Quicksink,
Am I to understand you correctly that ?? literally without geometry correlation of strata to anything one can name no concept of time would even be metaphysically possible. I tend to think this is what you mean by "no mechanism". In spirit, am I wrong here@?
I had tied for years to think of how bio-strucuture could "encode" long amounts of time for functional release but even evolution thinking biologists do not seem ready for that idea which I tend to realize now in what Mayr calls "proximate" biology. I think Mayr was misgrown the biology but that is besides your point I take it?