Did bones actually become fossilized in the sediments of "ancient" epeiric (inland) seas on continents?

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

@donpartain

In other words, the sedimentary rock layers of the fossil record were not formed by in situ, stationary sediments.

Can you explain exactly how moving water can deposit anything with a particles that take multiple days to settle out of still water? Alongside shells that weigh over 100 grams?

@donpartain

The observations we report suggest that published interpretations of ancient lime muds and derived paleoceanographic conditions may need to be reevaluated.

That means “some of them might have had some water energy present” not, “all of them were transported”.

@donpartain

How do you suppose these survived?

On the rest of the continent, with their ranges shifting slowly with the water.

@donpartain

many nearly complete skeletons have been found

Pre-human whale populations were in the (very vague) neighborhood of 30,000,000. If we assume that that has been constant for the last 20,000,000 years (probably as good a guess as possible), and that they live an average of 50 years, then that would give 12,000,000,000 whale falls over that period. That is enough to produce a few hundred specimens, even with very low fossilization rates.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@donpartain

@Adrian_B

The article doesn’t actually say that whale bones are completely consumed in all circumstances

The OP seems to hold an impression that because some whale skeletons aren’t preserved, that this means that whale fossils would therefore never form under any condition observed anywhere on earth at any time in the current age. But the cited source suggests no such thing.

Notice below:

(PDF) How not to become a fossil-Taphonomy of modern whale falls (researchgate.net)

Few whale carcasses have been reported from shallow waters (Smith, personal

communication), which may be due to the high rate of scavenging and current activity that

destroy and disperse the bones. In deep water, whale carcasses endure longer, and it takes a

few years to several decades to completely destroy a skeleton (Smith and Baco 2003),

depending on the specific environmental conditions

Few whale carcasses have been reported from shallow waters (Smith, personal

communication), which may be due to the high rate of scavenging and current activity that

destroy and disperse the bones. In deep water, whale carcasses endure longer, and it takes a

few years to several decades to completely destroy a skeleton (Smith and Baco 2003),

depending on the specific environmental conditions

Few whale carcasses have been reported from shallow waters (Smith, personal

communication), which may be due to the high rate of scavenging and current activity that

destroy and disperse the bones. In deep water, whale carcasses endure longer, and it takes a

few years to several decades to completely destroy a skeleton (Smith and Baco 2003),

depending on the specific environmental conditions

“Few whale carcasses have been reported from shallow waters (Smith, personal communication), which may be due to the high rate of scavenging and current activity that destroy and disperse the bones. In deep water, whale carcasses endure longer, and it takes a few years to several decades to completely destroy a skeleton (Smith and Baco 2003), depending on the specific environmental conditions.”

What is a whale fall? (noaa.gov)

“The whale skeleton can support rich communities for years to decades , both as a hard substrate (or surface) for invertebrate colonization and as a source of sulfides from the decay of organic compounds of whale bones. Microbes live off of the energy released from these chemical reactions and form the basis of ecosystems for as long as the food source lasts.”

As you can see, from these two sources, a whale fall generates and supports a microbe community–down to the sulfides, resulting from the final stage of bone disintegration.

Sure, there might be a case or two of some bones that escaping total breakdown, but these would certainly be the exception.

It’s also significant that in the fossil record, where whale bones fossilized by permineralization, many nearly complete skeletons have been found–such as in the Atacama desert in Chile (over 40 nearly complete skeletons). Now…have you ever read of nearly complete whale skeletons lying on the present-day ocean floor?

So, obviously the fossil record was not at all the product of marine animals just dying, and their skeletons drifting down into sea sediments.

Because Jesus?

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@donpartain

And, how does one test–repeatedly–and then observe the test results of the hypothesis that a certain radioactive isotope has a half-life of 4.6 billion years?

Measure the radioactivity of a given mass. Repeat this as often as you think necessary.

[T_aquaticus]

@donpartain

"Experimental Deposition of Carbonate Mud From Moving Suspensions: Importance of Flocculation and Implications For Modern and Ancient Carbonate Mud Deposition

How would this produce 2,000 feet of broken up crinoids? In order to get these plates you have to have an animal that lives and dies. Again, there are deposits that are 2,000 feet thick made up almost entirely of crinoids.

[T_aquaticus]

@donpartain

The basic meaning of “empirical” is “experiential.” That is, conclusions reached by direct–repeatable–testing, and then observation of test results to determine if a hypothesis is true or false. Right?

So, how does one test–repeatedly–a past event, to determine whether or not a hypothesized event actually happened?

The past event is the hypothesis. You don’t observe the hypothesis. Hypotheses and observations are separate things. We are using observations in the present to test our hypotheses of what happened in the past.

@donpartain

And, how does one test–repeatedly–and then observe the test results of the hypothesis that a certain radioactive isotope has a half-life of 4.6 billion years?

Starlight. Naturally occurring nuclear reactors. Consilience between independent decay chains. Consilience between radiometric dating and non-radiometric dating methods.

1. The constancy of radioactive decay is not an assumption, but is supported by evidence:

• The radioactive decay rates of nuclides used in radiometric dating have not been observed to vary since their rates were directly measurable, at least within limits of accuracy. This is despite experiments that attempt to change decay rates (Emery 1972). Extreme pressure can cause electron-capture decay rates to increase slightly (less than 0.2 percent), but the change is small enough that it has no detectable effect on dates.

• Supernovae are known to produce a large quantity of radioactive isotopes (Nomoto et al. 1997a, 1997b; Thielemann et al. 1998). These isotopes produce gamma rays with frequencies and fading rates that are predictable according to present decay rates. These predictions hold for supernova SN1987A, which is 169,000 light-years away (Knödlseder 2000). Therefore, radioactive decay rates were not significantly different 169,000 years ago. Present decay rates are likewise consistent with observations of the gamma rays and fading rates of supernova SN1991T, which is sixty million light-years away (Prantzos 1999), and with fading rate observations of supernovae billions of light-years away (Perlmutter et al. 1998).

• The Oklo reactor was the site of a natural nuclear reaction 1,800 million years ago. The fine structure constant affects neutron capture rates, which can be measured from the reactor’s products. These measurements show no detectable change in the fine structure constant and neutron capture for almost two billion years (Fujii et al. 2000; Shlyakhter 1976).

2. Radioactive decay at a rate fast enough to permit a young earth would have produced enough heat to melt the earth (Meert 2002).

3. Different radioisotopes decay in different ways. It is unlikely that a variable rate would affect all the different mechanisms in the same way and to the same extent. Yet different radiometric dating techniques give consistent dates. Furthermore, radiometric dating techniques are consistent with other dating techniques, such as dendrochronology, ice core dating, and historical records (e.g., Renne et al. 1997).

4. The half-lives of radioisotopes can be predicted from first principles through quantum mechanics. Any variation would have to come from changes to fundamental constants. According to the calculations that accurately predict half-lives, any change in fundamental constants would affect decay rates of different elements disproportionally, even when the elements decay by the same mechanism (Greenlees 2000; Krane 1987).
   CF210: Constancy of Radioactive Decay Rates

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

@donpartain

conditions

“Few whale carcasses have been reported from shallow waters (Smith, personal communication), which may be due to the high rate of scavenging and current activity that destroy and disperse the bones. In deep water, whale carcasses endure longer, and it takes a few years to several decades

Here’s an interesting article of whale bones from a shallow area with minimal evidence of scavaging. It seems they don’t know what killed them, but perhaps was a red tide. Perhaps whatever killed them prevented scavengers from destroying the bones. The mystery of the ancient whale fossils in Chile’s Atacama Desert offers clues on beached whales - Vox

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

That is reminiscent of the fun story of the girdled rocks because it took place in… the Atacama Desert. It’s another of several instances that I have never seen a YEC even try to answer. Maybe that’s because truth has something to do with reality. (I’m still waiting to hear back about Hawaiian Island/seamount chain – both were posted in the first reply to the OP.)

The World’s Largest Rock Tumbler is an Unusual Testimony to an Ancient Earth

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@donpartain

So, how does one test–repeatedly–a past event, to determine whether or not a hypothesized event actually happened?

In a nutshell: you measure things and then do the maths.

First: cross-checks between different methods. If two or more ways of measuring something (such as the age of a rock layer) give the same result, that is a pretty reliable indication that those methods are, in fact, accurate. If several different methods give the same result, that is an even stronger indication that those methods are accurate.

Second: testable predictions. You ask two questions: what would we expect to see if this hypothesis were true, and do we really see it? For example, if humans and dinosaurs really had coexisted within the past six thousand years, we would have sequenced the entire T-Rex genome by now. If the universe really were only six thousand years old, we would not see stars further away than six thousand light years. If radioactive decay rates had ever been high enough to squeeze all the evidence into a young earth timescale, we would not be here to tell the tale because it would have released enough heat to vaporise the entire planet.

Third: understanding the physical laws that are involved. The thing you need to understand here is that the laws of physics don’t work in isolation: they are all tightly coupled to each other into a coherent whole. If you change one, it has a knock-on effect onto just about everything else. This allows you to put tight constraints on the extent to which things such as the speed of light or nuclear decay rates could have been different in the past, because if these things had been different even by a small amount, the effects would have been very extensive and very far-reaching. Like, atoms and molecules not existing.

@donpartain

And, how does one test–repeatedly–and then observe the test results of the hypothesis that a certain radioactive isotope has a half-life of 4.6 billion years?

Directly. By counting the number of atoms that decay in a given period of time. You can do this using a Geiger counter or a scintillation tube. You can then calculate the half life from the average frequency of decay events, and how much of the isotope concerned you have to begin with. For example, for uranium-238, with a half-life of 4.4 billion years, a one gram sample would see about 13,000 nuclear decay events per second.

And no, you can’t just hand-wave the result away on the grounds that it’s calculated rather than being measured directly. To do so is to deny the legitimacy of mathematics itself. It would also give you a free pass to let you challenge speeding tickets, because police radar works by calculating your speed (using the Doppler effect) rather than measuring it directly as well. Good luck getting that one to stand up in court.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

I remember a brilliant demonstration of the impossibility of Sci Fi robot AI last century, as an analogy nicely paradoxically for Asimov’s point above, and more.

A UK university took the best self propelled robot at the time, possibly even a remote linked to a computer, and tried to program it to find a guy standing in the middle of a field. They then got a swarm of autonomous lawn mower / hoover level bots that could communicate.

Guess what found him? Quick. Frighteningly quick.

Ignorance - the Cloverfield monster - out-competes and stalks and overwhelms knowledge (which blurs in the AI and the guy). It’s actually attracted to it as prey.

On this site.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@donpartain

The basic meaning of “empirical” is “experiential.” That is, conclusions reached by direct–repeatable–testing, and then observation of test results to determine if a hypothesis is true or false. Right?

Wrong. ‘Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.’ Nothing in there about direct or repeatable testing. Hence my example of the data from SN1987: not direct or repeatable, but definitely empirical.

Others have explained how one tests hypotheses about the past. It’s not particularly complicated and it’s something humans routinely do.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

One bone preservation:

The basic problem with the argument is that it is an unjustified uniformitarian extrapolation. The reality is that there are a lot of different environments out there, some really lousy for preserving bones (e.g., a rainforest floor) and some really good for preserving bones (e.g., a low-oxygen area on the ocean floor with a moderate rate of sedimentation.) Over millions of years, some skeletons end up getting preserved and many don’t.

Many shallow-water areas have high rates of sedimentation, so bones get buried relatively quickly.
Note that the wording is “destroy and disperse”. Dispersing does not destroy the bones, but merely scatters them. And in fact, most fossil whale bones, like the boxes I have in the lab downstairs, are scattered around. There’s quite a lot of research on taphonomy - the process from death to preservation as a fossil.

