Re: Questions from a YEC convert
Arthur V. Chadwick (chadwicka@swac.edu)
Mon, 01 Dec 1997 10:24:59 -0800Thanks Steve for the update on the Colorado River. After spending a number
of years reviewing this problem, I think you have nicely summarized the
current state of affairs. The polyphase model grew out of the apparently
mutually contradictory models that nearly every student brought to the
problem. Like all compromises, it too is frought with problems. Models
such as the submarine tunneling of the river west of Peach Springs wash
have been proposed, and we have impounded sediments at both ends of the
canyon of about the right age to be from the ancestral river. Then there
are the problems of the barbed drainages in the eastern reaches of the
canyon, that imply that the river once flowed north along its eastern
course. I think that it is safe to say that the issue of how the river was
carved is still a grand mystery, and that everyone who has studied it has a
different explanation for its formation. But that is not the same as
saying that "most of the geologists have junked the idea that the Colorado
River carved the Grand Canyon". A few quotes (or even one) from geologists
who actually advocated this position would have helped his case.
Art
http://chadwicka.swau.edu