El Capitan Limestone Reef Formation

This topic regards the very impressive El Capitan limestone reef in West Texas. I am no geologist or paleontologist and I am open to any theory about its formation, but I have a few questions with the current theory of its formation from what I observed in the area and on my hike up to the top of Guadalupe Peak.1) What held the reef together under wave action all those millions of years it was being built? Only in the last couple hundred feet of the climb to the top of Guadalupe peak did fossil conglomerates appear. These consisted entirely (that I could see) of tiny elongated oval shaped creatures between an eighth inch and an inch in length and appeared to be in no particular orientation or structure. There is a picture in my topic about my trip in the Coffee House forum. These things did not look like the corals that I know of that form today's reefs and they did not appear to have enough structure to hold together in the surf.From: 404 Not Found From what I saw of it all but the top couple hundred feet precipitated entirely from the water. The entire climb to the top was 3000 vertical feet, and I think I am correct in saying it continues underground. This means that only a tiny fraction of the reef's calcium carbonate came from organisms.2) I only came across 5 shells (a couple of clams and conchs) while hiking the trail (though I wasn't searching particularly strenuously) and these were in the lower to mid elevations. They were unbroken and encased in completely homogeneous limestone. Why so few shells? And why at the lower to middle part of the reef and not the top where the conglomerates of little fossils were abundant? I also saw what looked like a worm burrow (though I am no paleontologist). If it was indeed a worm's burrow, then the limestone sediments must have been soft and just deposited. What would deposit so much soft limestone? and why would it not wash away or at the very least wash away this worm's burrow?The vast majority of limestone we encountered on the trail was homogeneous fine grained rock. Why did so much limestone go into solution and then precipitate so homogeneously? Why no stratification? And why were the fossils so abundant at the top and then suddenly sparse for the remaining 14/15ths of the visible mountain?3) Finally, when I visited Carlsbad Caverns, which is carved into the same limestone formation, I noticed that all the pools of water had a very low water level. I understand the area has been under a drought in the last few years and the water table has dropped. I assume that this is why the water in all of the little underground ponds had dropped. I remember going there when I was younger and seeing the beatiful shallow pools of water, but this time the pools were almost gone.Now it is very easy to see where the surface of the pond used to be because minerals have been redeposited in level flats around the pond edges at the past surface level. The current explanation is that the cave's formations have been forming for about the last few million years. Why is there only ONE rock surface and not many showing past water level fluctuations?All responses to these questions will be appreciated.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I would love to discuss El Capitan, but alas I don't know a thing about it other than it's a most awesome reef. Sorry.I'm sure Coragyps and Bill will be here as soon as they have the time.

Thanks for doing the hike (though the company probably made it less painful) and starting/reviving this topic, Dawg. I've got to get out to the library to get the monograph I read details in, but I can answer a couple of things right off.The reef grew, mostly from now-extinct calcareous sponges and not corals, a little below surface. The sea level rose relative to the land -probably meaning the land was sinking - over end-Permian times. I'll bet that this process was erratic, and that portions of the reef were destroyed over the time of its growth - in fact, the southern edge of the present structure is partially redeposited debris from the reef proper. This debris extends well out into the Delaware Basin in the subsurface. To the north of El Capitan there was a lagoon in Permian times - much of the sediment there is chemically precipitated limestone (as opposed to biologically) along with gypsum. Perhaps one of these areas was where you saw the featureless rock. I'll have to get the book to see where they mapped the 1600 feet or so of skeleton upon skeleton. I don't know that all that much actually was dissolved and reprecipitated - more like crunched up, dissolved a little around the edges, and then reprecipitation glued it all together. Again, I'll speculate that fossils were only obvious up on top because the deeper ones have this debris blanket on top of them. Also, limestone is often not too stratified - on the south face, at least, the reef would have prevented sediment from any rivers on the north from making shaly layers. The Delaware basin itself is very much stratified, though all in the subsurface. There's about 2000 meters of alternating shale and sandstone from wind-blown, not river-borne, sand all in millimeter-scale layers down there, and core from a couple of thousand gas wells to correlate and map it all. (The basin was the small sea south of the reef in the Permian.)The "lids" on the pools in the Caverns fascinated and puzzled me, too. I have no ready explanation as to why there's one such obvious shelf there, and no lower ones that I noticed.I've probably already overtyped my knowledge on this - I'll try to get that reference tomorrow.
Ah, here's one I had bookmarked!
http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/roth.htm

Thanks for your reply, I was starting to think no one was going to try and provide answers. I don't have time to discuss your answers right now as I'm back at school and stuff is happening... I'll try to get back to it later today or tomorrow.

And I'll try again this afternoon to get out to the library and get that book.

I have it here, Dawg - "The Permian Reef Complex of the Guadelupe Mountains Region, Texas and New Mexico" by N.D.Newell, et al. Pretty old, but 236 pages + 32 plates about nuthin' but the rocks you climbed.

What can you tell us?

I am a creationist and will suggest a easy and more plausible reason for the structures created.The reef did not substain millions of years of wave action. There is no evidence for this . Instead the reef was existed long enough to be in its present form and then it was fossilized at once by the pressures created by movement of water. It is exactly as it now appears. Of coarse the creatures would just be at one section where they lived.
The limestone shows its history of a sudden event and then no more activity.
Also as in the Carlsbad caverns it was created by a single event and the structure will not show the evidence of water action over time. It has one ledge because there was only one event.
Rob

Hmmm, maybe there is such a thing as "proof" in science, after all! I think that Mr Byers has just proved that he has no clue whatever about that of which he speaks!From the book mentioned above:
"The reef talus [broken-off chunks] is more conspicuous than the reef limestone, for it comprises two-thirds or more of the Capitan formation.....The fabric ranges from medium-grained to boulder breccia.....The reef talus over which the [present] reef was built ranges in thickness from perhaps 1000 to about 1500 feet." (p 38)"The Capitan reef ranges in thickness, roughly, between 400 and 1200 feet....The reef limestone invariably contains fossils cemented in situ, whereas the associated bioclastic deposits are composed of transported materials." (p 38)On "slump structures:"
"Deformation is most marked in the upper part of the Bone Spring formation, but numerous displaced wedge-shaped masses, bounded by shear planes, occur in the middle Bone Spring beds in Shumard and Bone Canyons. The deformed beds in any locality are underlain and overlain by flat-lying strata, so that, viewed from a few hundred feet away, the beds appear undeformed." (p 86)I could go on all afternoon if I could only cut-n-paste instead of typing.....

...get somebody who loves you to treat you to a scanner and some OCR software

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I could go on all afternoon if I could only cut-n-paste instead of typing.....

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Perhaps some translation into simpler English for our simpler non geologists would be nice (me for example, though I can suss out some of what is being said).

Trying to correlate the flood with geology, appears to be confusion, cause most YEC believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, however, if one looks to it being 13,000 years ago when God got around to this creation event week, then the El Capitan makes sense, cause it gives the El Capitan 5,500 years before the flood happened to multiply, if Adam/Eve exodus from the garden happened on the middle of the 6th day, then this exodus event happened approximately 7,500 years ago, meaning the Flood happened approximately 5,800 years ago, given the bible infers it never rained pre-flood (creationists belief of a water canopy existed pre-flood above the open firmament that bird fly)kjv genesis 1:7 & genesis 1:20, the world a tropical paradise, God caused a mist to rise up, kjv genesis 2:6, the corals grew to massive depths in the shallow tropical sea's(there is always possiblilities that greater magnetics played a factor in the accelerating of greater growth rates, with the tropical climatics, etc...), pre-flood and partially after the flood (supported by the bible that man lived much longer even shortly after the flood), and the bible itself inferences supporting that the earth rose, and the oceans settled explains why the El Capitan is at such a high elevation(with such a thickness of corals), is simply confirming psalm 104, and the corals had 5,500 year to multilply before being covered in the flood sediments, etc...P.S. I see El Capitan as evidence supporting the bible, cause to a YEC like me that believes the earth was before the Creation Week, but that the Creation Week was only 7,000 of our years, meaning accelerated coral growths pre-flood makes sense that El Capitan would show evidences of such thickness buried as a testiment of the Flood sediments and then supporting the bible that the earth rose, and the oceans settled. kjv psalm 104:5-10. etc...I don't expect any of you to accept this, but the thread said it was open to any input to explain El Capitan, etc...I'm not a geologist, but if the El Capitan coral fossils is quite thick, it's actually is supporting the 7,000 years to the Creation Week, and Peters telling us not to be ignorant that one day to the Lord is a thousand of our years, kjv 2 peter 3:8, To me this means that Adam Exodus from the garden happened 7,500 years ago, the corals were growing excessively rapidly for 5,500 years and then the Flood happened around 5,800 years ago, preserving the El Capitan testimony supporting the biblical Flood, that the muds of the flood covering should of covered these fossils with even up to a mile of sediments, if so then its supporting the muddied waters washing off the earth, and the earth rising so the waters would not again cover the entire earth kjv psalm 104:9, etc...This message has been edited by whatever, 09-04-2004 01:54 AM

Yes, I'm with NosyNed, I have an idea of what you said, but I'm not sure what that means as far as proving how the reef was built. A translation/summarization would be nice.

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Trying to correlate the flood with geology, appears to be confusion, cause most YEC believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, however, if one looks to it being 13,000 years ago when God got around to this creation event week, then the El Capitan makes sense, cause it gives the El Capitan 5,500 years before the flood happened to multiply, if Adam/Eve exodus from the garden happened on the middle of the 6th day, then this exodus event happened approximately 7,500 years ago, meaning the Flood happened approximately 5,800 years ago, given the bible infers it never rained pre-flood (creationists belief of a water canopy existed pre-flood above the open firmament that bird fly)kjv genesis 1:7 & genesis 1:20, the world a tropical paradise, God caused a mist to rise up, kjv genesis 2:6, the corals grew to massive depths in the shallow tropical sea's(there is always possiblilities that greater magnetics played a factor in the accelerating of greater growth rates, with the tropical climatics, etc...), pre-flood and partially after the flood (supported by the bible that man lived much longer even shortly after the flood), and the bible itself inferences supporting that the earth rose, and the oceans settled explains why the El Capitan is at such a high elevation(with such a thickness of corals), is simply confirming psalm 104, and the corals had 5,500 year to multilply before being covered in the flood sediments, etc...

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Let me get this straight. You say that El Capitan was deposited over a span of 5500 years immediately before the flood.How does this rate of depositon compare to known rates of limestone deposition?What about the pre-Permian rocks? Were they deposited instantaneously then? Why should pre-Permian deposition be different from Permian and post-Permian?Do you reallly think your model makes sense?