Proper order means proper chronological order. Until that simple fact sinks in there’s nothing more to discuss.
Just for the record I am a professional geologist, now in my 41st year in my career. I received my BSc (Honors) from the University of New Mexico in 1980, and my MSc from the Colorado School of Mines in 1986, from which I was awarded a silver diploma.
I have worked primarily as a consultant, in environmental and hydrogeological areas, as well as in the O&G field, designing deep geological greenhouse-gas sequestration projects.
Let my try to make the concepts simple. Millions of people all over the world have desk diaries to organize their work and personal lives. Every diary is organized by years, months, weeks, days and hours. Every one has the same calender, but few or none record the same project hours, meetings, lunch dates, travel plans and birthday parties on any day.
The geological time scale (chronostratigraphy) is the same everwhere, but the lithostratigraphic events (deposition, erosion, eruptions, earthquakes, etc.) can be very different.
Some diaries have blank pages (unconformities), some are full for every day.
Just because some locations have some deposits for each geological interval does not mean in any way that the same rock sequenses can be found in the same time interval in every other place.
I have taught these basic concepts to undergrad students, and to many other people from many other backgrounds and professions. This may be first time I have ever encountered someone who either cannot grasp the concepts, or refuses to acknowledge their reality.
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In my previous post I described the two main factors that allow such very thick piles of sediment to accumulate and be preserved: vertical epeirogenetic movements and global sea level fluctuations.
There are other important factors that determine the nature of the sediments deposited.
Climate plays a major role, especially when it comes to carbonates and evaporites, but also with respect to the weathering and erosion that ultimately provides the source of clastic sediments. Climate changes because of may reasons, one that I find striking is simply the physical location of the basin on the globe in the light of Plate Tectonics. We know for instance from paleomagnetic data that the area of NW Europe has moved from around 60 degrees South in the Cambrian to its current position of around 50 degrees North. In doing so it moved through a series of distinct climate zones and we can see the impact of that in the nature of the sediments that were left behind. This, incidentally, is one of those amazing consiliences in Earth Science that we can readily explain.
The there is the nature of the ‘hinterland’ - the areas outside the basin where the clastic sediments come from. If there is a nearby mountain range the input sediments will be coarser than if the particles have to be transported over great distances to arrive in the basin. Clearly over the time spans involved, the hinterland will change - mountain ranges may emerge as a consequence of plate interactions, and be eroded down again to little more than plains in the subsequent eras. Such changes will affect sediment supply and be reflected in the sedimentary record, and will be different from basin to basin.
Hopefully this very brief treatise will give you a feel for what controls the lithostratigraphic column, and how this will be different from one location to the next, even if throughout all that time there may have been deposition in both (interspersed with times of non-deposition or erosion).
I haven’t talked about the biosphere yet, and the biostratigraphy that results from that, which gives us the tools to correlate between basins and work out the relative time lines between them as well. More to follow, if you are still interested.
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Let’s talk about biostratigraphy now.
At the dawn of modern geology, people like William Smith in England looked at the strata in detail and noticed that they could be identified not only by their lithology but also by their fossil content. Each distinctive formation contains its own distinctive fossils. This provided a way to correlate layers that are further apart and separated by areas of non-outcrop.
It was soon realised that certain fossils showed a wide lateral distribution but a narrow vertical one. These so-called Index fossils then became the tool to assign strata to the geological periods. For instance, the Lower Paleozoic is characterised by trilobites, the Jurassic by ammonites, and so on. In fact this applies at much finer levels, as particular species of Index Fossils are limited to specific shorter time intervals within the periods.
This now formed the link between the biostratigraphy of a formation (what fossils it contains) and the chronostratigraphy of that formation (at what time it was deposited). Note that all this was developed before anyone had any clue about the actual time spans involved. In those days people were thinking in millions of years for the age of the Earth (anything less would make it very hard to explain the findings) but certainly not billions, as we know today.
