Saturday, May 7, 2011

The K-T Boundary Fairy Tale

Starting at Post #37 this thread at EvC brings up some familiar debate issues concerning the evolutionist interpretation of the death of the dinosaurs.

The poster of message 37 is a creationist who says:
Its been a great gain for YEC creationism to have the impact thing arive to explain the great fauna/flora change in the world suddenly.
this creationist sees the k-t line as the flood line.
so what did for us is to demonstrate a instant die off and a dramatic and different recovery in a point in history.
We simply say this was the biblical flood.
A great die off and different recovery in fauna/flora.
The impact is simply misunderstood as to when it happened.
The layer designated by geologists as the K-T line or the line between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary time periods this creationist calls the "flood line." This is a popular choice for creationists who locate Noah's Flood not in all the strata but in some particular one.

If a creationist accepts any specific layer of the worldwide strata as the demarcation of the Flood he accepts the evolutionist belief that the strata represent time periods, that the geological column represents the history of the planet. But this is the very position a creationist should be opposing. The geological column is a museum of life forms that lived before the Flood. The strata could not have been formed except in such a cataclysmic event as a worldwide flood.

Evolutionists look at a particular layer of sedimentary rock which contains many dinosaur fossils and call it the Cretaceous period, and a block of layers above it which contains no dinosaur fossils at all, as the Tertiary. Floodists simply see disparate sediments with disparate fossil contents deposited by water in one cataclysmic event.

Here's a typical discussion of the K-T "event" at Wikipedia.
The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma) at the end of the Maastrichtian, was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. Widely known as the K–T extinction event, it is associated with a geological signature known as the K–T boundary, usually a thin band of sedimentation found in various parts of the world.
See how they describe something as a fact, a known reality, which is nothing but their own imaginative conjecture? This conjecture is based on a thin layer of iridium-rich clay between the sedimentary rock that usually contains dinosaur fossils and the rock above. They don't even bother to say something like "Scientists have conjectured that the iridium layer might indicate a mass extinction ..." The only clue they have to the possibility of an extinction event in the first place is the fact that dinosaurs don't occur above this line. In other words the whole thing is dictated by their theory that the strata represent time periods.
Non-avian dinosaur fossils are found only below the K–T boundary, indicating that non-avian dinosaurs became extinct during the boundary event.[3]
Yup, it's only the non-presence of dinosaur fossils above this line that leads to the extinction theory -- which, again, is described as a fact.

But the next sentence is also very interesting:
A very small number of dinosaur fossils have been found above the K–T boundary, but they have been explained as reworked, that is, fossils that have been eroded from their original locations then preserved in later sedimentary layers.[4][5][6]
See how easy it is for evolutionists to reinterpret something that doesn't fit their theory. If they found a rabbit fossil in pre-cambrian rock they'd come up with something similar.
Mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and many species of plants and invertebrates also became extinct.
Meaning they too aren't found in the layer above.
Mammalian clades passed through the boundary with few extinctions, and evolutionary radiation from those Maastrichtian clades occurred well past the boundary. Rates of extinction and radiation varied across different clades of organisms.
All of which is describing only the presence or absence or rarity or abundance of fossils found in either location.

Here's another discussion of theK-T "event" as if it were a known fact:
One of the foremost problems that any successful theory of dinosaur extinction must explain is the fact that not just dinosaurs were affected. In fact, dinosaurs represent but a small portion of the species that became extinct at or near the end of the Cretaceous Period. The extinction event that brought the Cretaceous Period to a close (called the K/T extinction, where K stands for Cretaceous, and T for the Tertiary Era -- the Age of Mammals) was truly a "mass extinction," in that a wide variety of taxonomic groups from many different habitats were wiped out essentially at the same time.
It always helps to take any description of evolutionist fantasy and strip it of all the fantasy accretions down to the bare facts. In this case, ALL THIS MEANS IN TERMS OF ACTUAL KNOWN FACTS is that fossil creatures represented in this particular sedimentary rock that is called the Cretaceous Period do not appear in any rock above it. Their not appearing in any particular layer of sediments means NOTHING. Creatures were simply buried by the Flood in certain sediments and fossilized as the sediments hardened. In the case of dinosaurs, as with all land animals, a pair of them would have been on the ark. They may have survived for a while after the Flood and may have been the source of the various dragon stories across the world, but have since become extinct.
Life in the Ocean
Many of the groups of organisms that were hit hardest by the K/T extinction lived in the ocean. Ammonites and belemnites, shelled cephalopod mollusks related to the octopus and squid, were abundant in the seas of the Cretaceous Period, but had disappeared entirely by its end.
Again, all this means in terms of known fact is that there is an abundance of fossils of these creatures in the sedimentary rock misidentified as the time period "Cretaceous" that don't show up either in the rock above it or in the world today.
Another squid relative, the nautiloids, were also severely affected; only two species, the Chambered Nautilus and the King Nautilus, have survived to the present.
Do they show up in the strata above the Cretaceous or not? This ought to be the subject here, not merely whether they exist now.
Plesiosaurs, long necked, fish-eating marine reptiles, and mosasaurs, ferocious giant sea-going lizards, also vanished from the seas at this time... although their smaller land-dwelling reptilian cousins survived mostly unscathed.
FACT: fossils found in "Cretaceous" rock not found in strata above or living now either, except for the "smaller land-dwelling reptilian cousins."

Some creatures are found in fossilized form in specific layers and not at all in higher layers, but if they live today there's of course no reason to think of them as having gone extinct. But that's an interesting puzzle in itself -- if they exist only in some layers and not higher layers but do exist today, their not existing in layers they must have lived through -- according to the theory that those layers represent huge periods of time -- needs an explanation. But apparently this question only arises in creationists' minds as it calls the whole time period system into doubt; evolutionist geologists seem to be content to recognize fossils in only a specific layer even though none of them may appear in higher layers. Odd but true. Just one of the many ways science is blind to important questions that should falsify their theory.

Of course if the fossils were simply washed into their current beds by the great Flood all this is clearly nothing but fantasy, but worse than that it's fantasy forced on the public as fact, as the whole theory of evolution is


Here is a nicely simplified but typical example of an illustration of the Geological time scale showing the creatures whose fossils are found at each level of the strata, mislabelled of course as time periods.

So what does the layer of iridium suggest? Probably that the asteroid or comet which is supposed to be its source hit during the Flood and spread its iridium over the flood waters, which carried it along with some clay sediments to its current place between the dinosaur-fossil-carrying rocks and the higher mammal-fossil-carrying rocks. Perhaps it occurred in a late stage of the Flood since it is evidenced in the higher layers of the strata. OR, perhaps iridium from the Earth itself, although a rarity, was stirred up by the Flood and carried there. The Flood would have stirred up just about everything on the planet after all.

There is no need for any more proof of the way evolutionism reifies its theory, that is, treats its conjectures and fantasies as actual fact, but it's hard to resist another example:
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals that were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years,
"Dominant" because there are so many of them in that one layer of rock that has been fantasized into a 160-million year time period. Sigh
from the late Triassic period (about 230 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (about 65 million years ago).
Translation: Dinosaur fossils are found in great abundance in rocks given these names and misidentified as time periods.
The extinction of most dinosaur species occurred during the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event.
Translation / Fact: Dinosaur fossils don't occur in rock above the iridium layer (except as noted above sometimes they do and that fact is rationalized away but oh well).
The fossil record indicates that birds evolved within theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period.
Translation: Bird fossils are found in this rock with the dinosaurs.
Some of them survived the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, including the ancestors of all modern birds.
Fact: Do they show up in higher rock or not -- it is not said, but since birds exist now perhaps it is simply assumed they also lived during that fictional time period even if perhaps there are no fossils to show it.
Consequently, in modern classification systems, birds are considered a type of dinosaur—the only group of which that has survived to the present day.[1][2]
Sigh.

Allow me to reiterate the absurdity of ascribing a time period to a particular depth of sediment in any case, particularly the neatly horizontal layers of sediments in the worldwide strata. May I point out that while the surface of the earth NOW is quite irregular -- rippled and buckled and carved out and folded and raised up and lumpy and hilly etc etc etc -- the strata are FLAT except where they have been distorted after they were all in place -- originally they were ALL flat. For great distances. All over the world. Where they are buckled and distorted this clearly occurred to many layers at once, obviously after they were all in place and at least somewhat hardened.

Here's a perfectly pedestrian example of the bumpy earth we live on today that also shows the straight horizontal strata that are so laughably supposed to have been laid down in enormously long time periods -- without a bit of bumpiness to show for all that time they hung out on the surface of the planet, just nice clean flat horizontality.

Somewhere in this picture is the K-T boundary by the way. I'm not sure which line is supposed to be that boundary though.

What does this mean? It means at least that logically, according to the geologic timetable, all the earlier periods of time until the recent were undisturbed by normal processes of erosion, earthquakes, tectonic uplift, tectonic buckling, etc. etc. etc. All this occurred to the strata only AFTER THEY WERE ALL IN PLACE. I've put up many pictures on this blog that demonstrate this fact.

Therefore the standard evolutionist / geo timetable theory gives a picture of a remarkably placid planet unlike anything we know in historical time. (Yes I know they are rightly assumed to have been laid down in water, but were they under water ALL that time and only emerged to the surface at the point the canyon was cut?)

So, following the standard theory that explains those neat flat layers as time periods of millions of years each, nothing at all happened in the Grand Canyon - Grand Staircase area in the way of normal surface disturbance for all those millions of years, until after all the strata / time periods were neatly built up. THEN came the volcano beneath that uplifted the land, THEN came the cracking and breaking off of the layers that caused the canyons and the cliffs, THEN came the cataract of water that carved the canyon, and the canyons and cliffs of the Grand Staircase to the north as well. NO canyon was cut until all the strata were in place, no river ran through them until then. For millions upon millions of years.

This simple logical observation OUGHT to wake some up out of the Evolutionist Daydream. It really ought.

5 comments:

  1. Your proposal about meteor "dissolving" into the flood waters allowing for the layer to be deposited globally is interesting, but I'm curious how do you resolve the extinction of marine fauna in a World Wide Flood event? With a meteor impact into shallow ocean, land there are particles exploded and suspended in air blocking sun light and changing large amounts climate. Even with the note that the flood was rain based for 40 days and nights I find it difficult to believe that such a short period of time would devastate marine life. And that is ignoring the fact that there isn't that much water on Earth nor have Creationist proposed how it could have disappeared. To say God did so, makes the argument that of belief and not science, do you have a hypothesis on the matter?

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  2. You put "dissolving" in quotes as if I'd used that word but I didn't. Thanks for finding part of the idea "interesting," at least, small acknowledgments mean a lot.

    A meteor that hit during the Flood wouldn't necessarily have had the climatic effects so often assumed of the K-T theory. That is, it could have hit in deep enough water to minimize or even prevent such effects.

    You seem to be attributing the extinction of marine fauna in the Flood to the meteor?

    The extinction of so much marine life is usually understood to have been the result of the enormous amount of dissolved sediments in the water which would have suffocated them, but the simple fact of their having been buried in such vast quantities as we find them in the strata would itself have killed them. Of course many survived and repopulated the oceans as well so suffocation wouldn't have been worldwide if that is in fact part of the explanation. I don't think we need a meteor to explain that.

    Creationists, contrary to the straw man constructions of our opponents, don't say "God did" this or that concerning the mechanics of the Flood, but look for possible physical explanations.

    The usual explanations for the problem of the quantity of water have to do with the rearrangement of the topography of the land mass as a result of tectonic movement which deepened the oceans and lifted the land allowing the water to drain after the Flood. The water's rising over the land, as I understand it, would have to do with the release of the "fountains of the deep" from beneath the ocean floor, plus the enormous amount of rain. But there is another idea having to do with temperature changes affecting the level of the sea floor, which I haven't thought through myself, but which is presented by Paul Garner in the video I posted under the title UK Creationism. An increase in heat at the beginning of the Flood, which I think had to do with the release of magma from beneath the sea floor, would have raised the level of the sea floor, and then as it cooled toward the end of the Flood it would have sunk, allowing the waters to drain. Perhaps either or both of these theories apply.

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  3. Jesus Christ after two paragraphs, I barfed, wrote this comment, and promptly exited this disgraceful page. If it was a flood, then why is there so much goddamn iridium. Do floods magically make iridium? Nope, that leads us to our most logical conclusion. Satan must have put it there along with all the ancient bones!!! Your cambrian explosion pseudoscience is really more people away from christianity and toward empirical logic. So keep it coming!! It's always good for a laugh anyways. It is so harmful to your cause in hindsight, because your God and Jesus and the bible don't actually require that you don't believe in evolution. God never said the earth was 10,000 years old. In this day in age, if you can't coexist peacefully your going to sink. Indeed,
    "even in these days and age some people still believe
    That Earth is at the center of God's own universe
    And that man was made the 7th day, evolution is a myth
    And that even bones of ancient creatures are no evidence of the fact that we are not the end of the chain
    And they wont leave their ship
    That is sinking
    They refuse to leave their ship
    And while they spoke of grace and love, forgiveness from above
    They nailed thousands of non-believers to their crude symbol of love
    The myth that man is the crown of God's creation
    Breeds the excuse to deplete the Earth today
    The myth that man is the crown of God's creation
    Supports our present anthropocentric misconception".

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  4. Barfed all over yourself I'm sure, which is only fitting.

    Where did I suggest the Flood MADE iridium? A little reading problem there perhaps? And the usual straw man barf about magical methods which I also did not invoke, that exist only in your own mind.

    Fortunately people come to Christ through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit who has a remarkable way of cutting through the mental barf of God's enemies who think they are so rational.

    Oh yes the Bible DOES require that we not believe in evolution. It violates the whole reason for our salvation due to sin, the disobedience of our first parents which brought death into the creation, before which there was no death. Evolution denies this basic Biblical revelation. Evolution is a death-driven theory, and of course the idea that the earth is billions of years old contradicts God's revelation as well. Just a collection of noxious vapors from the minds of fallen humanity aided by the demonic powers who hate humanity. Wake up, man.

    Your assertions about what God did or didn't say are quite fascinating if only because they are grounded in nothing but your barfy imagination.

    Coexist peacefully with liars and evildoers? Well, we do try, but we'll never compromise what we know to be the truth and that just happens to be what the liars and evildoers keep trying to make us give up, funny that.

    The bones of ancient creatures happen to testify to God's judgment of this planet through the Flood, they certainly do not testify to evolution, which is just the evil dream of the evil one who has imposed it on you. Wake up dreamer, Christ is willing to give you light.

    Who nailed whom to what? I think you may have some history out of joint here. Christians have been persecuted tortured and murdered down the centuries by the Antichrist which you no doubt mistake for Christianity. Wake up dreamer.

    And who excuses depleting the earth and of what? You are truly deceived and serving the cause of the deceiver.

    Wake up.

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  5. So if a global flood created the majority of the sedimentary rock layers that can be found around the globe, and the fossils found within were animals killed by the flood, where are the fossils of men, cats, dogs, beasts of burden and birds? Why are they not present prior to the KT boundary layer?

    If radiometric dating and tree rings can't be used to accurately date the materials found on Earth, what dating method do you suggest that we use to scientifically date things? What does this dating method predict? What experiments can you perform to test this prediction true or false?

    How much time,heat and pressure is required to create rock from sediment?

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