Hydrological Sorting and the Fossil Record

[shernren]

Nope. Consider supersaturates. Consider turbidity currents. Again, you are insisting on using a calm water model which is not the only mechanism involved.

What do you mean by a "supersaturate"? We are talking about hydrodynamic deposition here, not chemical deposition.

Secondly, a turbidite flow will have even lower deposition rates than still water, as far as I know. By using a still water estimation I'm actually making a favorable and inappropriate approximation for creationist theory. Since you're so into experiments (a good thing!), why don't you try this: take two aquaria , fill them with a similar capacity of water, and set aside two similar masses of sand. In one aquarium, dump all the sand, stir for ten minutes, and leave to settle, noting the amount of time this takes. In the second aquarium, insert a pipe (any way you like) and include a suitable outlet (or let the water run out the top if you prefer).

The challenge is to create any possible flow condition in which the aquarium with running water has a shorter deposition time than the aquarium with still water. If it can't be done, then the issue is settled. If it can be done, the question becomes: can you change the water flow so that the sand settles out a thousand times faster in moving water than in still water, without miracles? Because that's what you need for your flood model.

 

[shernren]

No, not at all. But a three mile thick rock layer moving over the top of another especially fragile layer should leave extensive damage.

Isn't the whole "northern disturbed belt of Montana" enough damage for you?

Parts of Glacier National Park and the adjacent areas are in the northern disturbed belt of Montana. The area east of the mountains contains thrust-faulted and folded Upper Cretaceous strata; it is equivalent to the Foothills structural province in southern Alberta. The area southeast of the park contains thrust-faulted and folded Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks, which locally are transected by northeasterly trending normal faults. These strataplunge northwest beneath the Lewis thrust plateand are not exposed in southern Alberta and British Columbia, except possibly in the Haig Brook and Cate Creek windows in the Lewis plate in British Columbia. The Lewis thrust plate is deformed by numerous folds and small normal and thrust faults. The major structure in the plate is a northwesterly trending, doubly plunging syncline. The largest normal fault is the Blacktail fault, which extends northwestward into British Columbia as the Flathead fault. West of it are other northwetsterly trending normal faults. The measured minimum easterly translation of the Lewis is 15 mi (24 km), but it may have moved at least 40 mi (64.4 km). The park is in a southwesterly trending, structurally low area that is bounded on the north and south by southwest-trending structures.

 

[Assyrian]

No, not at all. But a three mile thick rock layer moving over the top of another especially fragile layer should leave extensive damage.

And we have exactly the evidence of the kind of damage we would expect in the grinding layer. Other damage apparently depends on whether the overthrust was underground or overground. The grinding layer runs under the whole overthrust showing one layer moved over the other. It is not enough that we have this evidence, but you want more.

Your global flood should leave vastly more extensive damage but you don't have problem with that being missing, while the runaway plate tectonics should leave plenty of evidence of the Hadean nightmare that the resulting global vulcanism would produce. Instead the entire geological column show life going on as usual, with animal track, burrows, nests, even raindrops. Not what you would expect under a thousand cubits of water.

 

[Assyrian]

This is an overly simplistic view. We only have basic models of current ocean currents, etc. with new surprises happening fairly often and we have some idea of what the sea floor looks like. Modeling an unknown terrain is much more difficult.

You don't need to know the terrain, you start with the strata we have now and work back. That is how geologists worked out Pangea and Gondowanaland. They didn't need to know about them to start with. Your flood currents should be much easier to deal with than ocean currents because they left massive trails behind like slugs with dysentery. You just follow the strata back and work out where everything went, where it was depositing sediment, where it was picking up more.

You can't. Not because this is oversimplistic, but because the strata bear no resemblance to currents moving around the ocean that a global flood would produce, but are localised and fixed, like sediment laid down in shallow seas or specific geographic locations. They may be wide areas but they do not wander around like ocean currents.

That is not to say that it is not being studied and worked on - just that it is a HUGE set of projects, not just a minor little task.

You have had a couple of hundred years.

And, once again, I need to repeat -- you must get away from thinking of the flood as one uniform little event. Even local floods are not uniform events - there is NO reason to assume that a global flood would be more uniform -- in fact it should be expected to have a much greater variety.

We just need to look at single aspects at a time. Track the sediment bearing bodies of water as the global flood moves the currents around the world. Figure out how to deposit layers of shale in tousands of meters of water, bringing in clay bearing water to a specific location and stopping it so the particles fall out, then repeating a few million times, all in one location in spite of these currents being free to move across the planet. And get it all done, with all the strata above and below the shale, in one year. Meanwhile figure out a way for animals to scurry across the different strata which is being laid down either deep underwater on in the middle of a turbidity flow.

Yes, the Scriptures talk about the highest peaks (THEN) being covered. We only have theories about how high that really is. We currently believe that there was major uplifting, especially later in the process.

Apparently the YEC uplift idea is based on Psalm 104 which speaks of hills and valleys being formed when God separated the land from the sea back in Genesis 1:9. There is no suggestion of any mountain formation in the biblical account of the flood, and no geological evidence either. The only reason for the YEC proposal is an attempt to deal with the problem of all that water.

We do know that places like the top of Mt. Everest were underwater at one point - we just don't know how high they were at the time.

Umm, we do know how high up they were. The Himalayas are ancient Sea Bed lifted up by plate tectonics when the Indian Subcontinent moved up into Asia. I though you were ok with plate tectonics?

 

[Assyrian]

(showing my ignorance) -- what do you mean a "fining-upwards" sequence?

In a flood, there are lots of different types of flows (yes, its complex <grin>). Landslides, both above and below water, various types of saturates, etc. Its too simplistic to assume only a calm water model of deposition.

And each type of condition will produce characteristic rock and strata. What you need to show is that shale has the characteristics of a landslide or supersaturated solution.

Again, I know that shale is no problem for hydrodeposition because I saw fine grain layers form extremely rapidly as well as slow speed deposition in my simple experiment that anyone here can repeat anytime. I may not have the right terms for the mechanisms, or even understand all the variables, but I know it works.

First you need to eliminate the effects of having sides to you backyard container. It has after all been shown in the article you quote that sides can producing layering. There are no sides in a global flood. This is difficult because your experiment has to be done on a much smaller scale, which obviously will have to have some sort of side to it.

What you need to show is that deposition in the center of the experiment is isolated from side effects, or that the side effects had their equivalent in a global flood. The first thing you need to determine is whether or not your container is producing miniature and very rapid 'tides' as water sloshes back and forth in the container. It is very possible that layers are formed by each slosh.

But we are talking about millions of layers in shale over areas hundreds of miles across. What sort of forces can move huge bodies of sediment bearing water back and forth millions of times in a few hundred days? Tides could do it but over a much longer period. But what could slosh the water back and forth so often in a global flood?

 

[shernren]

First you need to eliminate the effects of having sides to you backyard container. It has after all been shown in the article you quote that sides can producing layering. There are no sides in a global flood. This is difficult because your experiment has to be done on a much smaller scale, which obviously will have to have some sort of side to it.

Laptoppop will protest that you aren't taking local conditions into account and he may just have a point here. After all, some shale deposits are found in rock "basins", aren't they? That was certainly my impression of the Lewis Overthrust - conventional geology sees the Precambrian layers gouging through rock and leaving massive deformation in its wake; perhaps in a creationist explanation the deformation was already there (and God did it? Better not ask too much!) and the shale was deposited into it. If shale is being deposited from a landslide, then the cliff from which the landslide originated will also be a sort of "side" to the shale deposit.

Having said that, not all shale deposits have such "sides".

 

[Assyrian]

That was one of my earliers questions when Laptoppop brought up the AiGs layering argument.

What physical constraints resulted in the layering of vast beds of shale?

The problem with shale in basins from a global flood point of view is that the basins will produce very different effect when the water is contained in the basin to when the flood stands thousands of cubits above the basin. We also have to look at the reason the basin is producing layers. Is it because grains of different sizes slip when the walls are at different angles? But this effect will be more marked closer to the edge. Certainly landslide produce very distinctive features.

Or is it the effect of water sloshing back and forth in the basin? What would cause this massive movement back and forth in the water? What keeps it going to produce millions of layers? How long does it take for each layer to be produced by sloshing, in other words what is the frequency of a slosh in a basin hundreds of miles wide? And of course how does this work when the flood waters cover the highest mountains.

Any idea how wide shale beds get?

 

[laptoppop]

Actually I don't protest about basins because they aren't required. The sorting action isn't the particles against the sides, its the particles rubbing against other particles. The sides are NOT required for sorting, and glass sides do not affect the sorting much at all.

You can see this easily as I did by pouring the mixture out and not touching the sides,then taking a sample through the pile. The pictures were not as clear, but it was easily seen. We also dug through the layers when poured so that it touched the sides -- again, not much effect. Guy Berthaults first set of experiments, where he showed that layering does not have to happen in different times vertically, but can actually represent close occuring times horizontally used large tanks with no significant effect from any sides.

Of course we see this in nature as well -- even in the same article I cited -- if you look at the results of the mudflows (not just the atmospheric deposits) coming from Mt. St. Helens, we see thick laminated deposits, as well as canyons cut quickly through the laminations. A global flood would be expected to have many more mudflows than a local one -- both above and below the surface of the rising and falling waters.

