Summations Only

The idea that there aren't landscapes, hills, mountains, rivers found within sedimentary sequences is simply incorrect. Just do a google image search on 'seismic section' and you can see all sorts of preserved features.Geological studies show us that most major sedimentary deposits occur either as a result of rising sea levels (such as often happens after significant glaciation events) or due to land subsidence (as might occur due to crustal thinning during rifting). As the water level rises in a marine transgression a characteristic sequence of rocks is often deposited - check out this site to see one way geologists might identify transgressive sequences in outcrop. Marine transgressions at specific locations can often be correlated with other locations using biostratigraphy and isotopic analyses to create curves of global sea level changes. Here is an example of calculated sea level change for the last 350,000 years: (source: http://lirrf.org/posts/paleo-reefs-last-126000-years/).The key is that these transgressions normally take tens of thousands of years for the sea level to change from its minimum to its maximum (eg in the diagram above kya on the x axis = tens of thousands of years before present). As the sea level rises the shoreline moves gradually further ‘inwards’ depositing coarse beach sands overlain by silts then shales etc. So the reason that you don’t normally see tree roots still ‘in place’ in the lithified rocks is because the tree ecosystems retreat inwards as the sea level gradually rises. You don’t often see trees living beyond the waterline in a coastal beach environment do you?Interesting where we do (as you pointed out, quite rarely) see tree roots and sometimes tree stumps preserved 'in-situ' in the geological record it’s normally in locations where the vegetation has been rapidly inundated by mud or ash flows, ie more of a catastrophic scenario (ie Biblical flood perhaps).So the geological evidence supports relatively slow marine incursions and basin development and not wholesale catastrophic indundation.

Hi Faith I’m not sure I’m following you Faith — if we see running water eroding lithified sediments to create a canyon, surely that is happening at the earth’s surface and is part of the landscape? Or are you assuming that this is occurring completely underwater while above the water the landscape is flat and no erosion at all is occurring? What would your justification for that be? In general under water tends to be places of deposition and above water tends to be locations for erosion but you want to swap that around? That might require some adjustments to the laws of physics.The other thing to note is that researching of the drilling data in some of these seismic sections shows they drilled through coal seams, evaporates, fluvial sequences even air-fall tuffs all showing strong evidence of subaerial environmental conditions. In other words they were forming ancient landscapes. I’m not giving it anything. The chronology of the graph I presented was based on evidential measurements including geochronology, biostratigraphy and isotope analysis. Plus direct observations show us that 200m thick reefs (the limestones that often occur in transgressive sequences) don’t grow that thick overnight. Well, yes. Not many animals live for thousands of years. Not sure what you are getting at in these two sentences. Obviously not all living things get fossilised, only those unfortunate few who die in the right conditions. But if they do get dead and buried in the sediment — well eventually they might become fossilised. I’m not sure how strata ‘represents’ fossils though No, why would you think that? The chart I present referred only to the last 350,000 years. Sounds interesting, why don’t you show me the chart? Faith, we don’t claim that any of these these transgressive events ever covered ALL of the continents, even at their peaks. That is a Biblical concept. Land creatures kept living on the bits of Earth that weren’t under water. Apart from things than could move faster that 100m/year I guess? Not really sure what your point is. Yeah, well over periods of tens of thousands of years lots of things die.