Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood II

Dear Edge;Yes! You make perfect sense. The opportunity exists here to take an event that has so far remained an article of faith for some or been written off as a myth by others and study it scientifically. The limitations represented by the data are real and allow mapping the true extent of this late ice age marine transgression. I see several possible out comes from such a mapping, global coverage at all elevations, coverage only in non-glacial areas or possibly coverage only up to a certain elevation level. Conducting a mapping survey using soil samples from around the world is the next logical step in my research. As you have pointed out, due to the very nature of the research I am involved in, there is the possibility of discovering the true extent of the biblical deluge, which of course may turn out to be different than what may be expected. But I have yet to confront such a limitation and the overall pattern of evidence suggests that the flood was probably in the range of the first two possibilities listed above. If it turns out to be that the third possibility, a limited global flood, is what the evidence supports, I will have accept that. But until then, considering that the available evidence that I have collected so far that indicates a truly global event, I will continue to support a universal global flood unless it is proven otherwise. So you are very correct, by following my line of inquiry I will hopefully be able to discover the true extent of the deluge.Another point to consider is that once the flood (limited or not) is supported by a mapping of marine traces, study of the flood is transferred from the realm of religion to the realm of science. The flood would then be a natural event that the details of would be far better understood by the scientists studying it then religious people for whom it is a matter of faith, the scientists would become the flood experts not the YECs. This would mean the YECs could no longer use the flood as a way of trying to explain the geologic column, for science would then know the extent and conditions of the flood and would be in a position prove what happen in the flood and what did not. As long as science rejects the flood as a non event, the YECs can say whatever they want because as a matter of faith many people accept the flood as real, which since science rejects it, it predisposes them to side with the irrational YECs. But if the flood is accepted by science, the YECs are in trouble. For then people who believe in the flood have no reason to accept crazy YEC flood theories any more. Then if science can accurately map the extent of the flood and it's effects, the YECs are doomed, for their ideas would have to face real scientific evidence on a playing field that the public would accept as being level. This would finish most of the current support for YEC and reduce it to only a few small fundamentalist groups and YEC would no longer be an issue.

wmscottThe uniformitarian dception in 2 Pet 3 is 'everything goes on as it has since the beginning'. This is identical to 'the present is the key to the past'.You have so much confidence in these mainstream analyses of rocks. Have you studied paleocurrents at all? Half the geo-col is turbidite deposits. Most is marine on land.Why can't you see that mainstream geology could just be a calibration exercise to expectation? 'This looks most similar to a river delta so that's what it was.' What eveidence is there that it wasn't catastrophic draining of a flood surge erpoding soft sediments? NONE. These things have never been seriously considered since the 19th century.What of the huge freshwater beds of the Grand Canyon? Ferns strewn over thousands of square miles. No evidence of a river delta geometry. It was Genesis level catastrophic flooding.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
wmscott

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The uniformitarian dception in 2 Pet 3 is 'everything goes on as it has since the beginning'. This is identical to 'the present is the key to the past'.

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You have so much confidence in these mainstream analyses of rocks. Have you studied paleocurrents at all? Half the geo-col is turbidite deposits. Most is marine on land.

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You have been asked repeatedly to support this statement. Please do so.

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Why can't you see that mainstream geology could just be a calibration exercise to expectation? 'This looks most similar to a river delta so that's what it was.' What eveidence is there that it wasn't catastrophic draining of a flood surge erpoding soft sediments? NONE.

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Nonsense. That is why we have peer reviewed literature. If there were any serious objections to whether a sequence was deltaic vs something else, it would become an open point of contention. Believe it or not some geologists take these details seriously. I know that you have a jaundiced view of science, but I have personally seen this happen.Hmm, do I detect a littel bitterness here? Are you just a bit afraid of wmscott's ideas?

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These things have never been seriously considered since the 19th century.

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Sorry, but questioning the data goes on all the time. Unlike the field of creationism. I think you are projecting.

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What of the huge freshwater beds of the Grand Canyon? Ferns strewn over thousands of square miles. No evidence of a river delta geometry.

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Since when do river deltas require ferns? Really, do you have any idea what a river delta looks like in the geological record?

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It was Genesis level catastrophic flooding.

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Hey, you've convinced me. No matter that you haven't the vaguest understanding of geological processes, you must be correct.[This message has been edited by edge, 11-29-2002]

I can only judge by what I see, and I have seen no support from any quarter for your views. Not only will, but already have, many times. Like you, w_fortenberry never accepted the flaws pointed out in his geocentric theory. Should our failure to convince him be the measure of his theory? I think you would agree not. The oft repeated pattern here is that the flaws in your theory and deficiencies in your evidence are identified, followed by your patient explanation that you don't agree. Should our failure to convince you be the measure of your theory? You must again agree not.The measure of an idea is not the fervor with which it is held by its primary advocates, for by that measure your Biblical flood theory, w_fortenberry's geocentric theory, TB's paleocurrent theory, the hydroplate theory and so forth, would all be considered powerful theories. The true measure of an idea is its power to persuade others through its cogency and supporting evidence, and by this measure all these ideas fail.These reasons are why I think it would help you a great deal, especially after so lengthy a fruitless discussion, to go through a period of reflection and self-examination.By the way, I am by no means opposed to the idea of a global flood. It would be wonderful and exciting to have a new perspective to explore, a fresh paradigm for interpreting the evidence. But your ideas have so little evidence that anyone who could be convinced of your ideas today would be convinced by somebody else tomorrow and yet someone else the next day. He would be a person whose views change with every breeze. This is not the kind of adherent you want.One game I play to help myself assess the degree of my own bias is to pretend that I want to convince someone else of the idea. Is the evidence that has been presented to me sufficient to the point that I could persuade others? In the case of your ideas, I don't believe I could convince even a 10-year old that elephants and giraffes rafted through the flood, and I would expect guffaws from adults. I *do* think I could convince any 10-year old of many of your other ideas, and even a fair number of adults, but I don't believe I'd have a chance of persuading any adult with a science background. I have been wrong so many times that I have no trouble accepting I will be wrong many times again. But it would be a mistake to accept your ideas today, indeed any ideas based on so little evidence and with so much contrary evidence. Even if your ideas eventually prove to be true, I would still be able to look back at this period and see that rejecting your ideas was correct at the time because they were largely unsupported then. In order to judge your photographic evidence you need to provide the pictures you compared to from your diatom book. But no one except you thinks it unusual for extremely tiny marine diatoms (the pictures say magnification is 1000x) to be transported thousands of miles by wind and rain.--Percy

EdgeIf your statements are made in good faith then why do you deny that most beds could have been rapidly genernated?Let's not go and pick a problematic one for us - every theory has problematic aspects. Let's stick to the bread and butter of the geo-column. Let's pick most of the Grand Canyon strata.What is stopping most of those layers being generated by erosion of recently laid soft sdiment?[PS On the river delta point: how do you explain thousands of square miles of layered fresh-water deposits contiaining land plants? The only place thiscould happen is in a huge river delta but there is no sign of deltaic geometry in the freshwater layers of the Grand Canyon.]

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[PS On the river delta point: how do you explain thousands of square miles of layered fresh-water deposits contiaining land plants? The only place thiscould happen is in a huge river delta but there is no sign of deltaic geometry in the freshwater layers of the Grand Canyon.]

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Have you ever been to eastern Arkansas or northwest Mississippi? Before the Corps of Engineers made all those levees, this whole area got a new layer of sediment every decade or so, and it's chock full of land plants. And it's 500 river miles from the Mississippi River delta!

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
If your statements are made in good faith then why do you deny that most beds could have been rapidly genernated?

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Hunh? I don't know how much mor clearly I can say this. You cannot apply the concept of rapidly deposited sand laminations to major sandstone units or to other rock types. You are committing a logical fallacy to do so.

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Let's not go and pick a problematic one for us - every theory has problematic aspects. Let's stick to the bread and butter of the geo-column. Let's pick most of the Grand Canyon strata.

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What is stopping most of those layers being generated by erosion of recently laid soft sdiment?

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You do not generate layers by erosion. You generate them by deposition. Your understanding of sedimentation is so convoluted that I doubt we can help you here.

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[PS On the river delta point: how do you explain thousands of square miles of layered fresh-water deposits contiaining land plants? The only place thiscould happen is in a huge river delta but there is no sign of deltaic geometry in the freshwater layers of the Grand Canyon.]

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Somehow, TB, I doubt that you have any idea what the geometry of a deltaic deposit is or what coalescing deltas would look like. I am not sure why a coastal plain at near base level could not generate such a deposit. But if you say so...

The discussion in this thread should address wmscott's views. There are other threads for discussing TB's views.--------------------EvC Forum Administrator

Dear Tranquility Base;OK, verse 4 in 2 Peter chapter 3. That verse is referring to the world of mankind not the literal earth. What Peter was saying is that there would be those who would deny the fulfillment of the prophetic signs showing that we live near the conclusion of the system of things. Just as the earth or world that is described as being destroyed in this chapter refers to the symbolic earth of mankind and not the literal planet itself. Look at verse 6 which states that the world of Noah's day was destroyed by water, now the earth wasn't destroyed in the flood, but the earthly system of men was. The fact that the Bible's descriptions of the destruction of the earth only refer to our present earthly system of things or the human world is highlighted by scriptures that refer to the literal earth stating it will never be destroyed such as Ecclesiastes 1:4 "the earth abideth forever." Therefor there is nothing in 2 Peter that can be used against uniformitarianism.Actually I considered YEC flood theories early on in my search for evidence of the biblical flood and a simple examination of the evidence rapidly eliminated them as possibilities. I don't have a degree in geology, but I have read pretty extensively on the subject, and I can assure you as someone who would dearly like to see what you are looking for, that it just isn't there. Even in your own words in support of catastrophic creation of the geologic column reveal the impossibility of it. For even if you were right that most of GC was created by paleocurrents, what about the rest of the GC? Failure to account for all of it is still failure. I am aware of the 'flood with breaks or tides' theory but as so very many have pointed out it doesn't work. The required gaps are far far too long to have fit in the time frame of the flood. Then we have the problem that many of the deposits that you attribute to paleocurrents could have only been deposited by material being eroded over a great period of time from a source located above water, which doesn't fit with the flood ether. On the study of paleocurrents I would recommend the book "The New Catastrophism; The importance of the rare event in geological history" by Derek Ager. I know many YECs misquote Ager all the time, but I suggest you actually sit down and read his book and see what he really has to say. I think many of the geologists who post on this board should read this book also, for it does highlight the impact of catastrophic events on the GC, but as stated in the title these are rare events. Once you see these events in context, you can see for yourself how they were created. But if you only look at the deposit by itself without considering the context, it is like that verse in 2 Peter, you misunderstand it if you fail to consider the context it is found in.Now on the Grand Canyon, a wonderful place I hope to visit someday, I do have the book "Grand Canyon Geology" edited by Beus and Morales. A rather long and technical book, but an examination of the evidence reveals no possibility for rapid creation of the canyon or of the material that it is cut in. I have seen that others have already posted on the lava dams in the canyon and the lengthy time periods involved, and others have already pointed out that some of the layers are wind blown deposits not water deposited. If you would like to discuss the fern deposit that would be fine, but we will need some more information on it, such as what layer is it found in? I should also point out that 'ferns' seems to imply a deposit that dates from millions of ago and will only be found in the appropriate layers, now if all these layers that YEC claim were created in the flood, why are the ferns only in one layer? Plus I suspect that the ferns are rooted, they were buried by sediments where they grew. Yet the YEC is probably claiming that the layers below the ferns were created by the flood too. See as soon as you start thinking about this stuff in detail the impossible problems start popping up.A simple point to remember about the GC is that we only see part of it. If a vast deposit is laid down, only the parts that are not eroded away are preserved. Since erosion washes things from high elevations to low elevations, we see mostly things in the GC that were deposited in low places like flood plains or off shore deposits. Since the lowest elevations are frequently flooded or even underwater at time, this results in most of the GC that is seen having an association with water. But that doesn't mean they were created all at once in the flood. For example the silt and sand deposits, the only way they could have been created is for uplifted areas such as mountains to have the rocks that they are made up of, to be weathered away and washed down rivers towards the sea. For the source of the silt and sand was of course rock, the rock had to be broken down and the material had to be moved by rivers. The trouble for the YEC flood theories is there is no way the flood could have broken down the rocks into sand and silt, and there is no way for the flood to have moved the material. The transport of material is depended on it's size and the speed of the water carrying it. As others have pointed out there is no way the flood could have had such strong currents to smash rock layers to sand and keep them in suspension while still and at the same time be clam enough for the fine silt deposits to settle out. In many deposits there are alternating layers of sand and silt, which would require alliterating periods of fast and slow water. Some of these deposits have hundreds or even thousands of such layers, and the problem is if the water slowed for the silt to drop out, the sand falls out first. Which means there would be no sand left in suspension for the next sand layer. So then you have to invoke a strong current in another part of the earth that picked up sand and carried it into the silted area and deposited it without disturbing the silt. As you can see it gets harder and harder to explain using YEC, but under geology it is simple, in normal times the river deposited silt, then in times of heavy rains the increased water flow carried sand. The pattern is simply the pattern of floods that have occurred. Deposits such as this are obviously created slowly over time as shown by their many layers. A YEC flood deposit would be one huge deposit with large rocks on the bottom grading up through sand and fine silt on top and would be found earth wide including on the ocean floors. Yet such a massive deposit is not found. We do find turbidity current deposits, which do resemble the expected YEC flood deposit, but we only find them where we expect to find them and they frequently are found on top of a number of layers YEC claim were created by the floor or we find them beneath flood claimed layers. If the turbidity currents were flood created, the layers would be included in the turbidity layer and would not be found as a separate deposit.Due to the above basic impossibilities, I believe there is no way of formulating a workable YEC flood theory. The best that YEC can do is to create a sophism, which is an argument that outwardly looks true but is really meant to deceive since it is false. Since the evidence disproves YEC the YECs like to stir up the water and muddy the view so hopefully no one will notice, so please don't be fooled by them, take a unbiased look at the details and think about.TB, I admire your unyielding defense of what you believe, but I believe in the flood as well. I just believe it happened differently. Look at it this way, God used natural means in doing many things, why not the creation of the GC as well?

Dear Percy;I have to take my hat off to you, that was an extremely reasonable and well written post, I am very impressed. I must also apologise for thinking you were being unreasonable and prejudiced in your position.Elephants and giraffes did not need to be rafted through the flood, there was an ark. For now I prefer to just stick with the geology of the flood, since it makes no sense to argue in favor of the ark if the flood is not accepted. At this point arguing about the ark with you would be like arguing about the color of unicorns. First I will need to supply sufficient evidence to convince you of the occurrence of the deluge, before I could try convincing you of the former existence of an ark.The reference I used for identification was mainly "Diatoms of North America" by William C. Vineyard, published by MadRiverPress@msn.com, costs about 12 dollars. Here is a picture I got off the web of one of the Diatoms I posted earlier, Asterolampra Marylandica.

