From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: 5'th Category of evidence / perceived gravity and continental drift
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 03:33:52 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

[From Mr. Macrae -- Roger]

Since Ted has strayed into subjects I am familiar with (geology),
here is a rebuttal of the material in his "5'th Category of
evidence".  Most of Ted's argument is based on paleogeography
and plate tectonics.  Since Ted has _stated_ he is not interested
in discussion, I post this for the sake of the other readers of
talk.origins.  Ted is still welcome to comment on my statements - I
will respond.

First of all, a summary of Ted's strategy:  1) present evidence
of "glaring anomalies" in the geologic record 2) claim that they
cannot be explained by conventional (uniformitarian) geologic
explanations 3) propose a hypothesis that does explain them,
and better.

I will show that 1) the anomalies are not really "glaring", if
real at all; 2) they can be explained by conventional geologic
explanations, and that Ted's understanding of "uniformitarian
principles" is wrong; and 3) his hypothesis is weak on detail,
explains questionable anomalies, makes _incorrect_ predictions, and
most importantly, is _much_ worse at explaining the
evidence than the conventional geologic explanations.

As seems to be usual, Ted provides very few references to the
evidence he is using.  Paleogeography is quite visual, so it
requires maps.  Since Ted is using published geologic evidence,
you might want to look at it yourself.  I suggest one or more of the
following references:
[1] Smith, A.G. and Briden, J.C., 1977.  Mesozoic and Cenozoic
Paleocontinental Maps.  Cambridge University Press:Cambridge, 63pp.
[continental maps back to the Triassic]

[2] Zeigler, P.A.  1988.  Evolution of the Arctic-North Atlantic and
the Western Tethys.  American Association of Petroleum Geologists,
Memoir 43, 198pp + maps.
[absolutely beautiful colour maps showing basin development, mountain
building, and plate motions for the area surrounding Europe and
northeastern North America.  Plenty of cross sections and other data
in the text.]

[3] Scotese, C.R. et al., 1979.  Paleozoic base maps.  Journal of
Geology, v.87, no.3, p.217-277.
[maps in the Paleozoic (pre Triassic) ]
[Note: [1] and [3] are not the most recent, but they are good
compilations.]

[This one is less detailed, but probably easier to find and
understand]
[4] Murphy, J.B and Nance, R.D., 1992.  Mountain belts and
the supercontinent cycle.  Scientific American, April 1992 issue,
p.84-91]

A modern topographic map with the ocean floor would be useful too.

>news@fedfil.UUCP (HTE alias Ted Holden)
>A recent issue of the Aeon journal, which concerns itself with
>the nature of the antedeluvian world, carried my article concerning
>sauropod dinosaurs, as well as a somewhat longer and more
>interesting article by Lynn Rose involving continental drift theory.
>The average viewer of these groups will be vaguely aware that
>continents are thought to have drifted over the last 200 million
>years or so, but is probably unaware of the rather startling
>configuration which they are thought to have been in 100 - 200
>million years ago.

 startling?

>This picture has been painstakingly p[ie]ced together from data
>involving the fits of the various continental borders.  The most
>striking feature of the entire picture is the Sea of Tethys, a
>monstrous intrusion into the very center of the all-continent mass
>which leads a viewer to see a missing wedge;  the entire
>configuration resembles nothing so much as a pac-man with its mouth
>agape.

