From: swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Voyagers on the Ark of Noah
Date: 28 Jan 93 23:52:19 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <2B6440E8.29518@ics.uci.edu>, bvickers@valentine.ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers) writes:
|> ===============================================================================
|> Author: Mark Isaak
|>  Title: Problems with a Global Flood and Noah's Ark
|>   Date: Nov. 2, 1992
|> ===============================================================================
|>   Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have
|> 	originated only on the surface, such as footprints, rain drops,
|> 	river channels, wind-blown dunes, beaches, and glacial deposits.

Burrows, in-place roots, desciation cracks ...
[Really, the list is quite lengthy].

|> 	* Dinosaur remains are often extensively remineralized.

You said it.

Just last week I read an artical about a new genus of sauropod, named
Dislocosaurus, becaue the authors were not sure whether it cam from the Morrison
or the Hell Creek Formation (the original collector had failed to accurately
record its place of origin, so it was just sitting in the museum with no
good location data).

At one point in the article, in order to try to get a handle on the origin of
the fossils, the authors analyzed the minerology of the specimen, and compared
it to the minerology of other specimens from those two formations.  The
descriptions given make it clear that essentially complete mineralization was
the norm, at least for these two formations.
[BTW, the results were inconclusive, the Dislocosaurus bones had features that
were more common in the Morrison bones, but still present in *some* Hell Creek
bones].

[The artical was published last year, I believe in "The Journal of Paleontology"].

|>   How were hematite layers laid down?  Standard theory is that they were
|> 	laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen.  In an
|> 	oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.

Quick clue - how does one get reduced iron (hematite) in an oxidizing atmosphere?

|>   How do you explain the survival of any sensitive marine life (e.g.,
|> 	coral)?  Since most coral are found in shallow water, the turbidity
|> 	created by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off
|> 	from the sun.  The silt would cover the reef after the rains were
|> 	over, and the coral would ALL DIE.

Corals are *really* sensitive.  Right now there is a massive, nearly world-wide,
die-off of corals, that seems to be due simply to slight climatic changes.

|> 	 Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in
|> 	"fossil graveyards" as evidence for the Flood. In particular,
|> 	creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa, which
|> 	is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate
|> 	animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61).

And it is not just sheer numbers that make this scenario absurd, it is the
ecology it implies.  The most diverse large-animal ecosystems today are the
savannas of East Africa.  There one small area (of only a few square miles)
may have a dozen or so species of antelope, and 3-4 species of large carnivores.
Rain forests have the largest absolute diversity, but only in small, arboreal
animals.  Large ground animals are actually *less* diverse in rain forests.

Now, make a list of the large herbivorous dinosaurs found in, say, Montana
and Wyoming.  Even being conservative, you get a list of amazing size, at least
11 species just of horned dinosaurs.  Now add the similar numbers of sauropods
and 'duck-billed' dinosaurs, and then add the miscelaneous ones, like 4-5
species of ankylosaurs, several species of pachycephalosaurs, ...

You end up with more species in those two states alone, *just* counting
dinosaurs (and ignoring extinct mammals), than could *possibly* co-exist
in any one place.  Now add the living species to the equation ...

The result is just simply too absurd to be believed.  The flats of Montana
would have to have supported a diversity of herbivores orders of magnitude
larger than anything now observed.  So, even assuming that the present
maximum is not the theoretical maximum (a good assumption), the total
number of known large herbivores from Montana and Wyoming is just too large
to be credible.

[I chose the area of Wyoming and Montana because I am most familiar with the
fossils from that area, not because it is particularly apt to my point].

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins