At 12:20 PM 2/9/98 -0600, Karen G. Jensen wrote:
>Fri, 06 Feb 1998 21:21:35 you wrote:
>>This is due to the gradual progradation of sediments into the Gulf of
>>Mexico.
>
>How gradual?
I don't see a rapid influx of sediment into the gulf from Eocene on. If it
were really rapid influx I would not expect to see pure or nearly pure shale
layers. like the Recklaw shale of the Eocene. I would also not expect to
see areas in the Gulf like what we adoringly refer to as "the pig trough".
It is a region with no sand only shale. Shale particles take a long long
time to settle out, yet in this area there are oil wells drilled through
16000+ feet of shale.
>Remember that foraminifera reproduce very rapidly. The skeletal shape of
>each generation is sensitive to the temperatures, light conditions,
>salinity, other nutrients, etc. in the water as it grows. I remember a
>paper by a man who spent his life classifying the different morpho-species,
>only to discover that they could change from generation to generation!
do you have a reference? I have spent 25+ years using the microfauna of the
Gulf basin and have never heard of this. What is the guy's name and where
is his paper. It would be fascinating to throw it at a paleontologist.
>In my flood model, Oligocene to Pleistocene deposits are post-flood. The
>drainage in that area takes months, years, decades ("gradually" by flood
>standards; but "instantaneously" by traditional geological standards).
Let me note something about shale as it applies to your model. Shale when
first deposited is about 80% porous. Very little shale is actually in the
bottom sediments. However, this 80% water/20% clay can divert sediments to
other places because it has filled up the available volume for sediments.
Only after a long time does the water escape and the shale compact. I don't
think you could explain 16000 feet of uncompacted shale in 6000 years. Lets
see. Most shale has around 30% porosity left after compaction. So we need
to add 80/30=2.66 times the volume to account for the uncompacted shale.
Since the shale can only expand UPWARD (there being constraining sediments
around it) the 16000 feet must have been 16000*2.66 =42000 feet of original
sediment. The "hole" is only 16,000 feet deep and can't originally contain
all the shale that it had to. If you deposit all the sediment in 1000 years
after the flood, you will fill the "hole' with 16000 feet of 80% porosity
shale. It will take more than 1000 years for the shale to compact and then
you would have a huge hole. 16000 feet of 80% porosity shale would compact
to about 6000 feet of 30% porosity shale leaving a 10,000 foot hole in the
bottom of the gulf. We don't see this.
It
>is slow enough for foraminifera to reproduce, prodigiously wherever the
>environments were suitable. In the changing conditions, from the warm
>conditions immediately postflood to the cooler, drier conditions of the
>pleistocene, I would expect considerable variation in each kind of foram
>(some more than others), so I would expect changes of "species", tho some
>continutiy of genera.
Once again, I would like to see a reference for the claim that forams can
vary that rapidly. It seems to me that you are really an evolutionist and
believe in rapid evolution. :-)
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm