Summations Only

I barely managed to get anything said about my argument. Every time I got a post out about it, just a bare beginning, instead of anyone addressing its points I'd be buried in snark and accusations and other kinds of objections. I also many times said it's a hard argument to make, but that didn't lead anyone to make it any easier. If I were a mod you'd be gone for a LONG time, but I'm not, so I'm the one leaving.

All the landscapes and depositional/erosional environments have to end up in the rocks of a stratigraphic column. Forget the generalizations, take it step by step, see if it's possible.ABE: A stratigraphic column is a stack of rocks that may extend for thousands of square miles, flat slabs of rock one on top of another, each being understood to represent a former environment based on characteristics of the rock and its fossil contents. There are no rocks in the column that are merely sediments. See if you can trace the events that would turn all those environments into such a stack of rocks. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The way I arrive at the idea of animals losing habitat is simply from the fact that their landscape or habitat which sustains them, has to go away to become the rock in the strata. Presumably that landscape provided for their needs in many ways from shelter to food, so when it goes away all that also goes away.Of course it takes time, lots of time, during which they can go on living, but eventually it ALL Has to disappear to become the rock in the strata. This I see as a necessary event in the process of getting from landscape to rock. The landscape would normally be destroyed by being buried, the deeper the better if it is to utterly disintegrate into sediment and get lithified. To my mind this is a NECESSARY process that results from following out my puzzle.All the rocks in the stratigraphic column that are the remains of many such environments or landscapes, end up one on top of another with the most minuscule clues that they ever were part of such an environment. So you assume the environment and now figure out how it got from that state to the rock that represents it. And one of the consequences as I think it through is that when the environment is completely buried there is no more habitat for the things that once lived on it. There are MANY consequences, I'm merely focusing on this part of the scenario for now.Remember the rock in the column is a huge flattish slab that may extend for hungreds or thousands of square miles. That would presumably be the extent of the environment that formerly existed there.It's not just a matter of them living on higher and higher levels of sediment, it's that they've lost the ecological system in which they survived. If it was marine they lost the water and the living things in the water they needed for survival; if it was terrestrial they lost the plants and trees and other creatures they fed off. If the environment was buried in sediment then sediment is now all they have to live on. Absurdly people try to say that sediment is enough, but not if what they need to live on is the whole ecoloiogical environment with its plant and animal life.This scenario can be taken further of course but I'm going to stop here because I just want to make this one point for now: it's the process that gradually turns the landscape into the rock in the stratigraphic column that orphans the living things that had lived in that habitat. Long time spans allow them to live a while but there always comes the point when there is absolutely nothing left to sustain them.AT THIS POINT where do they go, what do they do? Do they all just die?Please don't assume I'm not aware of all the other things that have to happen to grow the whole stratigraphic column. I'm merely stopping here to make this one point and inquire about the NEXT STEP IN THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS from environment to rock.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I reject the standard Geological timescale, jar, so your declaration of loyalty to it does nothing to answer the puzzle. If you want to prove that the standard understanding is correct you have to do it by addressing the conditions posed by the puzzle, not by merely pledging allegiance to the status quo.

No, you are just being willfully obtuse. Just follow the logic, it's all there. The environment defined by the rock extends across the area now occupied by the rock. The environment provides the sustenance for the living creatures. For that environment to end up in the rock or as the rock as it now exists in a stratigraphic column, there is no more environment left, just the rock itself, the environment all has to go away, all buried deep. While some of it remains some of the living things can remain but the more the environment shrinks the fewer living things will remain and in any case it ALL eventually has to become the rock in the column. It's perfectly logical. Obviously you have no answer to it and I will no longer address any of your foolish irrelevancies.ABE: THE RESULTANT STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN is always the point of reference here. EVERYTHING has to end up in that column. There can't be any extraneous soil, there can't be any remaining elements of the environment the rock points to, because those things do not exist in the stack of rock, they are all gone. We can call this current environment #1 and its resultant rock #1 and when we introduce other environments and rocks we can number them accordingly to keep things more or less straight. Right now environment #1 is buried by sediments which will not end up in the column so they are going to have to be eroded away at some point. All that is to end up existing in the column is rock #1 with rock #2 on top of it and so on. /abeEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

