The Geologic Column

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The Geologic Column

• Sean D. Pitman, M.D.
• May 2006

www.DetectingDesign.com
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Features of the Geologic Column

• Made of layers of sedimentary rock
• Layers generally very flat/even relative to each
  other
• Found generally all over the globe
• Some areas have missing layers
• Some areas have most if not all the layers
• Found on mountains such as the Swiss Alps, Mt.
  Everest, American Rockies, Himalayas,
  Appalachians, etc . . .
• Popularly thought to record millions and even
  billions of years of Earths history

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An Old Geologic Column?
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Foot of the Book Cliffs northwest of Grand
Junction, CO
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• Layers are flat/even relative to each other
• Layers often extend over hundreds of thousands of
  square miles
• Where is the expected unevenness usually seen
  with weathering?

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The Speed of Erosion

• Rockies currently uplifted at 100-1000 cm/Kyr
• No change in elevation
• Erosion rate is matching uplift rate
• Current uplift thought to have started 70 million
  years ago (Laramide Orogeny)
• An erosion rate of 100 cm/Kyr equals 1,000 meters
  of erosion per million years or an incredible
  70,000 meters in 70 million years
• Total thickness of layers in this region is
  3,500 meters including the Tertiary layers

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• Ruxton and McDougall (1967) report erosion rates
  of 8 cm/Kyr near sea level and 52 cm/Kyr at an
  altitude of 975 m in the Hydrographers Range in
  Papua
• 92 cm/Kyr for Guatemala-Mexico Border Mountains
• Himalayas 200 cm/Kyr
• 800 cm/Kyr for Mt. Rainier region
• 1900 cm/Kyr New Guinea volcano
• Chugach and St. Elias mountain ranges in
  southeast Alaska, are currently eroding at "50 to
  100 times" the current Rocky Mountain rate -
  i.e., at about 5 to 10 cm/year or 50,000 to
  100,000 meters or erosion per million years
• Yet, many of these mountain ranges still have
  very "old" sedimentary layers on their surfaces?
  Go figure . . .

Ariel Roth http//www.grisda.org/origins/13064.ht
m
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Mt. Everest

• Thought to be about 50 million years old
• Himalayan erosion rate 200cm/kyr
• Just 100 cm/Kyr of erosion equals 50,000
  vertical meters of erosion in 50 My
• Still covered by Ordovician limestone - only
  about halfway down the column!
• Perhaps the layers used to be much thicker?
• Only some 6000 m of sediment once covered Everest
• Harutaka Sakai suggest have of Everest slid off
  20 Ma
• Ordovician exposed for 20 Ma and its still there?
  Really?

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The Colorado Plateau

• Colorado River sediment equals 500,000 tons per
  day
• before Glenn Canyon dam
• Sandstone 140 pounds per cubic foot
• 7.1 million cubic feet of erosion per day from an
  area of 200,000 square miles (5.57 trillion
  sqft)
• 2.6 billion cubic feet of erosion per year
• Colorado Plateau uplifted 15 million years ago?
• 38,000 trillion cubic feet of erosion in 15
  million years
• 7,000 vertical feet (2,100 m) eroded in 15
  million years
• Tertiary sediments survived atop the Grand
  Staircase?

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2000 m
Why did 2000 vertical meters erode in one
region, but not in the other? Was there really an
additional 2,100 meters of tertiary sediment
above Brian Head? Shouldnt the higher reliefs
erode more quickly?
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Brian Head Oligocene 32 Ma
Kaibab Limestone Paleozoic 250 Ma
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• Todays continents average 0.875 km above sea
  level
• Land surface area 148,647,000 sq km
• Cubic km above sea level 130,066,125 km3
• An average of several references suggest that
  about 13.6 km3 of solid material are carried by
  all the rivers of the Earth into the oceans every
  year
• 31,000 million metric tons/year
• Time needed to erode away all land currently
  above sea level 9.5 million years

http//worldatlas.com/geoquiz/thelist.htm
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What About Human Impact?

• Humans have simultaneously increased the
  sediment transport by global rivers through soil
  erosion (by 0.6 - 2.3 billion metric tons per
  year), yet reduced the flux of sediment reaching
  the worlds coasts (by 0.3 - 1.4 billion metric
  tons per year) because of retention within
  reservoirs.

James P. M. Syvitski, Charles J. Vorosmarty,
Albert J. Kettner, Pamela Green Impact of Humans
on the Flux of Terrestrial Sediment to the
Global Coastal Ocean, Science, VOL 308, 15 APRIL
2005
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• C. R. Twidale recognized this problem as far back
  as a 1976 in the American Journal of Science
•       Even if it is accepted that estimates of
  the contemporary rate of degradation of land
  surfaces are several orders too high (Dole and
  Stabler, 1909 Judson and Ritter, 1964 see also
  Gilluly, 1955 Menard, 1961) to provide an
  accurate yardstick of erosion in the geological
  past there has surely been ample time for the
  very ancient features preserved in the present
  landscape to have been eradicated several times
  over. . .

