I enjoyed the technical information on diatoms not lasting in different soil types, and would appreciate any links you have on such. That was a major concern early on and I was happy that it did not turn out to be an impossible problem. If you were correct on diatoms only lasting something like a year in the soil here, then any area undisturbed for more than a year would have the same level of diatoms presentWrong again. I did not say that diatoms would persist only a year. I summarized what I could find in various envirnments, and then asked you what your evidence was that diatoms could persist at shallow depths in soils for 4500 years or more. Since you are now ignoring this question, I can only assume that you have no evidence whatsoever that such as thing is possible. Furthermore, you continue to make the basesless claim that if your diatoms were wind-transported, then we should also find diatoms in recently disturbed areas. As a simple matter of logic, that's quite wrong. It may be that the diatom flux since the area was disturbed has been low or nil. Again, you are just assuming, without any evidence, that the flux of diatoms should be constant.Since as I have repeatedly stated, I have marine diatoms found underneath a glacial boulder, yet other glacial boulders don't have any. Clearly the diatoms were deposited after some of the boulders were left by the melting ice, but before the other one was dropped by floating ice in a flood of sea water. The fact that I can sit here and look at pictures of diatoms found beneath a glacial drop stone from the end of the ice age, settles the survivability question. The diatoms had to be placed before the boulder was, for there is no way wind could deposit diatoms beneath a boulder.Ok, thats a good observation. I'd like to corroborate it. Where were your samples taken, exactly? What I want to know is where precisely I can go and find *marine* [not soil!] diatoms beneath a glacial erratic. I can't go and sample it myself, but I can do some research on the area in general and look at soil and geologic maps. I may even be able to get some soil samples mailed to me.Furthermore, if you remember, you claimed that if the diatoms were windblown, they should be found in all areas. The evidence I presented shows that this is false, as in many types of soils they will disappear very quickly.Obviously though, even assuming that what you state is correct, this STILL does not demand, imply or even suggest a Noah's Flood origin, nor does it rule out an eolian origin. The diatoms could have been emplaced by wind before the emplacement of the boulder. You claim to base your theory on geology, but you keep making basic errors like this that would make even Henry Morris cringe.One other point to consider is "on occasion to euhedral K-Fe-rich clay minerals replacing the original siliceous frustule. In addition, converted diatom particles are found in" sounds like the some of the diatoms didn't disappear, they were converted in their chemical make up while they retained their physical form and were still recognizable as diatoms. I believe this process is called fossilization. If the diatoms that have been affected this way are still recognizable, wouldn't arguing against their survival be arguing against the existence of most of the fossilized remains we have in the fossil record?No, not at all. For your own sake, you should really get a textbook on petrology. Aluminosilicates are CLAYS. Clays are formed via chemical weathering. This is NOT a fossilization process, this is the breakdown of silicate minerals into weathering products. Are the diatoms you found clay pseudomorphs, or primary silica? I've never heard of any examples of clay-neopmorphed silicate fossils. If bible chronology is correct on the age of man and when the flood occurred as I believe it to be, our absolute dating systems apparently have some pretty sizable errors left in them yet and are better suited to giving approximations then exact dates. The dating systems in use, yield valuable information and are well worth using, but the information they give needs to be evaluated thoughtfully, and not swallowed whole without examination. Blindly believing whatever number some of these tests spit out, may well result in our generation of scientists being regarded as gullible dupes by future generations.One would have to be a gullibe dupe indeed to believe that the mish-mash of widely-spaced events you mention all occurred in one year as part of a Noah's Flood. You make it sound as if you have indeed 'evaluated thoughtfully' the voluminous information on Quaternary geology and the dating methods used. I find that quite hard to believe, given that you havent even been able to tell me why you think this event occurred around 4500Bp rather than, say, 50,000Bp. Your model relies upon a wholesale abandonment of dating techniques, not a thoughtful evaluation of them. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.My next question is, do you propose some kind of bolide impact as part of your flood theory? If so, on what evidence?Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-28-2002]

WehappyFew,This occurred to me after I wrote my last post. Even big diatoms are only on the order or 80um or so in diameter, which is very small compared to the porosity of many soils. Movement of particles this size through soil is no problem at all. In fact, this would be yet another problem for the flood-diatom hypothesis, since after 4500 years worth of rain draining through a soil with diatoms at the surface, you would NOT expect to find them only at the surface. You would expect them to be present at least to the same depth as other illuviation features (clay skins, etc.).PS- illuviation is:
The process of depositing soil material removed from one horizon in the soil to another, usually from an upper to a lower horizon in the soil profile. Illuviated substances include silicate clay, hydrous oxides of iron and aluminum, and organic matter.

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-28-2002]

Wmscott,Thanks for your reply. You are STILL confused on the diatom issue. Your quote above is from the article talking about how diatoms could be concentrated in the tills near the margins of the ice, not about the record of diatoms in the ice itself, near the center of the ice cap.However, I have examined your evidence re: diatoms to my own satisfaction, and the most charitable thing I can say is that they are not evidence for a worldwide flood. At the very least you may want to include a footnote in your book stating that diatoms are easily transportable by wind, and that eolian transport of marine diatoms onto land is a demonstrable phenomenon.Now let's move on the bolide impact. You write:
Direct evidence for such a comet impact is thin. We do have a number of aligned lakes that some believe were created a the end of the ice age by an impact event. But as of yet, no one has found a iridium layer for this event, yet no one has thought to look ether. A comet impact on a ice sheet would leave little direct evidence. We would expect to see the releases of large amounts of water, which we do have evidence for, but if the ice was thick enough, the impact crater could have been limited to the ice itself and no mark may have been formed in the bedrock below. So unless someone finds an iridium layer at the end of the ice age, the best evidence for this event will be the effects the impact caused to the ice sheet in the sudden releases of melt water. That evidence we do have, but for the comet impact, it is still indirect evidence. Even the Carolina Bay lakes are probably from secondary impacts created by glacial ice blasted out from the impact ice crater in the Laurentide ice sheet.
Well, at least you admit that the evidence for impact is "thin." I agree. I have a few additional comments though. First iridium or other REE enrichment is probably the least conspicuous impact product, and is not something you could identify in the field. The more obvious results would be a huge blanket of ejecta decreasing in average clast size away from the crater, and a blanket of melt spherules. If the impactor penetrated a quartz-rich target, you would expect shocked quartz too. Again, however, the test is quite simple. For the period ~5000BP to present, you could look for evidence in the ice record itself, or in the many northern European varve records. Its hardly reasonable that the amazing events postulated by you could have occurred without leaving evidence in any of these holocene climate records.Regarding the aligned lakes as impact craters. Why, there's no need to remain in the dark. All you need to do is core down through the lake sediments into the underlying rock and see if you find any meltrock, shattercones, or breccia. Simple as that.PS- I just noticed above that you state that this major impactor could have struck ice and never left a mark in the underlying bedrock. What if anything is your argument/source/reference for this assertion? I'm assuming that you are proposing a fairly large impactor, right?Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-29-2002]

Wmscott,You still haven't offered a single argument that rules out eolian transport. As I said before, even a marine diatom beneath a glacial erratic hardly implies transport via a global flood. It could have been emplaced by wind before the erratic was emplaced (assuming it could persist that long), or it could have migrated through the soil after the boulder was emplaced, given the extremely small size of the average diatom compared to the pore space in soils.And of course, the whole idea of a global flood prefentially depositing diatoms of all things is absurd, given that even the slightest current will keep them in suspension. Where are the planktonic foraminifera, for instance? Why no marine organisms larger than, say, 100um in those midwest soils? Hmm.On the impact. I asked you some very specific questions, which weren't answered. Therefore I should repeat them:I just noticed above that you state that this major impactor could have struck ice and never left a mark in the underlying bedrock. What if anything is your argument/source/reference for this assertion? I'm assuming that you are proposing a fairly large impactor, right?I'm not looking for opinions, surmises, or a restatement of previously-made assertions. I want to know on what evidence you assert that such a large impact could occur and not even pass through the ice. I want either the calculations themselves, or references to peer-reviewed articles I can read myself.Up to this point, the impact 'theory' seems to me to be mostly a collection of excuses about why no evidence is found for any major impact ~4500 years ago. I'm more than willing to accept a recent major impact, but not without some evidence.Next, I seem to remember you referring to ice-rafted debris in the Atlantic as evidence for the flood. I assume you are referring to Heinrich events, right? And if so, which of the Heinrich events is supposedly part of the flood? Was it the last one (H0), which occurred about ~11,000 years ago, or one of the other 3 or 4 such events that occurred in the last 40k years or so? [35,000 (H4), 27,000 (H3), 21,000 (H2), 16,000 (H1) ] And why should we invoke a global flood or bolide impact to explain this, when these are clearly cyclic events and have occurred repeatedly?For what its worth, I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with the literature on the subject. I recommend Cronin's Principles of