The fact that archaeologists find bones while excavating biblical sites is a problem for the claim that bones always decay rapidly under ordinary circumstances. Whales are big, and getting rid of a dead one is challenging (e.g., Oregon's Exploding Whale - 2012 KATU AM Northwest (KATU's 50th Anniversary) - YouTube ). Even with a bunch of bone-eating scavengers around, bones are not necessarily completely lost. A classic example of this is Buckland’s hyena den. Kirkdale Cave, discovered in 1821, had lots of animal bones. William Buckland noticed that a lot of the bones were chewed on, that there were a lot of hyena bones, and that there were phosphate-rich lumps on the cave floor. With comparison to modern hyenas (including persuading a chemist to analyze the fossil and modern excrement), Buckland was able to convincingly show that the cave had been a den for hyenas; it would now be assigned to the Pleistocene. But lots of bones remained recognizable even though a hyena pack was feasting on them.

More generally, the foundational error of modern young-earth creationism is treating parts of the Bible as if they were modern-style historical and scientific narratives, not connected to the rest of the Bible. Ironically, that is also the approach of most hostile skeptics. In reality, the Bible is a unified theological treatise, written by people in a very different culture about 2000-3000 years ago. The Bible needs to be read in the overall context rather than as isolated parts, and we need to understand how people then wrote and thought to see where modernistic ways of interpretation might be incorrect.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5789 has a detailed analysis of the processes evident associated with a fossil ichthyosaur. Note that the various steps each take a while and could not happen during a flood geology-style global flood rapidly burying everything.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

Smith & Baco (2003) is available at https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/csmith/Files/Smith%20and%20Baco%202003.pdf ; they do not say that all skeletons get completely broken down.

[donpartain]

@rsewell

Such a hypothesis can in principle be valid, but in practice is rarely consistent or stands up to scrutiny. This is the case here.

So, the hypothesis that marine fossils formed at the bottom of ancient seas can still be “valid, but in practice is rarely consistent or stands up to scrutiny. This is the case here.” Are you acknowledging that it’s “rarely consistent” or “rarely stands up to scrutiny” that marine fossils were formed at the bottom of ancient seas? If not, please explain exactly what you are saying in this comment.

[T_aquaticus]

@donpartain

So, the hypothesis that marine fossils formed at the bottom of ancient seas can still be “valid, but in practice is rarely consistent or stands up to scrutiny. This is the case here.”

My hypothesis is that you can never win the lottery. To test this hypothesis I buy 10 tickets. None of the tickets win. Have I supported my hypothesis?

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@T_aquaticus

@donpartain

So, the hypothesis that marine fossils formed at the bottom of ancient seas can still be “valid, but in practice is rarely consistent or stands up to scrutiny. This is the case here.”

My hypothesis is that you can never win the lottery. To test this hypothesis I buy 10 tickets. None of the tickets win. Have I supported my hypothesis?

This article by a veteran Microsoft programmer will be instructive:

One in a million is next Tuesday

In short: when things happen for a long time, or at a high enough frequency, very unusual and unlikely events become surprisingly common.

I’ve actually seen this happen – and had to fix the resulting bugs – on one or two occasions myself.

[donpartain]

@rsewell

You are attempting to make this observation concerning whale bones into a test not of fossilization, but an extraordinarily naïve and ridiculous test for the entire existence of the inland sea

In using whale bones as a test case (for which there is an abundant amount of evidence, due to the many current studies of whale falls), I am arguing from the greatest to the least concerning what happens to bones that are deposited in an ocean or sea. If such large bones are gradually, yet completely, consumed in less than 100 years–and so, unable to fossilize in the ocean depths, as is popularly hypothesized–then what would the probability be for the rest of animal bones, much smaller in size, of reaching ocean depths intact enough to be fossilized over millions of years, as is claimed?

In fact, I’ve given a very real example of such smaller bones that also drifted down into ocean sediments–namely, the bones of the 1500 men who went down with the Titanic in 1912. The Titanic wreckage, of course, was discovered recently. Yet, all the bones of these 1500 men were no where to be found. In fact, in some cases, their trousers were found–but no bones inside them.

