GM: "I first want to say that I just saw the tape where you
question Wise, Austin, Baumgardner et al at the 3rd ICC. Your
question devastated their model. Excellent point about their
model needing continental breakup in the Cambrian and there was
no evidence of it. They really stumbled over that question."
I have to say that the problem remains, despite the fact that
they are continuing to develop the model.
GM: "Anyway now to your post."
I had said of the sediments overlying the chalk: "The model
developed in the cited paper is that all these overlying
sediments are also post-Flood."
GM: "OOOHHHH. That won't work at all, not at all. The Niobrara
in Kansas is on the surface, but as you go west, it gets buried,
and buried deeply. Consult Geologic Atlas of the Rocky Mountain
Region pp 210-214. By the time you get eastern Colorado the
Niobrara is buried under 8000 feet of strata. It underlies the
Mesa Verde Formation which has lots and lots of coal. So I
presume that if the Niobrara is at the end of the flood, this
coal was a post flood phenomenon also."
Yes, that follows.
GM: "But one can follow this "postflood" Niobrara north into
Wyoming where it is buried 4000-8000 feet BENEATH the Green River
formation! So that makes the Green River postflood also and thus
the 6 million layers with the flattened fish must now be post
flood in this model. This is why I had to reject the Global
flood idea. Following a bed into the subsurface always created
problems like this."
Yes, I consider the Green River formation to be post-Flood. Why
the incredulity? The reaction I'm getting from you is not so
different from the reaction that you get from people who don't
like your theory that all the hominid fossils came from people
descended from Noah! Why should it be thought a "problem" to
hold to a post-Flood Green River Formation? It _solves_ problems
rather than creates them!
GM: "Concerning your article, I can agree with much of it. There
is a need for clear use of the terms bioherm and reef. There are
bioherms in which frameworks are absent. But there are also
reefs with frameworks present. I don't think that one can
dismiss frameworks in the fossil record as easily as Austin tried
to do."
I'm glad we can start developing ideas with a shared position,
even if we subsequently diverge! I do not want to "dismiss
frameworks" easily. I've seen frameworks in the field. But (now
it's my turn to use this word!) in addition to there being in
situ frameworks, there are allochthonous frameworks, 'apparent'
frameworks, and there are 'frameworks' of material that could be
dispersed very easily by a current or a wave. Such a situation
calls for some serious research, questioning the many "givens"
of the past. I appreciated Art Chadwick's post on this thread -
his experience seems to be similar to mine (if we do not look
for alternative explanations that better fit the data, we are
unlikely to find them).
GM: "I would send you to Carbonate Depositional Environments AAPG
Memoir 33 for pictures of framework reefs built in the fossil
record.
On page 403 is a connected colony stromatoporoid which was
encrusted in algae.
On page 402 a branching coral can be found and a Devonian
bafflestone can be seen.
On page 433 a colonial coral (Thecosmilia) from the Triassic can
be seen.
Figure 160 on page 419 shows another coral reef from the Rhaetian
near Austria
I simply do not know what the problem is when one can look at a
rock and see the connected structures as is shown in these
photos."
Local connections do not make an 'in-situ framework structure'.
We all see such features in the field - but the research
objective is to relate this to larger scale depositional
environments, etc. This is where the paradigm of
"uniformitarianism" has the tendency to force fit the data. I
am not saying "they don't exist" - but in situ frameworks are far
less frequently to be found than the literature suggests.
Best wishes,
David J. Tyler.