From: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Subject: Response to the Response to the Flood FAQ, part 3
Reply-To: macrae@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca
Organization: The Aurora Group
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 18:48:14 GMT

[Still more contributions from Andrew MacRae, who himself can't post.]

5. SALT FORMATION and DIAPIRISM
> folta@cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta)
>> isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)

>>   How could the flood deposit layers of solid salt --- sometimes meters
>> 	in width.  This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has
>> 	its fresh-water intake cut off, and then evaporates.  These layers
>> 	occur more or less at random times in the geological history, and
>> 	have characteristic fossils on either side.  Therefore, if the
>> 	fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood,
>> 	there are, it seems, only two choices:
>> 	(1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time,
>> 	during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or
>> 	(2) the salt is a later intrusion.
>> 	I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a
>> 	theory of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils.
>> 	[From: marlowe@paul.rutgers.edu (Thomas Marlowe)]

>Whitcomb & Morris, pg 412-417. Two simplified explanations: 1) the
> deposits were moved from elsewhere, where they had been since the
> creation; or 2) they were created by a lot of heat in a short time
>rather than a little heat over a long time (volcanic versus solar).

	For 1): But the salt deposits are interbedded with sediments
containing marine fossils, sometimes at centimetre scale.  Fossils were
supposedly created before the flood, on one of the days of creation?  When
do the "creation" fossils end, and the "flood" fossils begin?
	For 2): But the salt deposits are interbedded with sediments
containing marine fossils, sometimes at centimetre scale.  You can't have
the animals that made fossils living in molten salt.
	Salt is commonly crystallized into cubes with recessed faces called
"hopper" crystals.  These are observed in modern evaporative ponds.  I do
not think they can form from melts.

>Also, salt domes are so large that a non-Flood explanation has problems,
>too.  They claim that there are salt domes 3000 feet deep and deeper, and
>Europe has domes that may be 15,000 feet deep. To have evaporated in
>place would create enormous difficulties.

	Um, wow, I aggree.  In fact, domes up to several km high are common.
But I do not aggree that a "non-Flood explanation has problems".

>They claim that such large deposits are only explainable in terms of non-
>sedimentary mechanisms. The later intrusion mechanism above, sounds like
>this.
	Ooooooooo!  How original of Whitcomb and Morris.  What a coincidence
- the "intrusive" mechanism they describe is exactly the same one that
geologists theorized many decades ago.  It is called "evaporite diapirism"
(evaporite, since the domes usually contain more than just salt).  Did they
at least give credit to conventional geologists for the explanation? :-) :-)
	This mechanism causes its own problems for "flood" models, since the
evaporites intrude the overlying sediments plastically - i.e.  they do no
melt their way into the sediments, they slowly push their way through, and
the evaporites become highly deformed in the process.  This type of plastic
deformation takes a long time, because rapid deformation causes the rock to
break (i.e. fault), not bend plastically.  All of the intrusion and
deformation must have occurred _after_ the flood, if the kilometres of
overlying sediments were deposited by the flood.  A few thousand years is
not enough time to plastically intrude evaporites through kilometres of
sediments!  You will also be pleased to know that some evaporite diapirs are
subsurface, and form angular unconformities with thick sequences of
overlying rocks - also implying a more complex history than a single flood
can explain.
	Besides these problems, you are still avoiding the basic question:
how did the salt form in the first place?  True, deformed "salt domes" are
kilometres high, and must have formed by intrusive diapir processes, but
undeformed salt beds are still many hundreds of metres thick in some areas
_and_ are interbedded with limestones containing marine fossils, gypsum,
terrestrial sediments, etc. _and_ occur at many different ages.
	Do Whitcomb and Morris mention the fact that evaporite diapirs merge
into single beds at depth, and that therefore diapirism doesn't really
answer the basic question??


--------------------------------
--------------------------------
-----/-\------------------------
-----|+|-------------/-\--------   + = salt
-----|+|-------------|+|--------   --- = other sedimentary rocks
-----|+|-------------|+|--------   (these would be deformed
-----|+|-------------|+|--------   near the edges of the diapirs)
-----|+|-------------|+|--------
-----|+|-------------|+|--------
-----|+|-------------|+|--------
----/+++\-----------/+++\-------
---/+++++\--/+++\--/+++++\------
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  <---- originating salt layer
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
--------------------------------

	This is the normal condition for all "salt" diapirs.


6. FOSSIL FORESTS

>>   How could a one-year flood deposit the following: "In Yellowstone
>>   Park there is a stratigraphic section of 2000 feet exposed which
>> 	shows 18 successive petrified forests.  Each forest grew to
>>	maturity before it was wiped out with a lava flow." [J. Laurence
>> 	Kulp, quoted in Strahler, _Science and Earth History_, pp
>>	221-224.]

>This is an easy one. These are not 18 separate petrified forests, but the
>repeated, rapid, cataclysmic deposits of trees from elsewhere. The
>"trees" found are in fact tree stumps, without extensive roots or
>branches. It is well-known that tree stumps that are ripped up in floods
>often are deposited roots-down. (For example, this month;s Science
>magazine shows such an effect from a huge flood in Washington. Gish and
>company have also found the same sort of event at Mt. St. Helens.)

	I've seen the Mt. St. Helens paper [Coffin, H.G., 1983.  Erect
floating stumps in Spirit Lake, Washington.  Geology, v.11, p.298-299].  It
is a good, if short, observational paper.  The reason the roots are often
deposited down is because of boulders that the roots have trapped.  The
author makes a good point, however, note that at least as many logs and
stumps in the illustrations are _not_ upright [ibid. fig. 2, 3].
	Also note that the transported nature of the trees can be tested by
other methods.  For instance, trees grow in soils.  If you find a tree stump
with roots embedded in a paleosol (fossil soil), it must be in place.
Another test is whether leaves appropriate for the wood are found around the
stump (i.e. leaf litter), and other evidence that you were dealing with a
normal, "in place" forest floor at the horizon of the stumps.  As you imply,
an "extensive", delicate root system is more likely to be in place than
transported.

>Thus, what looks like "forest killed by volcano, tens of thousands of
>years until new forest, which is killed by volcano, ..." could have
>actually been entirely been deposited in rapid succession from a forest
>at another location. In fact, I think they presented (at their seminar)
>information  that one of their group had gotten a Master's Thesis out of
>looking into the different forest's tree rings and finding that the many
>layers were from the same forest (tree rings corresponded).

	Now that would be interesting.  Do you have a citation for the paper
or thesis?
	Ok, instead of trying to find out more about the Yellowstone
occurrence, for which your explantion is certainly a possibilty (without
more data), lets look at some others.  One that I am familiar with is the
"Fossil Forest" on Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic:

Cristie, R.L., and McMillan, N.J. (eds.), 1991.  Tertiary
        fossil forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island,
        Arctic Archipelago, Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin
        403., 227pp.
        

        Here you find _mummified_ (i.e. non-mineralized) tree roots
and trunks in an unlithified "leaf-litter" (needles, leaves, like you
find in modern forests).  Amber is common.  And, you guessed it,
there are paleosols:
        Tarnocai, C. and Smith, C.A.S., 1991.  Paleosols of the
        Fossil Forest area, Axel Heiberg Island.  IN: [see above],
        p.171-187.
        They recognize 15 paleosols in a 22m section at the site,
including the ones with the tree stumps/logs.
        

        There is no evidence that this is a displaced occurrence.  The
stumps and leaf litter are exactly as it would be if you were walking
through the forest today (except that the tree trunks have fallen over
beside the stumps :-).  The spacing between trees is similar to modern
forests.  You can even burn the wood :-)

Explain that.
And when you are finished, check out this reference:

Carpenter, K., 1992.  Behavior of hadrosaurs as interpreted from footprints
in the "Mesaverde" Group (Campanian) of Coldorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming, v.29, no.2, p.81-96.

Which describes dinosaur footprints and large tree stumps in the roof of two
coal seams in Cretaceous age sediments.

And visit Joggins, Nova Scotia, which has many upright stumps of
Carboniferous age giant lycopod trees in what look like river-deposited
sediments.  Giant lycopod trees are not woody, they are a tube of vascular
tissues with a pith-filled centre.  The root systems are branch into a
system 1-1.5m in diameter, and have many small rootlets (about 1cm dia, 10cm
long) projecting from the main root branches into the surrounding sediment -
- it is very unlikely that the rootlets or the pithy trunk could be
transported far without being crushed.

There are many more "fossil forest" horizons of different age worldwide.

	-Andrew
	macrae@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca


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