Snails in the Loess
Janet Miller (janetmiller@my-dejanews.com)
Thu, 10 Sep 1998 09:01:47 -0700 In a recent posting in response to something I
wrote, Pim van Meurs chided me for not taking proper
note of data offered by Glenn Morton concerning the
distribution of snails in the loess. I meant to post a
reply, but now I can't find Pim's article. I may have
deleted it inadvertently, so I'll have to define a new
subject for this purpose.
The gist of his posting was that (according to
data cited by Morton) the various varieties of snails
in the loess are distributed (in relation to rivers,
etc.) exactly as one would expect according to the
uniformitarian model. He then challenged me to explain
that fact in the light of Petersen's theory.
Well, of course, I can't. I would question the
evidence instead. Certainly I do not suggest that
Morton shaded the data (or the interpretation thereof)
in order to make an agreeable point, but that unseemly
parctice is not unknown, the pressure on authors in
academia being what it is. A paper cited by Petersen on
Page 141 offers a case in point. Here Skertchly and
Kingsmill describe certain great limey slabs lying on
the loess in China as "old river gravels". Some of
those conglomerate slabs were hundreds of yards long
and up to 30 yards wide. They were scattered at
various elevations on the hillsides and oriented at
random. Some of them even projected like shelves from
the loess. The above authors, presumably to curry favor
with a thesis committee or a referee, avoided the
obvious and offered these slabes as the bed of an old
river--an implausible interpretation, in my opinion,
but one at least in some measure agreeable to the
Uniformity Principle.
I wonder if either van Meurs or Morton would care to comment on those "old river gravels".
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