I still feel you are reading into it something that is not there. If you look at current deposition of sand, it comes from the land and is carried to the water. It may well settle out in the water, but the source material came from the highlands. Gravel beds settle first, then coarse sand, then fine sand as the water become more still, then silty sand, then sandy silt, then silt as the water grows deeper or quieter the sand turns to sandstone, the silt to shale. As the water deepens, the sandy layer is covered by silt as the water is less turbulant at greater depth. Again, local coastal currents may move the sand around, and storms may erode beaches and wash sand to deeper depths, but the general direction is the return to the sea.
Admittedly, it is a confusing terminology due to the definitions and limitations of language, and the authors saying the rising seas deposited sand inland is imprecise in a sense, though correct in that ultimately those deposits were water born, just not originated there. Much like if you deposit the proceeds from the sale of the Rolex watch you inherited, you deposit it, but you did not create or originate the funds or the watch from which they were derived.
I agree that at least much of the sand began as the granite craton was eroded. But, then, of course it ended up in the ocean or on the beach. Then, from there, it was (it seems to me) transported back onto the craton by the powerful flooding waters of the Sauk transgression.
But consider this: the same cannot be said for the clays that would become shale, in the sedimentary rock record. The Sauk transgressed over a bedrock granite craton that had no clay on it (let me know if you have a source that contradicts this)–rather, the source of the clay was solely the ocean. So, in the Sauk transgression, the shale–which overlay the sandstone–was simply marine. It did not begin as something eroded from the craton.
So, clay sediments did not simply accrue in an ancient inland sea. Rather, flooding ocean waters transported and deposited them upon the craton.
But think about something else, too: the popular claim is that the sedimentary rock layers (in their specific patterns of deposition, even) resulted simply from sediments building up on the inland seafloor, over long periods of time. I realize there is some evidence that limestones have formed under deep sea water (as I recall, in the Gulf of Mexico)–though, unlike limestones in the rock record, they contain no fossilized bones.
However, where is the evidence that sandstone and shale rock layers formed at the bottom of “shallow seas” (the inland seas)? How would diagenesis of these sediment layers, into rock layers, occur under water? Studies have shown that diagenesis of sediment layers requires deposition, compaction (where water is extracted by upper layers), and cementation by minerals.
Have you ever read of such a process occurring under hundreds of feet of ocean water?
The seas receded.making them on land.
Based on your allegiance to the bible, can there BE anything untrue within it? Maybe the untruthiness (if it exists) of the bible comes in its interpretation by humans. In your response here, you interpret the word “subdue” as a benign quest for knowledge and stewardship. That doesn’t fit my definition of subdue at all. Mine’s much more violent and unjust that yours. Who’s right?
Also, just a head’s up, quoting the bible to an atheist is unconvincing.
Sandstone and shale DO form underwater, but not in the way you are projecting. Here’s how it works: sand and silt erode off the high elevations into a sea. Gets buried by additional sediments. Lots of heavy heavy sediments push the sand and silt deeper. Time solidifies them and if enough time, pressure and heat ,the new sandstone and shale metamorphose into quartzite and slate. This can all happen under water but water is not necessary.
No it’s not. All opinion, attitude is not equal. All our truths are beliefs, philosophically, i.e. questionly, speaking. Justified - not revealed - true beliefs depend on validating - truthing - the justification process. When it’s false, the truth is. And no belief is outside a belief system.
Science is a belief system. So is the delusion of pseudoscience.
Probably the former. The Hebrew word leans more in that direction.
Well, you’ve put me in an awkward position. I’m supposed to respond to your definition of a biblical word, “subdue” (Hebrew, radah)…yet, I’m not supposed to quote Scripture to you to help you understand how that word was actually used!
Here’s the thing: Scripture qualifies–i.e., explains–Scripture. So, you don’t just isolate one passage from others that would serve to explain the usage of a word.
This same word, radah, is used in 1 Kings 5:15,16 to refer to what the supervisors (or, yes, stewards) did in their oversight of the workers who were building the Temple.
In fact, abusive rule was the very thing they had been delivered from, as they left Egypt!
So, yes, Genesis 1:26, 27 is describing stewardship that man and woman are to exercise over the rest of creation.
…uh, Evan, you are the one who brought the Bible into this discussion.
In other words, when the “seas” receded off the continent, they left what’s been called stacks of “ooze”? And, as the water evaporated from these sediments (over millions of years?), diagenesis occurred?
Yet, first, wouldn’t these stacks of sedimentary layers–over millions of years–significantly erode, as they were drying out? Imagine: the same winds that would dry them out would also erode them…especially over long periods of time.
Now, take a look at the actual rock record–for example, Google Image the Tonto Group of layers in the Grand Canyon. Notice the very sharply defined boundaries between each layer–no evidence at all of millions of years of erosion between them.
Also, the sedimentary rock layers are divided into sequences of varying lengths of time (five different “orders” of sequences)–and these sequences, that is, discrete packages of rock layers, are bounded above and below by erosion zones called “unconformities.”
So, if these sedimentary layers were formed under water–by virtually stationary waters–how would these unconformities (many of them formed in every megasequence) form?
Phil, I’m going to retract this statement since I have not actually read that there was no clay on the craton, when the Sauk transgression occurred.
But I will still maintain that the source of the clays in the Sauk transgression (and most other transgressions as well) were from the ocean. The quotes I sent you bear this out, as they speak of sediments sourced from “shallow marine” waters–such waters contain clay sediments.
You missed the point. The point is, science doesn’t care about either your or my opinion. It doesn’t care if we are religious or non-religious.
You didn’t make it. Science is opinion. Warranted opinion. Pseudoscience is not.
Yes, which would be required for nearly all well preserved fossils. What about the poorly preserved ones?
Eventually, yes.
As others stated, the coastal sediments reached thousands of feet of sediment in places, easily still seen when drilling for oil in coastal areas. Seas receded, uplifts happened. And yes, sometimes the top layers eroded away back to sea to form new deposits. In the region I live, we have shale, limestone and sandstone, with batholiths of granite poking through, formed at one time thousands of feet underground, uplifts happened, with those thousands of feet of sedimentary rock eroded away to expose them, and subsequently transported to the coastal plains and Gulf of Mexico. In some road cuts, you can see layers of shallow lagoons where trilobites left green layers of trilobite poop over long periods.
Now…can we specifically address the OP: “Did bones actually become fossilized in the sediments of ‘ancient’ epeiric (inland) seas on continents?”
We’ve noted that bones are rarely successful in escaping complete consumption, finally by bacteria–although, under special circumstances, where they were able to become buried in sediments, they have escaped.
But now, we still need to address the question, Did bones fossilize at the bottom of inland seas? Mainstream thinking is that all the marine fossils we find on the continents were formed at the bottom of ancient inland seas.
So, could bones have actually fossilized by permineralization at the bottom of these seas? This process of fossilization is typically explained as taking place after deep burial in muddy sediments–but not under water.
And, if bones did fossilize under water, in shallow, ancient inland seas, why don’t we find fossilized bones at the bottom of inland seas today?
Inland seas today include the Marmara Sea, the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, the Black Sea, Hudson Bay, James Bay, Seto Inland Sea, and the Caspian Sea.
Obviously, sea animals have continued to die in these seas, and their bones have drifted down into the sea sediments. So, why don’t we find their bones–and why aren’t they fossilized by permineralization–as we find in the fossil record?
But it’s not PERSONAL opinion. And this was the point.
Can you kind of get me caught up here? The thread gives the appearance of you genuinely trying to understand the question of your OP, but what are you trying to get at? It seems like you are saying that since marine fossils don’t readily fossilize, your alternative hypothesis is…? If I had to guess, I would guess that you would try to explain many such fossils as evidence of a global deluge some 4000 years ago. Is that correct?
Yours is. Your science.
This sounds like what have been called “The Whopper Sands”–massively deposited sands in the Gulf of Mexico, even as far as about 200 miles offshore.
Geologist and hydrologist, Tim Clarey (who worked several years for an oil company) points out that this massive sand deposit (dated during the Paleogene) was the product of the Tejas megasequence–when, after global sea levels peaked, there was an immediate drainage of Flood waters off the continents, with much of this drainage going south, to the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, this powerful drainage off the continent would also explain the erosion of the sedimentary layers you speak of here.
So, this sand deposit is certainly in keeping with the Flood model.
By the way, Phil, I, too, am from Texas–grew up in the Corpus Christi area.