Troy Britain wrote? They let the likes of HIM on this list? <G> Nice to see
you, old buddy. I didn't know you had joined this listserv.
> Karen J. said>> The many tracks and burrows higher in the column are also
> fascinating -- like the famous amphibian tracks in the Coconino sandstone.
> Why would you think there
> would be no amphibians left alive after the first few minutes or days of
> the onset of a flood? Animals that float don't mind how many thousands of
> feet of sediments are being deposited
> below them. <<
>
> Just to adding to what Steve S. has said already...
>
> A few more problems with this scenario:
>
> 1) Just a nit, the identification of the tetrapod track makers as
> amphibians is far from universally held.
>
> 2) Tetrapod tracks are NOT the only animal tracks found in the Coconino.
> The Coconino also contains the tracks of several different kinds of
> arthropods and other invertebrates.
>
> 3) The Coconino also contains other sorts of trace fossils most notably
> raindrop impressions.
>
> Even granting the tetrapod tracks are those of an amphibian (a dubious
> assumption), how do you explain the invertebrate tracks and raindrop
> impressions under the flood scenario? Did the spiders & scorpions happily
> bob about in the waves along with the 'amphibians' waiting for a chance to
> sink to the bottom and make footprints and then swim away?
>
> If this material was deposited rapidly how is it that no unlucky, stupid,
> or already dead animals managed to get buried in it? IOW why *only* trace
> fossils in the Coconino?
>
> And just where did the uncounted millions of tons of well sorted, rounded
> quartz grains come from to create this deposit? A cosmic dump truck? Then
> of course there is the question of how the flood managed to sort not only
> all the animals taxonomically but how it managed to sort the materials that
> make up the various rock strata both physically and chemically. A series of
> cosmic dump trucks?
>
> How do relatively delicate trace fossils even form in a global - washing
> machine - flood scenario?
>
> All these things, reptile/mammal-like reptile tracks, spider & scorpion
> tracks, the lack of body fossils, a sandstone made up of well sorted,
> rounded quartz sand is perfectly consistent with a desert eolian sand dune
> environment.
>
> Why should anyone who is not defending a literalistic interpretation of
> the Bible, accept the rather bizarre flood model for the origin of this
> formation over the straightforward one?
Well said. Your message reminds me that Art and I had planned on picking up an
earlier conversation about the Coconino sandstone from several weeks ago and I
had forgotten all about it. This message is as good a start to that
conversation as any. It seems to me that the Coconino is an enormous problem
for flood geologists, Leonard Brand notwithstanding.
Ed