Rapid generation of layers in the GC

Here's extracts from mainstream sedimentology texts I dug up myself last (southern hemisphere) summer on rapid formation of layers and also one quote I found on the internet from a geology journal:

quote:

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p132 "Many strata must have been deposited very rapidly. In terms of geological time, they represent essentially instantaneous events, usch as floods, that had durations ranging from a few seconds to several days."

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p135 "In the past there has been a tendancy to interpret each lamina as produced by a separate sedimentation event - for example, a tidal cycle, the swash and backwash of a single wave, or a single bed load avalanche. It is now clear, however, that laminae may also be produced by strong flow, particularly during traction on a plane bed in the upper flow regime."

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H Blatt, GV Middleton & RC Murray Origin of Sedimenary Rocks Prentice-Hall (New Jersey) 1980

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'It is reasonable to postulate a very rapid rate of deposition; that is a single lamina [or layer] would probably be deposited in a period of seconds or minutes rather than in a period of hours....There is factual evidence from both field observation and experiment that laminae composed of bed material are commonly deposited by current action within a period of seconds or minutes.'

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Alan V. Joplin, Dept. of Geology, Harvard, 'Some Deductions on the Temporal Significance of Laminae, Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, Vol. 36, No. 4, from pp. 880-887

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I'm not trying to say this necessarily proves anything but it is part of our 'thesis'. It certainly proves that mainstream researchers are willing to admitt that layers do not have to represent annual/seaonal bands or even point to great age at all.------------------
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Here's a quote from a mainstream journal, presumably from a mainstream geologist chiding his fellow geologists to take on some more catastrohpism back in 1972 (it sounds to me anyway). He's talking cyclothems and polystrate fossils:

quote:

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[The] tree was 43 feet high with hundreds of layers surrounding it, just as well preserved at the top as at the bottom. Now, can you look at that and imagine 2700 years a foot?... And in another illustration in a similar article, we see 50 trees described. Now this was from France. Now what would possibly explain this kind of phenomena? You see trees buried standing upright with huge amounts of sediment. No, it takes something like a large flood - a catastrophic flood - to bury a forest and cover the trees and then form into rock rapidly in order to preserve the detail that we see in these trees as well at the top as at the bottom... I think that's an excellent description and estimate of what happened and it fits best with the evidence. . . This tree standing upright in the sediment actually extends through two cyclotherms. A cyclotherm is a series of ten different rock units where we find coal forming. And this sequence - this series - of ten rock units repeats some 50 to 100 times. Trying to explain those cyclic deposits by normal uniformitarian processes gets very entertaining. I think the tidal forces of a huge flood are much better at explaining the cyclic forces. But if we look at the picture and notice that we've got coal down near the bottom that extends through numbers of layers up into another layer of coal above, what we're seeing there is a picture that demonstrates you can't form coal over hundreds of thousands of years. It has to be basically a catastrophic event that deposits this sediment and covers it and forms it into rock rapidly or you don't get this kind of picture with the tree standing upright well preserved from top to bottom in it. Actually, experiments with the formation of coal show, contrary to what we read and hear continually, does not take a long period of time [to form].

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George R. Hill, Dean of College of Mines & Mineral Industries, Chemtech, May, 1972, p. 292

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I admittedly found this one on the Internet but I don't think a context is necessary is it? Go read the article if you need the context. I'd be interested if this guy got sacked or not or was ever allowed to publish again .Again all this proves is that what used to be thought of as taking millions of years has in some instances, even by mainstreamers, been agreed to have taken only a matter of hours/days/weeks. Millions of years reduced to days. And of course Austin et al would immediately, for good reason, point to the flood and floating mats. Of course it could have been a huge non-Noah flood but it still begs the question that if thousands of feet of the GC are at least possibly due to a big flood then maybe the creationists have a point.------------------
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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-17-2002]

Edge and Joe, I have to say that you really did do exactly what TC suggested. You tried to say that I said my refs were 'proof' that the flood generated the GC when I of course said nothing of the sort. I understand that you don't like what I'm saying becasue it challenges something you are convinced of but if we treated each others actual specific points seriously then we could have a far more educational experience on both sides.So I will say it again that those refs I cited show:
(i) That layering can, and frequently did, occur rapidly in
'seconds and minutes' from, eg, constant flow.
(ii) At least some geologists agree (and I would find it hard to believe that any could deny with integrity) that major formations representing 100s and 1000s of feet of teh GC were undoubtledly formed rapidly.That is what I said/am saying. Stop setting up strawmen! Of course I'm saying this is suggestive of the global flood but I would love to hear your specific thoughts on (i) and (ii) above in this post that summarizes my first post.------------------
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And for those who don't know about 'cyclothems' they are simply coal containing sequences of strata that ideally contain repeating sequnces of 10 layers. In practice each cyclothem deposit may contain anywhere from a few to dozens even up to 100 cycles of these 10 layers and each cycle may only have some of the 10 layers. Each cycle is ideally composed from top to bottom:gray shale
limestone
black lamin. shale
limestone
gray shale
COAL
underclay
limestone (fresh water)
gray sandy shale
fine sand/siltIn the mainstream ref I quoted from (in the second post of this thread) the geologist was talking about cycles of order 40 foot with up to 100 of these being repeated. And the point he was making was that(a) geologists have struggled to explain these cyclical deposists via non-catastrophic means and that
(b) infamous () polystrate tree fossils have proven that these did form rapidly, a least in his opinion. Single tree trunk passes vertically though two cyclothems. It must have been rapid. And presumably it occurred via foating mats of uprooted vegetation, hydrodynamic sorting and multiple (tidal?) flood surges in the same big flood.Again, I am not saying this has to be Noah's flood but whenever we see a cyclothem deposit of 100s to 1000s of vertical feet it is logical to assume that it was formed rapidly due to these multiple examples around the world where we know it was rapid.We also have to be aware of the vast horizontal scale of these types of beds. Coal seams (and the other layers too) can traverse across multiple US states - from Pennsylvania to Kansas (although whether this paricular formation is a cyclothem I am unaware). Floating mats the size of US states inescapably come to mind.In any case it is clear that vast horizonal and vetical sections of the GC undoubteldy formed very rapidly and yet in the past it was believed that these were gradually formed over millions of years. Yes we than propose that this can be extended to the entire GC and then I agree there are problematic aspects, but, IMO, they may be surrmountable.------------------
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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-19-2002]

Edge, I really think I stated my POV quite clearly if you re-read the first post.I know you guys think what we say is 'nothing new'. But boy, this stuff is not even hinted at in the introductory books and even much of the advanced stuff. Anyone trying to get into geology would still hink that layers build up in stagnant lakes and gentle seas. The paleocurrent data shows that this is hogwash for the bread and butter strata that characterise the GC.I don't agree that what I'm saying is off-centre. What I am saying (eg abot paleocurrents) concerns the typical strata in the column, not some anomoly.------------------
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Joe, I said:

quote:

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I'm not trying to say this necessarily proves anything . . . It certainly proves that mainstream researchers are willing to admitt that layers do not have to represent annual/seaonal bands or even point to great age at all.
. . . .
Again all this proves is that what used to be thought of as taking millions of years has in some instances, even by mainstreamers, been agreed to have taken only a matter of hours/days/weeks.

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I thought I went to coinsiderable trouble to not overstate. OK, in the first point my 'do not have to' should have been stronger. I promise to be even more careful next time.My point? It was that (i) layers can be rapidly formed (some posters on this board have claimed that you shouldn't get layering). And (ii) my cyclothem example was to demonstrate that vast formations in the GC, previously thought to be gradualistically formed over millions of years, has mainstream agreement of rapid formaiton. This is non-trivial.If pressed geolgoists will agree on these issues as you have but they are not mentioned/emphasised in geology text books.------------------
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Joe, in all the texts I have read the origin of the sedimentary record is decribed via analogy with modern gradualistic means. Catastrophism is hardly mentioned in these texts. When it is it is as an anomoly.I have a simple first year geology textbook in my hands (Chernicoff) and the origin of the GC is described in this fasion.In each of the detailed texts on the 'origin of sedimentary rocks' (Selley (1996), Blatt et al (1980), Pettijohn (1974)) there are literally (I'm serious) about 1000 pages on analogies with modern gradualistic processes and a couple of pages on catastophic means of generating layering. I am not kidding. I read these books from cover to cover.The amazing thing is that this is never propoerly reconciled (IMO) with the paleocurrent data which IMO tells a story that is consistent with catastrophism even though this option is ignored in the mainstream texts.So what hogwash did I pronounce anyway?------------------
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Joe, I meant that you have agreed that some strata were rapidly formed.Do you agree that cyclothems were rapidly formed? What is the current mainstream consensus?I agree if you take our stuff to (our) extreme there are problems. I have seen work arounds for many of these problems and for now I am satisfied that the flood hypothesis is possible.------------------
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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-19-2002]

^ So what about the polystrate tree trunk passing vertically throuhg two cylcothem cycles that this guy is talking about?

I've only read a four or five paragraph extract from this article somewhere on the web. Our geology and chemistry libraries don't have ChemTech. Does yours? I think it's a merged journal. We should track it down but it's pretty clear he is referring to a tree trunk passing through two cyclothem cycles!EDIT - the journal is now called "Chemical Innovation" but our chemistry library doesn't have it.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-20-2002]

George R. Hill, Dean of College of Mines & Mineral Industries, Chemtech, May, 1972, p. 292

OK, wj, I'm saying, that if we can verify that this geologist GR Hill was not misrepresenting the data, then there is good evidence that sequences of cyclothem cycles were rapidly generated. This opens up (comes close to proving) the likely sceanrio that 1000s of feet of cyclothem deposits were generated rapidly - eg over less than decades. Dead tree trunks have a way of rotting.And regardless of Hill's evidence we all know that there are many many examples of polystrate fossils world wide demonstrating that 50 foot sections have been rapidly laid down. When the layering is just the same for the upper and lower 1000 feet why not the entire formation rapidly?

I'm not sure Joe, I've only seen the excerpt. Go get some shut eye.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-20-2002]

Well this is what I came to learn. But I estimate 'thousands of feet' from Hill's example and others I have read about. The cyclothem (coal) containing layers from Kansas to Pennsylvania are pretty thick too.

Hill talks about polystrate trees passing through multiple cyclothem cycles (ie it passes from one 10 layered cycle into another 10 layered cycle). These cycles are themselves part of 50-100 repetions. Semantics aside it is clear what he is talking about!Hill is simply saying that the polystrate tree trunk proves that two of the cyclothems happened very rapidly. If the rest of the cycles above and below look the same, and are conformable, it is reasonable (in fact it compells one) to assume that they all occurred rapidly as part of the same event.Forget about me, forget about my educaiton. Just read Hill. It could just be that the uniformitarian paradigm just doesn't allow you to consider the possibility that Hill is right, paleosoils or no paleosoils.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-20-2002]