From: alc@netcom.com (Chris Stassen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Geologic column (was: "Re: Darwin's Enigma")
Date: 16 Apr 92 03:54:27 GMT
Organization: The Lion's Den, San Jose

In article <54pm02Xncdaw00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Jim Loucks writes:
[I asked:]
>> How did geologists, in the days when they couldn't have been biased by
>> acceptance of evolution, order the geologic column in exactly the same
>> order that is accepted today?

> If they were creationists, maybe they believed in some sort of
> theistic evolution, that God occasionally created more complex
> organisms as time progressed. 

That's a pretty creative guess; certainly better than I would have
come up with in a similar position.  But it's not correct.  Remember,
I said that this was before the geological community took evolution
seriously (divinely guided or not!).

Most of the phanerozoic systems were identified by 1840, the majority
by Sedgwick, Murchison, and Phillips.  I think all would qualify as
young-earth catastrophist creationists by today's standards.

	"The sacred record tells us -- that a few thousand
	 years ago 'the foundations of the deep were broken
	 up -- and that the earth's surface was submerged by
	 the water of a general deluge; and the investigations
	 of geology tend to prove that the accumulations of
	 alluvial matter have not been going on many thousand
	 years; and that they were preceded by a great
	 catastrophe which has left traces of its operation in
	 the diluvial detritus which is spread out over all
	 the strata of the world." 
	(Sedgwick, 1825, Ann Philos, n.s. 10, 34)
	[Reproduced in _Great Geological Controversies_, p. 43]

Perhaps you were thinking of "progressive creationism" when you made
your reply, but that belief (whose main proponent at the time was
Cuvier) was a result of reluctant acceptance of the change in life
forms with depth in the column -- not a bias which can be blamed
as the source of that perception of change.

[regarding Deshayes' survey:]
>> Quaternary:	  90-95% of fossil shells identical to modern species
>> Late Tertiary:  35-50% of fossil shells identical to modern species
>> Middle Tertiary:  17% of fossil shells identical to modern species
>> Early Tertiary:   3.5% of fossil shells identical to modern species

> This says the apparent older time periods contain fewer fossil shells
> identical to modern species than the more recent. How are these time
> periods justified?

The survey was part of a joint effort with Cuvier.  At the time,
the latter three divisions would have been called "upper", "middle",
and "lower" Tertiary, simply based on their relative positions
where the strata overlap.  Even the ICR allows that the stuff on
bottom had to be laid down first (though they accept a non-standard
rate of deposition, to put it mildly).  

In other words, regardless of "time" (which I didn't want to bring
up because you don't buy it), the *ordering* of these strata is
simply derived from superposition.  I listed them top-to-bottom as
they are found in many locations around the world.

The question I wanted to ask you is not *whether* these formations
represented different times.  Rather, it is *how* the fossil contents
are to be explained under the assumption that they are *not* from
different times.  I expect something pretty good, if your level of
creativity at the top is to be any guide!

[By the way, I will get into the sorts of checks against the ordering
 of the geologic column this weekend.  I deleted that point out of the
 middle of this response because I didn't have time to get to it tonight.]
-- 
Chris Stassen						stassen@alc.com
DISCLAIMER:  My employer's account, but not their opinions.