From this web site. http://thalassa.gso.uri.edu/flora/genera/asterpra.htmOn the Diatom Grammatophora Marina I have been unable to locate on the web a end view simular to the one I shot. There is nice drawing (167a) on page 117 in "Diatoms of North America" that matches up very well.Here is a picture of Thalassionema Nitzchioldes, I was disappointed that the small end spine is not visible. There is a better view of it in "Diatoms of North America" on page 103, drawing 104a.

From this web site http://r.searchhippo.com/r3.php?i=1&q=thalassionema+nitzc...%3A%2F%2Fwww.soton.ac.uk%2F%7Eibg%2Fa-z.html
As we have been discussing, the limit for wind suspension seems to be about 40 to 57 microns, larger material must have be deposited by other means. I have also been focusing my research on marine traces above this size range. I also am working on collecting and analyzing samples form other sites to map the extent of the flooding. Judging from your last post, I think you will find the results exhilarating. You are so very right about the fascinating impact this could have on geology and archeology.

I repeat my earlier statement - if I tried to convince others of this I would be met with guffaws. This is why I keep urging reflection on your part. You have to ask yourself why this explanation is unacceptable to the scientists you want to persuade. Ask yourself if you've responded with effective evidence and argumentation for the problems that are usually raised with ark proposals. Ask yourself searching questions about how your idea is scientific if religious affiliation and degree of familiarity with science are the primary determinants for its acceptance. Let's put the two pictures side by side, yours on the left and the reference photograph on the right (click on them for enlarged versions):I'm going to assume at the outset that I won't be able to convince you that these pictures are too disimilar to conclude they're both of the same species of marine diatom (or even that they're both diatoms). But what I *will* do is say that you need to produce photographs sufficiently similar that other people would be convinced. Moving on to the other photograph: These, too, are far too dissimilar to convince anyone that they're the same diatom.In addition to reliable identifications of diatoms, you also need radiocarbon dating so that you know whether the diatoms are from last week, last year, or the last ice age.--Percy

Dear Percy;As I stated earlier, there is no point in me trying to convince you that there was an ark since you don't accept that there even was a flood. I will say that the first thing I did was to take note of all the problems posted about the ark at such sites as talk.org and I addressed each one in my book. I have a whole chapter on the ark and I discuss the various issues. I have also, based on the evidence, come to some different conclusions about what was on the ark and what was not, than is currently believed by many. This is a side issue for a later time, but let me say there is evidence that indicates that there really was a literal ark.As for "religious affiliation" or a "degree of familiarity with science" being needed for acceptance of my theory. I would have to say a basic understanding of science is necessary for accepting my flood theory rather than a religious outlook. Believing in the historicalness of the Bible is great for accepting the occurrence of the flood, but agreeing with my theory being the manner in which it happened is another. Many people believe in the flood, but that doesn't mean they are going to accept my theory as how it happened. It takes an understanding of the science involved to grasp the mechanics connected with flooding the world and then unflooding it. Religious people tend to have a habit of saying God did it, and they leave it at that, it takes a bit of scientific interest to ask how. Also belief in the Bible account is not necessary since the evidence speaks for it self. The evidence supports a post or late ice age global marine transgression that flooded enough of the earth's surface to cause the late ice age extinctions and leave behind marine traces in high places.

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these pictures are too dissimilar to conclude they're both of the same species of marine diatom (or even that they're both diatoms).

