Re: Sean Pitman and the Coconino Sandstone


"Seanpit" <seanpitnospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1138062571.946544.179110@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Carsten Troelsgaard wrote:
>> I copied the below from your site
>>
>> http://www.detectingdesign.com/fossilrecord.html
>>
>> Quote
>> Other dry-land features, such as raindrop impressions, crisp and steep
>> leeward dune fracture faces and cracks in the sand, and the preservation
>> of
>> spider trackways are often cited as evidence in support of this dry-land
>> formation hypothesis in opposition to Brand's underwater hypothesis. This
>> dry land hypothesis quite reasonable in many respects that seem to
>> require
>> open air exposure, but there are still a few other very puzzling features
>> that do not seem so consistent with a true desert-like environment or
>> dune
>> formation.
>>
>> What is rarely mentioned in the literature is that the vast majority of
>> the
>> Coconino trackways all head uphill.66 Evidently the lizards/amphibians,
>> arthropods, spiders and other creatures living in ancient deserts did not
>> like going downhill much at all. Also, trackways often start and stop
>> suddenly without evidence of sand-shift or disturbance - like the
>> creature
>> suddenly vanished into thin air (or swam off in the water).66,67,68
>>
>> Snip
>>
>> Ocean currents can and do make very pure quartz sand dunes with specific
>> characteristics that match the dunes in the Coconino Sandstone.71 Heavy
>> ocean currents can in fact amass huge quantities of sand in a very rapid
>> timeframe. The sand dune angle found in the Coconino Sandstone layers
>> would
>> require a depth of water of around 300 feet and a fairly brisk current.
>> In
>> such a scenario, large dunes with cross bedding can be made very quickly.
>> UnQuote
>>
>> You seem in part to acknowledge a desert environment recognized in the
>> sandstone and appear to reconcile two different interpretations into one.
>> Emplacing a large body of sand by ocean currents happens by entraining
>> and
>> suspending sand in /turbulent/ water. Your indication that a event like
>> this
>> still leave fragile trace-fossils inspite of the violent nature you try
>> to
>> impose as a caurse leave me in great awe for your imagination, and little
>> respect for your geological insight.
>
> Where is your explanation for trackways that go uphill pretty much
> exclusively?

I'll offer you some explanation and take critique for not having read any of
the papers involved. I do not have access to them. Weather dunes move by
wind and by water, they have a stoss and a lee side. I'll take that the
preservation-potential is far greater on the steep/lee side, than on the
eroding stoss side - I cann't tell weather a steep dune are best traversed
in a straight uphill direstion, anyway, as far as I'm conserned, the
question is not an issue, and you seem to fail my point.

> Given the complex nature of a series of closely spaced
> watery catastrophes, such as massive tsunamis traveling around the
> entire globe,

Now, that's more like it. I think that it's up to you to argue the case,
that the dunes has any likeness to tsunami-like deposition. You favour this
kind of 'catastrophism', but, as I've tried to put it in other posts, the
catastrophic nature of a sedimentary bed is a coherent set of internal
characteristics of the bed and bounded by the bed. Off my local coast are
slowly travelling sand-bodies that may display the characteristics you put
forth for the Coconino (giving you all the credit of the doubt) - I have not
met other but storm-tempestites to describe the catastrophic event you try
to introduce though, and their particular sedimentary characteristics has
not been mentioned from the Coconino. It's my impression from what's been
seen as a result of current hurricanes and tsunamies, that sediments are
moved across the coastline, producing scour on land and consequently
deposits at sea - there is nothing in the process that suggests
unidirectional longdistance transport as is the case for some contemporary
slow sand-displacement as mentioned above. If you want to continue on
'catastrophism', then atleast do a study of the Bouma sequences and their
characteristics .. and tell your audience what you find.

> short episodes of violent inundation could be followed by
> open air exposure for a time

I don't think that there are current geological literature that describes a
turbulent body of water capabel of carrying a lot of sand and concomitantly
sneak quietly across the surface it innundate, without destroying the tracks
in question (you do have public videos of tsunami-inundation, right). If the
process follow a conventional sceeme of slow inundation, there still is
specific sedimentary characteristics to be observed.

>- time enough for those surviving
> creatures to walk around for a bit. The returning sediment filled
> water would bury these delicate prints quite nicely.

If you still doubt what my objection is about, then tell me how this quiet
inundation are capabal of carrying the sand that constitutes the formation.

> If such prints were left in a desert environment, they had to have been
> made in wet sand by animals that pretty much walk uphill all the time,
> and these footprints had to be preserved from bioturbation.

What kind of bioturbation happens in a desert? Never mind.

> Where is
> this being done today in any desert-type environment?
>
>> The sedimentary environments between 300m marine depth and dry desert
>> leave
>> a host of recognizable characterietic facies (shore, bermcrest, ripples,
>> ..
>> you name it ..).
>
> The footprints were clearly not made on dry desert sand dunes. The sand
> had to have been very wet for an extended period of time in order for
> such prints to have been formed, much less preserved.

These words keeps returning to me, it's the communication between a lizard
and a spider:
"Oh no, another one of 'em biblical floods. Buddy, we've better run for
higher ground. Darn, all I asked for was a decent shower"

>> You may put my attention to it, if I missed their presence.
>> To weight your choise between the two, I suggest you take up on 'sequence
>> stratigraphy', as a tool to put separate formations into a relative
>> geological context to each other ... or simply make a more educated pick
>> between one of the two interpretations.
>
> And what is so convincing about your sequence stratigraphy?

Convinsing? .. It's the tool you use when you want to read about inundation
from the geological evidense.

> Much of
> the geologic column seems to show, at least as far as I can tell, clear
> evidence of rapid sequential deposition

I take that you don't refer to carbonates and evaporites.
I havn't read closely on your arguments involving erosion and
sedimentation-rates, in the best of circumstances, that kind of arguments
are inherently very inaccurate.

> without time for the expected
> erosion to alter the surfaces of the layers before the next layer was
> put down. These layers also cover vast extremely level regions,
> sometimes spanning multiple continents. I'm sorry, but the notion that
> the Earth was that flat for so long over so great an area stretches
> even my credulity.

This post is going to be far too long if I should comment properly on all
your misconseptions. Perhaps you should look at 'flatness' as a consequence
of atleast some of the origin from marine sedimentation (basically flat on
shelves) and the quiet lowering and rising of surfaces, or, that 'flatness'
once achieved has atleast potential to stay that way for quite a while.

Carsten

>
> Sean Pitman
> www.DetectingDesign.com
>


.

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