	Pangea was originally proposed by Alfred Wagener in 1928 but
largely ignored because there was no known mechanism to move
continents around.
	The Tethys was originally recognized/proposed because of its
distinctive fossils - _not_ the continental positions!
Paleontologists talk of a "Tethyean" marine fauna versus a "Boreal"
marine fauna.  The distinction appears to be because of an equatorial
(Tethyean) versus polar (Boreal) environment - Tethyean faunas
tend to be "warm-water", equatorial faunas (associated with coral
reefs, for instance).
	Pangea in its modern configuration has been known since the
1960's, when more evidence for crustal plate motion was found
(initially called "sea floor spreading").  Since then, the mechanism
for continent motion has been expanded to the principle of plate
tectonics.
	Contrary to what Ted says, there is _much_ more to
reconstructing continent positions than just "fitting" them together
(see [2]).  The nature of continental rifting necessitates
deformation/stretching of the continental margins, so the edges will
never "fit back together" _perfectly_.  Try stretching a toffee until
it breaks.  Now try to fit the pieces back together.  The edges do
not match perfectly because they are deformed.  This is an
exaggeration, but shows the basic problem.
	Plate reconstruction involves 1) paleobiogeography (fossils),
2) paleomagnetism (to determine magnetic inclination and approximate
paleolatitude), 3) comparison of geologic histories between plates
(e.g., collision between plates produces mountain-building episodes
in both at the same time, as well as similar geology), and 4)
"subtraction" of strips of oceanic crust of a given age (basically
reversing the current process at the mid-oceanic spreading ridges).
As you go back in time, reconstructions become less certain.
	It was no surprise to paleontologists when plate tectonics
suggested a large equatorial ocean that no longer exists (unless you
count the Caspian or Black Seas :-).  Just as it was no surprise to
find continents were once together because the land fossils were
similar on both sides (originally recognized by Wagener).
	It might surprise Ted to learn that Africa, India, Australia,
South America, and Antarctica were merged into the continent termed
"Gondwana" for a _long_ time prior to Pangea (see [3]).  And a
"proto" Atlantic Ocean, termed the "Iapetus" was also present between
Gondwana, part of Europe, and most of North America.  I suppose the
presence of this ocean is just as problematic as the Tethys?  And the
forces that brought Africa, India, Australia, South America, and
Antarctica together somehow did not affect all the other continents
at this time?

>Lynn Rose noted several glaring problems with this arrangement, and
>suggested a novel way of solving them.  The problems included:

I agree the explanation is "novel.  The "problems" are not "glaring"
at all.  See below.

>1.  That the continents were all clumped into a single mass in the
>first place.  No force exists at present which might ever draw them
>all together, and the odds of them all merely drifting together for
>no reason are greater than 64 - 1, which would be the odds against
>them ever merely appearing in the same hemisphere for no real
>reason.

There is a reason.  Continents do not just wander around aimlessly
like icebergs on an ocean. If they did, your 1 in 64 chance might be
reasonable.  The continents move due to heat-driven convection in the
mantle, and this is not random.  Recently there has been discussion
of a "supercontinent cycle", with continents converging into one
"supercontinent", and trapping heat in the mantle, eventually causing
renewed rifting and breakup [4].  The model has been proposed because
Pangea is only the latest accumulation of continents into a
"supercontinent".  There is evidence for similar accumulations in the
Precambrian, separated by periods of rifting and ocean development.
Surprise Ted.  You need 2 periods of the mystical "force", and
2 periods to break the "supercontinent" apart.
 

>2.  If, as seems overwhelmingly likely, some force drew the
>continents into one place, then that force should have drawn them
>into a circular mass.  The sea of Tethys is an anomaly, which
>clearly does not belong in the picture.  This is the big problem,
>and the main one which Rose solves.

  As I mentioned at the start, the Iapetus was another ocean
that pre-dates Pangea.  So the Tethys is not that unusual.
In the proposed "supercontinent cycle" model, there is no problem
with a non-circular accumulation, it does not predict one.
The process is slow enough that every continental piece does not
necessarily make it to the accumulation before new rifting starts
occurring anyway.

>3.  Given uniformitarian views, if we assume the system to be 7 B
>years old, our earth should have been in equ[i]librium even 200 M
>years ago.  If some force existed then to draw the continents
>together into Pangeae, and if that force were terrestrial, then
>clearly Pangeae should still exist.  The relatively minor
>catastrophes which establishment science presently allows for as per
>the case of the Alverez version of the dinosaur extinctions should
>by no means have broken up Pangeae.

Well, 7 billion is a bit off for Earth history.  More like 4.5
billion. I think Ted kind of goofed on the numbers anyway:

7 Billion              4.5                             .2     0 Now
+-----------------------+-------------------------------+-----+
  age of the Earth            time for "equilibrium"   "equibrilated"
Ted               geologists   (using Ted's age) 7-.2 = 6.8 billion

Whatever (independent?) calculations Ted is using to decide
how long it takes the Earth to be "equibrilated" after formation,
he is putting a limit at 200 million years ago for it to be
equibrilated.  Using _his_ age for the Earth (7 Billion years), you
end up with a "time to equibrilate" of 6.8 billion years
(7 billion - 200 million).  If you use the accepted age of the Earth
(4.5 billion) rather than Ted's, you will see we still have 2.3
billion years before the Earth is equibrilated.  I guess that is why
the continents are still moving measurably, and why Pangea did break
up.  Besides, although the Earth is a fairly closed system, the
current heat driving plate motion is generated by radioactivity.  It
is _not_ just residual heat from the formation of the Earth.
	Now, maybe the above exercise is silly, because I have
misunderstood what Ted wrote, rather than what he meant.  But the
explanation is a bit sloppy.