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I am a little bit puzzled by your response. I assume you accept that the picture on the right is of the marine diatom Asterolampra Marylandica, you can check the web site that it is taken from if you doubt it. As for similarities, you need to remember that the two pictures were taken with two different microscopes under different lighting conditions, and the samples have had dissimilar histories. Notice the tannic acid staining in the left image, and that the diatom is not laying perfectly flat as in the picture on the right. The right image is also of a diatom in very good condition while the one on the left is worn and old. Also notice that both images have apparently been taken at the same magnification and the images appear to be the same size. (I used 1000x and if looks that the other picture was as well.) Then there is the fact that both have the same round disk shape and both show a nearly identical spoked shape inside. The differences between the two specimens is very small, and is probably due to the differences listed above and the difference in the collection sites and the different times in which the diatoms lived. It should also be remembered that species identification is based on an archetypical specimen chosen to represent the average appearance of the species, individual specimens will vary slightly in their appearance. Look at the human race for an example, let's say we chose one individual to represent what an average human looks like. Now if we pick another person who happens to look a bit different from our example, that doesn't mean the second person isn't human. Minor differences are to be expected, the general form is what has to be compared, and the general form of the two specimens in question are very nearly identical. Or I will put it to you this way, if the picture on the left isn't Asterolampra Marylandica, then what is it?On the second set of pictures, the left image is of a broken end cap only, and the image on the right doesn't show the end cap details that were used to make the identification. The picture on the left was taken with an optical microscope while the right image was taken with a electron microscope, this also makes comparing the images more difficult. So on this set of pictures I will have to concede that the images are too different for the average person to see the similarity. And to tell you the truth, the lack of the end spine in the right hand pictures has made me question the quality of the reference book that I used in identification. I made this identification two years ago and I also was using another book that had better pictures, but I can't recall if this diatom was identified using that book or another for that matter. So the identification of the species of this diatom is somewhat in question unless I can find another reference that backs up the one I have on hand. But I have no questions about the first one, Asterolampra Marylandica at all.I agree with you on the desirability of having better pictures, posting them seems to have had a bigger impact than I had thought. So I will have to try to get more pictures of better quality. Was using the microscope today and did see some diatoms I have not seen before, I hope the pictures turn out.Carbon dating diatoms? Dating an individual diatom is of course impossible, they are far to small and being comprised of silicon have little or no carbon to date. Dating of diatoms is generally done by dating the material they are found in, dating the soil here is a no brainier since this is a glacial till soil area created by the Wisconsin Ice Age. The one possible problem with the till is of course it is the ground up remains of things that existed before the glaciers came south grinding up the landscape. But as I have already pointed out a number of times and you can see it for yourself, look at the background of the slide pictures. The small glassy material in the slide is glacial flour ground by the glaciers, chances are that anything as frail as a diatom would have been ground even finer than the solid quartz grains in the background. So sometime after the retreat of the ice sheet, the marine diatoms where deposited here. Some idea of how long they have been here can be inferred from amount of tannic acid staining seen in some of the diatoms. That brackets the time occurrence of a marine transgression to between the end of the last ice age and a time long enough ago for tannic acid to stain glassy diatoms. Then there are the historical accounts that don't mention such flooding which a major rise in sea level would need to predate. Which would push the time frame back to near the end of the ice age, which in terms of the dating systems used today, would set a time window of a few thousand years at the end of the ice age.Wm Scott

Dear wmscott The Scriptures in a number of places talk about the burning up of the Earth. It does not disappear, but its surface is destroyed, as it was with the flood. It is clear to me that almost every pronouncement of mainstream geology is no more than an empircial 'best fit'. There was no analogy of the flood to fit to so they fit the column to modern processes. But they ignored the Scriptures to do it. Simply becasue they had no model for it. Berthaults experiments even show that layering under currents has not been properly understood until now. There is nothing stopping every pronouncement of mainstream geology being quite wrong. It is a digital switch. Almost all of it is either flood or not. I think you place too much faith in mainstream pronouncements of eolian deposits and great ages. In our scenario perhaps a lot of metamorpheses and salt beds were formed by accelrated decay heating. As A8ustin and Berthault are showing the GC tells the story of vast hydrodynamic sorting of facies rather than eons of time. See my comment above. The ferns are distibuted in the hundreds of foot thick Hermite formation and are not rooted! You imagine that you can spo easily work out the dynamics of the flood. That is ridiculous wm! We completely agree. Almost everything mainstream geology pronounces fits even better in our scenario. Have you seen my thread on Lyell's catch cries of uifromitariansim? The basic catch cries are perfectly expected by a catstrophic flood. No, but they could have been. Since the Bible implies it then the two together tell me that that is how it was. We unashamedly propose the entire formaiton and break up of Pangea dueing the flood period. Our scenario was the mother of all catstrophes. It was the lietral rebirth of the continents. If you stop constraining yourself to uniformitarian thinking the flood makes a lot of sense. And Baumgardner has shown that catstrophic plate movement is possible and the trigger was probably accelerated decay.You can attempt to appease mainstream science but we are finding what really happened. You clearly haven't familiarised yourself with Berthault's and Julien's expereiments. What are you talking about? The bread and butter of the geo-col is vast sub-continental formaitons. The geo-col is 50% tubidity deposits and paleocurrents can be measurd throughout the geo-col. I believe he did use natural means. The events of the flood were tectonically instigated as mentioned above.Have you ever watched a baby being born? I noticed the separate skull plates of my sons head come together and subduct under each other and then slide back out to their sperate places as the baby emerged from 'the narrow gate'. The cross of Christ is a constraining door. The flood was the rebirth of the continents. It represents the baptism and sanctificaiton (= separation) that we all have to go through. At the same time we Scriptually get separation on the basis of tongue (Babel). It all comes together and gives the why and wherefores for the first time. Christ was baptised and separated to his call via 40 days in the wilderness.The geology of this planet, the birth from water, the rebirth in the flood, the separation of the continents and the fire to come is not an accident - it is a picture of the process of our life and that of our forerunner.None of this is an accident. It is not the realm of mainstream science. The geology of this planet is God's realm. It is his footstool.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-12-2002]

You *do* understand that such evidence would be huge news world-wide? Check out the stats at Message 64 of the What I have noticed about these debates... thread in the Faith and Belief forum. I haven't looked through a microscope since high school, I don't know what tannic acid staining looks like or what tannic acid is, and I have no experience identifying damaged and long-dead diatoms. All I know is what I see. The reference diatom has seven spokes, while your photo of something appears to contain two or perhaps three or perhaps four prongs, and has no other identifiable features in common with the reference photo. I do not know if this is what an Asterolampra Marylandica looks like after 10,000 years.You're taking your arguments to the wrong audience. Even if you're precisely right, you aren't right in a scientific sense until you achieve consensus. You need others in the field to confirm your identification. Put this in a paper and submit it. Call it "Marine Diatoms in Post Ice-Age Wisconsin." This is how you start, with a small set of data in one tiny branch of one field of science.Hey, you geologists out there, know anyone skilled at identifying diatoms? Naturally the impact of actual evidence like photographs is greater, but it is not by itself sufficient. When I read a geology textbook that says something like, "An inland sea separated east and west North America millions of years ago," I accept it because I believe the evidence has been examined by many geologists and that the statement represents a consensus of opinion. But when you say, "I have pictures of diatoms supporting a recent sea inundation in Wisconsin 10,000 years ago," naturally we're skeptical, because only you have made the diatom identifications, and only you have speculated about conclusions based on your identifications.BTW, I suggest putting comparison photos side-by-side. You also have moraines in Wisconsin from ice ages prior to the most recent, so your till could be older. How long is that? Given the evidence we have for wind transport of diatoms, for example the paper about Antarctica discussed earlier this year, you first have to establish that your diatoms could not have arrived via wind before you can make an argument based on an inundation of the sea into Wisconsin.--Percy

Here's yet another reference, this one from GSA Today, about wind-blown diatoms: They can also be transported by glaciers, as in another article in the same issue titled Glacial Transport of Diatoms in the Antarctic Sirius Group: Pliocene Refrigerator.Before citing the presence of marine diatoms (if this is indeed what they are) in Wisconsin as evidence of a sea inundation there 10,000 years ago, you must first eliminate the more pedestrian possibilities of eolian and glacial transport.--Percy