Re: pollen test of Flood geology
David Campbell (bivalve@mailserv0.isis.unc.edu)
Wed, 10 Sep 1997 15:28:23 -0400>At 11:58 AM 9/10/97 -0400, David wrote:
>
>> Most of these lived (and live) in the oceans and are found
>>worldwide in enormous numbers.
>
>As a palynologist I would take issue with that premise....
Pollen (except for seagrasses, which I've never heard of as fossil pollen)
is largely terrestrial in origin and shows strong provinciality based on
climate, biogeography, etc. Some dinoflagellates, many diatoms, and a few
representatives of other microfossil groups occur in fresh water. However,
the vast majority of microfossils are marine, i.e., nannofossils, most
foraminifera, most ostracods, radiolarians, silicoflagellates, tintinnids,
conodonts, pteropods, etc. All of these groups have been used around the
world to correlate sediments. Most species in the oceans today are
worldwide within a broad range of temperature tolerance. These patterns of
distribution are also true in the fossil record; e.g., siliceous-skeletoned
taxa (radiolarians and diatoms especially) are abundant today in equatorial
waters with upwelling. In the Pacific, where the plate has been moving
slowly north to northwest, the location of abundant siliceous microfossils
is further north as one drills deeper, corresponding to the ancient
vicinity of the equator. I cannot think of a way to accumulate such
numbers of microfossils in changing patterns within one ocean in a short
period of time.
The presence of occasional unresolved anomalies seems to be a
weaker objection than failure to explain the general pattern.
David Campbell