Polystrate whales in Peru

[Assyrian]

Does sedimentation rate of diatoms depend on the depth of water?

 

[shernren]

Does sedimentation rate of diatoms depend on the depth of water?

I don't know. Submarine sedimentation is essentially the act of getting suspended particles to fall out of the water onto a waterbed. So the larger the distance of water diatoms have to fall through, the longer it would take for the diatoms to fall to the bed. So maybe the shallower the water, the faster the diatoms would settle.

However, the even bigger limiting factor in a global flood case is the rate of production of diatoms. Essentially, to produce 2.5cm of diatom sediment per hour, you need your diatoms to reproduce at a rate of 2.5cm-depth per hour over an area square kilometers wide. You need enough nutrient flow to sustain it for a hundred days. I honestly don't know whether that is possible or not, but I strongly doubt that it is. Are there any capable marine sedimentologists here?

 

[Assyrian]

I don't know. Submarine sedimentation is essentially the act of getting suspended particles to fall out of the water onto a waterbed. So the larger the distance of water diatoms have to fall through, the longer it would take for the diatoms to fall to the bed. So maybe the shallower the water, the faster the diatoms would settle.

However, the even bigger limiting factor in a global flood case is the rate of production of diatoms. Essentially, to produce 2.5cm of diatom sediment per hour, you need your diatoms to reproduce at a rate of 2.5cm-depth per hour over an area square kilometers wide. You need enough nutrient flow to sustain it for a hundred days. I honestly don't know whether that is possible or not, but I strongly doubt that it is. Are there any capable marine sedimentologists here?

There is a very interesting article in wiki on diatoms. Look at the ecology section. Diatoms don't just sediment like a clay particle with no control over itself. They choose when to sediment. When there are nutrients they bloom in the upper layer of water. When the nutrients run out then they lose buoyancy or stick themselves together with mucilage (yuck) and sink to the bottom. Some even produce heavy 'resting spores' (anchors?). Then when condition are right, with plenty of nutrients, the ones who can rise up again and reproduce. Typically this 'boom and bust' is an annual or sometimes twice yearly cycle.

Now Laptoppop thinks supersaturated solution will account for the thick layer of diatoms, but while water rich in nutrients and silica will lead to diatom blooms, it needs the lean times for the diatoms to sediment (and form each new wave base with the occasional whale stranded on it). The 130 meters of layer upon layer of diatoms represent cycles of feast and famine and many many separate diatom blooms.

More speculatively, the whales may have been drawn into the bay to feed on the blooms. However the ones that got stranded were stranded on the remains of dead diatoms that had sedimented during previous nutrient poor seasons. Below them we the remains of other generations of whales who had fallen into the same trap in earlier cycles.

 

[shernren]

Yep, shoulda checked wiki. The "resting spores" are the diatoms, for some species. A "spore" or more accurately an endospore, in microbiological contexts, is what you get when a microorganism becomes dormant due to unfavorable conditions.

 

[lucaspa]

Polystrate fossils are difficult to explain in a uniformitarian context. Here is an example of whales which cut across a huge number of diatom layers. There are a couple of research papers, but here's a free link. The article is called "Taphonomy of fossil whales in the Micoene/Pliocene Pisco Fm., Peru"

http://www.llu.edu/llu/grad/natsci/brand/whale.html

Didn't you read the article? Here:

"Paleogeography and sedimentary structures indicate that these whales were buried in a shallow bay, above wave base, in an environment not likely to be anoxic. It appears that a combination of factors led to rapid accumulation of diatoms and burial of whales. These probably included: high levels of nutrients from upwelling and from volcanic input, leading to rapid diatom reproduction; self-sedimentation of diatom flocks and mats (from secretion of sticky gels that form diatom aggregates), as occurs in modern blooms; lack of dissolution of diatoms because of the shallow water; possible concentration of diatoms in the bay from storm-related currents (as indicated by sedimentological evidence). "

There is an explanation in a "uniformitarian" context in the part I bolded. Both blooms and storms happen today.

I think you may be misusing "uniformitarian". Uniformitarianism does not exclude "catastrophic" events. It includes floods, volcanic eruptions, etc. that we see happening today.

 

[shernren]

In terms of the polystrate whales - you have never explained how slow accumulations of diatoms can fossilize the whale without the whale decaying. The whales needed to be covered rapidly -- BUT there are multiple strata involved. The flood model handles it easily - with multiple small waves of water particularly dense in diatoms disturbed by the flood, including volcanic action and diatom blooms. The altitude of the whale fossils is also a huge problem for a uniformitarian model. How did the water reach so high?

Let's go through these from the bottom up.

1. How did the water reach so high? (You're really "throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks" at this stage, aren't you?) Well, it turns out that during the Miocene was pretty much when the Andes were being uplifted. No sweat.