>4.  As all who have downloaded my little file and viewed it have
>seen, India starts out on one shore of the Sea of Tethys and moves
>to the other.  According to current theory, again as per "Continents
>Adrift", India can barely make it over that distance even in the
>greatest version of the allowed time involved;  it should be on the
>ocean floor.  Rose goes into some detail on this point.

[Note: I think the "file" Ted is talking about is the program
"Time Machine Earth" by Edwin S. Smith, Jr., Sageware Corporation,
or an image produced from it.  It is a commercial IBM-PC program that
displays the continent motions for the last few 100 million years.  I
have seen it.  I like it, although there are some slight technical
inaccuracies, and it is a simplification of the process (it does not
take deformation or some smaller continental fragments (e.g. Florida)
into account).]

	Huh?  India should be on the ocean floor?  India is a
continent.  It is less dense than oceanic crust or the mantle.  It
floats, so it is higher, so it is land.  I _think_ what Ted means is
that India should be surrounded by ocean, rather than embedded in
Eurasia, because the expected rates of drift are too slow.  It would
not make it to Asia.
	Convenient how Ted uses uniformitarian assumptions of
continental drift rates here, but is loath to accept uniformitarian
principles when it is against his hypotheses. I.e. he can say
"uniformitarian principles do not apply", while geologists are not
allowed to say "plate motion rates could have been faster than any we
now observe".
	There is nothing in uniformitarian principles that
says processes in the past are _exactly_ as they are now,
or that _only_ processes we observe now could operate in the past.
There has not been a kilometre-size asteroid impact recently, or an
atmosphere with no oxygen recently, or all land without plants
recently, or highly fluid, high temperature komatitic lavas, has
there?  And yet geologists have no problems with these possibilities.
Uniformitarian principles only say the physics in the past operated
as it does now, thus processes observed now are comperable to those
in the past -  _not_ necessarily exactly the same, and _not_
precluding the possibility of other processes in the past that are
also constrained by physics, but not operating now.

In fact, Ted never says how different India's plate motion rates are.
If you examine modern spreading rates, the average is 1 or 2
centimetres per year.  The maximum is at least 6 cm/year (south east
Pacific).  I cannot remember if higher rates have been found.
How fast did India move?  Well, Ted doesn't provide a number, or a
reference, so here is one:
Patriat, P. and Achache, J., 1984.  India-Eurasia collision
chronology has implications for crustal shortening and driving
mechanism of plates.  Nature, v.311 (18 October), p.615-620.

If you look in here, you find some great plots of estimated rates
of convergence between India and Eurasia with time.  I have to
admit, Ted picked a good spot for an anomaly, because those rates
are _high_.  The maximum is 20-25 cm/yr, although only for a very
short time, and the average is much lower, especially as India
starts to embed into Asia.  But are these rates completely out
of the range of conventional explanations?  No.  They are
unquestionably higher than modern values, but _not_ too high.
In fact, if you look at the the "supercontinent cycle" model, it
predicts the higest spreading rates shortly after the supercontinent
breaks up (because of all the trapped mantle heat), as is observed in
India's case.  It also predicts slower spreading rates later - as is
observed now.
	What the conventional models say about this case is a bit of
a moot point anyway, given the ridiculous rates Ted's explanation of
the evidence predicts.
See below.

>During both ages, the earth was egg shaped, considerably
>more so in the age of Pangeae.

>Rose's solution to the aforementioned problems:  imagine a half of a
>grapefruit skin sitting atop a basketball (our egg-shaped world),
>and then inagine that a catastrophe occurred during which this felt
>effect of OTHER gravity, from the small-star or large planet(s) was
>reduced, which amounts to imagining that somebody pushed the half
>grapefruit skin down atop the surface of the basketball, thus
>forcing it to lie atop a surface of lesser curvature.  The skin of
>the grapefruit half would split into something very like the Sea of
>Tethys.

