What I think I have refuted

Three Meanings of Chronological Labels

In detail:1) How do Fossils Superpose?, 2) Searching for the Cretaceous Fauna (with appendix on Karoo, Beaufort), 3) What I think I have refuted, 4) Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children

In debate or otherwise on Assorted Retorts: 1) ... on How Fossils Matter , 2) ... on Steno and Lifespan and Fossil Finds, 3) Geological Column NOT Palaeontolical [Censored by CMI-Creation-Station? Or just by the Library I am in?], 4) Same Debate Uncensored, One Step Further, 5) Continuing debate with Howard F on Geology / Palaeontology, 6) Howard F tries twice again ...

Here is my little enemy:

Problems with a Global Flood
Second Edition
by Mark Isaak
Copyright © 1998
part 7. Producing the Geological Record
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#georecord

Here is his relevant argument:

How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape fail to explain:

• the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
• the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)
• why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.
• why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.
• why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?
• how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved intact with other fossils below them.
• why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.
• why artifacts such as footprints and burrows are also sorted. [Crimes & Droser, 1992]
• why no human artifacts are found except in the very uppermost strata. If, at the time of the Flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?
• why different parts of the same organisms are sorted together. Pollen and spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches, and roots produced by the same plants [Stewart, 1983].
• why ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer?

But the Wikipedia List of Fossil sites does not warrant to take Fossils from different "time" labels as being in different layers of same rocks. Anywhere, or almost, on earth.

And I answer:

Many times over he assumes, as have Creationists assumed, that Cenozoic layers are higher up than Mesozoic or Palaeozoic. It is true for rocks classified as this or that without fossils, but it is not true for the fossil bearing rocks themselves.

I get to the details (instead of just saying after many of them "answered already"):

• 1) the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
  
  
  • Unnecessary assumption that fossils of Mammoths lie further up than those of Ceratopsians. In Hilda site you find Ceratopsians but no Mammoths. In parts of Russia you find Mammoths but no Ceratopsians. As far as I know Russia is flatter than the relevant part of Canada, so dinos were if anything further up than Mammoths.
    
    And, no, as far as wikipedian list of fossil sites is concerned, there are very few places where Mesozoic and Cenozoic are together at all. Yacoraite seems to have similar fauna both Maastrichtian and Danian, only separated by an iridium layer which is supposed to be the Kreide - Terziär boundary (why not C/T and Cretaceous/Tertiary instead of K/T?). But not Ceratopsians under it, nor Mammoths above it.
    
    Probably Mammoths and Ceratopsians were not best friends either.
  
  
  
• 2) the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)
  
  
  • Algae are sea or lake but above sea bottom. Precambrian is just a label on how old that fossil bearing layer is. It does not mean Precambrian algae were any lower than Cretaceous (if any) algae.
  
  
  
• 3) why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.
  
  
  • Because the mollusks, being same height more or less during flood, have different labels that only very theoretically "imply" different heights in the geologic column.
  
  
  
• 4) why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.
  
  
  • Sorted into what?
    
    If you mean different "heights" of geological column, no, I do not think so.
    
    Except possibly where the brachiopods are the main fauna over several heights categorised as different times. Just as gastropods in Yacoraite are categorised as different times accoridng to the K/T boundary.
  
  
  
• 5)why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?
  
  
  • If by High ground you mean "more recent", the reason is probably pterodactyls and pterodons did not get along so well with Smilodons and Cave Bears before the Flood.
  
  
  
• 6) how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved intact with other fossils below them.
  
  
  • Probably formed after Flood if so.
  
  
  
• 7) why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.
  
  
  • In precambrian fossil sites you have simply an absence of greater organisms. If there had been greater organisms, geologists and palaeontologists would have labelled the rocks as at a "later time" than Precambrian. Nothing says precambrian sites need have been lower. Or are in fact now.
  
  
  
• 8) why artifacts such as footprints and burrows are also sorted. [Crimes & Droser, 1992]
  
  
  • Not completely, since there are contested footprints and contested placing of artefacts.
  
  
  
• 9) why no human artifacts are found except in the very uppermost strata. If, at the time of the Flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?
  
  
  • The world was not overpopulated.
    
    They usually kept away from dinos. Wouldn't you?
    
    Trilobites were usually under water. Men usually do not live above them.
  
  
  
• 10) why different parts of the same organisms are sorted together. Pollen and spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches, and roots produced by the same plants [Stewart, 1983].
  
  
  • Because it is the same layer.
    
    That does not imply different fossil sites are different layers.
    
    It does mean the layer was thick and burial rapid, though.
  
  
  
• 11) why ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer?
  
  
  • Again there is a confusion between layer and fossil site.
    
    Plant x is found in Permian biotopes, because Permian beasts liked to stay near plant x. Plant y is found in Triassic biotopes because Triassic beasts liked to be around plant y. And plant z can be found on both biotopes and goes well with both x and y, I suppose.

Anything you would like to reply? Take a good look at my "chronological" sorting of the Fossil sites (which wiki only sorted after continent and alphabetic order of names). Take a good look at my reflections on Cretaceous faunas in general and the Permian and Triassic of Beaufort (which is not Cretaceous) in the appendix to it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre, University Library
Sts Severine, Exupery and Felician
19-XI-2013