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Author Topic:   The Great Creationist Fossil Failure
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 465 of 1163 (787748)
07-21-2016 9:52 AM
Reply to: Message 462 by Faith
07-21-2016 9:12 AM


Re: Nope, no landscapes, no living things, just rock
I try to keep the distinction clear because I mostly have terrestrial sediments in mind, but may forget to.
Well, you often refer to the Grand Canyon sediments and, IIRC, to some of the marine sediments of the Cretaceous Seaway.
If you want to refer to the Navajo Sandstone (terrestrial), here is a depiction of its current extent:
It's original extent was up to 2.5 times this area. That would be about the area of Texas. Now, while Texas is large and the Navajo erg is large, they are hardly on the same scale as the continent of North America.
My point is that not all strata are continental in scale. Some are not even county-wide in scale. They may pinch out or they may transition to another rock type. This is more common in terrestrial deposits because of the variable size of the basins in which they are deposited. Some are just lakes. Volcanic environments, even more so.
The point is that environments move around due to tectonism and climate, etc. So, why are the fossils unique to a Triassic environment not the same as those in same environment of the Pleistocene or the Devonian?
If this is just 'flotsam' randomly raining down on the sedimentary environment, one would expect a lot of similarity and no patterns.
But if there is no global fludde, then there is no problem explaining terrestrial deposits in any part of the geological record.
In any case why should a core sample be only marine sediments?
I have no idea who said it would be. I have drilled plenty of core in non-marine rocks.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 462 by Faith, posted 07-21-2016 9:12 AM Faith has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 466 of 1163 (787749)
07-21-2016 10:05 AM
Reply to: Message 463 by Faith
07-21-2016 9:22 AM


Re: Corals weren't generated during the Flood; they were killed like everything else
I inferred it from the drawing itself that shows a straight contact line above each filled channel, and I do think it's quite possible for a channel to be eroded underground.
Why would the upper contact not be conformable? The channel is obviously filled by river sediments.
In fact, if you look at a lot of channels the upper contacts can be convex upward rather than downward sagging. This is because of compaction of the sediments (hence: still soft sediment and not supporting undeground openings) whereby the sands are not as compacted and act as a resistant knot in the system.
So, no. That is not a good inference.
Aren't karsts formed underground?
In limestone, not in coal sequences which are composed mostly of siltstones, mudtstone and sandstone. In fact, most coal mines I've been in are of such incompetent rock that we've learned to depend on them collapsing all the way to the surface after mining. Open spaces just don't last very long.
Don't salt domes penetrate up through strata from deep underground?
See above. I'm not sure what your comparison is. The presence of large amounts of water and evaporative deposits is incompatible.
Doesn't the chemical-laden water that cements the rocks trickle through the rocks?
Are you going to talk about deposition or erosion? I don't see gravels in places such as this.
Anyway even if I give a better interpretation later, I don't think it's important to this topic whether water ran in these channels at the surface or not since the surface was still just flat sediment and not a landscape.
This has become a mantra for you. We keep asking you to defend your points and all you can say is that you 'don't think it's important'.
Your inability to explain things should be a red flag to you that there is something wrong with your premise.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 463 by Faith, posted 07-21-2016 9:22 AM Faith has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 471 of 1163 (787759)
07-21-2016 12:34 PM
Reply to: Message 467 by Dr Adequate
07-21-2016 11:19 AM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
The dinosaur beds are just the places where (a) there was a nice depositional environment where bone stood a good chance of being buried by sediment (b) there is a nice lot of exposed rock today so we can spot the bones.
What Faith does not get, nor ever will, is that most dinosaur bones are actually found in stream sediments ... sand bars and the like.
What one needs is the accumulation of sediments (or volcanics) to preserve the fossils. I once found a mammoth femur in a lakeshore environment that was covered by volcanic ash. Or one could look at the La Brea tar pits ... there are a number of ways to manage the preservation in the terrestrial environment. It's just that they are smaller than marine environments and generally subject to later erosion.
Oh, wait! Erosion doesn't exist in the geologic record...
Silly me.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 467 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-21-2016 11:19 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 480 by Faith, posted 07-21-2016 9:15 PM edge has replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 472 of 1163 (787760)
07-21-2016 12:45 PM
Reply to: Message 468 by ICANT
07-21-2016 11:29 AM


