Growing the Geologic Column

Not as long as you think.ABE And by the way, speaking of sediments continuing to deposit there, shouldn't they be forming a horizontal upper surface? Isn't that what fresh loose sediments do, especially in water?Or maybe more to the point, if they are supposed to be forming the next layer in the Geo Column that IS what they would need to do but they don't seem to be doing that, just following the general deformation of the column.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry for the namecalling.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That is not a horizontal surface no matter how much vertical exaggeration there is. And such exaggeration in the GS bears on absolutely nothing I've ever discussed about it so why bring it up.Let's see. If that "Triassic" salt has supposedly been rising for millions of years but if the reality is it's been rising for only a few thousand I wonder when we might expect those domes to surface in real time rather than OE fantasy time. Anybody calculated their rate of rise?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Here's that diagram with a dotted line added to show exactly where the Plio-Pleistocene divides from the Miocene, which I did because my eyes are getting bad and it was hard to make out that boundary.That looks like a layer that was already there to me, that got deformed right along with the others as the salt worked on them, not new sediments at all. And the salt has certainly gone right up through it too.

deletedEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : taking back angry talk

Here's a version of that diagram where I've argued that you can tell by the pattern of fault lines that the strata, up to the Base tertiary, were already all in place when the faulting and deformation occurred. I'd also argue that the salt dome pushing up through the Base tertiary includes that layer ni the same order of things despite the fact that the faults don't go up through it. In any case you can prove by the fault lines which strata were already in place but you can't prove by the absence of faults that a particular layer wasn't already in place with the rest of them

Much later: Taking it all back. It's poisoning me.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If you're going to say the uppermost layer is as good as horizontal based on the vertical exaggeration, and I agree it is great, then you might as well say that entire formation is horizontal from bottom to top, and in any case the Plio-Pleistocene layer follows the contour of those beneath it though it should have a clearly horizontal surface even at that scale if it's really new deposition.

Can only assume it got deformed in that particular way. The evidence that includes it with the other layers as already there is the fault lines that penetrate into it from the layers below, most clearly those to the left of the salt dome, and the salt dome itself which rises right through it. Isn't it clear that the green layer was already there? It extends all the way from left to right, broken by many fault lines. The separate sections of it wouldn't have been laid down individually, it had to be a continuous layer that was displaced by the faults. By the tan layer you mean on the left that says Oceanic crust? No, that's not part of the strata.And all the pink wavy layers were there because they also stretch the full width of the diagram, and so does the red Albian. It really looks quite straightforward to me. Layers get laid down as one continuous deposit.Also if any were deposited later, they should have a different surface than the ones already deformed beneath them, because they would always deposit horizontally and have an originally flat upper surface that would deform separately. The Albian on the left shows that sort of difference I would expect, except that its upper surface conforms to the wavy pattern to the right so that difference on the left has to have some other cause.I've wondered what that green layer is because it stayed straight didn't get warped like the ones that are wavy, just displaced by the faults. The salt layer was originally above it and has clearly deformed along with all the rest of them.The only real question is whether the one at the top labeled Base tertiary was already there, and there is a question about that because no faults go up through it. But I'd argue that its nonhorizontal surface and the fact that the salt dome pushes it up shows it too was already there along with the others.

Just what you said here about my position makes you my enemy.And how can you call a "position" dishonest and ignorant without calling the person that? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : taking back angry talk

Any given fault line proves that all the layers it penetrates were there at that time. You could argue that shorter fault lines occurred before they were all in place but there's really no proof for that, it would just be a supposition. And the four shorter lines on the right between the two longer faults all had to occur at the same time to form that whole unit with the Jurassic shelf section. That leaves the one short fault on the far left,Multiple tectonic events doesn't change the fact that a single layer is laid down as one length from right to left, it isn't laid down a segment here and a segment there but as one length. The faults then distort the layers, in multiple events fine, but that doesn't change the fact of how layers get deposited as one unit. I've taken all that into account. If a fault penetrates through all the layers they were clearly all in place at THAT time, but you can't tell when any of the faults occurred in relation to each other so you can't make any assumptions about supposed earlier depositions. You could say that the very short fault on the left occurred before any of the other layers above it were there, just because it only goes through the lower layers, but that's not really provable either.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I already knew that.

But that would show up as a different upper surface on the new deposit (originally horizontal always) from the one it's depositing on which would have been distorted by the fault. I don't see that kind of thing anywhere on the diagramEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

I already took into account that it wouldn't maintain horizontality but it should at first since it would just lie over whatever was already there, distorted or not, just not after being distorted itself.Here:
It looks to me like it is.

yes the brown and the orange should also be more offset, but the main point of the diagram was to show that new layers after a fault would not conform to the shape of the earlier ones, either when just deposited or after the fault was extended. And that diagram shows many differences in shape of layers so there's no problem with such a situation being recorded there.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : remove evil talk