By carefully analysing the fossil content of a stack of sedimentary layers (the biostratigraphical ‘column’) we can now construct the chronostratigraphical column they represent. To a large extent this is independent from the actual rock type, or lithostratigraphy (although one would expect certain fossils to be more abundant in certain rocks, both being dependent on the environment of deposition).
So, when you wrote “How do they explain the appearance of the same 10 to 12 geologic layers at such diverse points on the globe?” you thought that these 10 or 12 layers look the same in terms of rock composition - lithostratigraphy. For reasons I now have explained, they don’t. They appear the same in terms of having been deposited in similar time periods (because of their fossil content) - biostratigraphy, and hence chronostratigraphy.
When you wrote “Then you cannot tie the global geologic column together.” you wrote whilst not understanding that the tying-together is not done on the basis of lithostratigraphy, but chronostratigraphy (mostly, but not only, using biostratigraphy).
When you wrote “All land masses would have to have been covered simultaneously to lay down similar layers.” you thought, wrongly, that Glenn Morton claimed that the lithostratigraphy in those locations is all the same. It isn’t, and the similarity is biostratigraphical/chronostratigraphical, not lithostratigraphical. Rock type has very little to do with this.
So, finally we come to the question of the extinctions. We need to be clear on what type of extinctions we are talking about. If it is about species going extinct, this happens all the time. As noted by Smith and everybody else since, in a vertical sense fossil species come and go very systematically. They appear quite suddenly, persist for a while, and once they are gone, they are gone, and don’t re-appear. The reason is simple - the particular species came into existence, flourished for a time, then died out; it went extinct.
Not all species are found everywhere, of course. In fact the majority has limited geographical spread and you won’t be able to correlate them across the world to all of these basins. They are local, in time and space. However, Index Fossils do have very widespread occurence, and you can see them going extinct in many basins pretty much at the same time (geologically speaking). Again, all this means is that these species simply died out.
Then there are the 6 major mass extinctions. These probably come closest to what you think happened in your Global Flood: huge numbers of species, and higher orders, all went extinct everywhere pretty much at the same time. Clearly these are instances when indeed there were world-wide ecological disasters. Some are now well understood: the Cretacous/Paleogene mass extincion is closely linked to the impact of a giant meteorite and the subsequent climate catastrophe (although there may have been subsidiary causes). The Permo-Triassic mass extinction is the greatest one on record, and various theories exist as to why it happened. It may have been a series of extinction pulses rather than one single one, and suggested causes might have been massive volcanic activty, meteorite impacts, climate change, or a combination of those.
Although the causes of the mass extinctions are not completely clear, and may have been different for all of them, none of these extinctions show evidence that they were caused by massive global flooding. Hopefully you will understand by now that global flooding isn’t actually possible because there simply isn’t enough water around to cover all of the land at the same time. There have always been mountains (we can still find their roots, of all ages) and some of these will have remained emergent even at times of the highest sea level. Centuries of very careful geological mapping and analysis has made this quite clear and undeniable.
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But Morton also used the word “entire” in his description, which means nothing of the large-scale column is missing in each location.
There is plenty more to discuss mainly because you have not eliminated the problem that Morton’s paper poses for your paradigm.
[moderators my most recent post has been changed, please review and publish]
I wonder what biostratigraphy informs us about digging oneself into a hole… Keep digging or stop digging?
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Look, I am appreciative of your knowledge but all of this is besides the point as I have already stated.
Above you are straining at non-essentials because again you are talking local stratification which, yes, will naturally contain some broken or missing layers compared to other global locations. Then when you quote Morton below, you actually gloss over the very point he is making:
But if there are sediments left at a given site once every hundred thousand years or so, then at the scale of the geological column, the entire column would exist.
Do you see it is not about the incidental local details which do not exist around the globe, but rather about the overall scale of the geologic column which he says does exist in all 26 locations around the globe.
The more you say Morton was “not saying what he plainly said”, the more I realize that his paper is a huge problem for your paradigm to explain.
The whole motivation of Morton’s article was to demonstrate the existence of the entire geologic column everywhere around the globe. To deny Morton’s claim only serves to further discredit your position.