Just address the puzzle jar. What happens after Environment #1 is buried so deep there is no habitat left for its former inhabitants? Nobody doubts the actual facts. What the puzzle is designed to find out is whether the standard geological scenarios explain them. As far as I've been able to take this particular example it appears that it doesn't.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Don't assume anything about what I'm "having a hard time" about or not. All I've described so far is one possible scenario -- an environment that gets buried deep, and that's as far as I got with it. If you want to introduce other scenarios that's fine but it would be nice to finish up the one first.This other scenario you've brought up is apparently "gone from the record?" That is, it does not become part of the stratigraphic column:? Then there is no place for it in my puzzle. The puzzle is about how an environment ends up as a rock in the stratigraphic column.Here's the context: You all look at rocks in such a column and determine from their qualities and contents that they represent such and such a former environment. That is you postulate an ancient environment from the rock, an environment in which the creatures found fossilized in that rock once lived. Please correct the wording if it needs it. It's from this sort of observation/interpretation that the puzzle got formed to reverse the scenario to see what's involved in getting from the environment to the rock, if it's even possible.if an erosional environment does not ever become a rock in the column then it is not part of the puzzle. Please either consider the example, Environment #1, that I've already begun, or introduce another that does end up as a rock in the stratigraphic column. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As long as I'm focused on a specific Environment #1 it's not a generality, it's a specific case we can discuss through various changes. Remember, it has to become a rock in a stratigraphic column. It can remain inhabitable to some extent only until it has become that rock, when it has become a relatively smooth bare flattish surface on which nothing continued to live, which is how we find the rocks in the stratigraphic columns. All that matters to my puzzle is what finally appears in the stratigraphic column representing that particular environment. The rocks normally present a specific collection of clues such as in the features or quality of the rock itself along with its fossil contents pointing to a particular environment. If your environment moves somewhere else it isn't going to show up in the stack of rocks, only a particular environment with particular creatures in it as shown by the clues in the rock. Whatever is in the environment has to show up in the stratigraphic column, which after all is made up of rocks one on top of another at the same geographic location, not some other geographic location. This is way too general. We're talking about a stack of rocks that may cover huge spans of territory, which in itself poses a problem for any possible relocation. The whole rock represents a slice of time in which a certain environment supposedly existed with a certain array of life forms. Again, all that matters to this puzzle is what ends up in the column, not what MIGHT have happened that you have no way of demonstrating. Then show this in the result in the column. Supposedly the changes, evolution I suppose you mean, could show up in a higher layer or later time period? Are you postulating new landscapes that become such rocks or what? But what MIGHT happen isn't going to solve the puzzle. You have to show what DID happen to a particular environment in the process of becoming a particular rock in the stratigraphic column. Otherwise you are adding to what Geology says. All it says is that the rock points to particular former environments inhabited by particular living things. That's ALL It says. In the process of trying to construct how the environment got to be a rock I ran into the problem that habitat must be lost in that process, which doesn't fit with what Geology has in mind, so I conclude that there is a contradiction here between the theory and the reality. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

"Changing landscapes don't become uninhabitable" is a general statement that totally misses the point of what I'm doing. In the particular circumstances of how an environment ends up as a rock in the stratigraphic column it seems to be the case that it must become uninhabitable, as I've shown. Please deal with the facts as given.

Please stop with the irrelevant generalizations. If you have anything to say that pertains to the situation as I've laid it out, please do, but obviously you don't.

All the party line, jar, nothing to do with my puzzle. So far everything you've said is a begging of the question.If there is in fact no way to get from the environment supposed to have existed, based on the clues in the rock as you describe them, to the rock that represents it, without destroying the habitat of the animals that supposedly lived there, that shows a huge disconnect between theory and reality that calls the whole Geological interpretive scheme into question. In fact it shows its utter falseness.The fact is that the stratigraphic column is nothing but a stack of sediments that were laid down as sediments and lithified due to the weight of the whole stack. There were no environments at all. There couldn't have been. That's all a misinterpretation made up out of the stuff in the rocks that is purely accidental. Just overwrought imagination. There was nothing but sediments, now become rocks, no environments, no landscapes, no creatures living in them, just one sediment layered on top of another.Well, you are all driving me to make such a flat statement by refusing to address the terms of the puzzle as I've presented it. We could still try to construct the events as I've asked but if nobody wants to I can always just declare the truth that the whole idea of former environments is a big fat fantasy. All the stuff being mustered in its defense has to do with facts about landscapes that exist now; none of it says anything about any former landscapes.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If the creatures' habitat has been destroyed there's no place for them to go. Their habitat is gone, that's the end of it. The question where would they go was rhetorical. There's no place for them to go. You can't turn a habitat into a rock without depriving the inhabitants of their habitat.

Gosh you're good at twisting things. No, all you've given is a bunch of imaginary scenarios, in keeping with the overall imaginary claim of there having been ancient environments where all those rocks in the stratigraphic column now are. Historical Geology is a fine exercise in imagination, but the reality is the rocks are rocks and never were environments.

I guess you just have no idea what the word "reality" means. Too bad, it enables you to make preposterous claims. But all you've done is beg the question, you've never once addressed the problem here.

You have to be able to demonstrate those possibilities, you can't just imagine them into existence. Once the creatures' habitat is gone it's gone. You have to make up some other habitat out of thin air then because all you have in reality is a great expanse of rock.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.