Summations Only

The line between the two sections is too even for that.

It isn't flat or horizontal. Just as in the pictures I posted and you ignored.

How come the upper layers are so flat if they were laid down on top of a picket fence as that earlier picture / diagram shows.

Because that's how sediment settles according to the basic laws of physics. Sediment that settles on steep slopes slides down, sediment that settles on the lower parts stays there. Overall result is a roughly flat layer. Sheesh.

Hi Faith,

Thanks for this image - Microsoft Paint just wasn't up to it:

So yes, the sediments will fill in all the irregularities of the landscape, the lowest points first, because sediments will run downhill from the higher points of the landscape. And as Edge pointed out, a slowly transgressing sea will erode the landscape and even out its features. But a sea that rises fast enough will leave in place very dramatic features, as we see here in this image of the Hudson Canyon south of Long Island. The most dramatic parts of the canyon are in the lower right quadrant:

The Hudson River formed this undersea canyon when glaciers covered much of North America, but then the glaciers melted, sea levels rose, and now this ancient canyon is gradually filling in with sediment and adding to the geologic column.

--Percy

I did that picture on Paint myself. It works. Except the old roller mouse was easier to control.

I just keep thinking maybe some sensible person will come along and agree with me that it makes no sense for the Geologic Column to continue anywhere but the Geologic Column.

The flat layers of the strata don't just slide into place or settle, they are LAID DOWN FLAT AND HORIZONTAL. They often have extremely tight straight contact lines. Now I'm thinking in terms of explaining some elements of angular unconformities as the falling away of the vertical foreground where the formation is exposed, as at Siccar Point, some areas of the Great Unconformity and your own pictures. Could account for where the eroded material went in an interesting new way.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I think it may be flat and horizontal but the angle of view makes it hard to be sure. The problem with such messy formations is that so much happened to them after they were formed it's hard to reconstruct a reasonable history of how the upper and lower parts were put together. That's the problem with a few of the pictures you posted too.

I just keep thinking maybe some sensible person will come along and agree with me that it makes no sense for the Geologic Column to continue anywhere but the Geologic Column.

Oh, we all agree that it makes no sense for the Geologic Column to continue anywhere but the Geologic Column. You just don't understand what the Geologic Column is. I've given you several definitions, as have others, and none of these definitions exclude non-flat non-horizontal layers.

Faith writes: Yes, any deposition SHOULD fill in the gaps but as a matter of fact angular unconformities do not fill in the gaps and dips and valleys.

I don't know why you're having problems accepting this. If you gently let sand rain down onto any surface and accumulate, it will conform to all the irregularities of the surface. Nothing else is possible.

Most contact boundaries between layers are fairly flat because low lying regions became low by exposure to erosion, which lowers and evens out landscapes, or are flat because they're seafloor, which starts flat when produced from magma at oceanic ridges. But there are tons of examples of non-flat contact boundaries, and images of a number of them have been presented to you in this thread. These non-flat contact boundaries reflect the surface topography of a region before sedimentation began.

I'm told over and over again that erosion can flatten a surface like that,...

Erosion is flattening surfaces all over the world, and it has always done so, the softer material eroding first. No one can understand why you're having so much trouble accepting this.

Maybe you remember the movie The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain? I believe the story is fictional, but the movie tells how a hundred years ago townspeople added to the top of a local hill so that geographers would declare it a mountain. At the end of the movie they show modern day townspeople repeating the exercise because the mountain had become too short again because of...wait for it...erosion.

--Percy

I guess you can just definitionally make it mean whatever you want it to mean. Your pictures are awfully distorted which makes them hard to interpret. The one you posted here had to have been originally horizontal but distorted afterward. Since those layers take millions of years to form according to standard OE theory I'm still astonished that everybody here accepts that all that can come to an end and yet the idea of the Column or the Time Scale can continue. For years it was the originally horizontal stack that was the column, now it's anything you want it to be.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't know why you're having problems accepting this. If you gently let sand rain down onto any surface and accumulate, it will conform to all the irregularities of the surface. Nothing else is possible.

All I'm saying is that as a matter of observed fact this is not the case with angular unconformities. What we see there is oiften an amazingly tight flat horizontal contact line, no evidence of filling in of anything. I agree it SHOULD. The fact is it DOESN'T. Some other process explains those formations.

Most contact boundaries between layers are fairly flat because low lying regions became low by exposure to erosion..."

The thing is that many of the contact boundaries aren't just "fairly" flat, they are knife-edge tight and flat.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I just keep thinking maybe some sensible person will come along and agree with me that it makes no sense for the Geologic Column to continue anywhere but the Geologic Column. Oh, we all agree that it makes no sense for the Geologic Column to continue anywhere but the Geologic Column. You just don't understand what the Geologic Column is. I've given you several definitions, as have others, and none of these definitions exclude non-flat non-horizontal layers.

But they should ONLY include those. It makes absolutely no sense otherwise. I mean NO sense, NONE.

Faith writes: I just keep thinking maybe some sensible person will come along and agree with me that it makes no sense for the Geologic Column to continue anywhere but the Geologic Column.

No one will agree with you because you just like your own definitions better than the ones everyone else is using and agrees upon. I'm sure everyone would be glad to switch to your definitions if they made any sense, but they don't.

Wherever you might stand upon the surface of this Earth, you are standing atop a geological column. No location is an exception, and the specifics of the strata underlying any location matter not. Sediment can add to any local geologic column anywhere, regardless whether that column includes deformed or eroded stata.

--Percy

If you want to denote only the flat layers on under the Earth or under a given location, you may not redefine "geologic column" to mean that. I doubt there's a simple word for "only the flat layers on under the Earth or under a given location" because mostly nobody cares about that, but you don't get to redefine standard terms. Merriam-Webster: 1. a columnar diagram that shows the rock formations of a locality or region and that is arranged to indicate their relations to the subdivisions of geologic time 2 : the sequence of rock formations in a geologic column

Nothing in this definition disagrees with what I've been saying. A column is an upward-rising structure. You can't relocate upper levels of the column anywhere but on top of it and maintain its integrity as a column.

Free Dictionary: The vertical sequence of strata of various ages found in an area or region. Also known as column. The geologic time scale as represented by rocks.

Sometimes the column and the scale are discussed as if they were identical. In any case "a sequence of strata" is a column and a column is a vertical structure. You can't represent "various ages" physically without stacking them one on top of another physically.

Glossary of geologic terms: geologic column The arrangement of rock units in the proper chronological order from youngest to oldest.

Again a "column" is a vertical structure, a stack of layers in the case of the rocks, and there is no way to arrange these rock units "in the proper chronological order" unless they are stacked one on top of the other.

No mention of horizontality or flatness. None. The definition of the geologic column does not include flatness or horizontality of layers. There is no definition anywhere in which "geologic column" requires flat or horizontal layers. You are 110% wrong.

There is no need to mention the horizontality, that is something you can observe in any of the strata, that they were obviously originally horizontal although many of the stacks have been distorted later and have lost their horizontality. Still you can see it was there originally.

{ETA} Many drawings of the geologic column show flat interfaces for simplicity. These do not represent the actual flatness or lack thereof of the interface, or any folding within layers. Here's a diagram of a local geologic column (kurdistan) that is more (but not completely) representational of the actual geometry:

That diagram represents something so distorted I have no idea what. In any case LAYERS are always ORIGINALLY flat and horizontal. The condition they are in NOW after much distortion could be anything, but ORIGINALLY they were flat and horizontal.

No one will agree with you because you just like your own definitions better than the ones everyone else is using and agrees upon. I'm sure everyone would be glad to switch to your definitions if they made any sense, but they don't. Wherever you might stand upon the surface of this Earth, you are standing atop a geological column. No location is an exception, and the specifics of the strata underlying any location matter not. Sediment can add to any local geologic column anywhere, regardless whether that column includes deformed or eroded stata.

Then the whole idea of the Geologic Time Scale, which was built on the idea of a vertical stack of horizontal layers that are found here and there in various proportions, is false. If you don't have an ascending vertical structure, a column, you do not have a time scale represented by the rocks, which could only be physically represented by such an ascending vertical structure.

I think you are all mad as hatters.

which was built on the idea of a vertical stack of horizontal layers that are found here and there in various proportions

No, not just here and there. Its everywhere. Every single point on the surface of the Earth has layers below it. Those layers below it are called the "geological column" for that particular section of the surface.

Each section will have its own column. Some sections are bigger than others.