You did not read my posts thoroughly because I never claimed the same lithostratigraphy, someone assumed that I was saying that and it somehow “caught on”. Of course I would not make that claim. And it is still besides the point.
I think we may be spinning our wheels here. You seem to still have a problem that is unresolved. This may need more specialists involved than one, and I appreciate your time.
This is false. Morton was a professional geologist just like me and he knew very well that the entire geoogical column doesn’t exist everywhere around the globe. The 26 locations are instances, but not representative of everywhere. In fact, I found out that many of the locations on that list actually do not contain rocks from all 11 periods, even if N. Dakota may do so.
As various people have told you, what Morton says is that there are locations where rocks from all 11 periods post-Cambrian are present, deposited in a largely (but not wholly) uninterrupted sequence. I have explained to you how that is possible, and how that in no way requires anything like a global flood at any time during their formation. Is there anything you don’t understand about what I wrote? What exactly do you think is impossible about these locations under the scenario I have described?
What I would also like to ask you is to read the detailed description by Moron of the actual rocks in the North Dakota succession, and why many of their characteristics are entirely incompatible with a global flood. If you don’t understand the big picture, perhaps you may understand the details.
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Let’s not quibble about the term “everywhere” because you full well know what I mean. Clearly, Morton’s whole thrust was to show that, on a global scale, the geologic column is fully intact.
It might have meant that if he had not explicitly said, in a paragraph that’s been quoted at you at least twice now, that he doesn’t refer to continuous, uninterrupted deposition. Do I have to quote it a third (or perhaps fourth) time?
Good gravy, you’ve quoted it yourself:
What do you think that meant?
No, it was to demonstrate the existence of various places in which rocks from every Phanerozoic period exist. Not everywhere, and “entire” only in the limited sense he defines quite clearly.
Yes you did. You claimed that the same strata occurred worldwide.
Good, but then you will have to explain what exactly you mean by “the appearance of the same 10 to 12 geologic layers” - the same in what respect, if not in lithostratigraphy? Do you mean biostratigraphy?
You will also have to explain what exactly you mean by "All land masses would have to have been covered simultaneously to lay down similar layers.” - similar in what respect, if not in lithostratigraphy? Do you mean biostratigraphy?
Because I don’t understand what you are referring to here I don’t understand what the problem is that you are seeing.
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I notice you’ve decided to ignore my post demonstrating that the listed sites are actually nothing alike? Wonder why that might be?
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Not at all. I don’t understand why you think that. He responds to a quote by Morris and Parke that says that
(in his words) there is no place on earth where all twelve of the periods are found.
To show them wrong, all he has to do is show one single case of where all periods are present. This then is what he does. One case, augmented by some others (even though not all of these actually qualify).
He does NOT claim that this one counter-example demonstrates, or even makes likely, that all periods are in principle present everywhere (‘fully intact on a global scale’). That would be a ludicrous claim that no amateur geologist would ever make, let alone a professsional one like Glenn Morton. Do you understand this?
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There are specific locations in the world where you can see the entire chronological sequences in order. That doesn’t mean you can see all the chronological sequences in order everywhere on the planet.
Seriously, you’re making yourself look terrible by continuing to repeat your basic misunderstanding.
Then why …
???
You are still hung up on the technicality of “everywhere”, not realizing that 26 locations at all points of the globe - though not technically “everywhere” - is still impossible to explain on a global scale.
I’m sorry. It looks like that unless can agree on the fundamental claims of Morton, we are not going to be able to communicate.
Really?
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Can you do me a favour and answer my questions about what exactly you mean when you say that the layers are ‘similar’? You have said you don’t mean lithostratigraphical similarity, ok, I’m glad to hear that, but I am still totally in the dark about what you do mean. In what way do you consider these layers to be similar? A genuine question!
I can’t make progress with addressing your problem until I understand that. This includes seeing why having this ‘similarity’ (whatever it is) at 26 locations ‘at all points’ (whatever that means) around the globe is impossible to explain.
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