From: Chris Stassen
To: All, Msg #52, Dec-12-91 07:22AM
Subject: Re: How Could Fish sruvive the Genesis Flood
Organization: The Lion's Den, San Jose
From: stassen@alc.com (Chris Stassen)
Message-ID: 1991Dec12.152255.907@alc.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
[Don Lindsay wrote:]
> You must posit yet another heavenly miracle, just to have Noah's Ark
> survive something that powerful.
In article <4170@pdxgate.UUCP> allenroy@jove.cs.pdx.edu (callen roy) writes:
> Now you are just begining to conceive the magnatude of the Flood. Some
> Bilical commentators make the same comment you just made.
And you need a miracle...
... to even get the ark _built_ before its frame decays.
... to make the ark seaworthy (300' is the limit for wood boats in modern
seas).
... to let Noah collect the animals and enough provisions for one year.
... to get all of the water to appear.
... to explain how creatures needing special environments survived on the ark.
... to explain the survival of any sensitive marine life (e.g., coral).
... to explain how all host-specific parasites/diseases made do with only
one pair of hosts (and if they did OK, how the hosts survived!)
... to sort the fossil record in an order convenient for evolution.
... to explain the formation of varves.
... to get all of the water to disappear.
... to get marsupials back to Australia, where their ancestors' bones are
("isn't that conVEEEEENient").
... to explain the genetic variation in all populations today.
... to explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras and
radiometric dating methods.
... to explain why "Devonian" corals show nearly 400 "daily" growth layers
per "annual" growth layer.
Can you tell me why you call this "flood geology" (as if it contained
some decent amount of science) instead of "flood miracle-ology"?
--
Chris Stassen \ "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
stassen@alc.com \ but only in expressing personal opinion."
408-943-0630 \ Proverbs 18:2
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* Origin: Universal Electronics Inc [714 939-1041] HST/V.32bis (1:103/208)
From: mike.siemon
To: All Msg #54, Dec-12-91 06:58PM
Subject: Re: Fishy survival of the flood.
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
From: mls@cbnewsm.att.com (mike.siemon)
Message-ID: 1991Dec13.025857.1349@cbnewsm.att.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
In article <1991Dec12.103351@IASTATE.EDU>, danwell@IASTATE.EDU
(Daniel A Ashlock) writes:
> Any investigator that allows himeself an unbounded number of miracles
> is not likely to produce results of general interest.
I understand the temptation to twit Mr. Roy on his absurdities, but there
is a more general point lurking in all of this. "Catastrophists" (whether
Veliholdenites or Floodites like Coffin) wish to persuade their audience
that "something special" happened. OK; that's fine -- unusual things have
been known to happen (if nothing quite so elaborately weird as the flood
scenario Mr. Roy is defending.)
But what these contributions to "science" keep missing is the null hypo-
thesis -- the notion that NOTHING is needed to explain the phenomena in
question, aside from the sheer, banal operation of that which is always
a part of our experience. "Uniformitarian" explanations are simply a
special case -- tagged with a name because it's *important* to understand
that everyday experience also has consequences, whether we notice them in
everyday life or not.
Whether it is actual miracles that "Flood Geology" needs (likely enough)
or merely the totally implausible working out of "standard" causes, what
the FGeologues MUST counter, in order to "do" science, is to show that the
results they are attempting to explain CANNOT be explained by the normal
working out of those processes which they (and we) KNOW are working now.
No hypothesis which is NOT established against the skeptical criterion of
"who needs it?" has any point in scientific theorizing. If the operation
of causes that we SEE in the laboratory (genetics labs in particular) and
in the ordinary course of life in the world around us (erosion and such
"counter" forces as the plate tectonic ones of subduction and collision)
CAN explain the record of the past, there is NO POINT to special pleading
in favor of anything else. Noah is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT if there is no
compelling reason to introduce him to explain the data we have. This is
not quite "Occam's Razor" -- it is more pointed than that. If what we
KNOW explains the world (and what we know includes the processes that can
be seen to establish the entire geological column and the land forms and
distribution of life-forms), there is NO PLACE for mythology like that of
Noah and his flood. We can admit ignorance of those things (many!) which
we DON'T know, without thereby opening up even the slightest room for the
kind of thing needed for Noah to be more than a fairy tale.
You are welcome to "believe" any story you like -- but unless you have
some solid grounds for showing the INADEQUACY of null hypotheses which
cover the same data, you simply have NOTHING of scientific relevance.
What people are pointing out in this subthread is that even a SINGLE
miracle compromises your ability to stand against the assumption that
nature continues to go on WITHOUT miracles, and *if* that seems to be
enough to construct the data under consideration, *then* there is no
need and no place for other explanations, however congenial. Those who
"oppose" the standard evolutionary models have a HORRIBLY great burden;
in the face of KNOWN processes that generate variation, with observed
splitting of populations into distinct species, and with mathematical
models that are consistent (as null hypothesis) with ALL observed vari-
ation of living things in the time-scale which (again, taking as null-
hypothesis the KNOWN physical processes) is available for them. The
"Genesis Model" by contrast has ZERO support in the data.
I mean that seriously. Name a SINGLE observation that would favor any
Genesis-derived statement AGAINST the standard model of the history of
life on earth. Special pleading that a sufficiently-distorted reading
of Genesis can be *squeezed* into something conforming to the data is,
if anything, evidence that Genesis is hopelessly wrong about the history
of the world.
Of all the responses to Mr. Roy, the ones I find most interesting (since
the science is hopelessly bogus in what he presents) are those which show
how wildly he has to diverge from SCRIPTURE to even hope to present a
model that might respect the data. Genesis is simply NONSENSE as far as
natural history goes. Pretending otherwise is NOT a good demonstration
of intellectual honesty or integrity. You may either leech ALL meaning
from the oritginal text, and invent "interpretations" that allow it to
"harmonize" with current science, or you have to discard it altogether as
ANY kind of stamement about the natural world. The former alternative is
one that has attracted poeple for millenia (Origen did the same, with a
different body of "science" as his target, some 1700 years ago) -- but I
am inclined to see it as futile, given that science is a moving target
and you have to revise this devotional fantasy every few centuries anwyay.
What is so difficult about the conclusion that religious scripture DOESN'T
CARE about the natural world? Sure, it gets it wrong. So what? If my
religion had to "validate" itself by getting a Nobel prize in physics or
medicine, I would have nothing to do with it. That wouldn't be religion,
it would be purest superstition.
From: callen roy
To: All Msg #94, Dec-13-91 10:55AM
Subject: A Flood Model (Original post)
From: allenroy@jove.cs.pdx.edu (callen roy)
Message-ID: 4193@pdxgate.uucp
Newsgroups: talk.origins
It seems to me, after attempting to keep up with all the responses to the
original post, that many in the discussion now did not read the original
posting. So I am reposting it.
A Flood Bodel
Chapter 7, Origin by Design, H. Coffin.
Sediments cover much of the earth's surface, including that part below sea
level. Sediments consist of broken particle of rocks and minerals in sizes
ranging from the microscopic to boulders as large as a house. Usually, as
in shale and sandstone, the particles are relatively small. Extensive beds
of coarse material of pebble or boulder sized do exist, however.
The sediments may reach a depth of up to 60,000 feet in certain basins.
Sedimentary rocks may have originally been clay, silt, sand, gravel, or
conglomerate. Livestone, which came originally from lime mud, is a common
rock also. Geologists consider certain accumulations of the remains of
plants and animals as sediments. Examples include oozes consisting of the
skeletons of microscopic plants and animals that collect in the oceans,
and coal fromed from plants and other organic matter.
Usually sediments appear in the form of beds that may be less than an inch
thick to massive ones hundreds of feet in depth. One need only stand on the
rim of the Grand Canyon to see readily the bedded structure of the earth
crust.
As we have already mentioned, such layers of rock often extend laterally
many miles, sometimes covering several hundred thousand square miles. Some
geologists go so far as to calim that we sould regard beds on different
continents as the same formation.(1) The material within a bed may be
mixed, but most show some indication of sorting. Coarser materials may
cluster at the bottom, or rhythmic sorting may have occurred within a
formation. The type of material in a bed may vary laterally, changing,
for instance, from sand to lime sand or from silt to sand. In some areas
we may find fossils in a bed, whereas elsewhere they are absent.
In many parts of the earth geological forces have distrupted or contorted
the sedimentary layers. In the Grand Canyon the beds lie flat. But in the
mountainous regions the sedimentary beds are often uplifted into anticlines
or depressed into synclines. Sometimes they may be folded and overturned.
Uplift may cause the overlying sedimentary beds to have eroded away, or
erosion may produce canyons and gullies or buttes and mesas. clues to the
past presence of sedimentary material may appear as islands or patches of
sediment still lying on granite or other nonsedimentry rocks. We have already
mentioned the example of Beartooth Butte on the top of the Beartooth
mountains in Wyoming. Here a mountain of sedimentary material sits on top
of the crystalline Precambrian rocks. Formerally the sediments composing
Beartooth Butte lay entirely over all of what are now the beartooth mountains.
Many other examples of temnants of formerly overlying sediments exist in
areas where erosion and disruption of the earth's crust have occurred.
Sedimentary rocks vary in the number of fossils they contain, ranging from
fast areas with none or few to dense pockets crowded with them. Most rocks
contain at least a few of them. Geologists consider the Cambrian rocks to
be the oldest layers with any quantity of fossils.
To the creationists the geological column does not automatically signify
time except for the obvious fact that lower sediments would of necessity have
to be deposited before upper sediments unless we find evidence that overturn
and disruption have occurred. We use the geological column for convenience
of names and for determining relative positions and order in the structure
of the sedimentary crust. Thus when creationists speak of Cambrian or
Devonian rocks, for instance, we do not mean to imply long geological ages.
Possible Interpretations
Evolutionary Sequence and Time
We may interpret the preceding facts from the sedimentary and paleontological
record in various ways. The majority of scientists consider the geological
column to have resulted from the gradual laying down of sediments by normal
geological precesses over a long period of time. simultaneously plants
and animals underwent slow evolutionary development. Living organisms lived
and died and were buried. slowly there built up the sedimentary layers
containing representatives of the evolutionary stages. if the layers
developed a continuum--gradual step-by-step connections from a simple one-
celled ancestor to the multitudinous complex forms of today--it would be
difficult to refute the evolutionary theory. However, the fossil record
has conspicouos gaps, or missing connectiong links. therefore, we do not
accept the uniformitarian and evolutionary interpretation for the structure
of the earth's crust.
Progressive Creation and Time.
Some creationists feel impressed with the evidence they think they see for
time in the geological column. they find it difficult to explain the
geological record as a result of the Flodd catastrophe, and thus they
account for the thick sequence of sediments by gradual geological processes
and creation by God of new life forms periodically over long ages.
Catastrophe by Water
A third explanaton for the nature of the earth's crust involves a major
catastophe by water during our planet's past history. Vast torrents of
water, acting in a short period of time, lay down sand, silt, and other
material to form the many thick and extensive beds of sediments. If there
were no global flood, it would demand much time for slow geological
processes to operate. but if the age of the earth since Creation is only a
few thousand years (as Scripture suggests), some event or episode in the
past history of the earth must have brought about the deposition and burial
of such great quantities of sediments with their contained fossils. The
Flood occurring in Noah's day is the logical answer to the need for much
water accelerate the rates of geological processes.
Some creationists become disturbed whenever anyone recognizes the geological
column as a valid description of the earth's crust. They feel that it opens
the door for the acceptance of evolution. However, if the geological column
is the product of ecology rather than evolutionary development, we are not
acknowledging evolutionary theory. Those creationists who have extensively
studied the sediments in the crust of the earth find it impossible to deny
completely the existence of some order in the earth's crust. furthermore,
almost any flood model would predict some order in the burial of plants
and animals. Table I helps to illustrate ho an ecological model might
explain stratigraphy. It shows a simple sequence of some of the major
fossil forms. The order is not as exact as the column might suggest. We
could lump together brachipopds and trilobites. Sharks and true fish are
stratigraphically close, as are also mammals and birds. Otherwise the list
agrees with the sequence of fossils in the earth's crust.
Table I Evloution and Ecological Zonation Compared
Young.......birds...........High Elevations
..l.........mammals...........l..................uplands
--l---------------------------l--------------------------
..l.........reptiles..........l
..l.........insects...........l..................lowlands and
Geological..................Ecological...........seashore
..l.........amphibians........l
--l---------------------------l----------------------------
Ages........true fish.......Zones
..l.........sharks............l..................open ocean
--l---------------------------l----------------------------
..l.........ostracoderms......l
..l.........brachiopods.......l..................sea bottom
Old.........trilobites......Low Elevations
The usual explanation for such an order is gradual evolutionary development
over long geological ages. However, another interpretation is also
reasonable. the list falls into an ecological sequence based on elevations
of known or expected habitats. it ranges from sea bottom (the first areas of
the pre-Flood wourld to fill with sediments to uplands and mountains. The
ability of of mammals and birds to move to higher ground would have
delayed their burial. A cataclysm that completely washed all sediments into
a homogeneous mixture would have canceled out all evidence of precious
ecological zones. Wherever there are sedimentary beds it is usually possible
to see that the Flood did not completely mix all sediments together. many
strata show internal mixing, but the beds above or below may be different in
several ways--color, texture, minerals, fossils, et cetera. The various beds
would contain sediments from different source areas. Changing curents
would transport material from different areas, including plants and animals
from varying ecological and elevational zones.
If the geological column accurately describes the order in the earth's crust,
and the activity of the Genesis flood shaped that crust, we shoud be able
to see parallels between the Biblcal account of the Flood and the
geological column (Table II).
Table II Genesis Flood Model
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geological | Genesis Flood | Comparisons and Comments
Column | Narrative |
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
Precambrian |Preflood |
| Beginning storm | breakup of earth's crust
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
Paleozoic Era | |
Cambrian | Heavy rain (7:11,12) | Erosion and Deposition of preflood
| | ocean sediments
| tsunami activity | Formation of the great Precambrian
| (7:11) | /Cambrian uncomformity
Ordovician | Rising water (7:20) | Upward coarse to fine grading of
| | sediments
Silurian | high water(7:24) i Depositions of thick shale and
| | limestone
Devonian | Tidal and | Cyclothems--rhythmic depositions
| wave action (8:3) | of sediments
Mississippian | water covers all land | Formation of coal. Burial of
| (7:20) | lowland forests, trees of greater
| | density and/or less bouyancy
Pennsylvanian | |
Permian | rain stops, wind starts | Crossbedded sandstones
| (8:1,2) |
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
Mesozoic Era | |
Triassic | mountains rise(8:5) | moving continents
Jurassic | | Mountain building(tectonic)
activiy
Cretaceous | Waters start to recede | Major erosion of emerging
| (8:5) | mountians. Guyots
| | Burial of reptiles.
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
-
Cenezoic Era | |
Paleocene | | Formation of coal. Burial of
upland
| Raven and Doves released | forests, trees of less density
Eocene | (8:8-12) | and/or more buoyency
| | Burial of Mammals.
| water continues to drop | Sediments accumulate along
Oligocene | (8:13) | continental margins.
| | Less dense and less well indurated
| | strata.
Miocene | Ark abandoned (8:14,15) | Major volcanic activity
Pliocene | | Localized sediments and valley
| | fills.
Pleistocene | postflood | Postflood erosional reworking of
| | surface sediments.
Recent | | PostFlood climatic changes
| | (glaciation)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table II Genesis Flood Model
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geological | Genesis Flood | Comparisons and Comments
Column | Narrative |
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
Precambrian |Preflood |
| Beginning storm | breakup of earth's crust
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
Paleozoic Era | |
Cambrian | Heavy rain (7:11,12) | Erosion and Deposition of preflood
| | ocean sediments
| tsunami activity | Formation of the great Precambrian
| (7:11) | /Cambrian uncomformity
Ordovician | Rising water (7:20) | Upward coarse to fine grading of
| | sediments
Silurian | high water(7:24) i Depositions of thick shale and
| Standing Water | limestone
Devonian | Tidal and | Cyclothems--rhythmic depositions
| wave action (8:3) | of sediments
Mississippian | water covers all land | Formation of coal. Burial of
| (7:20) | lowland forests, trees of greater
| | density and/or less bouyancy
Pennsylvanian | |
Permian | rain stops, wind starts | Crossbedded sandstones
| (8:1,2) |
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
Mesozoic Era | Violent Windstorm |
Triassic | mountains rise(8:5) | moving continents
Jurassic | | Mountain building(tectonic)
activiy
Cretaceous | Waters start to recede | Major erosion of emerging
| (8:5) | mountians. Guyots
| | Burial of reptiles.
--------------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------
-
Cenezoic Era | Receding Water |
Paleocene | | Formation of coal. Burial of
upland
| Raven and Doves released | forests, trees of less density
Eocene | (8:8-12) | and/or more buoyency
| | Burial of Mammals.
| water continues to drop | Sediments accumulate along
Oligocene | (8:13) | continental margins.
| | Less dense and less well indurated
| | strata.
Miocene | Ark abandoned (8:14,15) | Major volcanic activity
Pliocene | | Localized sediments and valley
| | fills.
