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Geological column

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

The geological column or more commonly known as the standard geologic column is the concept used to classify the layers of sedimentary rock that supposedly formed over millions and even billions of years according to evolutionary geology. Although the complete column cannot be found in all locations the thickness and the numbers of layers present can be found generally all over the world.

This is not something which is strictly confined to evolutionary thought as one would think. In fact the geologic column was originally devised by creationists before 1860 who believed more so in catastrophism rather than the more prevalent view today called uniformitarianism. The so-called "periods" and "eras" were later added in to effectively make it a geologic timescale to fit within the ever-more popular evolutionary theory.^[1]

Geology Background

According to evolutionists, the Earth formed by condensing from a dust cloud along with the rest of the solar system. It supposedly grew as a result of numerous impacts early in its history and then cooled over billions of years and as such it has always been very hot in the center.

About 1785, James Hutton developed an idea called uniformitarianism. In doing so Hutton unwittingly fulfilled a prediction in II Peter 3:3-6. The phrase, "All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" is essentially ancient Greek for uniformitarianism. Furthermore, because of this theory, men are willingly ignorant of both creation and the Flood.

The idea can be summed up in the expression, "The present is the key to the past." According to the, Fundamentals of Physical Geography an online textbook uniformitarianism;

“

is a theory that rejects the idea that catastrophic forces were responsible for the current conditions on the Earth. Instead, the theory suggested that continuing uniformity of existing processes were responsible for the present and past conditions of this planet.

”

Simply put, the basic assumption of uniformitarianism is that a catastrophic events like the global flood never happened. The result is that all geologic features are interpreted according to processes observed in the post-flood world, while assuming that there was no flood. This is important to remember when reading about geologic discoveries.

Stratigraphy

A global time scale has been derived by correlating fossils from one place to another.

Main Article: Strata

The Geologic Column is often depicted as sequences of fossil layers known as strata, with the simplest fossils on the bottom and more complex ones on top. It is divided into several geologic periods, based on the fossils found in them. The geologic column was assembled by comparing fossils from various locations, as is illustrated in the diagram on the right. However, it is extremely rare for all of these layers be found in any one location. In reality the geologic column is nothing but a mental abstraction.

The underlining principles of Uniformitarian Geology are called the three principles of stratigraphy. They were developed by the Biblical geologist Nicolaus Steno about 1669. They are:

Problems for the Geologic Column

The geologic column does not simply refer to the fact that rocks are found in the Earth in layers, but it mainly refers to the classification of rocks and fossils based on index fossils and the theoretical division of these layers into "ages". These divisions are based on fossils and the comparison of rocks containing them with rocks found in distant locations.

While rocks are found in layers, the concept of the geologic column assumes that certain fossils are found only in certain layers. These fossils which are used to identify particular layers of the geological column are known as index fossils. Unfortunately, it is assumed that index fossils represent an absolute pattern, and this concept so permeates the classification of strata that it makes it difficult to determine if the geological column is based on a real global trend. Information about fossils that can help check the reality of the trend is often lacking; such as absolute depth; since in the geologic column model that information is irrelevant.

Assumptions

The first problem is that the geologic column assumes the three principles of stratigraphy, two of which have been shown to be wrong, and one has never been tested.

Unscientific bias towards fossils

Another problem is that all available sources claiming that fossils are found as shown in the geologic column assume that they do, yet none of them give any actual evidence that fossils are found as claimed. The use of these geologic ages is so pervasive that it makes an independent determination of fossil distribution and back checking the validity of the geologic column practically impossible. This gives the appearance that it has been proven.

Fossils do not always line up in layers. Often only one layer of fossils is found at a given site. This is particularly common with vertebrates. Sometimes they are found in multiple layers, but a statistical study of their distribution shows the that even index fossils are seldom found layered on top of one another. It also shows that many fossils are artificially restricted to a few layers. Different names are given to similar fossils in different strata. This study can be found in Woodmorappe's book Studies in Flood Geology.

The fact is that the geologic column is not found complete at any place on Earth, except in books and on web sites. While the geologic column consists of ten basic layers, all ten layers are found in very few places making up less than 1% of Earth's surface. The theory says it should be 100 miles thick, whereas, on average world wide, the sediment layers are only one mile thick. The entire geologic column was patched together from various locations.

Claimed examples of the entire column

Geologic ages assigned to exposed strata in North America.

There are places claimed to have the entire geological column, but what is meant is that they have found layers that they can assign to all ten geologic ages. The following list is as found at The Entire Geologic Column in North Dakota.

The Ghadames Basin in Libya.
The Beni Mellal Basin in Morocco.
The Tunisian Basin in Tunisia.
The Oman Interior Basin in Oman.
The Western Desert Basin in Egypt.
The Adana Basin in Turkey.
The Iskenderun Basin in Turkey.
The Moesian Platform in Bulgaria.
The Carpathian Basin in Poland.
The Baltic Basin in the USSR.
The Yeniseiy-Khatanga Basin in the USSR.
The Farah Basin in Afghanistan.
The Helmand Basin in Afghanistan.
The Yazd-Kerman-Tabas Basin in Iran.
The Manhai-Subei Basin in China.
The Jiuxi Basin China.
The Tung t'in - Yuan Shui Basin China.
The Tarim Basin China.
The Szechwan Basin China.
The Yukon-Porcupine Province Alaska.
The Williston Basin in North Dakota.
The Tampico Embayment Mexico.
The Bogata Basin Colombia.
The Bonaparte Basin, Australia.
The Beaufort Sea Basin/McKenzie River Delta

Of the 25 claimed locations, stratigraphic information was available on only six of them. There is little if any mention of fossils other than micro fossils such as pollen. Often the rocks seem to have been assigned their geologic age by comparing them with rocks from other locations. Most of these are hundreds of miles away and there is no direct observation of a physical connection. In some cases the "ages" are assigned to a rock layer based on the strata above or below it. These six do provided some interesting information, however.

The Ghadames Basin in Libya

In this case, the only reference to fossils, was a general reference to micro fossils so this site seems to have little or no bearing on fossils order.

Contrary to the claim that this site represents the entire geological column, it is missing the Permian period. How can one claim the entire geological column is present when it is missing an entire period? The geological column labels seem to have been assigned based on the correlation with rocks from all across Libya. This means that there was sufficient room for subjective analyses, and that the labeling process assumed the geological column and thus cannot be used as evidence for its validity.

The cross-section of the Ghadames Basin hints that coincidence rather than long ages brought these layers together as they are. The cross-section shows some 25 fracture lines and the pattern suggests that rather than being fault lines they are the result of compression stress. The Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic and Cretaceous seem to have been forced over the others. This seems to have occurred after they and the rock beneath them had buckled down and before both had hardened completely. Such an event could have occurred during the Flood while the layers where not yet completely solidified.

The Tunisian Basin in Tunisia

While this area is rich in fossils, other than Pre-Cambrian, only Late Permian through Late Cretaceous seem to be represented and so it does not really contain the entire geological column. At least five of the formations in area "generally lack biostratigraphically useful fossils" [1] and were at least to some degree assigned ages based on indirect means such as the "age" assigned the strata above or below it. So it is circular reasoning to claim this site as evidence for the geological column in place and in order. [2]

The Western Desert Basin in Egypt

The only geologic "ages" that seem to be represented here are Jurassic and Cretaceous. Pre-Cambrian can be included since the basement rock is automatically labeled as such. The description seems to suggest that this is all that is actually found at this location. So only two out of ten geologic periods seem to be represented. [3]

The Jiuxi Basin China

Only the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras seem to be here with no sign of the Paleozoic except for the Pre-Cambrian being the generic label the basement rock. In fact it seems to only include Tertiary and Cretaceous periods, the Tertiary being part of the Cenozoic and the Cretaceous being part of the Mesozoic. So only two out of ten geologic periods seem to be represented here. Furthermore, the nearby Qilian Shan (mountain range) Ordovician strata can be found over Pliocene strata (part of the Tertiary). So contrary to being an intact geological column there is a place were "older" rock is found on top of "younger" rock and thus in the wrong order. [4]

The Bonaparte Basin, Australia

This one is fairly complete in that all "geologic periods" are present but it in no way qualifies as a complete column, since there are numerous gaps when the strata are spread out on the geologic column chart.

There seems to be cases of interbedding that go between periods. They are at Devonian / Carboniferous and Triassic / Jurassic boundaries. There may be others as well. There are also cases of interbedding spanning large portions of periods that should still be separated by tens of millions of years. They occur in the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary.

