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To: dirtboy

Again, you are asking people to believe that essentially no erosion happened in large areas for hundreds of millions of years. With ice ages happening every fifty to hundred thousand years? With climate varying on that scale and frequency imagining the stable buildup of layers is a non-sequitur, since climate is one of the primary factors in both deposition and erosion.

A couple of hundred million years is an unfathomably long time to have the stable, undisturbed buildup of a layer.


76 posted on 06/10/2018 10:28:46 AM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: hopespringseternal
Reference the stratigraphic column on post 66. See the squiggly line between formation 8, the Temple Butte Limestone, and formation 9, the Muav Limestone. That is an unconformity spanning over a hundred million years, with steam channels eroded into the Muav filled by the freshwater limestone of the Templ Butte.

More details:

https://hikearizona.com/dexcoder.php?PID=1939

The next two periods of geologic history, the Ordovician and the Silurian, are missing from the Grand Canyon geologic sequence. Geologists do not know if sediments were deposited in these periods and were later removed by erosion or if they were never deposited in the first place. Either way, this break in the geologic history of the area marks an unconformity of about 165 million years.

Geologists do know that deep channels were carved on the top of the Muav Limestone during this time. Streams were the likely cause but marine scour may be to blame. Either way, these depressions were filled with freshwater limestone about 350 million years ago in the Middle Devonian in a formation that geologists call the Temple Butte Limestone (see 4a in figure 1). Marble Canyon in the eastern part of the park displays these filled purplish-colored channels well. The Temple Butte Limestone is a cliff-former in the western part of the park where it is gray to cream-colored dolomite. Fossils of animals with backbones are found in this formation; bony plates from freshwater fish in the eastern part and numerous marine fish fossils in the western part. An unconformity marks the top of this formation. The Temple Butte is 250 to 375 feet (80 to 120 m) thick.

And the Redwall Limestone is atop either the Muav or Temple Butte unconformity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall_Limestone

The upper and lower contacts of the Redwall Limestone are both unconformities. Its upper contact is a disconformity that characteristically is a nearly horizontal surface with little or no relief. (In the Grand Canyon, the upper disconformity forms a horizontal platform at the top of the Redwall Limestone.) Locally, the bottom unconformity of the Redwall Limestone contains a basal conglomerate that directly rests upon this bottom unconformity. This basal conglomerate is typically composed of gravel that is locally derived from either the underlying Temple Butte Limestone or Muav Limestone.

The upper contact of the Redwall Limestone consists of a deeply eroded disconformity characterized by deeply incised paleovalleys and deep paleokarst depressions that are often filled by sediments of the Surprise Canyon Formation.[1][5]

DEEP Paleovalleys and paleokarts. In other words, fossile erosional surfaced worked out by Geologists who have studied the formations up close, not just looking at them from tourist overlooks.

This demolishes every strawman you have erected on this thread. I have found that debating the deliberately ignorant is a waste of time, so you may have the last word.

77 posted on 06/10/2018 3:20:06 PM PDT by dirtboy
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To: hopespringseternal
One more item, since we are discussing the Grand Canyon:

http://homepage.smc.edu/grippo_alessandro/unc.html

One of the areas of greatest rock vertical exposure can be found by Grand Canyon Village, in the heart of Grand Canyon National Park, on the southern rim of the canyon. A vertical profile can be drawn and rocks can be interpreted.

This image, taken from Doyle et al. (2001) shows: A - a vertical profile of the Grand canyon section B - a stratigraphic sketch of the Units and Formations present in the area, including their name, and showing the three different kinds of Unconformities, labeled as A, D, and N C - part of the Geologic Time Scale covering the Paleozoic Era, showing the age of the rock units, or Formations

Besides being able to observe the three different kinds of unconformities, we can also notice how the section of the Grand Canyon, always described as " exceptionally continuous", presents in reality enormous time gaps. That is, the amount of time missing at every unconformity, either because of erosion or because of non-deposition, is enormous. Our record is, once again, vastly incomplete.

Notice also that the top of the Grand Canyon (the rocks that you would walk on if you were for instance at the park Visitor Center) is Middle Permian in age. That means that, at this location, we are missing the whole geologic record from the Middle Permian to the Present (which includes all of the Mesozoic and all of the Cenozoic, more than 250 million years).

78 posted on 06/10/2018 3:53:11 PM PDT by dirtboy
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