Paleoclimatology. Specific articles on Heinrich events you may want to read are:Andrews, J. T., H. Erlenkeuser, K. Tedesco, A. E. Aksu, and A. J. T. Jull, 1994. Late Quaternary (stage 2 and 3) meltwater and Heinrich events, northwest Labrador Sea, Quaternary Research, 41, 26.Bond, G. C., and R. Lotti, 1995. Iceberg discharges into the North Atlantic on millennial time scales during the last glaciation, Science, 267, 1005.Heinrich, H., 1988. Origin and consequences of cyclic ice rafting in the northeast Atlantic Ocean during the past 130,000 years. Quaternary Research, 29, 142-152.McCabe, A.M., Knight, J. and McCarron, S., 1998. Evidence for Heinrich event 1 in the British Isles. Journal of Quaternary Science, 13 (6), 549-568.Ruhlemann, C., Mulitza, S., Muller, P.J., Wefer, G. and Zahn, R. 1999. Warming of the tropical Atlantic Ocean and slowdown of thermohaline circulation during the last deglaciation. Nature 402: 511-514.Verbitsky, M., and B. Saltzman, 1995. A diagnostic analysis of Heinrich glacial surge events, Paleoceanography, 10, 59.Cheers,Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-30-2002]

On your statement "idea of a global flood prefentially depositing diatoms of all things is absurd, given that even the slightest current will keep them in suspension. Where are the planktonic foraminifera, for instance? Why no marine organisms larger than, say, 100um in those midwest soils? Hmm." The reason for this is very simple, I haven't looked for them for one thing, I have been looking exclusively for marine diatoms.[/B]How could you miss foraminifera but find diatoms? Unless you are putting your soil samples in a hydrochloric acid bath. . . Besides, we wouldnt have to wait for you to find them, they would have been noted long ago if they had been present. the reasons for this is that diatoms are very common and most likely to be found due to their very large numbers, and their silicon shell gives them a very good chance of surviving over time.Yet, you haven't provided a single piece of data on diatom taphonomy in shallow soil environments. What is your evidence that diatoms have greater preservation potential in soils than forams? I want evidence and not more assertions. As for even slight currents keeping diatoms in suspension and preventing deposition, you must be kidding, there are plenty of currents in the oceans and yet diatoms manage to settle on the ocean floor just fine.I'm kidding? Actually, the joke's on you. First, open-ocean currents are extremely sluggish compared to the currents required to produce a one-year global flood, obviously. So thats a fallacious analogy. Second, most of the diatoms that do settle out of the water column are dissolved even before reaching the ocean floor. Third, the diatoms that do reach the ocean floor are almost completely altered into amorphous silica (Opal-A).The other marine organisms are not as plentiful and many of them are carbonate based rather than silicon, making them harder to find and far less likely to have been preserved.In fact, while diatoms are only abundant in cold, nutrient-rich water, planktonic forams are found in the surface ocean everywhere. And while foraminiferal ooze comprises 47% of pelagic sediment in the oceans, diatom ooze only comprises 12% (Pinnett, Oceanography, p. 102). Also, the dissolution rate of diatoms in ocean surface waters is far greater than that for carbonate (ibid. p. 105).On top of that, forams are much larger than diatoms, have thicker walls, have a smaller surface area to volume ratio, and would therefore be more resistant to crushing in soils than delicate glassy diatoms! In calcerous soils especially, forams could be preserved quite well.So, again I'm curious, what is your evidence that diatoms are more likely to be preserved in soils than forams?And as we have already discussed, we do have the remains of very large marine organisms found on land buried in deposits dated to the end of the ice age in the form of the three finds of whale bones in the state of Michigan. Finds of the marine organisms in the in-between sizes will no doubt turn up in time.Another non-argument for a global flood. Evidence that can be explained via a seaway is not evidence for a global flood, especially when you cannot even establish synchroneity between the whale bones and the other organisms you are attributing to the flood.On the impact, As far as I know, this idea is entirely new. As far as I know, no work as been done on this. But the answer to your question is simple enough, if the ice sheet is thick enough to contain the impact, then no impact features would be formed on the land surface below. Also remember that some of the ice sheets may have been much thicker and easily could have absorbed the effects of very sizable impacts.So, you're just going to repeat the assertion again?Small meteor fragments are routinely found on glaciers, which were easily able to absorb their impacts.Nice red herring! No one denies that small mateorites are found in the ice. We're not talking about pebbles, but about a massive impact with global effects. And contrary to what you say, all kinds of impact modelling and empirical research has been done.On Heinrich events, I would expect an association with the 0 event, the last one.In that case, you would be abandoning the biblical date for the flood, which was several thousand years later (~4500Bp), as well the association of the flood with the end of the last glaciation, which was several thousand years earlier, as well as the association with the Black Sea flood, the Pleistocene mammal extinctions, and so on.And you didn't explain to me why we should invoke a global flood to explain H0, when we don't need a global flood to explain H6, H5, H4, H3, H2, and H1, and when these events have happened at least over the past 70,000 years with a quasi-periodicity of 7-12,000yrs? You'll have to forgive me for not preferring your explanation over Heinrich's!There seems to be a number of theories on these cycles, some work well with the idea of a sudden surge event. In fact, none of the theories on Heinrich events are compatible with your global flood, comet impact, ice-flexing, etc. theory. And let's be clear on the difference between what you may mean by "sudden," and what geologists mean by sudden. We're talking about repeated episodes lasting ~1000 years, not a unique, 1-year global flood.Thanks for the abstracts you included. I'm not sure if you were trying to make this point or not, but let me say that there is no disagreement that Heinrich events can begin abruptly and are correlated with small rises in sea-level (about 10ft!). The events are also correlated with 3-6C drops(!) in temperature in Greenland. No support in any of this for a global flood.Now, let's try another argument, this one quite simple.Since you identify your flood with H0, we can locate the interval corresponding to your flood very precisely in both in the Greenland record and in the many north Atlantic DSDP and ODP sediment cores, as well as in numerous records on land.Your theory proposes that the flood was characterized by rapid, large-scale isostatic crustal movements, as well as by an impact event of some kind. Furthermore, the flood theory by definition requires that a huge amount of water first flooded the continents, and then regressed off of them back into the ocean basins.Contrary to what you seem to think, the effects of these processes would hardly be subtle or easily missed. First, from the rapid isostatic movements and possible bolide impact there would be massive and widespread slope failure at the Atlantic margin, resulting in massive turbidites right at the base of H0 in the ODP and DSDP cores. Above the megaturbidites I would expect a sedimentary layer rich in clay and terrestrial detritus washed off of the continental margins by the receding flood waters.Numerous cores from the Atlantic have been described in the reports of the ODP/DSPD, including some from ideal, 'toe of slope' locations,' some of which I have read myself.So, not to put too fine a point out this, but why don't we find evidence for this either? I'm starting to get the general picture that we're talking about one very stealthy flood . . .Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-31-2002]

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 01-31-2002]

Wmscott,Thanks for your reply. I'll get back with you later tonight or tommorrow.Be Well,Patrick

Originally posted by wmscott:
Patrick- You may have raised a valid point on the foraminifera and forams.
They may have been present in my samples, and I just didn't recognize them because I wasn't looking for them and didn't think to consult an identification guide for them. I will have to take that into consideration next time. And just because I didn't look for them doesn't mean they aren't there.Forams would be hard to miss. Given the thousands of soil surveys and soil micromorphology studies that have been done in the US and around the world, if the forams were present even in very low concentrations, they would have been found and noted long ago. That's my point.This is important because, unlike diatoms, the forams are clearly too heavy to be wind-transported over long distances. As I said before, it would be strange flood indeed that only deposited marine organisms that happen to be in the wind-transportable size fraction.On settling of diatoms, as already posted earlier in our discussion, strong currents were not necessary to flood the world and the evidence we have indicates that in general strong currents were not part of this event.Strong currents are not optional. The flood reached its highstand a mere 40 days after it began. You can't flood an entire continent in 40 days without strong currents, AT LEAST locally if only because of topographic irregularities.On the seaway explanation for the Michigan whales, no such sea way is believed to have existed. You are perhaps thinking of the Champlain Sea which didn't extend far enough west to count for the whales. On the timing of the deposits, both diatoms and whales are found in material from the end of the ice age.You're missing the whole point. The whale bones around the margins of the great lakes and the fauna of the Champlain sea are localized deposits which can easily be explained by a localized transgression of marine water. No matter how you slice it, that's no evidence for a global flood. And how far away from the proposed margin of the Champlain sea deposits are the Michigan whales found? It cant be very far. The graph below, from the "Michigan Whale Fossils" page, seems to indicate that the whale fossils are found only near the margins of the great lakes:
http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/michwls.htmlWhere can I find more information on the stratigraphic context in which the bones were found? I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing, but its hard to evaluate a claim like this until I get such basic information.And your statement that "both diatoms and whales are found in material from the end of the ice age" not only fails to establish synchrony, but is in fact inconsistent with your association of the flood with H0 (younger dryas event). As I've pointed out, H0 (~12kyr Bp) occurred ~2000+ yrs AFTER the end of the last glaciation (termination 1, ~14.5kyr Bp). There's no doubt about this since both events are present in the same paleoclimate records, and are clearly seperated by the Blling-Allerd warm period.On a comet impact on an ice sheet you stated. "contrary to what you say, all kinds of impact modeling and empirical research has been done" Could you kindly post some links or give some references? I would like to review such information.I'll find some references for you.On Heinrich events, the information on these events is a big step forward for the discussion on this board. Earlier Edge had posted "We have already established that this is not the behavior of ice sheets. No complete ice sheets have melted, surged or otherwise been disrupted in history. Jokhulhlaups occur on the fringes of glaciers and ice sheets. Never has an entire ice sheet been affected that I can tell."Huh? No complete ice sheets have melted in history, i.e. the past ~5000 years, so Edge is correct. And indeed the Heinrich events did mainly involve changes at the margins of the ice sheets. Greenland and Antarctic ice caps were not subject to mass-wasting or other major disruption by H0.Furthermore, as I am going to demonstrate in my next post using oxygen isotope data, H0 is associated with smaller ice-volume changes than the multiple Heinrich events preceding it, and of course was much smaller in magnitude than the ice-volume changes seen at each of the multiple glacial-interglacial transitions preceding it, none of which, oddly enough, seem to be associated with a global flood.The Henrich events answer his objection that yes they have and strongly enough to raise the world's sea level by 10 feet. These events appear to happen in connection with each retreat of each ice age or stage. A number of earlier retreats where associated with a rise in sea level, and a Heinrich event would be a good possibility of how the rise occurred. Now as I was saying earlier, if a comet impact or impacts triggered a Heinrich event, the event could have been much larger and abrupt than it would have been otherwise. The earlier non comet triggered Heinrich events possibly occurred in stages over a period of time, with the result that the oceans had more time to isostatically adjust under the increased water depth. A comet triggered event could have been too abrupt for this adjustment to keep pace with, and the larger size of the event trigged a larger rise in sea level. This sudden large rise, unlike the earlier Heinrich induced rises, was great enough to trigger a general surging of the ice sheets into the rising waters.See above. As I will show, H0 is not associated with a major global ice-volume reduction, major change in sea-level, major change in sea-surface temperature, or major input of ice-rafted debris, compared to numerous similar events which preceded it. Give me some time to get my ducks in a row and I'll give you quantitative data backing this up. I don't view the dating of the HO event as a problem at this time, considering that a number of the events, that at least to me that seem to have all been connected, have varying assigned dates with a spread of a few thousand years.Perhaps you dont view this as a problem simply because you are unfamiliar with how H0 (and the younger dryas interval on land) is dated? It is perhaps the best dated event in the entire quaternary record, especially in the north Atlantic region, and can be dated to annual to decadal-scale resolution with tree rings, varve counts, annual layer-counting in GISP2, and other methods. And as I pointed out above, there is no question at all that a) termination 1 occurred ~2000 years before H0/younger dryas and that the two events were seperated by the Bolling-Allerod warm period, and b) that H0 occurred 5000+ years before the biblically-dated flood (~4500 yrs Bp). If you're trying to imply that maybe H0 really occurred 4500 yrs Bp, or that H0 and termination 1 are synchronous events, then you are wrong.Now if, if the 0 Heinrich event was the start of the biblical flood, then yes we should be able to locate the flood in the ocean floor sediment cores. I agree that evidence of this event should be visible in these records.Thank you. You just made my job very easy. You'll see what I mean in my next post. But yes this was one very stealthy flood, the movement of water on and off the land was for the most part very steady and did not involve rapid movement or flow. . . The water currents would not have been fast, but they would have been vast and prolonged. Some effects from this type of prolonged current change may show up.Nope. As I pointed out, strong currents, at least on a local scale, are not optional when flooding an entire continent in a mere 40 days, even if the rate of sea-level rise is steady and constant.What I would expect to see is evidence of the isostatic depression in the form of earthquake induced turbidity flows and evidence of some areas experiencing a large increase in depth with a resulting change in conditions. . . But I would expect a lot of other cores to show earthquake turbidity flows at this time in other parts of the world.Again I conglatulate you on finally making some definite predictions (or agreeing with my predictions). Now, we are finally getting into a position to evaluate your flood theory rigorously.These effects may not be present in all areas, for some areas may not have experienced significant