RE: [asa] Re: Slug

David S. wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. [mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com]
> Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 7:37 AM

> Let's see, you cited Foundation, Fall and Flood, p. 176
> "All it would take for the flood to occur would be for these
> falls to erode their way through to the Atlantic Ocean.
> There is an indication of how deeply the Gibraltar Dam
> collapsed. The Trubi marl in Sicily, which rests on desert
> deposits, contains sea bottom dwelling animals that can only
> live in water depths in excess of 3,000 feet. The dam at
> Gibraltar must have broken at least to that depth so that
> these animals could crawl or be washed into the Mediterranean
> basin. This means that the collapse would have been
> catastrophic. Calculations show that with a break 3,000 feet
> deep, 15 miles wide, and a water speed of 15 miles per hour,
> the entire Mediterranean would refill in 8.4 months, an
> extremely short time compared with the massive quantity of
> water needed to fill this large basin. This is a time frame
> comparable to the time reported in the Bible for Noah's Flood."
>
> and I noted that the scablands did not involve a 3000' head
> or an entire ocean as source.

That was after you told me that if the depth of the Gibaltar lip was 300
feet today it had to be 300 feet when the Mediterranean infilled, which was
5 million years ago and Africa was much farther from Europe then than it is
today and the entire topography was different..

The Scablands, didn't have any chance to be a 3000 foot wall of water, it
was on the other side of the world, caused by something entirely different
and so I really have trouble seeing the relevance to the collapse of the
Betic Dam in Spain (most likely) which caused the infilling of the Med. No
one really knows the speed of the water that created the Scablands.

Also that the flow over Niagara
> Falls, with less than 10 m of depth, is 68 kmh.

It is 40 km/h, 25 mph. Now, I suspect you are trying to say that I have too
slow a speed. One must realize that the 25 mph of Niagara is the maximum
speed of the falls, not the AVERAGE speed of the falls. To calculate the
time it takes to infill a basin requires an average speed, not a maximum
speed.

 The flow at
> Gibraltar now, in a channel at least 300 m deep, driven by
> evaporation and wind, along with the flow of dense water
> along the bottom, is up to at least 6 knots at times.

Oh wow, 8 mph, but that is a spike speed for a small area. What is the
average speed my friend?

And that is today, not 5 million years ago. I gave you citations from the
literature on what the world was like back then, and even now you ignore it.
Here is more data for the recency of the present Strait of Gibraltar::

"The Strait of Gibraltar is a recent morphological feature that cuts across
the structures of the Gibraltar arc, who's similarity on both shorelines has
recently been established. The differential movements between Iberia and
Africa since the Jurassic probably did not occur at the present location of
the Gibraltar strait, but such evidence should be looked for farther north
or south. Likewise, communication between the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic in the Messinian could have existed only farther north
(Guadalquivir) or south (external Rif)." ~ B. Biju-Duval et al, "Geology of
the Mediterranean Sea Basins, in Creighton A. Burk and Charles L. Drake,
editors, The Geology of Continental Margins, (New York: Springer-Verlag,
1974), p. 704.

Is there a chance that you might admit that you were wrong on this and that
the present Gibraltar is irrelevant to the infilling of the Mediterranean 5
myr ago?

 Here is the documentation of that 1000m deep benthic ostracod--they don't
float and they don't live in shallow waters.

"These earliest Pliocene strata contain a benthic ostracod fauna, which
could only live in ocean bottom below 1,000 m. The associated benthonic
Foraminifera are likewise indicative of a deep marine environment of
deposition. The fact that of the deep-swimming planktonic genus
Spheroidinellopsis is the dominant (up to 90%) microfauna lends further
credence to the concept of a deep Mediterranean in the earliest Pliocene." ~
K. J. Hsu, W. B. F. Ryan and M. B. Cita, "Late Miocene Desiccation of the
Mediterranean," Nature, 242, March 23, 1973, p. 240

These benthics had indicate a deep gash and that then allows an adequate
rate of infill. If the forams couldn't live more shallow, then they too
constraing the depth of the dam collapse.

And some deep water forams were there in the Med immediately after the
collapse but have been eliminated because of the subsequent rise of the
Gibraltar sill.

"It is interesting to note the presence of some species in the Mio-Pliocene
strata of the Mediterranean drill sites which are well known in deep cold
water of the World Ocean but are absent or very rare in the Quaternary
strata and Recent sediments of the Mediterranean cores. These species are:
Cibicidoides bradyi, C. kullenbergi, C. robertsonianus, Eponides polius,
Nuttallides rusosus convexus, N. umboniferus, Osangularia culter and
Trifarina angulosa pauperata.. The restricted circulation patters caused by
the formation of the Gibraltar threshold seems to be the cause of the
elimination of these cold, deep water species." ~Ramil Wright, "Neogene
Benthic Foraminifers from mDSDP Leg 42A, Mediterranean Sea," in R. B. Kidd
and Paula J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling
Project, Vol. XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing Office 1978), pp709-726,
p. 709

Here is what is said about C kullenbergi
Cibicidoides kullenbergi

"This species, usually typical of water depths greater than 1000-1200 meters
is biconvex with the involute side more convex than the evolute." ~ Ramil
Wright, "Neogene Benthic Foraminifers fro mDSDP Leg 42A, Mediterranean Sea,"
in R. B. Kidd and Paula J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of the Deep
Sea Drilling Project, Vol. XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing Office
1978), pp709-726, p. 713

Here is that 1000 meters indicator again, this time with forams not
ostracods. Why were they eliminated? Temperature:

"The modern Mediterranean is not a typical ocean basin. The restriction to
oceanic circulation caused by the 320-meter deep sill at Gibraltar has
created a water mass structure whose deep bottom temperatures (13o C) are
warmer than those of water of similar depth in the rest of the ocean basins
of the world. Consequently, the resulting vertical zonation of benthic
foraminifers in the Mediterranean differs from that of the adjacent Atlantic
at depths greater than 1300 meters. Qualitative studies of the Recent
bathyal benthic foraminiferal fauna in the Mediterranean indicate that many
elements of the modern Atlantic deep-sea benthic foraminiferal fauna are
missing from the Mediterranean today" ~ Ramil Wright, "Neogene
Paleobathymetry of the Mediterranean Based on Benthic Foraminifers from DSDP
Leg 42A" in R. B. Kidd and Paula J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of
the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Vol. XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing
Office 1978), pp 837-846, p p. 837

Here is another report saying the same thing:

        "Among the species found in cores of Leg 42A, two are of special
importance. Bradleya dictyon is a common deep-sea species, known in the
Atlantic and southern parts of the World Ocean from lower Miocene to Recent.
It was found outside of the deep sea in outcrop or away from the ocean floor
for the second time in the pre-Messinian cores of Site 372A The first
recording of such an anomalous presence was in strata of the same age in the
Betic ('el Cuervo' Section north of Cadiz; Benson, in press) of Andalusia,
Spain. Oceanic continuity between these occurrences and an extensive record
in the DSDP cores of the Atlantic can be reasonably inferred. Its present
living distribution, at depths always below 1000 meters (with Hyphalocythere
at as much as 3000 m), indicates by analogy the intrusion of the
psychrosphere into deep Miocene basins now occupied by the Mediterranean.
This species, or its psychrospheric ally Agrenocythere hazelae, has not yet
been found in strata of the same age in the eastern Mediterranean." ~
Richard Benson, "The Paleoecology of the Ostracodes of DSDP Leg 42A,"
Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, " in R. B. Kidd and Paula
J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Vol.
XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing Office 1978), pp 777-783, p. 778

The fact that this was found in the Betic of Spain may indicate that that
was where the dam broke. If it broke there, it had to break at least 1000 m
deep. (I fell confident you will ignore all this and act as if this data
doesn't exist and then charge me with ignoring data).

And another:

     "The Gibraltar dam must have collapsed catastrophically. Salt water
from the 'bathyal realm' of the Atlantic had inundated the Mediterranean
desert at the pace of thousands of Niagara Falls. In the process the raging
torrent had eroded the former barrier, incising the breach to perhaps one
thousand feet below the level of the inrushing Atlantic. Such a deep
opening was considered necessary to siphon in the blind crustaceans from the
abyss of the North Atlantic and deliver them, enveloped in salt water no
warmer than 40 degrees Fahrenheit, to the rapidly filling basins of the
Mediterranean. Had the portal not been wide open, Benson argued, an
entirely different set of tiny crustaceans would have been found in the
Glomar Challenger cores.
 ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah's Flood, (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1998), p. 91-92

Why do you reject what everyone who has studied the Mediterranean infilling
says? I merely repeat it and you don't like it because it doesn't agree
with what you want to be the case, and what you want to be the case is me
wrong.

 By the way, the break in the dam 5 million years ago was NOT at the present
Strait of Gibraltar. It was in the Rifian of Morocco or more northerly in
the Betic zone of Spain. Why? Because of the collision between Africa and
Europe. It has caused the land topography to change in the past 5 million
years. Africa is about 100 km more northerly today than it was at the time
of the Med infilling. Geesh, sometimes one wonders.

Prior to the desciccation of the Med, there were two pathways connecting the
Atlantic to the Med.

"Orogenic uplift had already closed the Betic
corridor through Spain in the latest Tortonian/earliest
Messinian, and severely constricted the Rifian corridor
through Morocco in the earliest Messinian. The exact
timing of closure of the entire Rifian corridor is less
certain, because large olistolith complexes cover the
youngest marine sediments in the central parts. Mammal
exchange between Spain and Morocco-signifying a near-
landbridge-had already occurred at least 6.1 Myr ago, 140
kyr before the onset of evaporite deposition. These
tectonic processes . obviously limited the water exchange
between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic during the
Messinian, and thus probably heralded the onset of the MSC."
W. Krigsman et al, "Chronology, Causes and Progression of
the Messinian Salinity Crisis," Nature 400(1999):652-55, p.
655

Since that was the lowland area, they believe that the area of the dam
failure.

"It may be that at the time of the initial closing of the Atlantic
portal, groundwater aquifers did not exist and a large hydrostatic
gradient was required to get groundwater moving. One groundwater
routes were established, it is likely that they would have enlarged and
become more efficient through time. A profitable line of future
research would be to examine the timing and degree of karst formation
of the Chaine Calcaire in the Rif Mountains in Morocco, the
significance of the Tetuan Gap, and the collapse pattern of post- Tortonian
blocks in the Straits of Sicily, with regard to the
distribution of the underlying Triassic soluble salts and evaporites."
~ Maria Bianca Cita et al, "Messinaina Paleoenvironments" in R. B. Kidd
and Paula J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea
Drilling Project, Vol. XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing Office
1978), pp 1003-1035, p. 1031

Here is some more:
"It seems logical to assume that movement along the Azoras-Gibraltar
fracture zone opened a deep gash between the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean. The 'dam' at Gibraltar was damaged and broken." Kenneth
J. Hsu, et al, "History of the Mediterranean Salinity Crisis," in R. B.
Kidd and Paula J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea
Drilling Project, Vol. XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing Office
1978), pp 1053-1079, p 1075

Now, where is the Azoras-Gibraltar fracture zone? Not at the present
Gibraltar. It actually goes to the Betic region of Spain. It isn't at the
present strait of Gibraltar. But of course, you, who have never even studied
the area are going to prove this wrong? Sorry, but you are embarassing
yourself with this static, unchanging earth view of geology..

>
> I also wrote that I was looking for the fact that would give
> your theory the /coup de grace/ and hadn't found it.

Yes, you did and I find it interesting that you seem not to understand the
geological issues enough to know that you have spouted pure utter nonsense
above. If someone is going to give me the coup de grace, it will be someone
who has studied the issue more than I and who understands it better than I.
Since you haven't really studied the area, I don't think it will be you

 If I
> missed the point of your "rebuttal," sorry. But I find your
> claims irrelevant to rejecting a firmament-/stereoma/ with
> sluice-gates to release the water, something that has no
> connection to Aristotle's multiple crystal spheres. The
> lowest of them carried the moon, above the natural place of
> fire.Water's place was below both air and fire. The moon and
> other heavenly bodies were not made of any of the four
> elements, but composed of quintessence or aether.

My discussion of Aristotle has nothing to do with the Mediterranean flood.
It had to do with the fact that he may have influenced the first century
Jews to change the meaning of raqiya. Paragraphs like the above make me
wonder if you even read what I write before responding.

>
> As to heavenly bodies moving with a solid firmament, I note
> that the Enuma Elish (?) speaks of a moon-god and sun-god on
> tablet 5. The former had to coordinate with the latter. The
> sky was half the body of Tiamat, the freshwater sea and
> primordial goddess. The Egyptians had Ra sailing across the
> sky in a barge. They did not need a further mechanism, for
> gods can move as they please. With a single deity, Israel had
> all nature obey the divine will. What more would be needed?

Sorry, but I don't even understand this. BTW, I did enjoy meeting you last
year at the ASA. When I retire I will grow a similar beard, assuming I can.

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Received on Sat Jun 17 23:37:36 2006