Summations Only

Not really. Just because a stratum (or lamination) is inclined does not mean that it is older than the inclined stratum beneath it. I'd rather like to know how you deposit a grain of sand, for instance, with out previously deposited grains to support it.By the way, you are breaking Faith's rule that there are is no such thing as inclined deposition by invoking cross-bedding.And yes, some beds of sediment are created quickly ... millions of years ago. We have known this since the early days of geology.ETA: So, how do you preserve delicate tracks in water-saturated, current-deposited, water-saturated conditions?And where are the dinosaur ecosystems during the Cambrian? And how do their tracks get transported to the Mesozoic and coincidentally end up in the same aged rocks as the skeletal fossils? And nests with eggs?You appear to have a truly magical fludde.
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

So, animals don't die giving birth, or choking on a large meal? Heh, heh, I don't suppose you'd consider that neck muscles will contract upon death and dessication of the carcass ... And what? Please document. Well, then prove uniformity in its modern sense to be wrong.

Just today I was explaining the thick, soupy mud that occurs at the bottom of standing bodies of some bodies of water. It was easy for an 7-year old to understand.

So, canyons are not real landscapes?So if this canyon was filled in and covered by the next layer of sediment, it was never a canyon? So, maybe it's just a "canyon" and not a canyon, is that correct?Maybe you could tell us what a "canyon" is.

Perhaps, then you could explain what you mean by buried canyons not being part of an ancient landscape. Your previous paragraph on the subject was not clear.I'm having a hard time seeing any alternative interpretation to the buried landscape interpretation of the data. What do you see or not see that convinces you of your position?For instance, here is some data from the San Joaquin Valley: It clearly shows not only multiple soil horizons, but a couple of stream channels cut in the soils. Note also that gravels occur at the base of the channel fill, as we would expect.How is this not indicative of previous topography?

Well, the main problem is that a shoreline implies a land surface because shorelines are the interface between land and water.You will notice in your images that above the highest shoreline, there is land without shorelines.The point is that we can recognize shorelines in the geological record. For instance, the Dakota Sandstone records a shoreline that advanced across the mid-continent of North America. The problem is that it did not cover all of the land. There were emergent areas to both the east and to the west; hence there was topography above sea-level ... a landscape.

Of course they leave clues. That's why we say that there were ancient landscapes.We have offered to you things like river channels cut in various older formations, drainage patterns in the lower Paleozoic, and paleosoils at a number of locations.I have also asked repeatedly how we get trace fossils such as footprints injected into the geological record during a massive flood. Your implication is that fossils were transported there, somehow, but what about footprints?Of course, I'm making the wild assumption that dinosaurs actually walked on landscapes. Is that crazy, or what?

The problem is that those are marine deposits. It is their nature to be layer-cake in appearance.But you have two problems.One is that those layers have been eroded in some places, including in the
Grand Canyon, prior to the next layer.The other is that the Mesozoic of North America is composed of mostly terrestrial deposits which do not have the continuity of the the marine sedimentary rocks.

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So when I'm shown a seismic image of an enormous gash in those rocks buried very very deep and called a former canyon, I see no canyon unless you want to call it an "underground canyon" but that could be misleading, I see an enormous gash in the strata buried very deep.

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So, how did that gash form?And why, in some cases, doe they have a dendritic pattern typical of surface river systems.

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I wouldn't call it a canyon unless it occurred at the surface NOW.

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That's why we call then 'buried canyons' or 'paleotopography'.So, what would you call it?

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There is nothing about it other than its outline to suggest it was ever anything but that, a huge gash in the rock filled in with sediment, a feature most likely created by the very running water that created all the strata, and while it might have begun when it was at the surface it never became a "landscape" from any of the actual clues given, it just got carved out of the sediment and filled with another sediment, and successive sedimentary deposits buried it deeper and deeper. Really, there's nothing in the image itself to suggest anything else, and again there's the fact of the utterly barren surfaces of the strata in the stack that we see in so many places.

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This continues to be nonsense. Why would we see entire river systems cut into older rocks and then filled in with younger sedimentary rocks?And how do you transport trackways into buried strata if they were not at the surface at one time? The surface is shown at the top of the diagram. The current soil would not be a 'paleosoil' by definition.However, I showed this section because you mentioned once that it makes not sense to have on paleosoil developed on top of another.The fact that they are cut by stream channels only emphasizes the fact that channels can be buried. Actually, horizon means a surface within the strata that indicates a single moment in time. It has nothing to do with Old Earth.

Actually, they can be either, or both.Regressive shorelines, like the reservoir picture, can leave behind deposits of beach sand. It's just a matter of relative erosional processes and how soon the sea transgresses again.It is understood by geologists that transgressive sands are more likely to be preserved and are often thicker than regressive sands. However, both are common.