This means that the evidence suggests that this column formed a lot more rapidly than the geologic column suggests. There seems to be no reference to how any of the rock layers were assigned their respective ages but at the same time there seems to be no reference to fossils, so it is doubtful that they were used. This means that this site shows nothing about fossil order. [5]

The Williston Basin in North Dakota

Also known as the North Dakota Column, this is claimed to contain the entire geologic column. As stated earlier, the total theoretical column depth is 100 miles, but the depth of the Williston Basin is only 3.4 miles. This means that much of the column is missing. Such large amounts of sedimentation are possible during a year-long global Flood, because it was laid down sideways making it quite possible to lay down such large amounts of sediment very quickly, the main factors being available sediment and the rate of current flow.

Now it does have rocks labeled as all ten ages, but some interesting data can be found in, The Geological Atlas of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin.. The Williston Basin is part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin.

Here is how they labeled some these strata:

Hay River Embayment (van Hees, 1964) - a depositional area northwest of the Peace-Athabasca Arch, developed on the Interior Platform, containing remnants of rocks that have been interpreted as being equivalent to Lower and Middle Cambrian units of central Alberta. The rocks have not been dated, and some of the strata may be younger than here interpreted. The embayment extends westward into the mountains of northeastern British Columbia. This indicates that when lacking fossils, they find rocks that they can interpret as equivalent to the rocks they are dating, so as to set a geologic age. Biostratigraphy according to Williston Basin, "biostratigraphy based on pollen and spores has been used to determine the age of the coal beds." [6] Other fossils include shells and fish but many layers have few if any fossils. In general these layers have not been dated by fossils. Furthermore, there is little reference to radiometric dates beyond the pre-Cambrian. The one set that is mentioned produced inconsistent results.

Local lithostratigraphy and sedimentology are generally well known. However, the paucity of reliable radiometric dates and the absence of biostratigraphic control has hindered correlation within and between the assemblages and precluded accurate dating of each assemblage.

There are several other cases where poor or no biostratigraphic data is mentioned, as well as no reference to radiometric dates. As a result it seems that many of these strata were assigned geologic ages based on comparing rocks. Then the comparisons were interpreted based on the geological column. They seem to be assuming that because of the geologic column, the gaps must contain ages for which they have no fossils.

The conclusion that they have a complete geologic column in this area is based on the assumption of the existence of the geologic column. This is circular reasoning.

If that is not enough there is a place where a rock layer labeled Devonian can be found between rock layers labeled Carboniferous. Devonian is alleged to be older than Carboniferous, but this would suggest that they are really the same age.

Curiously while the theoretical column thickness is 100 miles, the maximum thickness of sediment found any place is only 16 miles. That means that at any given location at least 84% of the geologic column is missing.

Out of place layers

It is known that the layers of the geologic column are sometimes found out of place, that is older layers on top of younger ones. They are referred to as overthrusts. An overthrust would be one layer of rock being pushed over another. Here are some examples:

Name	Location	Out of place layers	Description
Qilian Shan	North / West China	Ordovician over Pliocene 505 million - 5.1 million	Ordovician strata is over Pliocene gravel with a valley filled with Pleistocene gravel
Lewis Overthrust	Montana, USA	Precambrian over Cretaceous 644 million - 144 million	350 miles and 15-30 miles wide and goes from Glacier National Park to Alberta, Canada. However there is a fault line.
Franklin Mountains	Near El Paso, Texas, at West Crazy Cat Canyon	Ordovician over Cretaceous 450 million - 130 million	No physical evidence of an overthrust.
The Glarus Overthrust	Near Schwanden, Switzerland	Permian - Jurassic - Eocene supposed to be Eocene - Jurassic - Permian	21 miles long. An overthrust is assumed because the fossils are out of place
Empire Mountains	Southern Arizona, USA	Permian over Cretaceous 286 million - 144 million	Contact is like gear meshing. Sliding would grind off lower formation's projections.
Mythen Peak	The Alps	Cretaceous over Eocene 200 million - 60 million	Older rock allegedly pushed all the way from Africa
Heart Mountain	Wyoming, USA	Paleozoic - Jurassic - Tertiary - Paleozoic supposed to be Tertiary - Jurassic - Paleozoic	Fossils in the wrong order "big time"
Matterhorn	The Alps	Eocene - Triassic - Jurassic - Cretaceous; supposed to be Triassic - Jurassic - Cretaceous - Eocene	Alleged to have been thrusted 60 miles

Qilian Shan is interesting since the upper stratum is over gravel. At first glance this would seem like a perfect example of an overthrust but the implication is that all of the underling Pliocene and Pleistocene material is gravel. An overthrust would grind the rock at the contact point, not two whole rock layers pushing one aside and going over the other. If the Pliocene and Pleistocene material was gravel to start with, both would have tended to be pushed aside. The top layer is partly broken up but that does not prove it is an overthrust. They seem to have been laid down together, with gravel under solid rock.

In some places the Lewis Overthrust has a well defined line between the Precambrian and Cretaceous. These places lack the deformation and rubble that would result from an overthrust. Some places do have such deformation and there is a fault line which shows there is tectonic activity. It could be an overthrust, but it could still have formed where it is, the fault resulting from subsequent tectonic activity.

Out of place fossils

Main Article:

Fossils are often found out of place according to the geologic column, many of which relate to humans.^[2]. A list of over 200 anomalously occurring fossils has been compiled by John Woodmorappe.^[3]

Out-of-place fossils are either ignored as anecdotal if not published by a "proper" (evolutionist) scientific journal, or explained away by one of two methods if they are:

Reworking	Fossil eroded from older rock
Down washing	Fossil is washed down into older strata

Reworking is used more often since preference is given to younger fossils in dating layers. The interbedding Mississippi and Cambrian limestone near the bottom of the Grand Canyon shows they formed at the same time, erasing at least 155 million years from the geologic record.^[4]

Organisms such as the Coelacanth and Nautilus are called living fossils because they remain essentially unchanged from their ancestors in the fossil record. Many were thought to be extinct based on absence of fossils in upper layers of strata, but then later discovered alive and well in remote regions. This shows that a lack of fossils does not mean that an animal was not living when a given layer was laid down, which places the entire stratigraphic order and time sequence in question. Furthermore, the fact that these animals are unchanged after the alleged million years strongly suggests that the deep time never happened.

Fossils do no always line up in layers, in fact in many cases only one layer of fossils is found at a given site, and this is most common with vertebrates. Where absolute depth can be considered, the pattern predicted by the geologic column does not hold. For example, there is a Jurassic site in Connecticut (Dinosaur State Park) whose fossil footprints are at a depth of 50-100 feet, and a Cambrian site in New York whose fossils are only 5 feet deep. Such discrepancies are just explained as resulting from erosion and rock movement.

Paraconformities

According to Ariel R. Roth a paraconformity (sometimes called a unconformity) occurs "when two different parallel layers from different parts of the geological column is missing in the layers." [7]

William R.Corliss, a cataloger and writer on scientific anomalies, wrote the following regarding paraconformities:

“

Potentially more important to geological thinking are those unconformities that signal large chunks of geological history are missing, even though the strata on either side of the unconformity are perfectly parallel and show no evidence of erosion. Did millions of years fly by with no discernible effect? A possible though controversial inference is that our geological clocks and stratigraphic concepts need working on." William R. Corliss, Unknown Earth (Glen Arm, Maryland: The Sourcebook Project, 1980), p. 219. [8]

”

Ariel R. Roth wrote regarding paraconformities the following: "The lack of evidence of time at the surface of the underlying layers of a paraconformity suggest that the long ages never occurred." [9] Young earth creationists see paraconformities as a serious challenge to the old earth uniformitarian geology paradigm. [10][11] [12]

Conclusion

The Geologic Column seems to be only a mental abstraction. There are sufficient assumptions made in classifying fossils and rocks to justify questioning its legitimacy. There are also sufficient anomalies to show that the timescale is wrong and that the fossil order depicted in the Geologic Column is at best a local phenomenon. In short, the Geologic Column is found only in books and web-sites and does not really exist.

What is needed is a statistical study of fossil locations that does not involve the geologic column classification system, but is based only on the actual three dimensional location of fossils, latitude, longitude, and depth relative to sea level. Surface altitude above sea level should be included as well, as this would give a true picture of both local and global fossil distribution, not one based on a theoretical classification system.

In closing as Sean D. Pitman, M.D. said,

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It seems then that the popular theories of geology and the formation of the geologic column may in fact have significant flaws that might be better explained by a relatively sudden global catastrophe or closely spaced series of very large catastrophes. [13]

”