Re: Testing in historical science

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 06:19:20 -0600

At 11:25 PM 11/18/97 -0600, bpayne@voyageronline.net wrote:
>Glenn Morton wrote:
>
>> Now lets see if we can show that trilobites
>> didn't live at the same time as mammals. Mammals first appear in the
>> Triassic, Trilobites died in the Permian. Everywhere around the world, the
>> Triassic is deposited above the Permian which means that the Permian is
>> older and the trilobites contained in them are older. The triassic strata
>> of the Rocky mountains lies atop the trilobite bearing paleozoics, including
>> rocks like the Leadville Limestone. The leadville is crinoidal and stained
>> red at the top by the overlying triassic redbeds. The equivalent is the
>> Madison in Montana, the Redwall in the grand Canyon, the Rundle in Canada,
>> the Keokuk/Burlington in the Midcontinent, the Ft. Payne in Tennessee and
>> Georgia. Since the crinoidal limestones can be traced far from where the
>> mammal bearing triassic strata are, these regions also must be older than
>> the Triassic.
>
>What you are referring to as equivalent, I assume you mean to be time
>equivalent. I am suggesting that what appears to be time equivalent,
>based upon fossil assemblages and evolutionary assumptions, may in fact
>not be time equivalent but rather facies equivalent. If the trilobites
>(T - see below) lived in shallow seas and the mammals (M)lived on land,
>and if the land sediments transgressed over the shallow sea deposits (as
>we might envision if massive erosion of the land occured during the
>Flood), then mammals would have lived contemporaneously with trilobites
>and yet be buried above trilobites. In other words, the time line would
>cut diagonally across the formation boundary between mammals and
>trilobites.
>
> Transgression of Land Deposits ---->
>
> MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ T L
> TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT I I
> M N
> E E
>
>> Since one can follow these beds immediately below the
>> Triassic so far, there is very little place for the trilobites to live at
>> the same time as the mammals.
>
>Depends upon your starting assumptions. As you can see above, I have
>plenty of room for the trilobites to live at the same time as mammals.

In order to do this in the context of a global flood one can only have one
transgression of land over the sea. This is because once the land is
covered by the sea waters, the animals who live in the sea should be brought
in with the sea water and then found mixed with the land animals. We have
lots of alternating layers of continental vs marine layers but few mixtures
(where continental deposits contain coral, I can think of none). There are
widspread Devonian land deposits (the Old Red Sandstone) which lies in the
middle of the trilobite horizons and below the Triassic where mammals first
appear. Modern mammals don't appear until very much higher in the lowest
Tertiary.

glenn

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm