PMFJI but,
Karen J. said>> The many tracks and burrows higher in the column are also
fascinating -- like the famous amphibian tracks in the Coconino sandstone.
Why would you think there
would be no amphibians left alive after the first few minutes or days of
the onset of a flood? Animals that float don't mind how many thousands of
feet of sediments are being deposited
below them. <<
Just to adding to what Steve S. has said already...
A few more problems with this scenario:
1) Just a nit, the identification of the tetrapod track makers as
amphibians is far from universally held.
2) Tetrapod tracks are NOT the only animal tracks found in the Coconino.
The Coconino also contains the tracks of several different kinds of
arthropods and other invertebrates.
3) The Coconino also contains other sorts of trace fossils most notably
raindrop impressions.
Even granting the tetrapod tracks are those of an amphibian (a dubious
assumption), how do you explain the invertebrate tracks and raindrop
impressions under the flood scenario? Did the spiders & scorpions happily
bob about in the waves along with the 'amphibians' waiting for a chance to
sink to the bottom and make footprints and then swim away?
If this material was deposited rapidly how is it that no unlucky, stupid,
or already dead animals managed to get buried in it? IOW why *only* trace
fossils in the Coconino?
And just where did the uncounted millions of tons of well sorted, rounded
quartz grains come from to create this deposit? A cosmic dump truck? Then
of course there is the question of how the flood managed to sort not only
all the animals taxonomically but how it managed to sort the materials that
make up the various rock strata both physically and chemically. A series of
cosmic dump trucks?
How do relatively delicate trace fossils even form in a global - washing
machine - flood scenario?
All these things, reptile/mammal-like reptile tracks, spider & scorpion
tracks, the lack of body fossils, a sandstone made up of well sorted,
rounded quartz sand is perfectly consistent with a desert eolian sand dune
environment.
Why should anyone who is not defending a literalistic interpretation of
the Bible, accept the rather bizarre flood model for the origin of this
formation over the straightforward one?
Bye
Troy Britain (Amateur Naturalist)