Re: So, oh well, we're still off topic.
One of my stupid questions.
Well, it's not stupid yet.
Would plant life in the sedimentary rock mean that the place the plant life was above water at one time and later covered with water?
Sure. Happens all the time. They are called marine transgressions and there are hundreds of them in the geological record. In fact, we may be seeing it going on right now. It does not mean that there is a flood of biblical dimensions.
Remember I am Old Earth and have no problem with the date that you would put on that taking place whatever that date may be.
Then you understand that millions of years is a long time. Processes that take long times are not visible to us humans who have only been aware for a few hundred years.
Another of my stupid questions.
Sand, mud, water, grass, and the remains of trees are all found at depth's of 6 miles under the surface of the earth under 22,000 psi. How did these materials get to such great depth's?
I would truly like your opinion of how those material's got to the position they are found.
I can find no information answering my question. If there is some please point it out to me.
The short story: Tectonism and subsidence. Right now the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is subsiding. Just look at the issues with NOLA. And no, George Bush is not pushing the crust down.
What's happening there is that the sheer weight of sediments is loading the local oceanic crust.
Same thing with the Hawaiian Islands. The are so heavy that they create a trough in the sea floor around them.
There are plenty of other reasons that we can discuss, but I'm done for now.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 468 by ICANT, posted 07-21-2016 11:29 AM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 491 by ICANT, posted 07-22-2016 12:26 PM edge has replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 489 of 1163 (787811)
07-22-2016 10:47 AM
Reply to: Message 480 by Faith
07-21-2016 9:15 PM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
While a lot of this discussion seems to be a bit off topic, I think some of it is important because what Faith is saying is that the fossil record is irrelevant for, supposedly, geological reasons. I believe that she is saying the entire geological record was deposited in one swell foop, and that the fossil arrangement is accidental, and also irrelevant because it all happened in a one year time frame.
The possibility of erosion within that time frame attacks her concept of a concentrated geological record. Hence, we have a discussion of landscapes and streams.
Faith says:
Well we could argue about that but it's really irrelevant in the current context.
As I said, the details of the fossil record are irrelevant to Faith.
Even if the sediments are stream sediments there is still the problem that sedimentary rock covers all the territory where supposedly there was a landscape with all the necessities to sustain the life of the dinosaur before it got buried in the stream sediments which became the slab of rock that covers all that territory.
Hard to make sense of this, but it seems that Faith is equating terrestrial deposits and their fossils to the extensive marine strata that we all think of in layer-cake geology.
What Faith does not seem to understand is that landscapes are subaerial, allowing land animals and plants to exist. Because of transgressions and temporary dams, etc., a largely erosional landscape can become depositional. Furthermore, this can happen repeatedly resulting in 'cyclothems' present in a lot of coal fields. A major point is that terrestrial deposits do not have the lateral continuity of marine sediments being deposited according to Walther's Law. Sediments are deposited in smaller basins than the ocean, but they do occur as alluvial fans, lakes and river sediments, as well as in volcanic deposits of various kinds.
While marine deposits are different, Faith neglects that there are trace fossils within those extensive marine sheets that are hard to explain by transport from another location and time. For instance, I showed a set of Cambrian trilobite tracks in a siltstone in an earlier post. My question would be: "How does your flood transport tracks and deposit them in a different location and layer where trilobites supposedly could not live?"
You still have to explain how this could be the case. Was the landscape there at one time but it all became sedimentary rock?
A landscape cannot become a rock. But it can be buried by sediments, resulting in a fossil landscape.
And if so how did that happen?
It happens when an area becomes inundated by water, wind-blown silt or sand, a debris flow or one of several volcanic materials. This process occurs repeatedly in the geological record.
And no dinosaurs survived? But wasn't that due to the meteor?
I have no idea why you bring this up now. What do you mean?
And what about all the other living things? Where did they go when their environment got squashed under all that sediment?
Well, if they didn't get eroded or destroyed first (since they lived on a landscape), they were incorporated into the sediment, an example would be coal.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 480 by Faith, posted 07-21-2016 9:15 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 495 by Faith, posted 07-22-2016 1:23 PM edge has replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 501 of 1163 (787839)
07-22-2016 2:27 PM
Reply to: Message 495 by Faith
07-22-2016 1:23 PM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
You keep saying erosion is a problem for me and I don't get what you mean.
I know.
... What erosion has to do with this escapes me completely.
Erosion has everything to do with creating landscapes.
Some landscapes are buried in younger sediments.
This isn't rocket science.
For my "concept of a concentrated geological record?" You mean for my concept of rapid deposition? Exactly what erosion is a problem for that?
Because in terrestrial deposits erosion is the rule, and it removes much of the geological record. It also reduces landscapes to flat planes over geologic time.
I look at strata in hundreds of pictures from all over the world and I don't see any problem. Sometimes there is some loose gravel or rubble between strata. Is that what you mean by erosion?
In part. So, where does it come from?
How would it be a problem if it is? There are lots of ways such loose rubble could occur. But I may not be getting what you have in mind.
Good. Name some.
"Landscapes and streams" is simply what is suggested by the idea of the surface of the strata having once been the surface of the earth which could support living things as represented by the fossils within the layer. What erosion has to do with this escapes me completely. It seems to be what is implied by the whole Geologic Timescale.
Yes, and all of that time in erosion, the landscape is being leveled and cleared of fossils, soils, gravel etc. Then it can be inundated and covered by later sediment.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 495 by Faith, posted 07-22-2016 1:23 PM Faith has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 502 of 1163 (787840)
07-22-2016 2:36 PM
Reply to: Message 491 by ICANT
07-22-2016 12:26 PM


Re: So, oh well, we're still off topic.
Are you referring to the flood recorded in Genesis or the one that is argued by YEC'S that came from the imagination of Ellen G. White?
The flood described in Genesis is not the flood that has been argued in all the flood threads on this web site.
I don't see a distinction. Geologically speaking, neither can be resolved in the record.
As to the moving of the plates and one plate diving under another plate, in subduction zones effect's would only appear in subduction zones.
And 'fossil' subduction zones.
Or am I missing something there?
Likely. The thickest crust is either on the overiding edge of a convergent boundary (Chile-Peru), or in very old continental crust that has cooled to greater depths, like southern Africa.
By the way 4.3 miles is not all that terribly deep. Before it blew up, the Deepwater Horizon drilled a well to 35k feet in the Gulf of Mexico (in and additional 4k feet of water). Still in sediments ...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 491 by ICANT, posted 07-22-2016 12:26 PM ICANT has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 503 of 1163 (787841)
07-22-2016 2:43 PM
Reply to: Message 495 by Faith
07-22-2016 1:23 PM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
For every sedimentary deposit that contains terrestrial fossils we have to conjure this supposed environment and then suppose it was eventually all reduced to a flat sedimentary rock.
That would be the ultimate effect of erosion.
But often erosion is not complete and we end up with Shinumo Quartzite islands in the Tapeats sea (that would be a landscape). These islands would be the 'monadnocks' mentioned earlier.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 495 by Faith, posted 07-22-2016 1:23 PM Faith has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 504 of 1163 (787842)
07-22-2016 2:49 PM
Reply to: Message 495 by Faith
07-22-2016 1:23 PM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
Well, the implication is that since these landscapes are subaerial, they are subject to erosion.
Fossils are extremely difficult to preserve in that regime. They are constantly moving to the sea or are otherwise destroyed.
And what better way to erode/eradicate fossil and soils, etc.; as well as to level the land, than by the crashing of waves related to a marine transgression?
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 495 by Faith, posted 07-22-2016 1:23 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 509 by Faith, posted 07-23-2016 3:03 AM edge has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 507 of 1163 (787851)
07-22-2016 5:28 PM
Reply to: Message 506 by Dr Adequate
07-22-2016 5:02 PM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
No. Era after era, sediments are deposited in depositional environments. At any given point the sedimentary layer on top is the landscape. The sediments lower down eventually lithify. As long as this process keeps going, anything which once was the landscape of a depositional environment will one day be rock.
Where is the absurdity?
I think what Faith is not getting is that as water rises across the landscape, that landscape is eroded and washed clean by wave action. In this way the landscape can be smoothed and cleared of such things as soil and fossils, etc. She is not taking into account all of the geological processes in going from marine to terrestrial and back again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 506 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-22-2016 5:02 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 508 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-22-2016 5:57 PM edge has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 550 of 1163 (788233)
07-27-2016 7:48 PM
Reply to: Message 549 by NoNukes
07-27-2016 5:41 PM


Re: From rock slabs to epeiric seas, there's no room for living things
According to this source, the geological column consists of correlated time units with a description of the life in those units and not rocks.
Interestingly, the figure is labeled "Geologic Time Scale".
The definition above may be informal. The term geological column as strictly defined refers to the geology of rocks found in a locality. So there is a grand canyon geological column and a north dakota geological column. In that sense, there is no "The Geological Column". Creationist sites always blur the distinction between a geological column of rocks and a column of time units. Given that their idea is that the whole thing was formed by a single Flood, perhaps that blurring is understandable.
I think that Pressie's issue is with the word "The", suggesting that there is only one and that it is 'geological', or made up of rocks when really, it's a calendar. So, yeah, it's grown to be a kind of vague term.
Because of this confusion, I think that most geologists would use the term "Geological Time Scale" along with "Stratigraphic Column" in a more precise manner. So, one could look at it as the strata being imposed on the time scale, complete with gaps and erasures.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 549 by NoNukes, posted 07-27-2016 5:41 PM NoNukes has seen this message but not replied

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 597 of 1163 (793750)
11-05-2016 7:13 PM
Reply to: Message 593 by mindspawn
11-05-2016 6:54 PM


Re: More amazing sorting
Human footprints have been found before the PT boundary.
Please provide evidence for this.
A bell was found in Carboniferous coal.
Really? You believe coal miners when they tell you something?
A reference would be nice here.
The Narmer tablets record dinosaurs with humans in early Egyptian society. as do Sumerian seals. Anyone is able to discover this information in the internet, I wont even bother posting the links here because you guys obviously will not accept those OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) as scientific evidence.
Actually, the reason is that we have done it before. They all are either of dubious chain of custody or have otherwise been refuted. Most are old stories from a more naive time.
Edited by edge, : No reason given.
Edited by edge, : No reason given.
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 593 by mindspawn, posted 11-05-2016 6:54 PM mindspawn has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 703 of 1163 (793884)
11-06-2016 6:28 PM
Reply to: Message 698 by mindspawn
11-06-2016 2:44 PM


Re: THE GREAT EVOLUTION FOSSIL FAILURE
I have the Sudden appearance of most phyla in the Cambrian Explosion ...
Okay so you've got all phyla but one.
What about all classes? Or all orders?
... without any hint at where they came from as supporting evidence for creation.
So, you've never heard of the Ediacaran biota?
Try this:
Ediacaran biota - Wikipedia
These creatures are certainly pre Cambrian Explosion and start to exhibit some of the features of younger phyla.
You have .... no supporting evidence for evolution.
Actually, I just gave you some. Want more, or are you just going to deny it like most YECs do?
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 698 by mindspawn, posted 11-06-2016 2:44 PM mindspawn has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 711 by mindspawn, posted 11-07-2016 3:01 AM edge has replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 775 of 1163 (794101)
11-09-2016 9:27 PM
Reply to: Message 711 by mindspawn
11-07-2016 3:01 AM


Re: THE GREAT EVOLUTION FOSSIL FAILURE
I looked up Ediacaran biota. They do not appear to be the missing link you are looking for. nothing about them appears to be a missing link between prokaryotes and the phyla of the Cambrian Explosion.
I don't remember suggesting that they were 'missing links'. I was simply pointing out that there were possible precursor life forms. Your statement that life just suddenly appeared in the form of all major phyla was incorrect.
I looked up Ediacaran biota. They do not appear to be the missing link you are looking for. nothing about them appears to be a missing link between prokaryotes and the phyla of the Cambrian Explosion.
So, you are saying that, according to you, organisms could not evolve with the changing environment.
How do you come up with that?
Where on earth did you learn about evolution?
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 711 by mindspawn, posted 11-07-2016 3:01 AM mindspawn has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 776 by mindspawn, posted 11-10-2016 4:24 AM edge has replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 788 of 1163 (794132)
11-10-2016 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 776 by mindspawn
11-10-2016 4:24 AM


Re: THE GREAT EVOLUTION FOSSIL FAILURE
Unfortunately the existence of "possible precursor life-forms" isn't sufficient to justify a theory like evolution.
Who said I was trying to justify evolution?
Believe it or not scientists don't go to work every day saying "Today, I'm going to prove evolution."
quote:
If these creatures suddenly appear in the fossil record as world conditions change, this rather points to them already being in existence in another location and radiating out from there when world conditions suit them. This appears to be the case with trilobites radiating out from Siberia.
Sure, they most likely evolved since we see evolution occurring throughout the fossil record.
quote:
So the evidence does not point to any evolving, but points to organisms already existing and radiating out from niche locations as new conditions become more suitable for that organism.
But they aren't the same organisms. What are you talking about?
Why would that not be evolution?
Are you saying that humans were hiding out someplace like Siberia until the most recent parts of the fossil record?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 776 by mindspawn, posted 11-10-2016 4:24 AM mindspawn has not replied

  
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