Hey, no one said it was easy.While formations such as the Tapeats can be time-transgressive, they can also be transgressive to trilobite index fossils. Believe it or not (silly point) it all makes sense in the end. But you kind of have to study it. Probably not, but there's no reason they can't be. The problem is that the Devonian landscape is probably formed by eroding the Ordovician landscape or the Ordovician rocks.I'm still getting the impression that Faith is confusing marine deposits with terrestrial deposits. Marine deposits, following Walther's Law can form continental scale sheets. Terrestrial deposits are formed in an erosional environment and are only preserved in more limited basins such as lakes, rivers, swamps or deserts, etc. When we talk about landscapes it is important that we realize they are formed by erosion, not deposition. Mountains do not appear to have high relief because they are uplifted, but because they have been partly eroded, leaving behind remnants of what was there before. The only exception to this is volcanic environments where landscapes can be formed by deposition (i.e. volcanoes) which are later eroded.

In that case, the beds in question are the confining layers, the tops and bottoms of the laminated sections. Actually, the cross-bedding does not physically cross the larger enclosing bedding surfaces. They are essentially a set of internal laminations or textures.They form by piling up sediment until it exceeds that angle of repose in that medium and then slumps to regain the maximum stable angle. This happens in both the aqueous and eolian flow environments. In this image, you can see that the cross-beds are cut by a flat surface which would be the top of the lower bed. This bedding plane is, by the way, an erosional surface. We know this because each sloping lamination is cut by that surface ... a temporary landscape, if you will, that is younger than the lower set of cross-beds.We also know that this surface is depositional because there is a new layer above it. Note that the crossing beds of the upper layer are not clearly cut by the surface. Ideally, they would appear to be approaching the surface asymptotically. They are younger than the surface.

To most of us, this is not a problem. We understand that there are parts of the record missing due to erosion or some other kind of non-deposition. That is because those are the only units from those time periods. Unfortunately, the 'geological columns' that you see are idealized. I have looked for one that might help you understand what is going on with them and came up with this example: In this realistic case, geological time is depicted on the right as different stages in the late Cretaceous. The body of the diagram shows the distribution of the actual geological record in a part of northeastern Iraq. The white parts of the diagram depict "no record". This would be due, usually to erosion, but it could also be for tectonic removal or simple lack of sediment during those periods. The jagged sub-horizontal lines are interpreted erosional unconformities. The vertical jagged lines represent different rock types being deposited across the region. In this region, the east(?) has a more continuous record.The traditional depiction would not show the white gaps, however, most geologists understand that bedding planes and unconformities represent an undetermined length of time.

Yes, that would be doing geology. Actually, the transition to terrestrial deposition in the Mesozoic is a major change in style. Much of the Paleozoic represents major transgression and regression, starting with the Tapeats Sandstone. After the early transgression, starting in the Cambrian, there was a long period of continental seas with occasional erosion due to sea level changes and very lilttle terrigenous input (sand, gravel, etc.).Then in the late Paleozoic we see some terrigenous sediments in the Supai, the Hermit and the Coconino. But there were some marine sediments up until the Moenkopi/Chinle time in the Triassic. After that the Colorado Plateau entered a prolonged period of terrigenous sedimentation and erosion that continued essentially to the present.The Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary formations have much less areal extent compared to those of the larger Paleozoic transgression. Even the Navajo Sandstone is not continental in extent, but probably was as large as Texas. That is nothing compared to the Tapeats that correlates with sandstones on the east coast and even on other continents. This was a turning point in the earth's history. Edited by edge, : No reason given.

I would think that the change from mostly marine sediment deposition to a terrestrial environment for long periods of time would be a major change in landscapes, life and continuity of geological formations. Both are common and I have provided images previously.Here is a picture of a coal mine in New Mexico. On the left wall, at the very left edge of the image, there is a lozenge shaped body of sand with large scale cross-beds indicative of a sand bar. These bodies, when mapped, follow a narrow band that looks for all the world like a channel cutting through most coal fields. Some of them in Illinois can be traced for tens of miles.It is important to understand these things because they present certain hazards to mining. The next image is a cross section of the Paradox Basin in which sedimentary fans continually feed into the basin from highlands to the right of the diagram. In the lowest part of the basin (part of the landscape), out beyond the clastic fans, you can see that salt was being deposited at the same time. Even farther out to the left, you get into marine sediments of the type that you commonly refer to ... some of the Grand Canyon formations.ETA: You will note the relatively rapid lateral changes of depositional environment typical of terrestrial sedimentation; in other words, NOT the continental scale geological formations. Edited by edge, : No reason given.Edited by edge, : No reason given.

Here is a better image of a sand bar in a coal field setting. These rocks are late Cretaceous to Paleocene in age. Note the cross bedding dipping to the right. This indicates that the streams was flowing toward the viewer or away (can't tell from here). The stream cut down to the thin coal layer (probably a bunch of organic debris at the time) as it meandered toward the right.The process was terminated as this meander was abandoned and the channel was filled by mud and silt shown in the upper right of the image.So, the sand bar was frozen in time until exposed by mining millions of years later. The image has a lot more information in it that could be discussed, but that should do it for now.