>>Art, there is a disconnect here that I don't understand. The marine iguanas
>>of the Galapagos live on a tranquil tropical island and venture into the
>>water for food. According to those who hold to a global flood, the coconino
>>was a deposit which occurred in the middle of a raging, turbulent global
>>flood, in which all airbreathing life save those on the ark was
>>extinquished. 5000 feet or so of sedimentary rock had already been deposited
>>prior to the depositoin of the Coconino. These lizards, spiders, scorpions
>>etc. had no tropical island to which they could flee during this time period
>>if it was all deposited during the flood. As you know, there are no islands
>>against which the Coconino and other sediments thin.
>
>Sorry, I was not thinking in terms of a hypothetical scenario, just the
>data in hand.
But you believe in a global flood and even your model, as I understand it
would require much of the geological column to be deposited during that
event. If this is true, then the Coconino is aproximately halfway up the
geological column which would imply halfway through the flood. If this is
true, (and tell me which assumption above is wrong), then one cannot treat
the Coconino lizards in the same fashion one would treat the Galapagos
marine lizards.
>
>
>>Could the Coconino lizards have walked under water? Maybe, but they had
>>already had 6 months or so of swimming in the global flood. Where did these
>>lizards rest? Where did they eat during that previous six months?
>
>You are assuming they were lizards.
Lockley and Hunt claim that they are mammal-like reptiles (which fits the
term 'lizard' better than it would an amphibian). See page 40 of Dinosaur
Tracks. It would seem that on this we are at a standoff. As Lockley and
Hunt note, "the notion of an arid desert crawling with amphibians is
contradictory, to say the least;..." p. 40 Course you would say that the
concept of a lizard walking under water is ridiculous, and I would agree.
But what ever they were, you are not answering the thrust of the argument
here. Since I know that you believe in a Global flood, the trackmakers, in
your world view, would have had about 6 months of swimming. What did they eat?
> As I pointed out last time that is
>tautological. You can't argue they were lizards because they were walking
>on sand dunes, then argue they were sand dunes because they had lizards
>walking around on them. These were amphibians from the get-go, and as I
>pointed out, at least for modern amphibia, there is nothing unusual about
>having them walk around on the bottom. And as for swimming around for six
>months, where does this come from? We are dealing with the depositional
>environment of a sedimentary deposit. After we have resolved something
>about that we can begin to consider where the animals might have come from.
> You are putting the cart before the horse, I think.
Am I to presume that this means that you will categorically state that the
Coconino was NOT deposited by the flood?
That of course is rhetorical because I know you do believe in a global
flood. Knowing that, it seem less than useful to try to mentally isolate
the Coconino from your preferred view of world history.
>
>>I have always admired those contortionists one sees at the circus. :-)
>>However, tracks that disappear can be explained by lack of preservation of
>>the fossil tracks. Apatosaurs sometimes only show front tracks, they were
>>not walking on their front legs, their back legs didn't carry the weight of
>>the forelegs. There are lots of reasons that only front or back might be
>>preserved. And the fact that we see lizards today with feet pointing uphill
>>yet moving transversely.
>
>Ok, I realize you haven't seen the tracks, and I know you have different
>mental impressions of what you think the tracks look like, but let me try
>again. You cannot use lack of preservation when a trackway disappears and
>reappears a couple of feet higher up on the same slope with no disturbance
>of the intervening area ( of course, you must know all these arguments have
>already been tried). The particular trackway I have in mind (there are
>several exmples I have seen), angles from lower left to upper right across
>a foreset slope (all the time with the claw imprints directly uphill). The
>trackway abruptly stops, then resumes at the same angle a foot or so higher
>up. Oh, I know, there are people like Lochley who stay up all night trying
>to think up elaborate scenarios for how this could occur in dry sand dunes.
> But then Occam's Razor begins to cut....
Let me ask this. Are you positive it is the SAME animal? Are there
characteristic marks on the foot which can be used to argue that this was
one amphibian.
>
>>There are several observations I don't think Brand's hypothesis fits.
>>Spiders and scorpion tracks (especially the tracks consistent with high
>>temperatures), wind ripples, and rain-drop impressions. How do you get rain
>>drop impressions underwater?
>
>Glenn (with obvious irritation in my voice), you know better than that.
Won't be the first time you have been irritated at me. I can be really
iritating when I try. :-)
>You can't use derived data as evidence for the premise. They were
>scorpions because they were sand dunes. If the investigatores had even made
>a modicum of effort to try other organisms [as Brand and Tang have done
>(Geology 19:1201-1204, and Tang's thesis on invertebrate trackways), they
>would have seen all kinds of other possibilities, but their minds were
>closed by the assumption of desert.
OK, lets do it this way. Are there any deposits in the geological column
that you would say are definitely terrrestrial?
>I have never seen "rain drop" impressions, but I have seen lots of worm
>burrows that looked superficially (especially if you think they were desert
>dunes) like rain drop impressions. You must realize those conclusions were
>not backed up by experiments on dry sand. Try dropping some rain drops on
>a foreset dry sand slope sometime and see what results....
I will. I might have to buy some sand for that experiment.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm