Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children

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 ...

He claims all of the Geological Column is found in North Dakota. Here is the article section:

Geocolumn in North Dakota
from article: The Geologic Column
and its Implications for the Flood
Copyright © 2001 by Glenn Morton
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/#column

I will quote usually first sentence of each paragraph. And I will break off in Jurassic Piper formation. I add numbers and I break off the quotes also by adding comments.

• 1) The Cambrian of this region consists of the Deadwood Formation.
  
  
• 2) Above this is a black shale. Shale, due to the very small particle size requires quiet, tranquil waters for deposition to take place. This is one of the unrecognized difficulties of flood geology. Every shale, which is approximately 46% of the geologic column, is by its existence, evidence for tranquil waters.
  
  
• 3) Above this is the Ordovician Winnipeg formation. It consists of a basal sand whose lithology is very similar to that of the Deadwood scolithus sand, "suggesting that the Deadwood Sandstone may be a source for the Winnipeg Sandstone" (Bitney, 1983, p. 1330). This would mean that local erosion was the cause of the sand for the Winnipeg sand rather than a world wide catastrophe. The Winnipeg does not have scolithus burrows.
  
  
• 4) Above this is the Icebox shale. Once again a shale requires still water for deposition.
  
  
• 5) Above this lies 1300 feet of Ordovician limestone and dolomite. These are the Red River, Stony Mountain and Stonewall formations, collectively known as the Bighorn Dolomite.

WAIT - 1300 feet ... how did one get down to the layers "under" that?

• 6) Above the Ordovician carbonates lies the Silurian Interlake formation.
  
  
• 7) The lower Devonian is the Winnepegosis formation ...
  
  
• 8) The next Devonian bed is the Prairie Evaporite. It consists of dolomite, salt, gypsum, anhydrite and potash.

O ... K ... it contains how many fossils again?

• 9) The Devonian Dawson Bay formation is a carbonate which shows evidence of subaerial erosion
  
  
• 10) Next up is the Duperow formation. It also shows signs of subaerial erosion, salt deposition in the pores, anhydrite deposition.
  
  
• 11) Above this is the Birdbear formation ...
  
  
• 12) Above this is the is the Threeforks shale.

WAIT - seven layers above the supposedly 1300 feet of Ordovician limestone and dolomite ... how did you get down to it and measure the 1300 feet?

• 13) The overlying Bakken formation is an organic rich shale.
  
  
• 14) The mississippian Madison group is probably my favorite deposit in the whole world.

Fossils: dead crinoids.

• 15) Above the Madison is the Big Snowy group.

Fossils: algae

• 16) Above this is the Minnelusa formation
  
  
• 17) The Opeche shale is of Permian age and overlies the Minnelusa.
  
  
• 18) Above this is the Minnekahta limestone which was deposited in hypersaline waters. Hypersaline waters were not likely to be the flood waters which would have been brackish at worst due to the large influx of rainwater.

Salt breaking through during flood from interior of the world right here?

• 19) Next is the Triassic Spearfish formation.
  
  
• 20) The Jurassic Piper formation comes next.
  • a) The lowest member is the Dunham salt
  • b) Highly oxidized red beds, (normally marine deposits are dark, continental,subaerial deposits are reddish) with gypsum,an evaporitic bed lies above the salt
  • c) A small limestone followed by more redbeds and gypsum finishes the Piper formation.

WAIT ... 15 layers above the 1300 feet of Orodovocian limestone and dolomite. I start getting really worried about how one got down to those layers.

Or rather, to skip the irony for a moment, I think it begins to become obvious that our author is not using words like "above" and "below" in their standard linguistic sense, but as some kind of Geological abstraction derived from this. All I am pointing out is that there is this difference. When a Geologist - maybe even Creationist such like Tas Walker or Woodmorappe (whom this is an answer to) uses the words "above" and "below" there is no need to assume the actual stones of one formation have been found generally above or below those of another formation supposed to be above or below it. Non-Geologists usually learnt to attach a meaning to them.

Since if Glenn Morton had never ever learned to attach the ordinary meanings to the words "above" and "below", I can only conclude that becoming a Geologists involves some kind of brainwashing into applying these categories where ordinarily speaking they are simply not there at all.

Under one of the numerous sections mentioned above, he mentioned the deposit was potash and salt and such ... and I asked how many fossils had been found there. My point is that though he may have some lithographic point in assigning the Prairie Evaporite, which consists of dolomite, salt, gypsum, anhydrite and potash to the Devonian, such a deposit is not at all likely to contain any Devonian fossils. And apart from algae, crinoids and trilobites, no fossils have been mentioned as far as I went. This poses the question what fossils there are after all in North Dakota. And though Glenn Morton is not answering it, he very definitely ought to take a look at what seems to me to be an answer:

North Dakota on Palaeocritti site:
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-location/united-states/north-dakota

• Slope Formation, North Dakota, Upper Paleocene (Tiffanian)
  • Simoedosaurus dakotensis (Choristodera Simoedosauridae)
  
  
  
• Bullion Creek (=Tongue River) Formation, North Dakota, US, Late Paleocene
  • Champsosaurus gigas (Choristodera Champsosauridae)
  • Champsosaurus tenuis (Choristodera tenuis)
  
  
  
• Sentinel Butte Formation, North Dakota, US, Late Paleocene
  • Champsosaurus gigas (Choristodera Champsosauridae)

So, we very definitely do not have all ten periods on top of each other and each of them represented by lots of fossils in place. The palaeocritti site does not mention trilobites, but these hardly detract from the general picture that N Dakota is poor in fossils easy to tie down to a period. And even poorer when it comes to different periods - excepting that Palaeocene is very different in the textbooks from when the trilobites are supposed to be from. Does that count as "out of place fossils" or are the "visible parts of" Slope Formation, Bullion Creek Formation and Sentinel Butte Formation too far off from the relevant "visible parts of" the formations with Crinoids or Algae? Of course, one might suppose the spearfish formation has its name from containing spearfish fossils, it does not say.

Glenn Morton is in fact also citing another line of anti-flood logic while going through the numerous "layers" supposedly found on top of each other in "North Dakota" ... how many square yards was that spot again on the surface? Oh, wait, it is thousands of square miles, it is not a spot! ... and this is saying about such and such a layer things I have already in part quoted:

This is one of the unrecognized difficulties of flood geology. Every shale, which is approximately 46% of the geologic column, is by its existence, evidence for tranquil waters.

Now, in that case, though I would not absolutely bet he is right on that point, he has not produced a square miles wide and fathoms thick shale in a lab, I presume, there might have been parts of the flood when waters were in fact more tranquil. He gets into quite a few of such details, and I generally tend to rely on Woodmorappe and Walker to answer such questions.

Meanwhile, I have reaffirmed my point about a Geological Column no-where existing. How successfully is for the normal reader to conclude.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Ste Rosaline
17-I-2014