	Ok.  This explains the Tethys as a "split" as the "mountain"
collapsed.

>What Rose is saying is that the Tethys Sea never existed, and that
>we are only forced to imagine it's having existed by our insistence
>on believing that the world was always round as it is now.
	Huh?  I thought you just said the "grapefruit splitting"
explained the Tethys, then you are saying it didn't exist at all?
	Well, you will have to explain to all those warm-water marine
fossils that lived in the Tethys that they did not live in the ocean,
they lived on land.  Seriously, does anyone believe this stuff?  I
can point to many references to the Tethyean faunas that are
impossible to explain without an ocean for them to live in.  For
instance, how do corals or echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins, sand
dollars) live on land or in fresh water?  Ok, I am using a
uniformitarian "assumption".  I.e. that no coral or echinoderm has
_ever_ been found in fresh water, or even brackish water, and that if
you put one into fresh or low salinity water, they die; but if this
is not a safe assumption, you also have to explain why they occur
together with many other marine organisms and made coral reefs in
lakes.
	Even more ridiculous is the predictions of Rose's model.  If
the Tethys were formed by "splitting" as the "forces" from the nearby
planetary body lessened, wouldn't the Tethys have stretched
(i.e. rifted) margins?  How do you explain that the evidence for
the Tethys is now in the highest and longest mountain chain in the
world - the Alpine-Himalyan system?  Mountains are formed by
compressive forces that still be measured now.  Exactly the
_opposite_ predicted by the process you/Rose are advocating
specifically for the Tethys.
	Also, the rates of spreading at the "splits" you speak of are
several orders of magnitude larger than than the ones required for
the conventional explanation.

>Lynn Rose mentions one final problem involved with continental
>drift theory, and this involves the present fits of the Red Sea
>shores and the shores of the Gulf of Aden.  Both fits are quite
>good;  you can join the shores of the Red Sea, or of the gulf, BUT
>ONLY ONE AT A TIME;  if you join the shores of the Red Sea, the
>shores of the Gulf will be open by about 20 degrees, and vice-
>versa.  Basically what you have is like two letter "V"'s connected
>at their vertices, one something like 110 degrees and the other
>something like 90.  This ammounts to a dilemma on the map of the
>world.  Given our earth as it presently exists, such a split could
>not happen.
	"..as it presently exists such a split could not happen". 

Wrong.  As Ted has explained it, there _is_ a problem with the
"fit" of the Arabian plate with Africa.  What he is saying is
that if you close #1 below, there is an obvious wedge-shaped gap at
#2.  Likewise, if you close #2, there is a gap at #1 (take a look at
a real map, it is quite obvious).


   |\
   | \       --/
   \ 1\   --/       -----
    \  \-/  2  ----/           1 = Red Sea (water)
     \    ----/                2 = Gulf of Aden (water)
      ---/                     3 = East Africa Rift (land depression)
     /  /
     /3/
     / /
      /

The "problem" is that Ted has not given you the full story:  1) The
Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are only 2 parts of a 3 part rift system.
The southern extension is the East African Rift.  Here you find a
linear, down-faulted trough with associated volcanism - just as
the conventional geologic explanation says happened in the Red
Sea and Gulf of Aden _before_ they got deep enough to be below
sea level.  It is a zone of stretching of the continental crust,
with maximum stretching in the north, and less to the south.
Now what happens if you close the Red Sea, _and_ undo the stretching
that has occurred in the East African Rift?  It fits much better.

2) Since continental crust stretched and deformed when it rifted
along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, you do not expect
the pieces to fit _exactly_, unless you undo that deformation as
well. If plates were _completely_ rigid, even at the edges, there
might be a problem, but they are _not_.

3) The coastline is only a single line of the full 3-dimensional  
structure of the rifts that should be considered.

4) Rifting and oceanic spreading occurs as a rotation of the two
halves about a pole because the Earth is spherical.  I.e. it always
produces wedge-shaped zones of extension, with minimum extension
towards the pole of rotation, and maximum away from the pole:
        

                  _______
pole   _____-----/  ^
+-----/             | maximum spreading rate
      \-----_____   v
                 \-------
So when you reconstruct the plate positions, you have to rotate the
pieces, not just spread them apart.

