Well, i guess we won't get anywhere if we now begin to argue in how far that point about not the whole earth being covered by that time was supposed to get clear with the earlier posts, so i'll leave it at that.
However...these tuffs are triassic. You previously said that the strata from the cambrian to the mesozoic or something like that (either way, way later than the triassic) were laid down by the noachian flood.
That leaves some questions: Where did the underlying strata come from? was it submerged at some time, rose above the waters, had the tuffs deposited, and then was submerged again?
What is the range of strata during which the earth was supposedly completely covered by water?
My hypothesis, at this point, is the flood strata ranges from ca. The Cambrian to somewhere around the K/T boundary:
As to the lower strata, I hypothesize they mark the earlier phases of the flood, being generally at a lower elevation than the overlying strata. That would explain the proliferation of marine organisms in the lower strata and land animals appearing in the upper strata:
The lack of a worldwide uncomformity between the different strata leads me to hypothesize there is no great age difference between each of the strata.
Quote (charlie):
Water didn't fully cover the earth until the K/T boundary.
If the earth was fully covered by that time, how is the sorting of fossils among the cenozoic accounted for then? Even your own explaination for it ceases to work there then, as there were no higher grounds to flee to anymore, thus delaying the demise.
The K/T boundary includes the Tertiary. The Tertiary is part of the Cenozoic. Man appears in the Tertiary, which is the top of my hypothesized flood strata. The geologic column displays survival of the fittest at it’s most extreme, in a very, very short period of time.
Quote (charlie):
1. Tertiary fossils include: large numbers of mammals including man and many birds.
2. Cretaceous fossils include: large dinosaurs and other reptiles, a few birds and a very few mammals (rare).
3. Jurassic fossils include: marine life, large and small dinosaurs, reptiles other than dinosaurs, a very few mammals (rare), and a very few now extinct birds.
4. Triassic fossils include: Fish, invertebrates, plants, salamanders, other reptiles, turtles, frogs, and very, very rarely, a mammal. Note, all these live at relatively low elevations.
5. The animal fossils in the Permian strata include:Trilobites, brachiopods, amphibians, and reptiles. Note, all these live at relatively low elevations.
6. The animal fossils in the Pennsylvanian strata include:Brachiopods, bivalves,cnidarians, echinoderms, and gastropods, again, all living predominantly at lower elevations
7. The Missippian is marked by all marine animal life, with the only vertebrate animals being the amphibians and fishes.
8. The Devonian is marked by all marine animal life, with the first amphibians showing up at the end of it’s chapter.
9. The Silurian period is marked by all marine life. No Amphibians are recorded.
10. The Ordovician again records all marine animal life.
11. The Cambrian, is, again, all marine animal life.
That's a nice selection of fossils, and it conveniently leaves out all those that don't fit the pattern, or it groups them under categories so that no-one notices them.
That "large number of mammals" of the tertiary also includes sloths, hedgehogs and so on. These are supposed to have outrun or outsmarted velociraptors and other fast dinosaurs?
And of course it doesn't even bother to mention plants except once in the triassic. All those land animals, fast or slow, were outrun by trees, grass and other plants?
I also kind of doubt the elevation information of this list. E.g. many species of salamanders are only at home in mountain ranges, and i see no correlation between invertebrates and elevation either
By the way...why would marine life be the first to die, and in that particular order?
Quote (charlie):
The various fossil assemblages represent, not evolutionary stages developing over many ages, but rather ecological habitats in various parts of the world in one age. Fossils of simple marine invertebrate animals are normally found at the lowest elevations in the geologic strata for the simple reason that they live at the lowest elevations. Fossils of birds and mammals are found only at the higher elevations because they live at higher elevations and also because they are more mobile and could escape burial longer. Human fossils are extremely rare because men would only very rarely be trapped and buried in flood sediments at all, because of their high mobility.
Dr. Henry Morris, Ph.D.
Hydraulic Engineering
http://www.icr.org/article/54/
Oh my...this is incredibly weak.
How many people die every year in flooding events? Mobility means little there, especially if one only has his legs or a horse at best and one wasn't warned. And of course, if there are no hills nearby because one lives in a plain. Or if one happens not to expect a global deluge (so one heads for the next mountain range) but just a large flooding, so one moves towards the next hill of a few dozen metres, on which one subsequently gets trapped by the rising waters.
Really, Morris isn't making any sense there.
Birds are the only ones who are excused by mobility.
Your first statement means little. Dr. Morris was a doctorate level hydraulic engineer, who studied the geologic column the vast majority of his long life.
I agree there are exceptions to the overall mobility/ elevation variable, such as a crippled human, but these exceptions would be rare compared to the overall fossil record formation, hence making them a very rare find. Then you have the circular reasoning of academia: if man is found in the stratum, then the strata is assigned as Tertiary. But, for the most part, it makes total sense. Marine invertebrates, living at low elevations and being relatively immobile would be the first to be covered by the stirred up ocean floor sediments. Follow the mobility/ elevation variable up the geologic column and see if you don’t agree that the pattern makes sense in a macro sense.
I think an interesting issue to investigate is the correlation between the strata in which a particular species is found, and it’s metabolism (warm or cold blooded- mobility). It appears there’s a strong correlation between warm-blooded, very mobile species and the sequence of deposition. The first unequivacable warm-blooded species to appear in the column are mammals. As you probably know, the debate between dinosaurs being warm or cold-blooded is a hotly debated topic.
As to the plants, there are species at all elevations. Simple, ocean marine invertebrates, no...
