How can you believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old?

I completely understand.

I wouldn't want to burden them with an experiment that might resemble reality.

btw who said scavengers think ducks are too small to be bothered with?

Put the scavengers in there, and I promise that that dead duck will be one dead duck.

and yer point is what RL? that more ducks wont get fossilized than do? OF COURSE. we all recognize that its a game of numbers many more ducks wont get fossilized. (Maybe thats why we dont have a lot of early bats). The fossilization experiment (like experiments in general) try to hold down the numbers of variables there are other ways to test the conditions for predation. Why would someone whose trying to understand sedimentology, send in a bunch of hungry wolves to screw up the mud ?
Youre not succeeding at your intended effort to be a critic.
Are you aware of the processes and default values that go into computer modelling of natural phenomena like river meandering or dust plumes (like at World Trade Centers)? Theyre many times laughable, but they give us a first look at a process or event. Little steps.

Because if you want to understand sedimentology, it is helpful to know that fossil bearing strata ARE 'fossil bearing' because most often they were laid down quickly.

If the strata were laid down a little at a time, then decay and scavengers would destroy yer dead ducks and there'd be precious few fossils.

As it is, many strata are LOADED with 'em.

All we have for evidence is that you continue to say that fossil-bearing sediment layers were laid down rapidly. Suppose scavengers do get a dead animal? So what? If they don't eat the bones, and a slow process of sedimentation occurs, the bones can still be preserved, even in the event that scavengers got a the carcass. As FM has pointed out, fossils represent very small numbers of the members of an species represented by the fossil. It is entirely possible that an animal died in or near the water, and was covered. It is entirely possible that scavengers got at the carcass, the residual bones of which were covered.

If tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, or billions of members oaf any give species once existed, we could find thousands of fossils of that species, and it would be a tiny, tiny fraction of the population of carcasses produced from all the members of the species.

If you are going to insist that sedimentation takes place rapidly, you have the burden of providing evidence that this is so. Providing your version of "logic" doesn't count as evidence.

RL is also ignoring the obvious fact that a dead animal can be covered almost immediately (by a passing wave, or a small landslide), but the formation of the rock layers can still take millennia due to compression of the material to form the rock.

RL is [intentionally] confusing the rate of sedimentation as equivalent to the compression rate of rock formation. This is a typical RL style ploy.

And, by chance, did you notice the order they were in?

Ignorance is bliss, why shall I alter your state?

"The differences between professionals and laymen is that the pros take interest in those processes that dont always follow an easily accepted (and explainable)rule". We ofetn take trips into arcane areas that lay people consider "obviously stupid" because they already "know" the way things really work.

In sedimentology labs for undergraduates we often do lab experiments in the areas that concern such things as depositions of colloids which are often the means by which very fine (supermolecular sized)particle sediments and precipitate sediments are laid down. Colloids follow rules that often challenge normal density separation of particulate sediments and account for more than 35% of all sediments and , are among the most economically important deposits. Consequently if you wish to fully understand how the planets processes work, you have to recognize that precipitates, colloids, reduzates , evaporates etc, seemingly defy standard lay understandings of how sedimentary rocks are formed. Whether you wish to take up the information or not, is immaterial to me. Just please dont try to sound authoratative and try to make vast sweeping statements that are just not true in the main.I understand that youve got a lot of your credibility invested in the concept of a "Flood" so I wont even go there since its just plain foolishness on my part to impart false credibility to you by making any argument to the contrary of your worldview. Its like beating my head against a wall (and Im not so dumb that Im gonna keep giving myself impact welts

The processes of sedimentology are often delved into in great detail because the processes that control colloids and precipitates and evapoites , often signal conditions that give us initial information that economic minerals are often nearby.
For example, colloidal gold is often found in suspension deposits from anoxic lakes such as the Chatanooga, and oil deposits are often trapped by very fine shales adjacent to sandstone deposits, and natural gas deposits are now all the rage in exploration of colloidal limestones (oolites and pisolitic forms that develop secondary porosity fetures that act as traps for ntural gas formed as a secondary deposit when acids react with specific layers in the limestones.

The fossils associated with "slow deposition" sedimenats are often numerous and are often environmentally sensitive(in other words , these fossils show us that were "getting close " to a mineralized zone.

You may wish to dismiss all this but this very phenom has given me a very comfortable life, so Im kind of smiling at your naive outlook in how you wish the earth processes to be "simply stated--simply understood"

ENjoy yourself, but , if you ever want any additional resources please dont hesitate to ask, Ill try to point you in the direction of elementary texts and papers that may help if you really wish to understand better.

Pauligirl said The very process of slow deposition gave rise to Eldredge and Goulds "punctuated Equilibrium" hypothesis, because they werent certain about the amount of time that separated their brachiopod species gave rise to their hypothesis that rapid evolution can occur in "saltation" jumps. When, later sampling of these same units are now showing that the deposition was on a micro scale and the interval of time represented by what they thought was demonstrating their hypothesis wasmerely a phenomenon of micro slow deposition.

You mean like nearly every major phyla that appears out of nowhere in or near the Cambrian period?

Yeah , I did notice that.

How did all of these major organs, body plans, biological systems etc just show up in a brief span with little or no ancestry?

I thought there was supposed to be a llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg evidence trail stretching from unicellular life to these advanced critters, and each step along the way showing just slight gradations of variation?

RL is like a broken record.

How do you interpret the base of the CAmbrian RL? Maybe Im just guilty of wrong thinking.

Nope. The order they were in.
But nice tapdance.

Evolution: A change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one
generation to the next.

Creationism: The belief that oak-trees can outrun raptors when trying to escape
to higher ground during a global flood.


......"flood geology," fails the test of scientific analysis so completely it is almost comic. It predicts, for example, that bottom-dwelling sessile creatures such as sea urchins should be found at the bottom of the geologic column, since they would be among the very first organisms to be buried in the sediment at the bottom of such a flood. However, sea urchins are not found there, nor are any complex marine organisms. Sea urchins do not appear until the early Paleozoic, for the very simply reason that they had not yet evolved. In fact, the distribution of sea urchin fossils in the fossil record is the exact opposite of that predicted by flood geology.
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/02_Events/Conferences/CF_2000_04_1415_Teach/Keynote_Miller.shtml

Double Trouble: What Really Killed the Dinosaurs
Charles Q. Choi
Mon Nov 12, 7:55 AM ET

Instead of being driven to extinction by death from above, dinosaurs might have ultimately been doomed by death from below in the form of monumental volcanic eruptions.

The suggestion is based on new research that is part of a growing body of evidence indicating a space rock alone did not wipe out the giant reptiles.

The Age of Dinosaurs ended roughly 65 million years ago with the K-T or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, which killed off all dinosaurs save those that became birds, as well as roughly half of all species on the planet, including pterosaurs. The prime suspect in this ancient murder mystery is an asteroid or comet impact, which left a vast crater at Chicxulub on the coast of Mexico.

Another leading culprit is a series of colossal volcanic eruptions that occurred between 63 million to 67 million years ago. These created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds in India, whose original extent may have covered as much as 580,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers), or more than twice the area of Texas.

Arguments over which disaster killed the dinosaurs often revolve around when each happened and whether extinctions followed. Previous work had only narrowed the timing of the Deccan eruptions to within 300,000 to 500,000 years of the extinction event.

Now research suggests the mass extinction happened at or just after the biggest phase of the Deccan eruptions, which spewed 80 percent of the lava found at the Deccan Traps.

"It's the first time we can directly link the main phase of the Deccan Traps to the mass extinction," said Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller.

Clues in other life forms
Keller and colleagues focused on marine fossils excavated at quarries at Rajahmundry, India, near the Bay of Bengal, about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) southeast of the center of the Deccan Traps near Mumbai. Specifically, they looked at the remains of microscopic shell-forming organisms known as foraminifera.

"Before the mass extinction, most of the foraminifera species were comparatively large, very flamboyant, very specialized, very ornate, with many chambers," Keller explained. These foraminifera were roughly 200 to 350 microns large, or a fifth to a third of a millimeter long.

These showy foraminifera were very specialized for particular ecological niches.

"When the environment changed, as it did around K-T, that prompted their extinction," she added. "The foraminifera that followed were extremely tiny, one-twentieth the size of the species before, with absolutely no ornamentation, just a few chambers." As such, these puny foraminifera serve as very distinct tags of when the K-T extinction event started.

The researchers found these simple foraminifera seem to have popped up right after the main phase of the Deccan volcanism. This in turn hints these eruptions came immediately before the mass extinction, and might have caused it.

Double trouble

What killed the dinosaurs? Basically they went on biting while mammals were learning to box.

If someone wants to believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, I say ok fine, I cant make you believe otherwise. But dont expect to be taken seriously - on that or any other matter. And keep away from children.

Rogers did a geophysical math model back in 2002 that calculated the Deccan Basalt mega calderas were exactly polar opposite of where Chixlub was at that time. Remember everything was being rafted about as drifting continental masses.Somebody then came up with a wave propogation solution that showed the chixclub could have "detonated" the Deccan Ridge and started the double whammy.

Evidence of lots of sulfate deposits that coincide with these events has always been kept in the background in deference to Louis ALvarez.

Detonated?

Like the shock wave from the impact opened up a weak spot that resulted in the Deccan event?

Thats what the wave propo model suggested. So knowing the age of the chixclub and the Deccans (were theycontemporary phenoms) would give a lot of credence to a double whammy theory. Ive always liked that one because we always forget about the shock waves that scatter radially from something like a big bolide ,and then they refocus about a point around the planet.

Really? That's cool. I never heard that before. How strong is the evidence for correlation of these events?

I wonder if other impact sites of similar size also have recoil events on the other side of the globe.

It takes some money to mount field studies , I havent seen any results of any yet , but Im sure that Rogers and others have been looking at doing just that.
You can review whats new in the science by going to Webpage Title. This is the geological Society of Americas website and it has a number of abstracts that you can read without a membership key. Theres a bout 3 levels of journals
a"whats new" journal, a"precis "journal, and the long drawn out sleep inducing"Geology Bulletin" journal, which includes all the bloody details and every stupid tooth of every fossil or zircon crystal blemish. (I get this every month and , admittedly skim through it until I hit something of interest, then I spend more time) Otherwise Id just be reading magazines and periodical websites

The PErmian flood basalts are being traced back to a polar opposite based upon the brekup of Pangea and the vagaries of spherical geometry, they have a number of plausible solutions that depend upon specific paths that the continents may have taken while drifting around

When did India begin its geological 'slide' into the asian subcontinent? Was that before or after the Deccan Traps?