Pleistocene | postflood | Postflood erosional reworking of
| | surface sediments.
Recent | | PostFlood climatic changes
| | (glaciation)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since mankind has not experienced any worlwide flood within secular historical
times, it is difficult to know exactly what happened to the earth during
the Genesis Deluge. However, we can come to certain deductions. Let us make
some comparisons between the Beginning Storm period and part of the
geological column.
Upper Precambrian and Lower Paleozoic
As this period commenced and continued, its major work would be erosion.
Violently moving shallow water would allow little opportunity for deposition
except for some of the coarse depositis. A catastrophe such as the Scriptures
describe undoubtedly had accompanying major upheavals and readjustments of the
earth's crust. the Magnitude of event is difficult to visualize. It is
significant that the greatest erosion recorded in the crust occures between
the top of the Precambrian and the bottom of the Cambrian. The amount of
material eroded and redeposited is greater than that calculated between
beds throughout all the rest of the geological column combined. Around the
world you usually find coarse deposits--basal conglomerates--located at the
base of the Cambrian. furthermore the lower Cambrian itself often consists
of sand or coarse material. From the lower Cambrian upward we usually
observe the sediments passing through a sequence from coarse to fine, a fact
that fits in well with the action of rising and deepening water. Shallow,
rapid water erodes most efficiently. Deeper water may move fast on the
surface, but at depth it will likely flow more quietly. The upward sequence
of coarse to fine in the Cambrian is difficult to explain on a long-term
uniformitarian basis. It appears likely that the early stages of the Flood
(the Beginning Storm) produced major erosion and deposited coarse sediments
in the Cambrian.
Middle and Upper Paleozoic
As the Flood waters became deeper and the storm less violent (the period of
Standing Water), the currents would naturally drop much shale and limestone.
Could this be the middle and upper Paleozoic? Above the Cambrian, great
beds of shale and limestone are especially abundant. Here also we encounter
vast organic deposits (coal). Obviously large quantities of vegetable matter
could not collect in basins unless they first had been eroded from the land
masses, which requires higher water. The lower and middle Paleozoic sediments
contain few tetrapods(four-legged animals). Some reptiles appear in the
upper Paleozoic, but do not appear in abundance until later. Larger
repriles, mammals, and birds could have escaped the rising water until it
reached the highest levels. We have well-documented modern examples of the
migration of animals out of an area being flooded. The same movement of
animals would have happened at the time of the Genesis flood. Numerous
footprints indicated that many of them still survived at the end of this
period of standing water. However, the violent windstorm (and the great
waves it must have generated) finally wiped them out.
Mesozoic and lower Cenozoic
The third stage of the Flood (the Violent Windstrom) we could correlate with
the Mesozioc and lower Cenozoic. These sediments contain great quantities
of the carcasses of large reptiles and mammals destroyed and buried during
this period of Flood activity. Mesozoic and lower Cenozoic beds include many
high energy sediments. The crossbedded sandstones and the gread deposits
of conglomerates indicate high energy water action.
Middle and Upper Tertiary
The last stage of the Glood (Receding Water) corresponds with the rest of
the geological column, excluding the upper Pleistocene and Recent. On the
basis of our Flood model we would expect large amounts of shale and finer
sediments to settle out at this time. The earth's crust does show in the
upper portion great quantities of such types of rock. As the waters receded,
much mud and saturated sediment washed off the continents into the oceans.
Along the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, great depts of mid
and upper Cenozoic sediments have accumulated. Sediments lower in the
geological column are not as well represented.
Table II puts the four stages together. This table thus summarizes a Flood
Model and correlates it with the geological column. In making the comparison,
we must keep in mind severl important reservations.
1. Many portions of our present land masses would lack parts of the
geologic column because they would be too far from the source areas
for such sediments.
2. The adjustments of the earth's crust in the later stages of the Flood,
when mountains rose and the ocean basins developed, would have created
tremendous erosion that would have removed large portions of earlier
deposits.
3. Postflood erosion wold mis and confuse some of the upper sediments so
that now it would be difficult to determine exactly when the Flood
terminated.
4. It is not necessary to conclude that the Flood completely ended when
Noah left the ark. Most likely for many years, perhaps hundreds of years,
lower elevations continued to experience local flooding conditions.
5. We should not use the ecology of the present world as a firm model of
pre-Flood ecology. Pre-Flood seas may have been smaller and not
interconnected to allow all ocean waters to reach a common sea level.
