From:    Marty Leipzig
To:      jonny vee                              May-09-94 06:31:20
Subject: Flood myth question

jonny vee while keeping an eye out for the Cyclops, said to Marty Leipzig:

 >  jv> The second assertion, that a boat fossilized in four thousand years,
 >      [big, huge, gaping, festering, bleeding _Deinonychus_ sort of snip]

 >      Thanks, jonny. I saw this load of bilious bilge and disposed of
 >      it in a packet that should be hovering around in cyberland just
 >      about.....now.

 jv> Yeah, I saw that yesterday.  Actually, though, I really would like to
 jv> know a bit more about the process of fossilization, if it would not be
 jv> too great a demand on your time.  From your response to whatsizname, I
 jv> gather that four thousand years is a bit premature....

     Just a bit, like a few orders of magnitude.

     "Fossilization" is really a "bag" term for preservation in the
     rock record. To be more precise, one should refer to the
     actual processes (plural) of preservation. These include:
     mummification (preservation in arid/cold [or both] climates),
     usually reserved for fairly recent sort of remains (mammoths in
     permafrost, cave bears from the Pleistocene, and dodo and great
     auk remains from the Pliocene). Other more typical
     preservational modes are carbonization (usually for florules,
     i.e. plant remains), but certain critters croaking in water and
     falling to the bottom of a lake or restricted ocean in an euxinic
     or anoxic environment are not bothered by scavengers and other
     reducers, and are eventually "distilled" into a carbon film.
     Good examples are some of the piscine remains in the Eocene
     Green River Shales, ichthyosaurs from the Jurassic of Germany
     and Cretaceous fish from Brazil.

     Other methods are replacement and permineralization; where
     there is a molecule for molecule exchange of organic remains
     (carbon base) for inorganic (silica, hematite, opal, magnetite,
     pyrite, etc.). This yields exquisite detail as it is a VERY
     slow process (10^6's years). Such examples include the
     "Petrified Forest" of the 4 corners area fame (coniferous trees
     replaced by precious opal), numerous examples of pyritized
     brachiopods from the Carboniferous Cincinnati Shales
     (_Platystrophia ponderosa_ is a largish brachiopod and oftimes
     is found completely pyritized...makes nifty geological door
     prizes.)

     Other modes of preservation include imbedment in various agents
     such as tar (Pleistocene Rancho de La Brea as a classic example),
     amber (Baltic insects from the Miocene) and body casts and molds by
     interment in ash falls.

     As for the supposed big boat that "fossilized" in a mere 4,000 years
     on the slopes of a tallish mountain, just where the flying fornication
     did all the water come from (and go to) that allowed this rapid mode of
     fossilization on the side of a volcano? All processes of preservation
     (excepting the latter inclusion cases) require copious amounts of
     liquid H2O for the vehicle to carry dissolved minerals for replacement.

     Or is it all just a great, huge load of bovine biogenic colluvium?





... Creationists are fossils in their own time.
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.12
 * Origin: A Little Corner in Time BBS (1:106/113.0)