In addition, there are other evidences of mudflows. Most fossils require some sort of special burial to occur. For example, fish typically *float* and decay after dying. For them to be trapped in fossils require special conditions.

Busy day today - hope to post more later.

 

[laptoppop]

Isn't the whole "northern disturbed belt of Montana" enough damage for you?

Without trying to be a jerk, no, it isn't.

If one rock mass, up to three miles thick and weighing i don't even know how many billions (trillions?) of tons, slid over the top of another fragile clay shale set of rocks (think pottery!) for 40-130 miles (depending on angle), I would expect the layers below to be all chewed up along the entire route, not just in particular areas.

 

[laptoppop]

What do you mean by a "supersaturate"? We are talking about hydrodynamic deposition here, not chemical deposition.

Secondly, a turbidite flow will have even lower deposition rates than still water, as far as I know. By using a still water estimation I'm actually making a favorable and inappropriate approximation for creationist theory. Since you're so into experiments (a good thing!), why don't you try this: take two aquaria , fill them with a similar capacity of water, and set aside two similar masses of sand. In one aquarium, dump all the sand, stir for ten minutes, and leave to settle, noting the amount of time this takes. In the second aquarium, insert a pipe (any way you like) and include a suitable outlet (or let the water run out the top if you prefer).

The challenge is to create any possible flow condition in which the aquarium with running water has a shorter deposition time than the aquarium with still water. If it can't be done, then the issue is settled. If it can be done, the question becomes: can you change the water flow so that the sand settles out a thousand times faster in moving water than in still water, without miracles? Because that's what you need for your flood model.

I understand what you are trying to say here - but you are still using the wrong model.

In my little experiment in my yard which anyone can duplicate easily, I saw quick initial formation of layers of very very fine material interspersed with other material. I also saw later deposition of especially fine material on top, settling out of the water at a much much much slower rate. I was putting the material in along with moving water from a hose at the time - the environment was quite chaotic. And yes, if I had kept the hose running, that final layer would never have settled out. But my point is that there was a different mechanism at work.

I don't know all of the mechanisms - but in laymen's terms I would say that the water could only hold so much material in suspension at one time. Once I went beyond that level, the material went to the bottom and produced a nice set of mixed layers. Note that the layers were not just coarse to fine - there were various patterns there with more than one coarse layer, more than one fine layer, etc. You could describe it as localized sorting within the timeframe of the material traveling through the over saturated water.

In modern times we have seen a similar sorting occur in the mudflows from the flooding around Mt. St. Helens which quickly produced laminate cliffs many feet (30+?) thick.

One more thing -- the amount of solid material within the local area of the aquarium was quite a lot -- about 1/3 of the aquarium's total volume. With less material, I'm sure the water could hold it in suspension.

 

[shernren]

Without trying to be a jerk, no, it isn't.

If one rock mass, up to three miles thick and weighing i don't even know how many billions (trillions?) of tons, slid over the top of another fragile clay shale set of rocks (think pottery!) for 40-130 miles (depending on angle), I would expect the layers below to be all chewed up along the entire route, not just in particular areas.

Montana is 628 miles long. Can you show me any point along the route where there is no evidence of grinding?

I don't know all of the mechanisms - but in laymen's terms I would say that the water could only hold so much material in suspension at one time. Once I went beyond that level, the material went to the bottom and produced a nice set of mixed layers. Note that the layers were not just coarse to fine - there were various patterns there with more than one coarse layer, more than one fine layer, etc. You could describe it as localized sorting within the timeframe of the material traveling through the over saturated water.

"Once I went beyond that level, the material went to the bottom and produced a nice set of mixed layers" - the question is how fast? How long did the sedimentation take, and how thick was that layer in the end? And do you really expect sorting to sort out an entire kilometer or more of one sediment type from nearly a kilometer of another - and deposit them in kilometer-thickness layers? Physical processes often do not scale up linearly. Your Mt. St. Helens laminae, if they are even good comparisons at all (geologists have long known that turbidites deposit layers and know how to identify them using Bouma cycles), are only 9 meters thick. Do you really think the same physical processes will scale to a kilometer?

One more thing -- the amount of solid material within the local area of the aquarium was quite a lot -- about 1/3 of the aquarium's total volume. With less material, I'm sure the water could hold it in suspension.

And this would cause it to settle out even slower.

 

[laptoppop]

By "route" I mean the entire surface of the Lewis Overthrust.

No, it didn't take even longer. The layers formed as fast as I poured the mixture.