isostatic depression. The location of the cores will need to be taken in consideration when looking for these effects. The channel area between Greenland and North America is not that wide compared with an ocean and may not have been depressed very much. Not to worry my friend - the bases are well-covered! There are numerous cores throughout the east and west north Atlantic (e.g. Greenland-Norwegian Sea, Irminger Basin, Labrador Basin, ), and elsewhere, that we can examine for evidence of the H0 global flood event, including several right near margins of the Laurentide ice sheet. Just a few that we can look at are DSDP 609, ODP 643, V23-081, V23-14, V23-81, V28-14, etc. The graph below shows just a portion of the cores we can examine:Regarding the locations of the cores, the ideal location for looking for coseismic mass-slumping and turbidity currents would clearly be toe-of-slope and near-margin basinal locations, from which we have many cores. However, distal portions of turbidites and terriginous detritus would be evident over a much wider area.And remember, as a consequence of the proposed H0/global flood association, we can now identify the flood interval precisely in numerous records. This wont leave much wiggle-room once we start examining this data.In order to keep the goal posts from moving, maybe you could tell me beforehand where, exactly, the largest isostatic readjustmenst occurred? It would be best if you were as precise as possible, since only you know the details of your hypothesis.Patrick

Originally posted by wmscott:
As the water rises, the 'edge' moves inshore and continues the process. In earlier events this was probably a step by step feed back event. A sudden comet triggered event would run at a possibly faster pace and be large enough to raise sea levels high enough to trigger more general surging which in turn triggered even more surging and so on.I need clarification on something. I'm moving this question to the top of my post becase I want you to answer it as soon as you can. I understand that your theory involves the melting of a large proportion of the glacial ice, but I'm unclear on how much exactly. I need as definite an answer as you can give me. Are you basically proposing a rapid deglaciation, where global ice volume shrinks from the level of the last glacial maximum to roughly modern ice-volume during the flood? That seems to be exactly what you are proposing, but I want to make sure of this before I make my next post.We are also assuming that the rise in sea level all took place in 40 days, it may very well have been longer.You're confusing me again. Are you defending the biblical flood or something else? The biblical flood has the rain falling and fountains of the great deep opening for 40 days, after which the rain ceases, the fountains close, and the waters are calm. Your flood may be different, of course. . .On topographic irregularities causing faster currents due to pinch points you are absolutely correct, and we see such erosional effects due to this at places such as the Straits of Gibraltar, the Bosporus Straits, the Manych depression and many other places where the terrain focused the effects of the otherwise slow current flow.Now explain why we don't see these features worldwide on the continents, for instance around mountains and hills, especially in areas closer to the equator where there is no evidence for glaciation!"No complete ice sheets have melted in history" Really? I am not sure what you meant to say, flood or no flood, the ice sheets are gone.I "meant to say" exactly what I did say. You seem to be having a reading problem. I said that Edge was correct that no complete ice sheets have melted in history! By history, I mean the span of time since the first written records, the past ~5000 years or so. The melting of the Laurentide ice sheet did not occur within this time, but long before. Hope that clears things up for you.As for the Heinirich events only effecting the edges of the ice sheet, the rise in sea level by one of these events was 10 feet, that is a lot of edge.Let's see . . . 10ft is just about 3m. The average difference between glacial and interglacial sea-level is over 100m, about 125m according to Fairbanks [Fairbanks, R.G., 1989, A 17,000-year glacio-eustatic sea level record; influence of glacial melting rates on the Younger Dryas event and deep-ocean circulation: Nature, v. 342, no. 6250, p. 637-642. ]! So, the Heinrich events you wish to associate with your global flood are associated with relative sea-level changes about ~3% of that associated with the glacial-interglacial cycles which have occurred repeatedly over the past ~2My. And the sea-level rises you are referring to are not associated with the H events themselves, which are cold periods, but with rapid warming at their termination.Please also consider the possibility of H1 instead of H0 as being the flood. Considering the limited look I have had on these events, I think it best to consider the last two in case I got it wrong.H1, being several thousand years earlier than H0, is even more incongruent with the biblical chronology than H0. But whats a few thousand years between friends? Although you say that you favor a biblical date, but even allowing any reasonable margin of error, not a single event you associate with the flood is in agreement with the biblical chronology. At any rate, whether you prefer H1 or H0 won't affect anything as far as my argument goes.Patrick

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[This message has been edited by ps418, 02-04-2002]