Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

I'm still trying to get someone to explain where the sediments come from in the middle of a global flood...I'm also trying to figure out where Noah lived. These days we live on an erosional unconformity. If Noah lived on land, then there must have been erosion going on. But Faith says all erosion has occurred after the flood.I'll keep everyone posted with whatever I find out.

Do you have any idea what the end result of erosion is?Can you tell us how the thick sandstones of the Mesozoic formed in the middle of your flood if there was no erosion occurring in the middle of the geological time scale? But if it's not a fact?And please explain your reasoning here. Not seeing it. But where did the mountains come from in Noah's time? After all there was no tectonism before the flood either...

Why not?How long should they last?

Maybe because in one place you are looking at deposition and in another you are looking at erosion.For instance outside my window are mountains, but less than a continent away there are nice gently sloping continental shelves with limestone being deposited...Probably makes no sense, eh?

Perhaps by filling in the low spots in the landscape?Maybe this image of a seismic cross-section will help.

You're way ahead of me. I'm still trying to figure out what an underground canyon is...

That's the point. They didn't. What's the problem with previous time periods? I'm not seeing the problem. How widespread should a geological formation be?Can you tell me about a formation that spans an entire continent? Did you ever hear of geologic time? It shows pre-existing topography being filled in by sedimentation. The upper layers are flat.As you wish.And who is 'we'?Edited by edge, : No reason given.

Please give an example of such a formation that spans a continent.

This is exactly correct. It is rare for a single depositional environment to exist over a broad (continental scale) area at one time. An example would be he Cretaceous Chalk deposits of western Europe. The basal Cambrian sandstone formations might be another example, but the fact is that these are beach sands which require (guess what) emergent land masses and erosion.However, some of the most widespread deposits that we know of such as the Navajo Sandstone of the western United States have no lithological equivalent in other parts of the continent. There may be some chronological equivalents, but there are no great ergs in almost any direction.I guess that, basically, what I'm saying is that things are a lot more complex than the common YEC understanding of large scale sedimentation.

Certainly could. They are different ages, of course. I'm not sure about how large or thick the sand hills are, but if they don't erode away, they will form a desert sand deposit in the current geological record.Or if Faith is correct, the geological record is dead and nothing will change, ever...

They typically form in basins or on wide continental platforms that are inundated for extended periods. The Manco Shale is one of the large ones that I am familiar with and it formed on the bottom of the Cretaceous seaway in central North America over a period of about 15 million years.Here is a stratigraphic correlation chart for the Mancos. What it shows is the Mancos Shale, and its equivalent, the Pierre Shale, in gray, do not extend to the west where the Laramide mountain building event was occurring. In yellow, 'tongues' of sand stone such as the Dakota up to the Fox Hills extend from source areas in the highlands to the west, eastward into the Mancos basin. These represent times of marine regression as sea levels fluctuated during the time of the seaway.Just for fun, here is a cross section of the Denver Basin sequence which is underlain by the Pierre Shale. AFAIK, the Pierre is eroded away east of the Dakotas.Not sure if this answers you question, but these are truly important geological features of the planet.Edited by edge, : No reason given.

You are welcome.

Well, it's a fairly complex picture, but basically yes. Most of the deposits I'm familiar with are continental basins with some enclosure. The deep sea deposits usually exist primarily in the sea. That sounds kind of moronic, but what I mean is that they are often incorporated into the rock record as highly deformed and accreted to the continent, or they are subducted.An exception would be something like the Gulf of Mexico, where huge accumulations of mud will someday become an epic mudstone (shale) basin. Depending on the course of plate tectonics it could also be deformed.Another case where they are not subducted is in the Great Basin where they have been overthrust onto the slope and shelf rocks. In that location, they are called the Western Assemblage or the Upper Plate rocks, etc. But, they are different in having a lot more chemical sediments such as cherts, along with turbidites and oceanic volcanics associated with them.Here is what can happen to the deep sea sediments: This is a passive margin or trailing continental margin such as the Atlantic side of NA. Huge shale deposit could be built out onto the oceanic crust as in the Gulf.I hope this helps in some small way. The message board environment isn't the best for explaining such broad and variable topics.

The jagged edges of the shale environment in the schematic cross section can represent two things:-- transgression-regression
-- a transitional boundary too detailed to show on the diagramIn this case the major departures are certainly related to transgression and regression of the basin. In fact, you can see that one of the major transgressions resulted in the Fort Hayes Limestone out in the middle of the basin. But yes, the thicker shale systems are long-lived and more stable than, say, the cyclical transgressions that gave us the Carboniferous coal sequences on the east coast.

I see no reason why it could not exist in these locations. At the same time, I see no reason why it would necessarily exist anywhere on the planet. However, the point is that it does exist despite YEC claims.This is really a YEC red-herring claim. The people who can vouch for it would be those in the oil and gas field such as Glenn Morton.However, as you mentioned, this seems to be important to YECs and unimportant to geologists. It appears to simply be an argument propogated through the literature, having little or no significance. The other point is that they are wrong.