 

[laptoppop]

And yes, I have no reason to believe it doesn't scale just fine.

 

[Assyrian]

Scale does matter. Insects can walk on water. You can't.

Surface area increases with the square of the size, mass increases with the cube. Energy is mass by velocity squared. Fluid dynamics is even more complicated. Things don't just scale up linearly.

 

[laptoppop]

Understood, but these processes do just fine. Why do I say that with confidence?

1) While the volume and velocity of the water may (or may not) increase with a larger flood, giving it the ability to crush and move larger boulders, for example, the size of the particles of interest do not change -- the amount of energy required to move them do not change.

2) Just between my little experiments and the Mt. St. Helens mudflow, we see a huge scaling -- the full column is just one more step.

3) In general, formation of a sedimentary layer requires a liquid transport -- a flood. Such layers are not forming today outside of such conditions. There are some examples of non-fossil bearing layers being formed through deposition, but the conditions required to trap and preserve animals are not being directly observed, except in a flood environment. Given that a flood is required, one then is only discussing local versus global. A global flood has some unique characteristics, but shares much with a local flood.

 

[Mallon]

(showing my ignorance) -- what do you mean a "fining-upwards" sequence?

Sorry for the delayed response. I've been visiting a museum on a research trip for the last couple of days.

To answer your question, fining-upwards sequences are simply sequential layers of sediment that become increasingly finer-grained as one looks higher in section. This is just a natural phenomenon that results anytime you drop a load of sediment into water -- the dense particles settle out first and the least-dense particles settle out last, creating a fining-upwards sequence. Since you are trying to cite them in support of your flood model, I thought I should point out that turbidite deposits are always associated with fining-upwards sequences and that invoking them would necessarily limit the extent of the Flood sediments represented in the sedimentary record.

I also want to point out that in all this talk of the Lewis Overthrust, not once has a TE defended their argument with an appeal to ignorance (read: "It's too complex and too many factors involved to be able to properly understand it").

 

[Deamiter]

The layers in the Mt. St. Helens deposits are not 9 meters thick, they are inches thick. There is no way water can take a suspension and seperate it into kilometer-deep distinct layers. THAT is what doesn't scale -- not the depth of deposition but the depth of the layers. Further, while layers at Mt. St. Helens LOOK different, they are not particularly distinct -- they could never (for example) be mistaken for seperate slow events. Neither could your experiment in the tank create more than visually distinct layers -- while some are generally coarser or generally lighter, you won't find the extreme seperation between say, sandstone and shale.

This is because (as you note) the size of the particles do not change so the rate and nature of their settling out of the water stays constant. If you dumped kilometers of your 'mixture' into a Nile-sized flow, you wouldn't see kilometer-deep layers, you'd see maybe foot-deep layers, and again, there would be no clear distinction between composition of layers (as found in your back yard or at Mt. St. Helens).

 

[laptoppop]

Obviously I disagree -- we are not just talking about "settling out of the water" but of large volume slurry behavior, etc. But let me ask you then -- how DID the layers form? How are critters encapsulated so that they fossilize and not decay?

I believe the question is between local and global floods, not between floods and ???? With a local flood you have an additional problem -- that of dissolving the material in question sufficiently to make the deposits.

For those interested - here is a paper discussing the issue of dissolved solids and currents over continents in a global flood: http://icr.org/research/index/researchp_jb_patternsofcirculation/

 

[Mallon]

Obviously I disagree -- we are not just talking about "settling out of the water" but of large volume slurry behavior, etc.

This is a mighty ambiguous statement. Could you please distinguish between the behaviours of standard particulation and "slurries"? How do they differ in terms of the sedimentary patterns they deposit?
Or is all this simply too complex for us to understand?

 

[laptoppop]

I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over. The bottom line is that in a "standard" particulation the water is able to fully dissolve the contents. Over a long settling time, which is exacerbated by currents, etc., the contents will slowly gently settle out.

This is in contrast to the wide variety of conditions found in a local or global flood. Yes, there will be some calm areas or periods where calm settling occurs. There will also be times when the slurry is too much to be dissolved in the water -- mudslides for example.

Depending on a wide range of variables -- the flow of the water, the temperature, the nature of the dissolved or partially dissolved solids, on and on, a flood will erode the area beneath it, leave it pretty much alone, deposit lightly, or deposit heavily.

Given the scale of the deposits, both in x-y (geography) and in z (depth), a global flood is by far the best way to explain their creation. Local floods would not have the ability to sort such large volumes of material. Long-term deposition would not result in fossils, and would not explain the purity of separation either.

This is absolutely not too complex for you to understand. It may be too challenging for you to accept the ramifications.