Without any uniformitarian assumptions, can you identify which fireplace is made of river rock?
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During the Zuni (Cretaceous) megasequence, over 2300 feet of sediment was deposited on the North American continent–most of it is shale, from clay off the ocean floor. A large percentage of the sediment is also sand–and the sandstone layers contain lots of marine life (molluscs, bi-valves, gastropods, various kinds of fish, and marine reptiles); so we know this was not just terrigenous sand.
You deny tsunamis had anything to do with this. So, what kind of hydraulics do you believe accounts for 2300 feet of mostly ocean sediment, deposited during the Zuni megasequence (and, by the way, this megasequence transported and deposited the greatest ocean sediment amounts even on other continents–especially Africa)?
Yes, I noticed Timothy’s reference to the K-T boundary. This boundary corresponds to the unconformity separating the Zuni from the Tejas; it is an erosion zone caused by the regressing (or retreating) waters of the Zuni megasequence, though some might argue it was caused by the transgressing water flow of the Tejas.
It is referred to as one of five “mass extinctions”–each one of which was actually an erosion zone, an unconformity separating one megasequence from another. However, instead of saying it represents millions of years, we catastrophists say the extinctions were simply times various kinds of life forms were destroyed by the flooding waters of that megasequence. In the first three megasequences, the ocean level was fairly shallow, so land animals could flee to higher ground (thus, layers of these sequences contain almost entirely marine life). However, beginning with the Absaroka, the sea level was high enough to begin overwhelming land animals. Then, the Zuni and Tejas–with the highest sea levels–overwhelmed even massive dinosaurs; the dinosaur “graveyards” portray their en masse efforts to flee the rising, turbulent waters.
So, yes, I believe the species Timothy named did become extinct after being drowned out of existence by these inescapable waters.
I still would.
You get a partial credit here. You may be pleased to know that geologists do not associate the K-T boundary with millions of years, but accept catastrophism in this case, with extinctions happening in very abrupt fashion in geological terms. The meteor which created the Chicxulub crater truly wrecked apocalyptic havoc on Earth, and most agree it was the precipitating event in the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, although there is discussion of other factors such as the Deccan volcanism. The signature iridium enriched layer is found in locations all over the world. Dinosaurs, large or small, are never found above this layer, large mammals are never found below. So uniformitarianism or catastrophism is not about presuppositions, but about compelling evidence.
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YEC catastrophism is, I’m sorry to say. Their interpretation of Genesis is presupposed to be infallible, ■■■■ the evidence.
I don’t doubt this is what we all value the most.
So, Dale, here is our situation: we know that during the Zuni mega sequence (Cretaceous) some force of ocean water managed to transport and deposit upon the North American continent over 2300 ft. of mostly ocean sediment—more specifically, about 10.5 million cubic kilometers of such sediment (and much much more on the African continent). So, you and Ron have argued against tsunamis being that force of water. So what hydraulics do you believe moved such massive amounts of sediment upon the continents?
I will use the Sauk mega sequence to illustrate what I’m saying. We know that the flooding ocean waters were laden with over 3 million cubic kilometers of ocean sediment—plus billions of sea creatures from the marine shallows. Plus, we know it went from west to east—it thinned from the west coast eastward. And we know that as the water transgressed across the craton, it was depositing huge amounts of this sediment according to Walthers Law (fining-up); the Tonto group in the Grand Canyon exemplifies this. We also know that it managed to deposit its ocean sediment, along with the sea life that had been living in it, on both sides of the Transcontinental Arch, even into the New England states and Canada.
But according to old-earthers, it took about 56 million years for the Sauk transgression and regression to deposit its load of sediment and sea life. This means the flooding would have been super super slow. You seem to be saying it would just be picking up new sediment as it went. But at such a pace, it would not be able to even hold its own sediment load, let alone pick up new sediment. There is no way sediment from the Sauk would have been able to make it up to New England.
The individual grains washed off the yet-higher land and had the marine organisms live on them. Eventually, essentially all oceanic sediment is either terrigenic or biogenic. How long it took to turn into rock is immaterial to the issue. If the ocean lifted the sediment off the seabed and dumped it all over the continent, then every deposit would be highly sorted (which a cursory glance at most deposits would disprove), and all the fossils would be badly broken.
