Summations Only

Since my name's been mentioned.

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At least at the Great Unconformity the band of erosion can be explained as caused by abrasion between the upper and lower levels, which I like to explain as due to the tilting of the Supergroup strata by the volcanic action beneath. The strata would have violently tilted against the upper strata which remained intact due to the tremendous weight of the strata above, and the tilting and sliding would have abraded both levels, and the evidence is that the eroded band is composed of material from both levels. This got discussed in far more detail on other threads.

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I don't believe that this is true. Let's see some evidence of this "eroded band". Sure, we can find eroded material from the older rock embedded in the newer,yes (and there's nothing surprising about that). But not material eroded from the younger rock.

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Paul K and I had an argument about how a particular boulder of quartzite got into the eroded band because quartzite takes a long time to form

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This is misleading. The time issue wasn't even that important in the original discussion. The question was how the boulder formed and got into the Tapeats Sandstone.Clearly, the Shinumo Quartzite must have already existed as such while the Tapeats Sandstone was being deposited. I guess that there's a time factor as such there, but I don't see any need to go beyond simple plausibility arguments.

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Clearly it came from the layer called the Shinumo in the Supergroup, but the question I had then was how that particular layer got metamorphosed into quartzite but the other layers in the same group are just sedimentary rock.

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A question which was something of a distraction. Since we don't have the evidence needed to answer it and it doesn't seem to be directly relevant I don't see any need to worry about it in the context of this discussion.

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I don't know but it's clearly a hunk of that particular quartzite that was abraded and got buried in the eroded band, by the shifting of the rocks brought about by the force of the underground volcano, according to my favorite theory.

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Going back to the original posts, the boulder is found embedded in the Tapeats sandstone, above the Hakatai Shale (which is above the Shinumo, where it is present). It's not present in an "eroded band" (the Shinumo Quartizte isn't even in contact with the Tapeats Sandstone at this location).ANd finally we have the old problem with your ideas about the formation of angular unconformities. We do find get flat, undistorted rocks lying on top of an angular unconformity ? I've yet to see any sensible explanation other than the standard geological view that the flat rocks were laid down on top of the unconformity after it had been eroded flat.

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Why do you require the strata to be broken up? As I keep telling you, on a scale of miles rock is very pliable. It's going to bend, not break.

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Because she wants to "explain" why the strata laid on top of angular unconformities are NOT bent. It seems pretty silly to me - but so long as she wants those strata to be there and lithified when the angular unconformity is created, she's stuck with it.Guess that's why she needs to invent her "eroded band". Every angular unconformity would have to have one - if she was right. I've never heard of one, and she doesn't seem to have produced any examples. So much for "observable evidence".

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You mean she thinks the strata above the angular unconformity were greatly fractured so that they could settle into a flat form? Why? Weren't they already flat? Or does she believe they were previously tilted in line with the layers of the supergroup? But how would the even be possible because the extent of the above strata is hundreds of miles, so they could never have been tilted.

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No, she means that they STAYED flat while the rocks beneath tilted up on end. I guess that she wants it to be true because of her idea that all the strata were laid down by the Flood. I can't think of any sensible reason to believe it, at all.As I understand it, she thinks that the strata on top were lifted up on top of the bends (presumably in her idea the rubble would fill the hollows created by the bending, but I've seen no evidence that that has actually happened).

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You've posted a lot and asked a lot and I'm just not going to get to it. But this theme keeps coming up, from you and PaulK, the idea that I somehow WANT things to be the way I've been describing them. I assure you I simply deduced that they ARE that way from what I observed, and I've tried to argue from that perspective. Period.

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Then can you show me where your "eroded belt" is observed ? On your ideas it needs to contain mixed rubble from the older bent rocks and from younger unbent strata. But I've never heard of any example at an angular unconformity and you haven't show any. So far as I can tell it's just something you've made up.

In the case of Siccar Point I only remember material from the older rock embedded in the younger. The quartzite boulder from Paul Garner's talk would be another case like that (there being no sign of erosion caused by the boulder being forced into solid sandstone).I tried google which found NO hits for the search: Siccar Point "eroded belt" but showed up a number of links in the alternative it came up with. Including this: Hutton's Unconformity at Siccar PointA further search found this: Siccar PointHere are some selected quotes: The basal conglomerate appears to be what you call an "eroded belt". However, the eroded material is rounded (else it would be classified as a breccia) indicating water transport, and it appears that pebbles and larger stones eroded from the greywacke have been deposited with some quartz pebbles and red sand to form the conglomerate.This is really not what your ideas demand - but it is entirely consistent with the conventional view.

Thanks for confirming that the Garner video doesn't support your claim either. A boulder simply suspended in the sandstone indicates that it was deposited with the sediment that became the sandstone. That's not what you need.

I don't see the disagreement. The point is that the Tapeats was just sediment when the boulder arrived, not rock. So it's not evidence for your ideas about the formation of angular unconformities. So where are these "eroded belts" of yours?

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The idea is that that IS the eroded belt, the lower part of the Tapeats in which the boulder is embedded along with the eroded area at the top of the Supergroup.

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So where's the evidence for that?

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The fact that a part of the Supergroup, i.e., the boulder, is embedded in the upper layer, the Tapeats, is evidence that the lower part of the Tapeats was also involved in the erosion

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It's evidence that the Tapeats sediment was just sediment when the boulder arrived, and much of it was deposited later. That really doesn't help your ideas because it's entirely consistent with the mainstream view.

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Garner says the sandstone is a "matrix" in which elements of the lower layers are found although all we can see in the picture is the boulder. But that's enough to show that the lower layer got mixed into the upper, so the Tapeats had to have already been there when the erosion occurred, rather than laid down on top of the eroded surface of the Supergroup many millions of years later.

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Rocks may be eroded out of older strata and embedded in newer strata. It happens all the time. Since the boulder is embedded in the Tapeats it seems that is what happened - with much of it arriving after the boulder. Only the part of the Tapeats beneath the boulder can be known to be present when the boulder arrived, and I don't see any way to tell how long it was before that, that the boulder was eroded out if the Shinumo Quartzite.

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In the fact that the boulder traveled a wuarter of a mile from its origin pointl ought to be sufficient evidence.

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That rather suggests that it was transported on the surface, which doesn't support your view at all.

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Plus the fact that there is no way for it to have gotten into the sediments otherwise than being broken off along with the scraping between the layers.

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I'd say that it was eroded out of a surface formation and moved along the surface, settling onto the sediment as it was deposited.

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You said it's common to find rocks from lower levels in higher ones. That should call the whole theory into question which of course I'd have taken note of if it were all that common but oddly it's never come up. And it should be pretty hard to explain on Old Earth theory.

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All you need for fragments of older rocks to be found in younger rocks is for pieces to be eroded out of the older rocks and deposited in a place where the new rocks will eventually form. Given an old Earth it would be amazing if it DIDN'T happen.

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It had to have been broken off the Shinumo layer and the most sensible explanation for that is that abrasion between the layers did it..

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No, it's not. In case you've forgotten this boulder is your sole "evidence" of this "abrasion". You may like it, but that doesn't make it sensible.

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This is a boulder fifteen feet in diameter. How did it get "eroded" out of its layer under normal conditions? No, the force of the abrasion between the layers explains it much better.

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How do boulders normally form ?And if this abrasion happens under solid rock how did the boulder ever make its way up to the surface to be buried in sand ?Why would this "abrasion" even form boulders ?Do try thinking and researching before declaring your personal opinion to be "the only sensible answer".

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This one was a piece of a layer of quartzite that got broken off.

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And how does that help your case ?

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The Tapeats wouldn't have been solid rock, it would have been wet compressed sediments.

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So even in your view, the Tapeats wasn't rock then. Well that's progress.

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The Shinumo layer was tilted as part of the Supergroup up against the bottom of the Tapeats and the abrasion broke off the piece of layer as a boulder which got moved along within the wet sand, and then the continued sliding between the two layers carried it a quarter of a mile from the point where it broke off.

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And your evidence for this is ? You can start by offering your evidence that it came from a portion of the Shinumo buried under the Tapeats rather than rising above it: Great Unconformity

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We're talking ONE boulder here, I doubt it's a normal occurrence. Quartzite is very hard so it broke off as a huge chunk rather than being broken up into small pieces or pulverized into sediment, which is what happened to the Tapeats above.

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Which really doesn't mean that we can rule out the usual explanations without firm reasons.

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I'm giving sensible answers based on considering the facts. You on the other hand are just reaching for any old explanation that might work to confirm your theory.

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You really are dedicated to inverting reality.Try dealing with my post about Siccar Point.

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If you look at those cross-sections of the Grand Staircase - Grand Canyon area you can see that the uplift over the GC is in a mounded shape, and that the tilted layers of the Supergroup I've been asking you about occur at the bottom of the canyon area directly under the uppermost height of that mounded area. It looks to me like there is a relation between the uplift and the Supergroup that hasn't been dealt with yet so I would like to get explanations, such as

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When did the uplift occur in relation to the tilting/erosion of the Supergroup?

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Looking at the diagrams I don't see any direct connection. The tilting seems to have come before the uplift, probably by a long time.In this drawing - the least stylised - - it appears that the later strata were laid on top of the GCS, after it had tilted and eroded. The Shinumo Quartzite sticking up into the upper strata is rather telling, and the fact that the fault between the two sections of the GCS doesn't continue upward - in my opinion - also suggests that the fault occurred before the upper strata were deposited.The rise on the ground also starts well before reaching any portion of the GCS, and the tilt of the GCS doesn't exactly agree with the slope.In this diagram, presumably showing a different section ! - we see slopes in opposite directions. The strata of the GCS slopes up right-to-left, while the ground slopes up left-to-right (the surface of the GCS does have a small left-to-right upward angle, and I suppose THAT could be due to the later uplift).So I'm not seeing any reason to suppose a connection in either.

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Can't picture what you have in mind here, but a river already established would divert AROUND any uplifting of land, not erode through it, and besides, this mounded uplift has a north-south slope, so it's hard to see how water could have eroded the mound east to west.

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You're ignoring the time factor here. It's the level of the river bottom that matters. If the uplift is so slow that erosion will keep up with it, keeping the river bottom at about the same level as it started, the river won't divert.And I'm not sure what direction has to do with it. The direction of the river is already fixed by its course - why should it not cut into the rising land, no matter what the direction of the slopes.

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I don't explain the meanders or switchbacks as being caused by that initial cataract of water, but by the river that resulted after the great volume of water had decreased to river size. It is rivers that create those formations, not great cataracts of the size I've had in mind that opened the canyon in the first place.

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So practically the entire depth must have been cut by the river, AFTER it had acquired the meanders and the switchbacks. Think about that one.

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Yes, apparently everything depends on the slowness of the uplift, and of course at a centimeter per year its height isn't going to offer any appreciable obstacle. Yet the uplift is a MOUND and the canyon is cut into the south side of it along its length so it slopes north-south no matter what its depth. You simply have to assume that the water was already running in that direction anyway and had enough volume so that the rising land really made no difference whatever. I still need to picture a channel for it to seek and I can't find one on the south side of that mound even at a centimeter in height, but I guess that's just me.

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So long as it follows an existing channel - as the meanders indicate - that really isn't a problem. So long as you understand that with uplift being matched by erosion of the river bed the river will follow the original course the shape of the mounding doesn't seem to be an issue.

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Water seeks a lower level, it doesn't cut into rising land, UNLESS of course it's a ginormous amount of water that overwhelms everything in its path. Even then it would seek the lowest level to flow in. But a centimeter wouldn't stop it so that takes care of that.

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If the lowest level is it's existing bed then it will follow that. The cutting KEEPS the riverbed low enough for it to continue on it's existing course.

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I can't even think about it because It doesn't make enough sense to begin to think about it. The huge volume of water I've thought did the cutting and sculpting of the canyon occurred at the beginning; the river is what was left at the end, so the original cataracts of water did the major work of scouring out the canyon and the river just cut out its own river bed at the bottom of the canyon after all that enormous amount of water had drained away.

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But according to you, this initial rush did NOT sculpt the meanders at all. They formed later. Which means that the meanders - with all their depth - must have been cut by the river as it developed over time. Like I said, you have to think about it.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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Oh and while we're at it, Paul, do YOU think, as Percy does, that strata stacked a mile deep would be pliable enough after a billion years to bend over the contour of that mound over the GC that can be seen in the cross-sections?

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Provided the bending is done incredibly slowly, under high pressure, yes. There is good evidence (distorted fossils) of such things happening elsewhere. And, after Percy's reply it seems that this represents bending more extreme than the examples you are proposing.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.