We thus interpret the sequence of fossils in the earth's crust to be
largely the result of pre-Flood ecology and not the consequence of evolution
over time. Some interesting though indirect evidences in support of the
ecological model are surfacing.
Various fossl plants and animals have modern living representatives. such
'living fossils' somewhat puzzle evolutionists because they do not find
fossil examples in intermediate beds between the ancient fossil and modern
living specimens and because the organisms have not changed over supposed
eons of time.
Two animal 'living fossils' that illustrate the ecological rather than
evolutionary distribution in the geological column are Neopilina, a small
mollusk, and the coelacanth fish. Paleontologists considered Neopilina
extinct since the Devonian (280 million or more years) until it was
discovered living in deep water off the coasts of Central and South America.
(2) Coelacanth fisheds supposedly died out 70 million years ago. In 1938,
a fisherman caught a live coelacanth off Cape Province, South Africa.(3)
Others have been collected since then. If the two animals have been living
continuously from geological time to the present, why have they left no record
of themselves in sediments since the Devonian (Neopilina) or the Jurassic
(coelacanth)? Neopilina (paleontologists classify the fossil form as
Pilina) is a deep-sea-bottomd dweller. during the Genesis flood, it would
have been among the first to be buried. Therefore we would not expect its
remains to extend more than a short distance up the geological column.
Sediments composing the upper Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozioc came from
higher environments and involced ecological zones that did not include Pilina.
However, the mollusk did survive the ravages of the Flood in some form and
repopulated certain areas of the post-flood sea bottoms. (See Table II.)
The coelacanth fish is not a deep sea dweller although it keeps far enough
below the surface to escape most fish nets. furthermore, it is a swimmer
and able to move about. Its buried remains would naturally occure higher
in the geological column because the Flood activities would bring about its
burial later. it also escaped total annihilation to reestablish itself in
the post-Flood seas. The Devonian and Jurassic positions (its last
appearance in the geological column) for Pilina and the coelacanth fish and
the total absence of fossil remains since those periods fits a flood model
involving sequential burial of ecological zones and qrgues against their
existence over long ages of time.
Foraminifera (small one-celled sea organisms) are common as fossils and
also thrive in modern oceans. Cretaceous forams (the commonly used shortened
term) appear in California sea cliffs in the same vertical sequence as their
counterparts now living in the adjacent ocean.(4) In other words, living
forams similar to the Cretaceous fossil species have the same vertical
distribution as the fossils in the cliff. Obviously the fossil forams are
in an ecological rather than an evolutionary sequence.
Although we could give more examples, it is a subject needing much more
research. Almost no one has studied stratigraphy from this perspective. We
predict that much evidence will come forth favoring a stratigraphy caused
by a worldwide Flood acting on an ecologically zoned pre-Flood world.
In addition to ecological zones as the reason for the stratigraphic sequence
of fossils, we must consider other factors. Ambulatory animals would likely
try to escape rising water by fleeing to higher ground. That would put
creatures from lower zones into higher elevations. Those in higher areas
would not likely move to lower regions. We can see evidence for this factor
in animals footprints. The majority of amphibian, reptile, and mammal body
fossils occure higher in the geological column than do their footprints.
Another factor to take into account is how long plant and animal carcasses
will float. They would remain at the surface for varying periods of time
until water saturation caused them to sink to the bottom. Priliminary results
from animal carcass flotation research on a small sample (an unpleasant
experiment!) show the amphibian bodies sink first, followed by reptiles,
mammals, and birds--a sequence similar to that in the geological column.
Notes:
1. Ager, 1973
2. Lemche, 1957.
3. Smith, 1956.
4. Sliter and Baker, 1972; Sliter, 1972.
References:
Ager, D.V. 1973. The nature of the strtigraphical record. The Macmillan Press
Ltd., London. 114 pp
Lemche, H. 1957. A new living deep-sea mollusc of the Cambro-Devonian class
Monoplacophora. Nature 179:413-416.
Smith, J.L.B. 1956. The search beneath the sea. Henry Holt and co. NY
Sliter, W.V. 1972. Cretaceous foraminifers--depth habitats and their origin.
Nature 239:514,515.
Sliter, W.V. and R.A. Baker. 1972. Cretaceous Bathymetric distribution of
benthonic foraminifers. Jour. foram. Res. 2:167-183.
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