Re: Flood Model [was Early Cambrian explosion]

Arthur V. Chadwick (chadwicka@swau.edu)
Tue, 09 Feb 1999 11:53:43 -0800

At 10:19 PM 2/8/99 -0700, Kevin wrote:

>Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but I did some rough calculations awhile back and
>discovered that if all the carbonate rocks had been laid down during the
>Deluge, the amount of heat released would have raised the surface
>temperature of the earth to over 1000 degrees Celsius during the flood year.
>I leave it to your imagination as to what effect this would have on the Ark
>and on the earth's biosphere as a whole.

This is assuming calcium carbonate is precipitated from solution; which you
know it was not; at least not immediately. Most of the carbonates I have
studied are transported assemblages. For example, the Devonian DeNay
Limestone in northcentral Nevada, 600 meters of a typical lime mudstone is
all transported in from outside the basin as turbidites. No temperature
change there. Lots more like that.

>First of all, the deposits are not pure: they contain plankton, pollen and
>volcanic dust, among other impurities, exactly what you would expect if the
>deposits had been formed by evaporation.

Most halites I have studied (I have processed hundreds of samples) are
pretty much sterile. There are some halites, such as the famous Cambrian
salts of Punjab province in India that are loaded with palynomorphs and
insect fragments of putative "Eocene age". Now there is a salt that has
pollen and junk in it. But how do you explain it in Cambrian salt?

Art
http://geology.swau.edu