Allen, Glenn and those who have been reading this whatever it is.
An answer to Glenn's request for a Biblically based interpretation of the Haymond formation (I am assuming you wanted the whole formation explained and not just the sand/shale sequences) can be found in CRSQ v. 36 #1, June 1999. The Haymond Formation Boulder Beds, MArathon Basin, West Texas: Theories on Origins and Catastrohism by George F. Howe, and Carl R. Froede Jr. and in the other CRSQ articles referenced in this article. Now I don't know if they ever explained or even addressed the interbedded sand/shale sequences but if they did this is where the answer is, not in the article on the Tavrick formation regardless of how similar the two may be.
It's a simple piece of logic; when a person asks a question about a particular formation you either anwer it directly or say you don't know but you may have an analogous formation for which you do have information that may be relevant. But at least be sure you have read the literature on the formation requested and that the answer to the specific question isn't there.
As for Glenn insisting that Allen address the sand/shale sequences of the Haymod Formation specifically I don't see why he is being so picky. IF Allen can figure out how to get clay to deposit rapidly enough to explain an ANALOGOUS deposit then the same information should acceptable as an explanation for sand/shale sequences of the Haymod Formation. I believe one of the keys to science is that the laws of physics are consistent with regard to time and space variations. But the key words here are IF and ANALOGOUS. I have never heard anyone explain how to deposit clay rapidly (other than by adding chemicals to create floculates as I believe I have heard they do at sewage treatment plants) and having not read all the articles on the Haymond or the Trevic I don't know if they are analogous or not.
As for Allen asserting that since turbidites represent rapid deposition in high energy environments, if he will read the section on turbidites in the Encyclopedia of Sedimentation, 1978, ed by Fairbridge and Bourgeois, published by Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross Inc. I think he will find that only the sand portions are deposited rapidly - the interveening clays and shales are deposited slowly and this agrees with both the observation of the behavior of these materials in natural environments and in laboratory tests.
Allen, as I remember you don't believe clays can only be deposited slowly, but until you can come up with some field observations or lab work to verify your assertion that they can be deposited rapidly I think Glenn has you in a corner. Yes, I know there are rapidly deposited finely laminated volcanoclastics near Mt. St. Helens, and I know that AiG published some articles on self organizing interbedds of coarse and fine materials; but finely laminated - high flow regime- volcanoclastics are not hydrodynamically the same as clay and while I have read the AiG material several times I fail to see how it applies here or really to anyother clay settling problem. I'll check again to see if I can find the relevance. What I do know and think is relevant is that as slow as swamp water moves, the clay doesn't settle out of it at anywhere near the rate you need it to. If it did the channels would all be choked with clay while the water flowing out of the swamps would be clear as those famous Rocky Mountain rivers and in the swamp I saw that just wasn't the case.
Darryl
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