2. The Flood model does not handle it easily. You have failed to answer my question about how receding waters can deposit whale carcasses so that they are concentrated at the top of a hill, instead of around the bottom with density decreasing as they go up. Surely your Flood model, no matter how complex it is, does not make water go uphill, and onto an isolated peak at that, when water over the rest of the world is receding?

3. Also, diatoms don't just self-sediment: they clump together and sediment when nutrients are scarce. Therefore you can't get away with a continuous production model where diatoms are constantly streaming in from (literally) God-knows-where, which wouldn't work anyway; you need a model in which there are nutrient blooms, followed by nutrient shortages and massive (remember, a million years' worth in 200 days) sedimentation, followed by yet more blooms, followed by shortages, followed by ... over the course of 200 days. Where did these nutrients come from? How did they go bust? Where did additional nutrients come from? How did they go bust? The conventional scenario can get by with twice-yearly cycles, with rapid busts giving quick burial. You need the same cycles to be done in weeks, repeatedly.

4. Where is the documentation for how the whales are polystrate?

 

[laptoppop]

#4 - read the article again.

You are right about the uplift -- it also is used in the creationist model, and supported by scripture as well.

The carcasses would be deposited as they die and wash around. As more whales died, they got deposited in higher sediments.

So, you still haven't answered -- how do you explain the multiple layers of diatoms surrounding the whales without decomposition?

 

[shernren]

#4 - read the article again.

Not seeing it. Which particular bit of the article supports your assertion that these whales are polystrate?

You are right about the uplift -- it also is used in the creationist model, and supported by scripture as well.

According to the Bible the Flood was ended when God sent a large wind and the waters receded. Not by uplift.

The carcasses would be deposited as they die and wash around. As more whales died, they got deposited in higher sediments.

Wow. I've never seen a more ad hoc statement than this in my entire life. Do you have any reasoning at all that would explain how whales, being buried in shallow, receding water, would get deposited more over peaks instead of over lowlands? Like I said, is your Flood model so complicated that water is allowed to flow up a hill as it is receding down a hill?

My reasoning for the flood model being incapable of explaining it is here, to refresh your memory:

Look carefully at the diagram there that Assyrian put up. Look carefully also at the geographical distribution with altitude of the whales that you can find in the original photograph. Now, it would be a pretty mean feat for you to argue that 100 meters' worth of diatomaceous earth and whales were buried in the first 40 days of the flood, or about 2.5 meters of diatomaceous deposits a day (roughly 10cm an hour - before compactification during lithification). You'd do better to argue that those are post-flood deposits during the second half of the flood year, because you have much more time.

But, during the end phase of the flood year, the waters are receding. So any aqueous carcasses should be carried with the flow, what more microscopic diatoms, no matter how much they self-sediment. Immediately you face a problem: why are most of the whale fossils and partial-fossils concentrated at the summit*? As you go down, the fossils get sparser and sparser, and the lowland study area has only 5 whale fossils where a comparable highland area would have something like 12. But dig even deeper. Water is receding, and you have to posit that the diatoms and whales were left on high ground by the currents. (And remember that this is wave-base deposition, so you can't claim that the surface waves did not affect the bottom and that there were totally different currents in deep water.) If that is the case, they would only have been under flood water for about 100 days at most, then the only pressure left on them would have been atmospheric pressure. Lithification takes long enough with a significant hydrostatic head; but if you leave a bunch of diatoms out in the field, how long should it take you to get diatomaceous rock? Furthermore, you should then see subaerial weathering. There were already olive trees for Noah's dove to pluck leaves from within about a hundred days; how long do you think it would have taken for vultures to descend on whale carcasses? (That raises an interesting question: shouldn't birds have been more able to escape than mammals, and thus found way higher up in the fossil record? But I digress.)

Essentially, you need a hundred days of receding water to deposit whales and diatoms preferentially on higher ground. Simple physics says there's no need for a complex flood model to figure this out.

So, you still haven't answered -- how do you explain the multiple layers of diatoms surrounding the whales without decomposition?

Actually, both I:

3. Also, diatoms don't just self-sediment: they clump together and sediment when nutrients are scarce. Therefore you can't get away with a continuous production model where diatoms are constantly streaming in from (literally) God-knows-where, which wouldn't work anyway; you need a model in which there are nutrient blooms, followed by nutrient shortages and massive (remember, a million years' worth in 200 days) sedimentation, followed by yet more blooms, followed by shortages, followed by ... over the course of 200 days. Where did these nutrients come from? How did they go bust? Where did additional nutrients come from? How did they go bust? The conventional scenario can get by with twice-yearly cycles, with rapid busts giving quick burial. You need the same cycles to be done in weeks, repeatedly.

(emphasis added) and Assyrian:

We have a repeated sequence of events through 130 meters of strata. A whale get stranded above the wave base and is buried. Layers of diatoms die and bury the whale and new wave lines form in the bay. Then another whale get stranded dies is buried and new wave base is formed in the sediment. This site contains layer upon layer of stranding and burial events with plenty of time for diatom to reproduce, form blooms and die in between.

showed you how we explain it.

 

[laptoppop]

Sorry, this is the article that mentions that there are some laminations in various parts -- often not very distinct.
http://origins.swau.edu/who/chadwick/raul.pdf

However -- it is crucial to note that these whales were buried rapidly, and that current models for depostion of diatoms are not adequate in explaining what was found.

In terms of uplift being biblical -- I could swear that it is -- but I need to find it. If not, then it becomes a hypothesis, not a biblical statement. The amount of weight of the water, the release of the water from under the earth, etc. all support uplifting of mountains and major movements -- but I do want to be accurate about whether or not it is biblical.

 

[Assyrian]

Any YEC books I have read that have talked about uplift based it on Psalm 104, which as we have seen in the thread on that topic is talking about the creation, Genesis 1, rather than the flood.

 

[Mallon]

Can someone please explain to me how polystrate whales count as evidence either for a global flood or against geological uniformitarianism?

 

[Deamiter]

Sorry, this is the article that mentions that there are some laminations in various parts -- often not very distinct.
http://origins.swau.edu/who/chadwick/raul.pdf

However -- it is crucial to note that these whales were buried rapidly, and that current models for depostion of diatoms are not adequate in explaining what was found.

The article you cite discusses evidence that the whales were buried rapidly, but does not in any way suggest that current models are not adequate in explaining the rapid rate of deposition. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that the rather rapid die-off of diatoms in the bloom and bust cycle compounded by the relatively high sedementation rates in an embayment cannot account for the rate of burial? You've made a very strong claim (that current models cannot explain these findings) but I wonder -- what rates do YOU think current models predict and what rates are shown by the findings? I mean, you must have crunched at least some quick back-of-the-napkin numbers or read the work of somebody who did before claiming that the modeled rates were not sufficient, right?

Or are you again tossing spaghetti as we've seen so often of late?

 

[Deamiter]

Can someone please explain to me how polystrate whales count as evidence either for a global flood or against geological uniformitarianism?

I won't claim to be a mind-reader, but my understanding is that laptoppop is claiming that normal rates of diatomaceous deposition cannot account for the 3-5 m (or whatever the width of a whale) necessary before the bones are weathered. We know the whale was buried quickly, and laptoppop has apparently discovered that current models of deposition cannot account for the required rates.

I do hope he comes up with some verifiable numbers that show why current models can't account for these fossils or I'll have to conclude that he simply HOPES that current models can't account for the fossils and is disingenuously claiming that they don't in the hope that nobody notices.

Perhaps we might email some of the authors of the article he cited to see if they can point us to references suggesting the cause of this deposition that is so unlike the majority of whale fossils found in nearby sites (that show weathering suggesting somewhat slower deposition).

 

[grimbly]

Even the author's don't conclude that the evidence points to a global flood. All they talk about is a high rate of diatom sedimentation and they have a reasonable explanation using conventional geological principles that we see going on today.
Fossil whale preservation implies high diatom accumulation rate in the Miocene–Pliocene Pisco Formation of Peru

Leonard R. Brand*,1, Raúl Esperante*,2, Arthur V. Chadwick*,3, Orlando Poma Porras*,4 and Merling Alomía*,4 [SIZE=-1] 1 Department of Natural Sciences, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California 92350, USA
2 Geoscience Research Institute, Loma Linda, California 92350, USA
3 Biology Department, Southwestern Adventist University, Keene, Texas 76059, USA
4 Universidad Peruana Unión, Carretera Central, km. 19, Ñaña, Lima, Peru [/SIZE]
Diatomaceous deposits in the Miocene–Pliocene Pisco Formation contain abundant whales preserved in pristine condition (bones articulated or at least closely associated), in some cases including preserved baleen. The well-preserved whales indicate rapid burial. The 346 whales within

1.5 km2 of surveyed surface were not buried as an event, but were distributed uninterrupted through an 80-m-thick sedimentary section. The diatomaceous sediment lacks repeating primary laminations, but instead is mostly massive, with irregular laminations and speckles. There is no evidence for bioturbation by invertebrates in the whale-bearing sediment. Current depositional models do not account for the volume of diatomaceous sediments or the taphonomic features of the whales. These taphonomic and sedimentary features suggest that rapid burial due to high diatom accumulation, in part by lateral advection into protected, shallow embayments, is responsible for the superb preservation of these whales, leading to a higher upper limit on phytoplankton accumulation rates than previously documented.


http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/2/165

 

[shernren]

Do you mean this?

Whales are incased in light gray diatomite which contains some thinly laminated to very thinly bedded sections, but is not generally well laminated.

Those don't make the fossils "polystrate" ...