So basically Ted has over-simplified the rifting process and
left out evidence to the point that it looks like there is
an anomaly.

<historical stuff deleted>

>Rose proposes the world mountain (of the age of Kronos) to have
>been based within the Afar Triangle.  He proposes something akin to
>a half a grapefruit sitting atop a basketball (for the purpose of
>conceptualization and not necessarily to scale) as having been the
>former situation, and then (when the whole thing fell at the end of
>the golden age), surface splitting would occur with the skin of the
>half grapefruit being suddenly forced to lie flat upon the surface
>of lesser curvature.  If two such splits thus occurred, as easily
>might happen, then you would see just such an impossible split as
>we see between Africa and Arabia now.

Wait a second.  On one hand you are saying the pieces do _not_ fit,
the next you are saying it did split, but in a way that makes
them not fit.  But how is your/Rose's model different in terms
of evidence from the deformation during rifting (geologists) versus
the deformation of the "squashed" "world mountain" (you/Rose)?

First you wrongly knock down the "uniformitarian" explanation on
the grounds that it does not fit the evidence, then you
fill the supposed "void" with yours.  I say there is no justification
for disputing the "uniformitarian" plate tectonic explanation,
because your statement that the lack of _perfect_ fit is not
predicted by plate tectonics is _WRONG_.

<stuff about coincidental solution of multiple problems by
the "world mountain" hypothesis">

Uniformitarian plate tectonic explanations are even more successful
at explaining and predicting evidence, not just 3 or 4 supposed
"anomalies".

>Before I lose track of it, I should also mention that Rose's novel
>method of accounting for the splitting of continental plates, i.e.
>the notion of a curved surface being forced to lie upon a world
>which is suddenly less curved, will also account for a couple of
>other anomalies. Mountains are generally thought to arise when
>continental plates collide or shift over and under each other, and
>yet we have cases of mountains, such as the Urals, where nothing of
>the sort shows any evidence of ever having occurred.
[WRONG - see below]
>Rose states that a highly curved surface suddenly
>forced to lie upon a surface of lesser curvature, aside from
>splitting as we have seen, could also wrinkle, thus forming
>mountains.
	Sure, but the dominant stress in the "squashed" surface
should be extensional (the splits), while around the collapse of
the "world mountain", it should be compressional.  I.e. in plan view,
something like this:
                 2
          ____---------___
	 /       |        \       1 = radiating extensional "splits"
        /     \  |  /      \          (e.g., the Tethys)
     2 |  ____ \ 1 / _____  | 2   2 = compressional mountain belts
       |       /   \        |         (e.g., the Urals?)
        \     /  |  \      /
	 \       |        /
	  ----________---
                 2
	Two points: 1) How does this explain the Urals? and
2) Where on Earth do you find a _continent_sized_ structure even
vaguely resembling that, let alone in the Afar Triangle region?
(Similar structures do occur on Venus, though :-).

	As for the "mystery" of the Urals.
They are no more a "mystery" than the Appalachians.  If you
look at continental reconstructions (yes, the same ones as you use),
and go a little bit further back than Pangea (see [3] or [4]), you
will see that Europe and Asia where once _separate continents_. 

Gasp!  In fact, there are marine fossils and sediments in the Urals
(a classic area for Carboniferous and Permian-age marine fossils),
indicating an ocean was there.  What happens when separate continents
(like Asia and India, for instance) collide?  Gasp!  Mountain ranges.
See [2] for detailed maps of the collision that took place along the
eastern edge of the European continent.
  The Appalachians were formed during the same continental collision
that produced Pangea in the first place (which you admit existed)
(see [2] and [4]).  How is this any different from the Urals, except
that the ocean did not reopen in the case of the Urals?
	No anomaly.  No further explanation necessary.

	So, to summarize, your "anomalies" are questionable (except
perhaps India), you have misrepresented the evidence, your hypotheses
make false predictions, and, in my opinion, your hypothesis _FAILS_
miserably against conventional geologic explanations.

>--
>Ted Holden
>HTE
	e-mail comments welcome.
	-Andrew
	macrae@pandora.bio.ns.ca
	(After Sept.1: macrae@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca)