Re: Meaning of the Geological Column

Zoe wrote:

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:27:15 GMT, John Harshman
<jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Zoe wrote:


On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 05:42:05 GMT, "Ross Langerak"
<rlangerak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip>

Strata below a certain level
may be tilted while strata above that level may be horizontal.

how does a tilted strata demonstrate that a layer was once there and
is now missing, please?

Let's take another look at my previous statement: "Erosion and other
geological processes produce inconsistencies between sequences of strata."
Then I said, "Strata below a certain level may be tilted while strata above
that level may be horizontal." We are looking for inconsistencies here, not
missing layers. It is the difference between the tilted strata below and
the horizontal strata above that is significant. Clearly, the tilted strata
below the inconsistency has experienced processes that the horizontal strata
above has not (tilting).


when you say "below the inconsistency," what is the inconsistency?
Clearly, it is not anything in the tilted layer that is the
inconsistency because you say it is "below the inconsistency." And it
is not the horizontal strata above the tilted layer, because there is
nothing inconsistent about a horizontal layer. So what exactly is the
inconsistency? A missing layer?

The inconsistency is the boundary between the tilted and untilted
strata. It's called an angular unconformity. Now there may not be an
entire missing layer, but there is definitely missing rock -- all the
parts of the tilted strata that had to be removed to turn the boundary
into a more or less flat, level surface. Angular unconformities are
among the most obvious falsifiers of the notion that all strata were
deposited by a single, global flood. Because in order to get one, you
need several events in succession, each of which takes more time than
the flood model makes available:


1. Deposition of the lower layers, which are originally horizontal.


okay.


2. Lithification of the lower layers.

the question is WHAT cycles of deposition were there to cause later
layers to lithify lower layers? Repeated flooding, with each event
occurring over millions of years? How would a tilted or even
horizontal layer lithify if there were as yet no layers above it to
compact it?

Agreed. there must have been deposition above any layers that were
lithified. Note that your idea of "flooding" is not necessary to explain
deposition. There is all sorts of transport by water that couldn't
reasonably be called flooding, and all sorts of wind and even gravity
transport too.

So if a deposition sits out in the open for millions of years, with no
layers on top of it to compress it, it would more likely erode away
than turn into solid rock. Right? And the same thing would happen to
the next deposition.

Yes. In general something has to push the excess water out, and in
general that's pressure from layers above. So if you really want you can
add an extra step of non-lithified layers.

3. Tilting of the lower layers.

not just tilting but sometimes literally turned on their sides.

That's a lot of tilting, eh?

4. Erosion of the tilted layers into an approximately horizontal surface.

that's the question. Erosion does not seem to produce a horizontal
surface. More like ragged ups and downs, depending on the varying
means of erosion and what particular elements hit what particular
spots in the layer.

Actually, over time it does give you a fairly horizontal surface. It
might start out raggedy, but sediments will be deposited in the low
spots which will then erode less, and the high spots will be
extra-exposed and will then erode more. Anyway, the erosional surface is
only more or less flat.

5. Deposition of sediments on top.


finally..


6. Lithification of those sediments.


again, what would cause this next deposition to lithify if, for
millions of years, there was not another layer deposited on top of it?

Who says that another layer isn't deposited for millions of years?

I don't think you have managed to debunk a flood event.

The first three words are certainly true.

As to your explanation for what an inconsistency is -- okay, I see
what you're saying. The inconsistency that McBane was talking about
was the missing part of the tilted layer; not an entirely new and
missing layer, but the peaked part of the tilted layer.

I think you have some bizarre misconception of what constitutes a layer.
The inconsistency was the unconformity, the erosional surface in the
tilted layer that indicates missing time. Not only are parts of the
tilted layers missing, but clearly while they were being eroded nothing
new could have been deposited in that spot. You can't have both erosion
and deposition in the same spot at the same time.

So I went and found some photos of these angular uncomformities. More
questions are raised than answered, however. Look at this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vallisvale.jpg

That's a very pretty unconformity.

The explanation given for a missing layer is that it eroded. How
about the possibility that it could have been sliced off through an
onrushing cataclysmic action.

Onrushing cataclysmic actions don't do that sort of thing. And besides,
you are trying to explain both the tilted and horizontal bits, above and
below the unconformity, by a single flood, right? But remember that
6-part sequence above? All except number 6 would have to happen during
that brief flood. This is physically impossible. It would take many years.

And what about the area left vacant at the angle where the rocks tilt?
What fills that area?

I have no idea what you're talking about there. No area is left vacant.

Here's the original scenario, horizontally laid layers:

----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------

would a volcanic eruption cause tilting?

It would cause some local tilting. Intrusion of a sill or suchlike would
cause tilting, but both would be on the scale of a few meters. That's
not the reason for angular unconformities.

I'm not sure I can see how
an eruption would tilt rock. Wouldn't it merely intrude as follows:

---------------- ----------------
-------------- ---------------
----------- -------------
--------- -----------
----- --------

Where does the rock that gets intruded go? Now in fact some of it would
be melted or included as xenoliths. Never mind, though. This is not the
cause of most tilting.

how about an earthquake, where the earth beneath layers of rock gives
way so that the original horizontal layers tilt at an angle? This
could happen in an instant. And, from the site below, it appears that
the layers continue on down under the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vallisvale.jpg

How did that happen? I'm intrigued.

Not one earthquake, but perhaps many over a long time. Tilting of this
sort has several potential causes: Block faulting or syncline/anticline
formation due to continental-scale compression are the big ones.

Also, erosion doesn't seem to be the best answer, considering that
erosion is not a consistent, evenly occurring process, where the top
of a rock layer flattens out. The eroding particles appear to come
from the sides, as in the following:

Eroding particles? From the sides? What you see here is an angular
unconformity in which the erosional surface has itself been tilted
sometime after formation. Remember that the rocks both left and right of
the unconformity were originally horizontal. By the way, it also looks
here as if the erosional surface isn't quite flat, and that the younger
(left) sediments fill some holes in the older (right) surface.

http://geoweb.gg.utk.edu/courses/HistoricalGeo/angular.html

Or this one:

http://marlimillerphoto.com/SrU-01.html

where the rocks have definitely been turned on their side, and the top
surface doesn't show the kind of erosion that creates a flat top.

Another angular unconformity where the erosional surface isn't
horizontal. Yes, the recent erosion here hasn't produced a flat surface.
But if it goes on long enough, it will -- more or less flat at wave base.

Compare that, again, to the "inconsistency" or top of the tilted layer
in the photo below. The top of the tilted layer does not look like
the result of erosion, either. It is too clean a slice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vallisvale.jpg

This is because you don't know what erosion looks like. A snapshot of
erosion in process doesn't look the same as what it looks like when
erosion stops.

(hey, I just got my geology degree from a coupla days of discussing
geology on this forum; hear me out)

We're going to have to take back that degree. I'm afraid that being
exposed to ideas is like being exposed to chicken pox. It doesn't
educate you if you're resistant. You have to be susceptible to learning.

Do you have, somewhere, some real-world series of stacked layers that
contain the types of fossils that generally, in succesion, span life
forms from trilobites, starfish, Pterygotus, Ichthyostega, Dimetrodon,
Placodu, Archaeopteryx, Tyrannosaurus, Brontotheres, Sabre-toothed
cat, Deinotherium, woolly mammoth, ending with primates?

This is the silliest sequence ever imagined. It's not an evolutionary
sequence, it's not a temporal sequence. It's just a random list of
names.

the above list of names is not random. Apparently, you're not
familiar with your own theory's evolutionary tree, John.

Or perhaps you can pick out random words without understanding what they
mean.

I picked
them from the following site which gave the types of speces found in
each of the periods of the eras, going from trilobites on up to the
present-day species:

http://www.bobainsworth.com/fossil/palaeozoic.htm

http://www.bobainsworth.com/fossil/mesozoic.htm

http://www.bobainsworth.com/fossil/cenozoic.htm

All very nice. Was it intended to be a temporal sequence, not an
evolutionary one? If so, you should choose groups, at least, that are
unambiguous representatives of the periods, and don't extend into other
periods. Primates are known from the Late Cretaceous to the recent, for
example, and are not the culmination of all time.

I will just note that your second-listed group is still around
today, and that there are primates older than the oldest known
sabre-toothed cat.


Your position is that fossils in rock strata serve as evidence for
evolving species; that after these findings were made, then
evolutionists came along and merely recognized the ascending order and
interpreted such a progression as evidence for evolution of the
species from simple to complex. So please for this evidence from the
real world. Where have fossils beyond the shell level, been found in
this ascending order?

Once again you make the false assumption that biostratigraphy has
something to do with evolution.

John, stop backing away from your own theory. You're trying to
divorce evolution from the fossil succession in the same way you guys
divorce evolution from abiogenesis. I expect one day you will divorce
evolution from evolution because none of it makes any sense.

No. You just don't understand anything here. I can't tell any more what
you're trying to talk about. Have we left biostratigraphy behind? Do you
now want to talk about evolution? I have no idea.

I have early on changed and acknowledged that biostratigraphy was
ongoing before the theory of evolution came limping along. Let me
repeat.

I have acknowledged your claim that the fossil succession was firmly
in place before evolutionists came along and interpreted the
succession as meaning evolution from a single common ancestor. So
stop trying to insist that I am still saying that the geological
column was developed by evolutionists. I have retracted that and
refined my position to say that evolutionists, in the later history of
the geological column, began to apply their interpretations to the
finds such that the final version of the geological column reflects
their understanding. And if you read the history, there was much
controversy before that happened.

If you read the history, this idea that the dating of any fossil depends
on evolutionary theory can be seen to be silly. That's why I contradict
you every time you say it. Let me repeat. No fossil is dated based on
any assumptions of evolution.

Why can't you get rid of this? It's
preventing you from understanding anything that is said to you, and
renders your questions and demands nonsensical.

the questions seem nonsensical because you are still back at square
one, when I have long since corrected myself and moved on.

Where are you? I have no idea.

Once again: index fossils are among the forms of evidence used to
correlate and order the geological column.

and once again, I am asking for index fossils higher than the level of
shells. How did they order the scattered fossils of vertebrates
through the shell index fossils, for instance?

This should not be difficult to understand. Shells appear at all levels,
including those levels in which vertebrates also appear. There are other
index fossils too. Mammal teeth can be good. Pollen can be good.
Remember: all an index fossil needs is to be plentiful and widely
distributed in space, but narrowly distributed in time.

Use of index fossils has
nothing to do with evolution.

but evolution has a lot to do with interpretation of the index
fossils. Don't try to divorce the two.

Here you are still confused. Evolution has a lot to do with the ages of
fossils, but not with finding out their ages, which is what we're
supposedly talking about. And those are determined by the ages of the
rocks they're in. One way to determine the ages of rocks is by using
index fossils. That doesn't mean index fossils have anything to do with
evolution, any more than a thermometer has anything to do with snow falling.

Once we have a geological column in order,
we can determine the ages of non-index fossils. The ages of fossils do
show vast transformations in biotas through time -- thus there are no
species in common between Cambrian and Recent. However, the ages of
fossils have very little to do with inferring evolutionary
relationships. Nobody gets together a list of fossils in order of age
and then uses that as evidence that this is also a list of ancestors and
descendants. Though in fact it's interesting and informative to see just
how well the order of groups in the fossil record fits the order
expected from phylogenetic analyses.

then you might want to warn your disciples of evolutionary theory that
they should not cling so desperately to a fossil record that, as you
say, has nothing to do with evolution.

I say nothing of the sort. I said that using index fossils to find the
ages of strata has nothing to do with evolution. The fossil record is
much more than index fossils, and fossils are much more than their ages.

And if the fossils are not stacked but scattered, then please for the
index fossils that place these scattered higher-level fossils in
ascending order.

Once again, what exactly do you mean by "ascending order". Does this
refer to time or to evolutionary advancement, whatever that is?

ascending order has to do with evolutionary advancement, as supposedly
observed to occur through time, starting from simple organisms and
ending in modern, complex organisms. You say that geologists (not
evolutionists or evolution-believing geologists) first observed and
noted a progression of fossils that later corroborated evolutionary
theory. Can you show me this progression?

There is in fact no general progression of increasing complexity. There
is a general progression of "more like current life", though. However,
the average complexity of life is about what it was 2 billion years ago:
lots of bacteria. You might say that the complexity of the most complex
life has increased over time, but I'm not sure even that is true since
about the late Paleozoic, when land faunas assumed something like their
present diversity.

However, "more like current life" is pretty easy to demonstrate. Look at
the Cambrian fossil record: no modern species, hardly any modern orders,
and few modern classes. No life on land at all. Now look at the
Triassic. Some of the modern orders have appeared, though still no
modern species, and land life has assumed much of its modern character,
though the actors are quite different. Now look at the Miocene: almost
all modern orders, many modern families and genera, even a few species.
Life everywhere is of quite modern aspect, though again with differences
and with few species in common. That's a progression right there.

I would like to see an example of a Tyrannosaurus,
for example, that is found in the same location as an index fossil
that has been relatively dated as belonging to a specific period. And
what determines that the particular index fossil is older or younger?

Index fossils are found in vertical sequences.

so do you have references to locations where the index fossils are
found in vertical sequences, all the way to the present day?

Is this another request for the entire geological column in one place? I
thought we had passesd beyondd that. Index fossils, like anything, must
be correlated across different sections. You have been shown how this is
done. No one spot has everything. Remember the various letter sequences
you have been shown. Now imagine that each letter is an index fossil.

That's one thing that
makes them good index fossils. But this is a multi-step process, and
there are many means other than index fossils for dating strata. If you
look at any paleontological report on a new fossil discovery, you will
find that it is referred to a particular stratum in a particular
formation.

on paper, yes. It will say something like "Triceratops" was excavated
from a site noted as from the Cretaceous period. And that has been my
question all along. How do you determine that a site is Cretaceous or
Jurassic or Silurian, when it lies far away from the originally named
site?

You look up the reference in the paper, the one that tells you how the
formation was dated. There are many methods for this, all of which have
been explained to you. Absolute dating is generally by radiometric
methods. Briefly, a radiometric date of a stratum in spot A can be
correlated with spot B by using index fossils and such, which thus
assigns an absolute date to spot B.

And there will then be references to that formation that will
tell you how the age of the formation was determined. The ways in which
that is done have been explained to you many times.


Strata below
a certain level may be interrupted while strata above that level are
continuous.

how does interrupted strata demonstrate a missing layer?

The interruption might indicate erosion had taken place. Using an
illustration similar to McBane's from your original post:

aaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaa aaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

This is what we would expect to see if the upper layer - and any layers
above it - were exposed to erosion. Now, if this formation is submerged
again, a new layer would be deposited on top of the upper layer, filling in
the gaps.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaaaaahhhaaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

This would indicate that there had been a gap in deposition.


is this an example of a single location? If so, I understand and
agree with your illustration as an example of how to recognize erosion
of a layer for a localized stretch of rocks. However, if your example
is in answer to my question of how layers in North America are
identified as being from the same period as layers in Europe, then it
doesn't add up.

True. For any time after the opening of the North Atlantic, North
America and Europe will not share any layers (barring the odd iridium
anomaly). They might however share index fossils; many marine species
even today are found on both sides of the Atlantic. That's one way to
correlate layers on different continents.

so you can correlate layers up to the point of shells that are common
to both North America and Europe. Beyond that, it is guesswork for
the higher-level fossils?

No. There are other methods. Please stop using "higher-level", because
neither of us has a clear idea of what it means.

Radiometric dating is another,


I've resolved that to my satisfaction. Let's not talk about it any
further.

If you want to ignore the principal method of assigning absolute dates
to strata, sure.

and magnetic reversal intervals are another.

magnetic reversal intervals could have occurred rapidly during an
extremely cataclysmic event.

We're talking about determining that two strata are the same age here.
Relative dating. It doesn't matter for that purpose how long the
intervals are. However, it should be pointed out that your claim is
nonsense.

Over a wider scale, why would the missing aaa's imply only erosion?
Unless you are suggesting that water covered the entire area so that
the same material was deposited equally all over, it is entirely
possible for deposits to be made at intermittent and uncorrelatable
locations.

Not sure what that meant.


if the claim is that layers can be traced horizontally over extended
areas, it means that each layers must have been laid down at the same
time.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
ccccccccccccccccccccccccc

the aaaaaaaaa layer would have to be laid down through the same
deposition event in order for it to be continuously traced over wide
areas. Same for bbbbb and cccccc.

And I would still like you to explain why the period of time of
deposition is a period that carried only a certain type or mix of
material such that distinct layers are recognized.

It doesn't. It didn't.

How else does a layer get recognized as a layer if not by its
similarity of content? Even if it's a mixed content, it is correlated
with layers elsewhere because of its similar content,isn't it?

You are confused over scale. We're not talking about a time in which,
say, sandstone was being deposited all over the world. We're talking
about sandstone with certain characteristics being deposited in some
sedimentary basin, which may be a few hundred or a few thousand miles in
extent. It would show lateral continuity, and the sequences and
thicknesses of layers would be similar across a broad extent too. Now
it's much more complicated than that, with time-transgressive facies and
lateral facies changes, etc. But that's why geologists get the big bucks
(humor). I will also mention that in the past 30 years or so, seismic
stratigraphy has greatly extended our ability to correlate strata over
distance.

Are you saying
that over a period of 25 million years, the only material being
deposited was the type of material seen in a distinct layer? Why?

You mean worldwide? Obviously not. Locally, you can indeed get the same
sorts of material, monotonously, for millions of years, simply because
the same erosional processes are removing material from the same source
rock and depositing it in the same basin.

so the conclusion, then, is that it is not possible to correlate rocks
worldwide because the materials differ.

It is not possible to correlate two isolated, widely separated locations
only by their two lithologies. You can correlate them directly by other
methods, which have been explained to you, and you can correlate a chain
of locations, each close enough to the next for lithology to be a useful
tool.

.

Relevant Pages

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