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• . . . Yet the silcreted land surface of
  central Australia has survived perhaps 20 m.y. of
  weathering and erosion under varied climatic
  conditions, as has the laterite surface of the
  northern areas of the continent. The laterite
  surface of the Gulfs region of South Australia is
  even more remarkable, for it has persisted
  through some 200 m.y. of epigene surface
  attack. The forms preserved on the granite
  residuals of Eyre Peninsula have likewise
  withstood long periods of exposure and yet remain
  recognizably the landforms that developed under
  weathering attack many millions of years ago. . .
  The survival of these paleoforms as Kangaroo
  Island is in some degree an embarrassment to all
  of the commonly accepted models of landscape
  development.

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• Dott and Batten (1971) noted
• "North America is being denuded at a rate that
  could level it in a mere 10 million years, or, to
  put it another way, at the same rate, ten North
  Americas could have been eroded since middle
  Cretaceous time 100 m.y. ago."

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• B.W. Sparks (1986) in Geomorphology
• "Some of these rates of erosion are
  obviously staggering the Yellow River could
  peneplain flatten out an area with the average
  height that of Everest in 10 million years. The
  student has two courses open to him to accept
  long extrapolations of short-term denudation
  erosion figures and doubt the reality of the
  erosion surfaces, or to accept the erosion
  surfaces and be skeptical about the validity of
  long extrapolations of present erosion rates."

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The Smooth Grand Canyon Dome
2000 m
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How did Red Butte Survive 5.5 million years?
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Red Butte, Arizona
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Beartooth Butte

• 300-400 million yeas old
• Same layers Paleozoic

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Beartooth Butte, Wyoming
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http//www.geology.wisc.edu/maher/air/air07.htm
Sheep Mountain, WY
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Eroded Dome of Sheep Mountain
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Eroded Dome of Sheep Mountain
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Little Sheep Mountain area, Bighorn Basin, WY
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Little Sheep Mountain area, Bighorn Basin, WY
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Pryor Mountains north of Lovell, WY
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Bighorn River Canyon Between Pryor and Bighorn
Mountains, MT
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10 miles east of Moab, UT
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25 miles northwest of Twin Falls, ID
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W
S
N
E
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The Real Grand Canyon
Straight shot with few twists or U-shaped turns
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Scablands of eastern Washington
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Deccan Traps, India

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• Thick pile of basalt lava flows (2,000 m thick)
• Cover 500,000 km2 with a volume of gt1,000,000 km3
• Thought to have formed about 65 mya over the
  course of 30,000 years and played a role in the
  extinction of the dinosaurs
• Individual flows understood to form very quickly
  (a few days) because they cover over 100 miles
• Time between lava flows 2 to 3 hundred years
• Not enough time for significant erosion between
  flows

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Deccan Traps, India
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Granite Boulders, Deccan Plateau
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• If Deccan Plateau and Deccan Traps formed some 65
  mya what would erosion do to them over this time?
• Current rates of at least 4 cm/Kyr for granite
  and16 cm/Kyr for basalt equals 2,600 meters and
  10,400 meters of erosion respectively
• How did the Deccan Plateau (granite), much less
  the Traps (basalt) survive?

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Columbia River Basalt Group

• Northeastern US
• 163,000 sq Km
• 300 individual flows extending up to 750 Km from
  their origin
• The CRBG is believed to span the Miocene Epoch
  over a period of 11 million years (from 17 to 6
  million years ago via radiometric dating)

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CRBG
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• Average time between flows 36,000 years
• Enough time for 6 to 7 meters (19 to 23 feet) of
  vertical erosion yet no evidence?
• Several examples where two or three different
  flows within the CRBG mix with each other

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• Erosion rates too high?
• Some suggest rates lt0.5 cm/Kyr for exposed
  basaltic rocks
• Real time study by Riebe et al (2001) on erosion
  rates of the granites in the Sierra Nevada region
• Average of 4-5 cm per 1,000 years (Kyr)
• Range of between 2.0 cm to 6.1 cm per Kyr
• Independent of very different climactic
  conditions
• Lasaga and Rye (Yale University)
• Basalts from the CRBG erode, long term, about 4
  times as fast as non-basaltic rocks (Idaho
  Batholith)
• Basalt erosion would therefore average 16 to 20
  cm/Kyr (6-7 m per 36 Kyr)
• Several thousand years worth of erosion can occur
  in one year (episodic erosion - Idaho Batholith,
  1997)
• (http//adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001HyPr...15.3025M
  )

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• Lincoln Porphyry lava flows of Colorado
• Originally thought to be a single unit because of
  the geographic proximity of the outcrops and the
  mineralogical and chemical similarities
  throughout the formation
• Revised after radiometric dating placed various
  layers almost 30 My apart in time
• No erosion despite hundreds of thousands of years
  between layers

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• Tertiary lava flows in the Gunnedah Basin
  sequence exist between Triassic and Jurassic
  sediments which are thought to be over 100
  million years older. Over a large horizontal
  scale, these flows grade imperceptibly into lavas
  which overlie Lower Tertiary sedimentary rock.
  Consequently, the lava flows that are found
  between the Triassic and Jurassic are considered
  Tertiary! Otherwise, geologists would have to
  acknowledge that everything between Jurassic and
  Early Tertiary is contemporaneous!
• - Robert Kingham (1998) Australian Geologic
  Survey Organization

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Younger With Time?
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• What is one of the strongest evidences that the
  Geologic Column is much older than YEC notions of
  less than 10,000 years?
• The Grand Canyon lava dams required hundreds of
  thousands of years to erode each!

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The Baby Grand?

• Ed Stiles, "Is the Grand Canyon a Geologic
  Infant?" The University of Arizona News, OPI,
  July 18, 2002
• 2000 foot GC lava dams collapsed within 80
  minutes!
• Huge wall of water suddenly released
• 37 times the flow of the largest flooding of the
  Mississippi River

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• Huge amounts of rapidly moving water equal huge
  amounts of rapid erosion
• Certain portions of the Grand Canyon, once
  thought to be up to 5 million years old (Marble
  Canyon and the Inner Gorge), may be as young as
  600,000 years old
• Initial dating of 5 My backed up by K/Ar dating,
  now thought to be inaccurate in this region due
  to the lack of complete removal of the argon
  daughter product at the time of initial formation
  of the lava dams

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• Mather Gorge and Holtwood Gorge in Pennsylvania
• Used to be 180 million years old
• July, 2004 Luke J. Reusser, a geologist at the
  University of Vermont in Burlington, used
  measurements of beryllium-10 that builds up in
  quartz when exposed to cosmic rays to re-date
  these gorges to just 13,000 years
• Younger now by 4 orders of magnitude!

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Monument Valley
Over 50 million years of erosion?
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Ripple Marks?
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Priest Nuns of Castle Rock SW view of Castle
Valley, 10 miles east of Moab, UT
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Arches National Park
100 million years of erosion in southeastern Utah?
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• More than 2,000 arches within 73,000 acres of
  southeastern Utah
• Once buried by almost 1 mile of sediment
• Local uplift caused cracks to form 100 million
  years ago
• Subsequent erosion expanded the cracks to form
  the fins and arches that we see today

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Arches National Park, UT
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Entrada sandstone (Jurassic) Arches Nation Park,
UT
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Landscape Arch, 291 ft.
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Landscape Arch
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• Erosion rates too high for the layers to still be
  there, much less thin walled high-relief fins to
  survive for tens of millions of years
• Note also that only the surface layers of these
  fins show any evidence of significant erosion

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Paraconformities
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Supai Group
Redwall Limestone
Muav Limestone
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Paraconformity sediments on sediments (same
orientation) no obvious erosion surface
(Boggs, p. 456)
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Redwall
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Paraconformities

• Millions of years, no sedimentary layer
• Where did it go? No evidence of erosion
• How does solid rock interdigitate over and over
  again with sediments that come along millions of
  years later?

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• Top layers of GC region are Permian (250 to 290
  my)
• Next should come the Pennsylvanian (290-320 my)
  Not there! 30 my Completely missing?
• Permian rests direction on the Redwall Limestone
  (Mississippian 325 to 345 my)
• Red color of the Redwall Limestone result of iron
  oxide derived from the overlying Supai Assemblage
• Interesting that many meters of solid rock could
  be stained so completely and so evenly by iron
  oxide from overlying sediments

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• Below the Redwall Limestone should come the
  Devonian, Silurian, and Ordovician layers
  (totaling more than 150 million years of time),
  but they too are completely missing except for a
  few small "lenses" of Devonian
• Redwall is found resting directly on and
  interdigitating with the Muav Limestone - which
  contains many trilobites and other Cambrian
  fossils

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Dead Horse Point, Utah
Gaps cover 250,000 sq. km
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• N.D. Newell, in the 1984 issue of the Princeton
  University Press, made a very interesting and
  revealing comment concerning this paraconformity
  phenomenon 
• "A puzzling characteristic of the erathem
  boundaries and of many other major
  biostratigraphic boundaries boundaries between
  differing fossil assemblages is the general lack
  of physical evidence of subaerial exposure.
  Traces of deep leaching, scour, channeling, and
  residual gravels tend to be lacking, even where
  the underlying rocks are cherty limestones
  (Newell, 1967b). These boundaries are
  paraconformities that are usually identifiable
  only by paleontological fossil evidence."

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• In an earlier paper Newell noted
• "A remarkable aspect of paraconformities
  in limestone sequences is general lack of
  evidence of leaching of the undersurface.
  Residual sods and karst surfaces that might be
  expected to result from long subaerial exposure
  are lacking or unrecognized. . . The origin of
  paraconformities is uncertain, and I certainly do
  not have a simple solution to this problem."

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• T. H. Van Andel in Nature, 1981
•  
• "I was much influenced early in my career
  by the recognition that two thin coal seams in
  Venezuela, separated by a foot of grey clay and
  deposited in a coastal swamp, were respectively
  of Lower Palaeocene and Upper Eocene age. The
  outcrops were excellent but even the closest
  inspection failed to turn up the precise position
  of that 15 Myr gap."

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Empire Mt., Southern AzOlder on top of Younger

• Nonconformity
• Cretaceous Rock capped by older Permian
  Limestone
• 150 my older
• Undulating contact zone
• No evidence of overthrusting
• No scraping, gouging, or linear striations
• Undulations not smoothed off

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Angular Unconformity
Happened slowly? or catastrophically?
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Clastic Dikes
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Coconino Sand Dunes
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• Coconino sand dunes have an average slope angle
  of 25 while the average slope angle of modern
  desert dunes is 30-34 (the resting angle of
  dry sand)
• Sand dunes formed by underwater currents do not
  have as high an average slope angle as desert
  dunes and do not have avalanche faces as
  commonly as deserts dunes do
• Some crisp avalanche faces are found in the
  Coconino Sandstone dunes suggesting that at least
  some exposure to open air occurred, but such
  exposure may have been intermittent and
  relatively brief
• Grain frosting occurs both in desert
  environments as well as during underwater
  chemical cementing during sandstone formation

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Varves
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• Lambert and Hsü (1979) measured "varves" in Lake
  Walensee, Switzerland and found up to five
  laminae deposited during one year
• From 1811, which was a clear marker point
  (because a newly built canal discharged into the
  lake), until 1971, a period of 160 years, they
  found the number of laminae ranged between 300
  and 360 instead of the expected one per year or
  160
• Our investigations supported de Geer's first
  contention that sediment-laden floodwaters could
  generate turbidity underflows to deposit varves,
  but threw doubt on his second interpretation that
  varves or varve-like sediment are necessarily
  annual. (Lambert and Hsü, p. 454)

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• Julien, Lan and Berthault (1994) experimentally
  produced laminations by slowly pouring mixtures
  of sand, limestone and coal into a cylinder of
  still water
• Using a variety of materials, they found that
  laminae formed if there were differences in size
  and density of the materials and that the
  thickness of the laminae depended upon
  differences in grain size and density

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• In many cases where large ice lobes or glaciers
  sit or float in lakes, there is year round
  delivery of sediments and turbidite activity
  occurs almost continually resulting in graded
  laminae that are not true varves. (Quigley, p.
  152)
• How many varve-like layers form from year to year
  becomes anyone's guess. Wood (1947) describes
  peak river inflows after light rain that
  deposited three varve-like couplets in two weeks.
  Just as we have seen in many situations, e.g.,
  stalagmite and canyon formation, strata
  deposition, and fossilization, time is not the
  essential factor for their development, although
  evolutionists insist that such things took much
  time to form. While evolutionary catastrophists
  admit rapid formation, they almost invariably
  propose long periods of tedium between
  catastrophic events. (Ager)

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Shale Beds
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Continental Drift
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• 2000 years ago Emphesis was a seaport city, now
  it is 5 miles inland
• Louisiana coastline is being lost a 25sq. miles
  per year
• US spends 500,000,000 to prevent erosion of the
  east and west coasts
• Florida spends 8,000,000 per year
• Past 50 years Washington state has lost over 300
  meters of certain of its coastlines
• Northern and north center regions of California
  erode at about 30 cm/yr with some areas
  (Capitola) eroding at up to 1.5 m/yr (Plant and
  Griggs 1991).

http//bonita.mbnms.nos.noaa.gov/sitechar/main.htm
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• Texas is loosing between 0.3 and 15 meters of
  coastline per year
• Landmark lighthouse of Cape Hatteras, built 1500
  m inland in 1879 has to be moved to avoid
  collapse into the ocean
• True all over the world
• Japan literally spends billions of dollars to
  prevent erosion

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• What would an average of just 1 cm of coastal
  erosion/deposition do to the shape of the
  continents in 200 million years?
• The change would be two thousand kilometers
  (1,200 miles) . . .  Enough to erode (or deposit)
  half way through or onto the United States on all
  sides!
• Would the puzzle still fit?

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Questions?Seanpit_at_gmail.comwww.DetectingDesign.
com