But think beyond this. If the hypothesis is correct that the bones of marine animals drifted down into the ocean sediments and were fossilized there, shouldn’t we be finding their bones all over the ocean floor, at various depths (the ancient inland seas were supposedly “shallow seas”–and BTW, whale fall studies show that in shallower seas, whale bones are completely consumed even faster)?

So, where are all these bones? In fact, why don’t we find them along with fossilized–or at least fossilizing–bones? The oceans certainly qualify as “ancient seas.”

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

Of course, we can find old bones that are unfossilized lots of places. I remember a bison skull my dad found in an old creek bed in West Texas, probably buried in a flash flood 150 years ago or so. If undisturbed, it may well have fossilized in 10,000 years or so. so not everything is degraded. On the other hand, tens of thousands of buffalo roamed over those prairies and disappeared without a trace, as you might point out. If rare events are common, that points to long periods of time.
It seems one question young earthists have to answer is why are the animals we find in fossils beds not walking around now, and why are animals walking around now not found in fossil beds, with a few obvious exceptions.

[donpartain]

@rsewell

Furthermore, your test (which is based on uniformitarian thought, BTW), only applies to common case whale fall, where the body come to rest on firm sediment and remains exposed to oxygenated water.

I’m not sure what you have in mind when you say “firm sediments.” But I’m sure you know that sediments can be “several tens of kilometers” thick, according to Wikipedia.

And you are mistaken about whale bones today remaining “exposed to oxygenated water.” According to studies, there are four stages of bone breakdown in whale falls. And in the third stage…

Whale fall - Wikipedia

“In the third stage, sulfophilic bacteria anaerobically break down the lipids embedded in the bones”

[donpartain]

@glipsnort

Well, no. First, you aren’t actually testing a hypothesis; you’re looking for any data that will support a fixed conclusion that you didn’t come to based on empirical evidence. Second, the hypothesis that fossils are all only a few thousand years old was decisively falsified two hundred years ago; the immense weight of evidence from numerous fields of science that has accumulated in the two centuries since then mean that this isn’t remotely a viable hypothesis. Third, your evidence doesn’t really test the hypothesis. Fossilization of skeletons is a rare event. Observing that fossilization did not occur in a handful of observed cases of whale falls tells you just about nothing about whether it ever occurs.

First, thanks for the supernova/neutrino example relating to empirical evidence. I’ll give this some thought.

The hypothesis concerning the origin of marine fossils is basically “Marine fossils resulted from the bones of marine animals sinking into the sediments of ancient inland seas.” And I am arguing that this hypothesis has been tested repeatedly–and, o.k., I won’t say “falsified,” but at least strongly made suspect–in whale fall studies, where even the largest marine animal bones are found to undergo four stages of deterioration (and in the process, spawning ecosystems around the bones), until completely consumed (in less than 100 years)…and so, unable to fossilize…

And the implications should be obvious: if even these massive marine bones were consumed rather than fossilized, what is the likelihood that all other–much smaller–bones were fossilized in sea sediments?
In fact, I have given the example of the 1500 men who went down with the Titanic. The wreckage, of course, has recently been discovered–but not the bones of the 1500 men; even the trousers of several of them were found down in the wreckage…but no bones in those trousers… They had–like the whale bones–been completely consumed…with no prayer of ever becoming fossilized in these sea sediments.

You dismiss the whale falls as having no significance since there were only a “handful” of cases. Yet, actually there have been much more than a “handful” of such studies–and they have all been consistent in their findings: complete consumption of the bones. Wikipedia (under “Whale Falls”) even says, “Researchers estimate that 690,000 carcasses/skeletons of the nine largest whale species are in one of the four stages of succession at any one time.” Much more than “a handful,” wouldn’t you agree?

In fact, if marine animal bones fossilized at the bottom of ancient inland seas, then why don’t we find fossilized marine animal bones at the bottom of any present-day ancient sea or ocean–like the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian–or even shallower seas (the ancient inland seas were supposedly “shallow seas”)?

In other words, where is the present-day “supernovas/neutrino”-type data we can observe that would supply “empirical evidence” that marine animal bones have ever fossilized in sea sediments? Do you see what I’m saying?