>In my response to Bill this morning, I missed an important point in
preserving
>raindrop impressions in the Coconino. This also applies to the preservation
>of footprints. Bill is correct that there needs to be rapid burial (not
>instantaneous burial) in order to preserve such delicate features. But the
>most important item which is needed is that the raindrop impressions and
>tracks must have time to dry and harden. If the sediments containing the
>tracks or impressions were not hard, they would likley be washed away when
>the next wave comes by. It is precisely this lack of drying and hardening
>which makes it so hard for footprints on a beach to be preserved when the
next
>wave comes in. So contrary to what global flood advocates imply, footprints
>and raindrop impressions require drying out prior to the next influx of
>sedimentary material. This then means a period of time must pass which is
not
>possible in the global flood which was supposed to cover the earth to great
>depths but now we find was really quite shallow.
You must be assuming it is possible to make recognizable tracks of any type
in dry sand that can be preserved. This has so far been impossible to
demonstrate. As you can imagine, a raindrop impression would be reduced
back to the constituent grains as soon as it dried unless there happened to
be some kind of cement present in the ground water. There is no evidence I
am aware of for the kinds of disruption occasioned by rain in dunes.
However all of these problems disappear for underwater deposition.
Interestingly, on the cover of the AAPG tabloid, a year ago or so was a
striking photo of a section of Navajo Sandstone Jurassic). In the photo
was a man standing against a cliff of the sandstone, aand the legend
declared this to be the desert sands of the Navajo. But directly behind
the man, and obvious to any viewer were prominent dewatering strcutures not
likely to be found in desert dunes! We wrote a letter to the editor
pointing this out, but for some strange reason, they chose not to print it.