I will add materials composing the layers to my stratigraphic sequence.
The sequence (going down through layers which show unambiguous evidence of having been above sea level in between their depositions) goes from shelly sand to shell hash or limestone to shelly mud, shell hash or limestone, to mostly leached limestone for awhile, to an aquitard dense mud.
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It seems you do not accept the rise and fall of the land masses in response to the shifting tectonic plates. Obviously, the forces that transport sediment are gravity and tectonic activity. Ocean sediments sink to the bottom, the bottom is lifted up by shifting plates, and sediments are now above sea level. As mentioned, we can measure it happening today.
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As an example: with a megatsunami, why is Santeevoluta only found as molds in the Castle Hayne, and Triplofusus cronlyensis and Scaphella precursor are only found in the Waccamaw (which are within 10 miles of each other in some cases), given that they are the same size and of vaguely similar shape?
Why can I find 150 mm Mercenaria campechiensis and 2,000 2-7 mm Caecum at the same small quarry (if you want to help me sort them, let me know 
)?
Why are Haminoea, Limacina, Raeta, Cochlodesma, complete Eulima, or any number of others, ever found, if everything is getting smashed by the boiling, churning slurry oceans?
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This paper registers many of the misconceptions @donpartain seems to has been proselytizing here:
Also, this article for AiG
The Sedimentary Record Demonstrates Minimal Flooding of the Continents During Sauk Deposition
And from ICR
Grappling with Megasequences
Laurence L. Sloss would have been aghast at how his work has been appropriated and misrepresented.
Do you have a reference for your data here? Where is the evidence that there is any ocean sediment which was transported? The transport did not happen, so there is no need of any hydraulics whatsoever. What marine sediment is present is due to the presence of the inland sea for millions of years.
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I’m not a geologist, but I would think it would be the same processes that are slowly depositing ocean deposits right now.
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I do. Rational arguments based solely on the evidence, without the presupposition that your interpretation of Genesis is infallible, would be worth way more, because without that, the evidence is worthless.
YECism has at least one major theological problem in addition to its presumption of infallible interpretation. Since it doesn’t seem like you’ve been following this other conversation, “Is the fossil evidence modified?”, I would invite you to look at it, starting about here, perhaps, where we begin to address it.
Creationism in general does not value compelling evidence the most. From the AiG statement of faith:
No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation.
Timothy Clarey’s paper is a work of theology, not geology.
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And every YEC is an infallible interpreter except for their young earth colored glasses.
The ones I actually know are more sensible, fortunately.
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The Zuni sequence includes a huge number of distinct layers, including about half of the Jurassic and the Cretaceous. (A random example is at Abstract: Sequence Stratigraphy of Late Mesozoic Rocks of the Colorado Plateau, by D. Nummedal; #91004 (1991) ) Each layer has evidence of how it formed, which can be seen by studying its geological features. They cannot be produced by a single giant wave. There are hundreds of different zones with different types of ammonites as well as different microfossils. Most larger fossils show somewhat slower change, but there are numerous zones marked by changes in the types of all kinds of fossils. Oysters, inoceramids, and rudists are a some important index fossils that are large, bottom-living clams that would not be moved around in the same way as planktonic microfossils or ammonites. There are also major changes in the types of fossil leaves and pollen, in the vertebrates, in corals, in sea urchins, etc. Many beds preserve fragile specimens that would have been destroyed by the wave you are proposing. There are reefs, there are trackways with drips of mud, there are thin layers of volcanic ash, there are land and freshwater deposits, there are calm marine conditions, there are massive evaporites; none of those could be deposited by a single giant wave, or even by lots of big waves. If you actually examine the geological evidence, you do not find support for a young earth position. All young earth claims since the late 1700’s have been attempting to explain away the geologic evidence, plausible only to people who do not know the geology well (or who aren’t thinking about the geology). They are not based on the evidence of the rocks; they are attempts to impose a young-earth position regardless of the scientific evidence, without considering whether the young-earth interpretation of the Bible might be at fault.
The dinosaur herds aren’t buried in ocean sediment. It’s river sediment. Occasionally, an individual dinosaur got washed out to sea (or pulled into the water by a predator such as Deinosuchus), so there are a few dinosaurs in ocean sediments, but most are in terrestrial settings. A giant wave like what you propose should produce far more mixing of ocean and land materials than what we see. You’re also mixing up the occasional buried herd (which happens from time to time with modern large mammals) with the areas that have a lot of dinosaurs, but not as a single group. Another find in the area of the Alberta dinosaurs was a slab of rock covered in gaping shells of freshwater clams. (It may be findable online in one of the virtual tours of the Royal Tyrrell Museum.) The sediment in the rock shows the traces of the clams burrowing. It tells a clear story. A stream full of mussels got a pile of sand dumped on it due to a flood (certainly not on the scale of flood geology claims, as the clams only had several centimeters to dig up through to get back to the surface). But the sand diverted the water, and the clams were left high and dry when they reached the surface. That could only happen in a land setting, with some time of exposure, not within a giant wave. A giant wave should mix up everything across the land surface. But the fossil dinosaur herds are herds, not a mix of all the different kinds of dinosaurs around. There are major changes in the types of dinosaurs present in the different layers, which likewise does not make sense in your single giant wave model.
If you were to try to use your megatsunami model to find oil, you would quickly run into problems. To find oil, a model needs to give specific details, not merely sound impressive. Exactly how big is this wave? Which layers were produced by it and which weren’t? Where would there be a high enough concentration of dead stuff to produce significant amounts of oil or gas? Where would those concentrations of dead stuff have experienced enough heat and pressure to turn into oil or gas, but not so much as to completely cook it away? Where are the layers with enough holes to hold oil or gas, with an impermeable layer above to trap the oil or gas underground instead of letting it leak out at the surface where bacteria can eat it?
No young-earth model answers such questions, except to the extent that they answer them incorrectly (for example, a giant tsunami would produce a giant jumble of material, likely to have plenty of dead stuff and holes to hold oil and gas, but nothing that would cap it and prevent leaking out. But we don’t see those deposits at the scale predicted by your model; we only see the occasional regional tsunami deposit associated with things such as an asteroid impact or the side of a volcanic island falling into the ocean). This is why no oil company uses young-earth models - they are no good when it comes to actually describing how the world works.
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Phil, from what I have read–in both old-earth and young-earth articles–there was a definite uni-directional flow of sediment from west to east, across North America: from the west coast to the east coast.
Notice the article Ron submitted, entitled “Paleogeography of the Late Cretaceous of the Western Interior of Middle North America–Coal Distribution and Sediment Accumulation,” says this: “Lithofacies grade, west to east, from coarse-grained sandstone facies, through interbedded sandstone and shale, to shale, chalk, and ultimately to limestone.” So, “west to east” grading…from coarse to fine sediment layers: so, sandstone to shale to limestone. Such lithofacies are characteristic, according to Walther’s Law, of a transgressive water flow, where sediment is deposited with sand (sandstone) overlain by clay (shale) overlain by carbonate (limestone).
So, this pictures water flow from the west coast to the east coast–a transgressive flow.
This is also supported by this geological diagram: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSoegk5Md-PFOMlJ6tww9-1P7sLEErTqcDhlMIne8hRg3Zp-EHl8vuTeXUpsFr8oQeiwjM&usqp=CAU
Notice how the sediment layer deposits are thickest in the west, and then thin towards the east (circumventing the Transcontinental Arch).
Now, in view of this, I see a problem with the popular idea that sediment layers on the craton were simply laid by the rise (uplift) and fall (subsidence) of the continent (six times, no less). Assuming such actions would spread these layers across the continent, what direction(s) would the water flow take? It seems to me that as the continent would rise from beneath sea level, the water flow would go both east and west–separated by the Transcontinental Arch (the high point of the continent). So, the sediment layers should show sediment being deposited from west to east on the east side of the Arch, and sediment being deposited from east to west on the west side of the Arch. Yet, again, this is not at all what we find in the actual geological record, which shows only a west to east, transgressive flow.
And, in such a scenario, the sediment layers would be thickest at the Arch, and thin toward the coasts. However, what we actually find is that the sediment layers are thickest in the West and then thin toward the East.