Ten Misconceptions about the Geologic Column

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Ten Misconceptions about the Geologic Column (#137)
by Steven A. Austin, Ph.D.
Abstract
It may sound surprising, but the standard geologic column was devised before 1860 by catastrophists who were creationists. Adam Sedgewick, Roderick Murchison, William Coneybeare, and others affirmed that the earth was formed largely by catastrophic processes, and that the earth and life were created.


The ten strata systems that geologists use (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary) compose the "standard geologic column" and are claimed by many to contain the major proof of evolutionary theory. Several erroneous notions have been attached to the geologic column. The following are the ten most common misconceptions.

Misconception No. 1. The geologic column was constructed by geologists who, because of the weight of the evidence that they had found, were convinced of the truth of uniformitarian theory and organic evolution.
It may sound surprising, but the standard geologic column was devised before 1860 by catastrophists who were creationists.1 Adam Sedgewick, Roderick Murchison, William Coneybeare, and others affirmed that the earth was formed largely by catastrophic processes, and that the earth and life were created. These men stood for careful empirical science and were not compelled to believe evolutionary speculation or side with uniformitarian theory. Although most would be called "progressive creationists" in today's terminology, they would not be pleased to see all the evolutionary baggage that has been loaded onto their classification of strata.

Misconception No. 2. Geologists composed the geologic column by assembling the "periods" and "eras" which they had recognized.
The geologic column was not composed by assembling a chronology of "periods," "eras" or other supposed measures of time, but by superposition of objectively defined sequences of sedimentary strata called "systems." The "periods" and "eras" were later appended to the system nomenclature of the "geologic Column" transforming it into a "geologic time scale."

Misconception No. 3. The strata systems of the geologic column are worldwide in their occurrence with each strata system being present below any point on the earth's surface.
The notion that the earth's crust has on "onion skin" structure with successive layers containing all strata systems distributed on a global scale is not according to the facts. Data from continents and ocean basins show that the ten systems are poorly represented on a global scale: approximately 77% of the earth's surface area on land and under the sea has seven or more (70% or more) of the strata systems missing beneath; 94% of the earth's surface has three or more systems missing beneath; and an estimated 99.6% has at least one missing system.2 Only a few locations on earth (about 0.4% of its area) have been described with the succession of the ten systems beneath (west Nepal, west Bolivia, and central Poland). Even where the ten systems may be present, geologists recognize individual systems to be incomplete. The entire geologic column, composed of complete strata systems, exists only in the diagrams drawn by geologists!

Misconception No. 4. Strata systems always occur in the order required by the geologic column.
Hundreds of locations are known where the order of the systems identified by geologists does not match the order of the geologic column. Strata systems are believed in some places to be inverted, repeated, or inserted where they do not belong. Overturning, overthrust faulting, or landsliding are frequently maintained as disrupting the order. In some locations such structural changes can be supported by physical evidence while elsewhere physical evidence of the disruption may be lacking and special pleading may be required using fossils or radiometric dating.

Misconception No. 5. Because each strata system has distinctive lithologic composition, a newly discovered stratum can be assigned easily to its correct position in the geologic column.
Sandstone, limestone, dolomite, shale, chert, salt, conglomerate, coal and other rock types are not diagnostic of specific strata systems. Therefore, a rock's physical appearance cannot, with certainty, distinguish the system or strata level to which a rock may belong. The sequence of rock types is more useful, but hardly an infallible guide to correlation. Thus, the Cambrian System on an intercontinental scale is typically composed of quartzose sandstone, overlain by glauconitic sandstone with dark-brown shale, overlain by impure, light-brown limestones.3 The correlation of "Cambrian" strata is further strengthened by the presence on an intercontinental scale of an unconformity (surface of erosion) at or near the base of the system. Each rock type is not distinctive of the Cambrian, and neither is the unconformity, but the sequence may be.

Misconception No. 6. Fossils, especially the species distinctive of specific systems, provide the most reliable method of assigning strata to their level in the geologic column.
Bed-to-bed correlation of strata to their "type system" area is the most reliable method of assigning strata to a system. The data from oil well drilling, seismic surveys, and surface geologic mapping is of such character that subsurface correlation of lithostratigraphic units of the thickness of systems is possible on a continental scale. Although some fossils appear to be distinctive of certain systems (most fossil taxa range through a few to several systems), care must be exercised in correlation by fossils. First, the stratigraphic range of a fossil type is always open to extension as new fossils are discovered. Second, when an extension of a fossil's range may be required, geologists may call upon erosion (reworking fossils into younger strata or leaking fossils into older strata) and structural events (overturning or faulting strata and fossils). An example of the first problem is the monoplacophoran mollusk Pilina, which might otherwise be considered diagnostic of the Silurian System, except for the startling discovery that Neopilina lives today, and, therefore, would be expected in any system overlying the Silurian. For these reasons correlation by fossils must always remain tentative awaiting further confirmatory evidence from lithostratigraphy. We should look very skeptically at strata correlations which rely solely on fossils.

Misconception No. 7. Sedimentary evidence proves that periods of millions of years duration were required to deposit individual strata systems.
Before radiometric dating was devised, uniformitarian geologists postulated "periods" of millions of years duration to slowly deposit the strata systems. A single sedimentary lamina, or bed, was supposed by uniformitarian geologists to represent typically a year or many years duration. It was concluded, therefore, that multiplied thousands of laminae and beds superimposed required millions of years. Recently, however, geologists have discovered that laminae and beds form quickly on floodplains of rivers during floods, in shallow marine areas during storms, and in deep water by turbidity currents. The evidence of rapid sedimentation is now so easily recognized that geologists observing a strata system these days often ask where to insert the "missing time" of which the strata do not show sedimentary evidence. Catastrophism, quite naturally, is making a come-back. There is good reason to believe that entire strata systems, and even groups of systems, were accumulated in a hydraulic cataclysm matching the description of Noah's Flood in the Bible.

Misconception No. 8. Radiometric dating can supply "absolute ages" in millions of years with certainty to systems of the geologic column. 10
Geologists and geochronologists assert that radiometric dating verifies that individual strata systems and their strata are millions of years old. When asked to document the most reliable radiometric age dates, geologists usually point to isochron and concordia plots which employ multiple isotopic analyses, which they claim will remove the effects of original "contaminants," and display the "age" of a rock in graphical form. However, we find geologists often reporting isochron plots which are discordant with the accepted "ages" of strata systems.4 Frequently, these discordant isochron plots "date" strata systems much older than even the accepted old ages customarily assigned to the systems of the geologic column. Geologists should be asking which, if any, of the isochron plots should be accepted as "absolute ages," and if the discordances do not falsify the assumptions upon which radiometric dating is based. Geologists need to consider radiometric methods which indicate ages of thousands of years for strata systems,5 as well as general indicators supporting young age.

Misconception No. 9. The environmental "pictures" assigned to certain portions of the geologic column allow us to accurately visualize what its "geologic ages" were like.
Books, films and museum displays contain illustrations asking us to visualize what earlier "geologic ages" were like. These "pictures" show supposed primitive earth conditions, specific environments with sediments being slowly deposited, inferred "transitional organisms" evolving toward familiar forms, and whole communities of organisms "at home" with other organisms absent. Perhaps the most blatant environmental picture" has been assigned to lower Precambrian strata, formed when the earth supposedly had a reducing atmosphere and an "organic soup" in which life evolved. Yet, geologists have yet to find sedimentary evidence for the reducing atmosphere and the soup.6 This reminds us that accepting an environmental "picture" requires much imagination from a meager supply of facts.

Misconception No. 10. The geologic column and the positions of fossils within the geologic column provide proof of amoeba-to-man evolution.
All the animal phyla, including chordate fish, are now known as fossils in the Cambrian System. No ancestral forms can be found for the protozoans, arthropods, brachiopods, mollusks, bryozoans, coelenterates, sponges, annelids, echinoderms or chordates. These phyla appear in the fossil record fully formed and distinct, in better agreement with the concept of "multiple, abrupt beginnings" (creation) than with the notion of "descent from a common ancestor" (evolution).

REFERENCES

R.Ritiand, "Historical development of the current understanding of the geologic column: part II," Origins, Vol. 9, 1982, pp. 28-47.
Estimated by the author using data from J. Woodmorappe, "The essential nonexistence of the evolutionary-uniformitarian geologic column: a quantitative assessment," Creation Res. Soc. Quarterly, Vol. 18, 1981, pp. 46-71.
D.V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1981), P. 11.
C. Brooks, D.E. James and S.R. Hart, "Ancient lithosphere: its role in young continental volcanism," Science, Vol. 193, 1976, pp. 1086-1094.
R.V. Gentry, et al., "Radiohalos in coalified wood: new evidence relating to the time of uranium introduction and coalification," Science, Vol. 194, 1976, pp. 315-318.
S.A. Austin, "Did the early earth have a reducing atmosphere?" ICR Impact 109, July 1982, 4 pp.


www.icr.org/article/242/

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Geological Layers Laid Down
Quickly Atop Mount St. Helens

www.creationism.org/articles/nelson1.htm

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This picture was taken Sat. June 23, 2001, in the restricted area between Spirit Lake and the Mt. St. Helens Crater along the Truman Trail (#207). Because of the Eruption/Landslide of May 18, 1980, fourteen miles of the north Fork of the Toutle River was buried by rocks, mud & debris to an average depth of 150'. Where this picture was taken the depth of the fill is 300' or more.



This means everything seen here, the creek, the embankment, the rocks & brush was thin air slightly over 20 years ago. The trail we were hiking on would have been over the tops of the tallest trees around Harry Truman's Lodge. Now count the horizontal layers in the embankment, starting at the edge of the creek I can easily count 17 layers (with the naked eye), by standard Geologic measurement how many millions of years would this represent? Yet most of it happened Within the first two years following the Main eruption of May 18th. (More photos here)

www.creationism.org/articles/nelson1.htm

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7 Wonders of Mount St. Helens
by Lloyd & Doris Anderson

www.creationism.org/sthelens/MSH1b_7wonders.htm


Introduction: The 7 Wonders, summarized below, are seven geological features resulting from the eruptive activity of the ‘80’s and displayed at the MSH Creation Information Center. Because they were formed rapidly they challenge evolutionary thought which assigns long ages to such formations. We call them “wonders” because of the awe they produce. In fact, it is our persuasion that these wonders are a message from God to remind man of the speed in which He created the world.

1. Mountain rearranged beyond recognition in nine hours. MSH was acclaimed the most beautiful of the Cascade peaks. Cone-shaped and snow-covered, it towered over heavily-forested deep ravines with a crystal clear lake to its north. In March of 1980, magma began moving up into the mountain wedging it apart. A powerful earthquake at 8:32 a.m., on May 18, caused the north slope to plunge into the valleys below, releasing the pressure within with a lateral, northward, fan-shaped explosion. This initial eight minute blast destroyed 230 square miles of forest.

The mountain continued to erupt until evening, expending the power of 20,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. In those nine hours, the top 1/4 and entire center of the mountain disappeared, leaving a vast, gaping, horseshoe-shaped crater. Deep ravines were filled, 250’ of material was deposited on the bottom of the lake, and the river that drained the north and northwest sides of the mountain was buried under an average of 150’ of deposit. In just nine hours the region had become a hideous, lifeless moonscape.

For 150 years geological evolution minimized the role of catastrophic events. Yet the enormous geological change produced by this nine-hour eruption of a minor volcano would take a million years of gradual change.

2. Canyons formed in five months. In the five months following the eruption two canyons were formed by mud and pyroclastic flows, establishing drainages for the 1.5 x 2.0 mile crater. The primary drainage, Step Canyon, is up to 700’ deep. To its east is Loowit Canyon. Both canyons cut through 100’ of solid rock. Creeks flow through each canyon. The typical evolutionary explanation is that a creek slowly forms a canyon over vast ages. In this case we know that the canyons were formed quickly; then a stream began to run through them. Textbooks say the most spectacular canyon in the world, the Grand Canyon, was formed by stream erosion over a hundred million years. Now scientists who specialize in geological erosion believe it was formed rapidly just like these canyons at MSH.

3. Badlands formed in five days. Badlands topography is found in the Southwest and in South Dakota. It occurs where loose material has been eroded in areas of rock structures, leaving a jagged but picturesque landscape. The standard explanation for such landforms is that water, over the centuries, washed away the loose materials, leaving free-standing towering rock patterns.

At MSH the massive landslide carried huge amounts of ice and snow with it, burying them in the deep valley to the north. Throughout the day 30’ of 550 degree F. ash was also deposited, which quickly melted that ice, causing it to “flash” to steam. This is the same energy process that caused the explosions up in the mountain throughout the day. Water expands 1700 times when it turns to steam. When this happens instantaneously, it is an explosion. Eventually through similar explosions all the water was used up.

When the red hot ash covering the buried ice and snow in the valley caused that ice to melt and “flash” to steam, something called “steam explosion pits” (up to 125’ deep) were formed. They had nearly vertical sides until gravity collapsed them to produce a “rill and gully” effect, one of the features of badlands topography. (Rills are small gullies). The great badlands features in the US could also have been produced by catastrophic forces and some by volcanic action.

4. Layered Strata Formed in Three Hours. On June 12, 1980 a third explosive eruption produced 25’ of stratification that amazed geologists. Successive layers are traditionally thought to require long periods of time to form; yet upwards of 100 layers accumulated mostly between the nighttime hours of 9 and 12. While a plume swiftly ascended nine miles above the mountain, wave after wave of pyroclastic flows began hurtling out of the crater and down the north slope, each dusting the valley below with another lamination. Measuring from a fraction of an inch to over a yard in thickness, each took from a few seconds to a few minutes to form.

Geologist Steven Austin described these pyroclastic flows as ground-hugging, fluidized, turbulent slurries of fine volcanic debris. They moved down the mountainside at hurricane speeds and left deposits of 1000 degrees F. One would expect each deposit to be homogenized & thoroughly mixed. Remarkably these high-velocity slurries of red-hot ash and pumice separated into coarse and fine particles of perfectly defined layers. Such features follow laws governing flows demonstrated in laboratory sedimentation tanks.

Similar thin layering appears in the Tapeats Sandstones of the Grand Canyon. Conventional wisdom says they were formed by slow and continuous sedimentation over long ages. Both gas-charged slurries which formed the MSH strata and water-charged slurries which formed the Tapeats strata follow the same laws of physics. The volcano has demonstrated that such formations can be formed rapidly. A global flood would have produced Tapeats in a brief time.

5. River System Formed in Nine Hours. The landslide of May 18 had buried the river and highway to Spirit Lake to an average 150’. It also buried most other drainages in the 23 square miles of the Upper Toutle Valley and plugged the valley’s mouth. For twenty-two months no established path for water to the Pacific Ocean existed.

Then, on March 19, 1982, an eruption melted a large snow pack that had accumulated in the crater over the winter. The waters mixed with loose material on the slopes of the mountain creating an enormous mudflow. In nine hours while no eye watched, the mudflow carved an integrated system of drainages over much of the valley and reopened the way to the Pacific Ocean. The drainages included at least three canyons 100’ deep. One was nicknamed “The Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle” because it is a 1/40th scale model of the Grand Canyon.

Much water (or mud) accomplishes rapidly what a little water (or mud) takes an eternity to accomplish.

Evolutionary geologists assigned long periods of time to the formation of the 16,000 square mile Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. In the ‘70’s they finally acknowledged that this vast geologic formation which includes the Grand Coulee was formed mostly in two days as a result of a catastrophic event. Catastrophic events best explain the great erosionary formations on the earth’s surface. The histories of nearly 300 people groups speak of an event adequate to the job--the Global Flood.

6. Sinking Logs Look Like Many Aged Forests in Just Ten Years. A million trees were washed into Spirit Lake the day of the main eruption. As the years go by one by one they become waterlogged and sink to the bottom. Dense root wood is still a part of 10% of the logs. Those logs sink to the bottom in an upright position and their roots quickly become covered by the continuing sedimentation washing into the lake. They give the appearance they grew and died where they are deposited, one forest on top of another over long periods of time.

Such formations are found in other places, including Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone National Park. There, geologists found forests “rooted” in 27 different layers in the ridge and concluded they were observing 27 successive forests. The interpretive sign at Specimen Ridge expressed their error. It read: “Buried within the volcanic rocks that compose the mountain are twenty-seven distinct layers of fossil forest that flourished 50 million years ago.”

Today the truth is out and the sign is gone. Scientists realized that the Spirit Lake phenomena explains Specimen Ridge. The trees floated on a lake, became waterlogged and sank to the bottom over a period of time, giving the appearance of multiple forests that grew one on top of another. The 50 million year formation could have formed in just a few years plus the time necessary for petrifying the logs (100 to 1000 years).

7. A New Model for Quicker Coal Formation. Dr. Steven Austin wrote his doctoral dissertation at Penn State University on a new model for coal formation based on his study of a coal field in Kentucky. While geologists have used a peat swamp model to explain coal formation for over 100 years, Austin argued that explanation doesn’t fit because coal is coarsely textured like bark, not finely textured like swamp peat. Swamp peat contains root material; coal does not. Swamp peat rests on a layer of soil; coal often rests on a rock layer. No swamp peat has been found partly formed into coal.

Austin advanced a floating mat model--that a watery catastrophe stripped away millions of acres of forest and tangled them into mats. The mats floated on an ocean over Kentucky, bumping against one another and dropping their bark to the bottom. Subsequent volcanic activity provided heat and pressure, the final ingredients used in laboratories to produce coal. The result was rich seams of coal in Kentucky and a Ph.D. for Austin.

Just ten months later Mount St. Helens erupted, dumping vast amounts of vegetation into Spirit Lake including a million logs. Dr. Austin found the logs on the lake stripped of their bark. The bottom of the lake was strewn with up to three feet of bark mixed with other vegetation and sediment. To this day the material remains as merely slowly decaying vegetation. But if a catastrophe supplies the right amount of heat and pressure, the material will quickly change to coal. Dr. Austin’s research indicates that the idea of coal formation requiring millions of years is highly questionable.

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The case of the ‘missing’ geologic time
by Andrew A. Snelling

Traditional evolutionary geology maintains that the deposition of sediments to form major rock layers often takes long periods of time. Once deposited, the sedimentation period involved is believed to have closed with a major change in climate and/or uplift of the ocean floor to form a new land surface. There often then followed, it is claimed, a lengthy time in which erosion of that land surface may have then removed large amounts of the previously deposited sediments. Such an eroded surface should be evidenced by gullies, stream and river canyons and valleys, and such like at the top of each major rock layer or layers.

Then it is supposed a new climatic regime began and/or the land subsided to again be covered by the ocean. Thus a new rock layer of perhaps an entirely different kind of sediment was then deposited. This new layer would be expected to bury and preserve much of the previously eroded surface at the interface between the lower rock layer and this newly deposited layer above.

In Grand Canyon
Therefore, this accepted scenario for earth history involves many uplifts and subsidences of land surfaces. So where the rock layers of the earth’s surface are exposed to view, as they are in the Grand Canyon of Northern Arizona (USA), where there are numerous different sedimentary rock layers laid down one upon another, there ought to be many buried erosion surfaces found at the boundaries between the various individual rock layers. Indeed, the display on the Grand Canyon in the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff diagrammatically shows how the land surface in the Grand Canyon area must have subsided, been covered by the sea while sediments were being deposited, and then uplifted again with erosion taking place. This is depicted as happening at least five times during the development of the 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) of horizontal sedimentary rock layers now exposed in the walls of the Grand Canyon.

Creationists do recognize significant erosion surfaces between rock strata in the Grand Canyon, but unlike evolutionary geologists have concluded that these erosion breaks do not represent large time breaks. Indeed, evolutionists currently assign more time to these erosion breaks, where strata may have been eroded away on these erosion surfaces and therefore are now missing, than to all the 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) of horizontal rock strata present in the Grand Canyon today!

Where erosion can clearly be seen to have occurred at these breaks between rock strata in the Grand Canyon, creationists maintain that the erosion was very rapid, facilitated in many cases by erosion occurring in soft, ‘non-hardened’ rock. Consequently, rather than having a land surface exposed for enormous periods of time after an ocean retreated, the same Flood processes responsible for depositing the sedimentary layers were also capable of eroding significant thicknesses of both loose sediment and consolidated rock.

The nature of the debate concerning these so-called erosion breaks (technically known as unconformities) is brought into sharp focus in statements made by representatives of each viewpoint. For example, Dr. Davis Young, Professor of Geology at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, a Christian geologist who opposes the special creation/Flood approach, writes:

‘The presence of each unconformity is physical evidence that the Colorado Plateau (the area taking in the Grand Canyon) experienced consolidation of sediments, uplift, and possibly gentle tilting, weathering of the uplifted surface to form soil, and erosion by streams and wind before the sediments of the next formation (rock layer) were deposited. There must have been several of these episodes of consolidation, uplift, weathering, and erosion—a conclusion clearly at variance with the theory that the sediments were deposited during a year-long global flood.’1


more
www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v14/i3/time.asp

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Grand Canyon strata show geologic time is imaginary
by Tas Walker

www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v...grandcanyon.asp

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The Downfall of Uniformitarianism 11/04/2003
Can major paradigm shifts occur in science today? Check this one out.
You’ve seen it on TV science programs and in textbooks: plumes of hot magma from deep in the Earth’s mantle rise through the crust and erupt on the surface (the IMAX movie Yellowstone has computer graphics of the whole process). Perhaps you’ve seen animations of the Hawaiian Islands riding over a “hot spot” and building its chain of volcanoes over millions of years on its slow, drifting journey. Textbook diagrams show cross-sections of Earth’s crust, with lava erupting from channels rooted deep in the mantle, while crustal plates float and drift atop deep convection currents.
That’s all defunct now, and so is a lot of the uniformitarian dogma associated with it, claims Warren B. Hamilton (Colorado School of Mines), in an extensive article in this month’s GSA Today.1 Uniformitarianism is out, catastrophism is in. Now, don’t get the idea Hamilton denies the Earth is billions of years old; he still accepts the 4.567 billion year figure, the condensation of Earth from a solar nebula, and all that. But he replaces Charles Lyell’s old premise “the present is the key to the past” with a new picture that seems to pay homage to Stephen Jay Gould. He calls his model “Punctuated Gradualism.” How serious is the subject? Enough for him to entitle his paper, “An Alternative Earth,” and for it to get prominent press in a journal of the world’s leading geological society.
Here’s the overview Hamilton provides of his paradigm, and the timeline of catastrophic events he now envisions (Note: Ga = giga-annum, i.e., a billion years. Emphasis added in all quotes):

The Earth described here differs profoundly from that accepted as dogma in most textbooks and research papers. Crust and upper mantle have formed a mostly closed system throughout geologic time, and their dramatic temporal changes are responses to cooling. The changing processes define a Punctuated Gradualism and not Uniformitarianism. Major stages in Earth evolution:
4.567–ca. 4.4 Ga. Hot accretion and major irreversible mantle fractionation. Giant bolides continue to ca. 3.9 Ga.
4.4–3.5 Ga. Era of nearly global felsic crust, too hot and mobile to stand as continents.
3.5–2.0 Ga. Granite-and-greenstone era. Permanent hydrosphere. Old crust cooled to density permitting mafic melts to reach surface. Diapiric batholiths mobilized from underlying old crust.
2.0 Ga–continuing. Plate tectonic era. Distinct continents and oceans. Top-down cooling of oceanic lithosphere enables subduction that drives plates, forces spreading, and mixes continental as well as oceanic crust into upper mantle.
While much of this timeline looks standard, some of the underlying changes to assumptions are striking. The rhetoric is also notable in that the new view is revolutionary, and overthrows long-held beliefs about uniformitarianism and plate tectonics. Notice his confidence in the abstract: “Plumes from deep mantle, subduction into deep mantle, and bottom-up convective drive do not exist.” In his Overview, he outlines how the old ideas have died:
The conventional model (e.g., Turcotte and Schubert, 2002) of Earth’s evolution and dynamics postulates that most of the mantle is little fractionated, major differentiation continues, and continental crust has grown progressively throughout geologic time; through-the-mantle convection operates, lithosphere plates are moved by bottom-driven currents, and plumes rise from basal mantle to surface; and plate tectonics operated in early Precambrian time. All of these conjectures likely are false. They descend from speculation by Urey (1951) and other pioneers, reasonable then but not now, that Earth accreted slowly and at low temperature from fertile chondritic and carbonaceous-chondritic materials, heated gradually by radioactive decay and core segregation, and is still fractionating.
Hamilton explains that “The notion of a cold, volatile-rich, young planet has long since been disproved,” but its corollary of an unfractionated [i.e., homogeneous, and therefore fluid] lower mantle no longer can stand up to the facts; “major constraints” now rule this view out in favor of shallow crustal activity from the upper mantle and crust. This includes radioactive heating, of which he says, “Earth’s heat loss, now largely of radiogenic heat, is much overstated in the standard model.” He suggests a value 70% the earlier one, and states, “thermodynamic and mineral-physics data require that nearly all radioactivity be above 660 km (Hofmeister and Criss, 2003),” i.e., no deeper than 400 miles. At that depth there is a discontinuity that could not be breached by a magma plume.
In short, most volcanic activity and crustal movement is shallow, and plate tectonics started much later than assumed. What are some of the ramifications geologists will have to consider if Hamilton’s “Alternative Earth” becomes the new textbook orthodoxy? Some are technical, but here are a few for the casual reader:
The heat of volcanism is shallow, not deep. The early crust did not form continents till much later than earlier assumed.
Plate tectonics began later. “Plate tectonics did not operate within preserved Archean crust,” Hamilton asserts, and began (in his timeline) at 2.0 Ga.
Plate tectonics operates differently. “What drives plates?” he rhetorically asks. ”Most published models and explanations overlook known plate characteristics and behavior and instead elaborate false assumptions.” He describes subduction and seafloor spreading as shallow processes, not driven by convection from deep within the mantle. Notice how he derides those who have fudged their data to argue for deep mantle motions:
Many published models are misleading: colors are saturated for lower-mantle anomalies one-tenth or one-fifth the amplitude of upper-mantle ones, huge unsampled volumes are assigned average values or populated with spherical-harmonic artifacts, illusory continuity is generated by severe smoothing and sharpening, cross sections are placed where subduction interpretations look most plausible. Models account for only a few tenths of traveltime variance, and have not been tested by attempting to squeeze solutions back into upper mantle. Nonsubduction alternatives receive little evaluation.
No more mantle plumes allowed. Of the prototypical Hawaiian Islands case, he says, “There, in its only rigorously testable locale, the fixed-plume concept is falsified.” How do supporters typically respond? He claims, “Plume advocates respond to such refutations by making their conjectures ever more complex, unique to each example, and untestable.” Yet beyond this, “All other geochemical, kinematic, and tectonic plume rationales derive from the misinterpretation that Hawaii stands atop a plume.”
Pure magma cannot reach the surface. “Pro-plume conjectures assume wrongly that magmas are transported from melting sites to surface without modification, thereby preserving elemental and isotopic ratios of sources,” he chides. He is emphatic that this assumption is no longer supportable: “Thermodynamics and phase petrology, including cotectic compositions of basalts and presence of underlying cumulates, prove that instead melts are profoundly modified before eruption (O'Hara and Herzberg, 2002).” Hamilton continues to take opponents to task, accusing them of circular reasoning and flawed methodologies.
Island chains can form at once. Rather than growing by drift of plates over hotspots, they form over “crackspots” that allow heat to the surface: “Island alignments, in this view, reflect regional stresses, perpetuation of directions once established, and lithosphere properties.” Otherwise plume advocates have to explain how the Hawaiian chain made a 60-degree turn.
Recycled plate slabs are complex. “Temperature, age, and isotopic ratios of sunken slabs vary regionally.” What applies hither may not apply thither or yon.
Plate tectonics is top-down, not bottom-up. Cooling at the top drives subduction, producing shallow cycles in the upper crust, all happening above 660 km. It also allows for rotation of plates, impossible under the bottom-up view, which assumed there could be no net rotation: “The no-net-rotation framework minimizes motions of ridges and randomizes motions of subduction hinges so that many roll forward–impossible with gravity drive. The lack of rational kinematics in these popular frameworks fosters acceptance of mysterious bottom drives,” he says.
These are just a few of the ramifications mentioned by Hamilton. Other consequences of this “Alternative Earth” with its shallow motions and shallow heating may become evident if the view becomes mainstream, which appears inevitable (see Aug. 20 and Apr. 1 headlines).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1Warren B. Hamilton, “An Alternative Earth,” GSA Today, Vol. 13, No. 11, pp. 4–12.; DOI: 10.1130/1052-5173(2003)013<0004:AAE>2.0.CO;2.
What’s most interesting about this story is not the new model, which may become the next discarded paradigm in the future, but the frank and revealing charges made against proponents of the old model: that they cheated, lied, and used irrational arguments to prop up their beliefs. Is that possible in science? You read it right here.
Creationists have similarly argued against the standard model for a long time and maybe now are getting some comeuppance. Dr. Walter Brown, for instance, has complained that deep mantle magma plumes are impossible, because the kinematics and thermodynamics would force the channels shut (see his paragraph on volcanoes and lava). Volcanism, therefore, must occur at shallow depths.
What can we learn from this paradigm shift? Make no mistake: confident-sounding scientific models, replete with professional jargon, (maybe even this one here - cf. 11/14/2002 headline), are written by fallible human beings. Like a hollow idol on a pedestal, a popular theory about the unobservable past might gleam in the sun for awhile, till toppled by tremors of fact. Broken on the ground, it is swept away and forgotten, and then a new hollow idol takes its place. Why hollow? Because no observer was there to corroborate the processes or the vast periods of time they are assumed to take. Remember Grand Canyon! It was the prototypical case of a phenomenon requiring millions of years, yet now the consensus is growing that it was formed catastrophically and recently (see 07/22/2002 headline). It should seem foolish to place one’s faith in the conjectures of mortals instead of in the testimony of an authoritative Eyewitness.
Those not beholden to secular geological conjectures might well consider what this paradigm shift may do to other geological conjectures. It may well cause a domino effect on current models in subjects as diverse as radiometric dating (which assumes pristine, unprocessed material from the deep mantle), planetary differentiation, seismology, volcanology, magnetic field dynamo theory, and even the origin of life. This model tinkers with temperatures, chemistry, the nature of the core and mantle, the timing of continents, and a host of geophysical processes affecting land and sea. Evolutionists had better revisit their assumptions about the early earth and what this does to their beliefs.
Now that mantle plumes and deep plate tectonics are out, who knows what will happen next? Perhaps Hamilton’s shallow plate tectonics theory will topple for other reasons. It seems to hinder large migrations of plates, such as the belief that India migrated from lower Africa, crashed into Asia and built the Himalayas. His choice of terms, “punctuated gradualism,” recalls Stephen Jay Gould’s punctuated equilibria, the “Alternative Earth” model in biology. It arose out of frustration with the lack of evidence for Darwinian gradualism, not because of positive evidence for the alternative. Gould replaced that “standard model” (neo-Darwinism) with – what? – a new model with even less empirical support, claiming, essentially, that evolution happens so fast it leaves no trace in the fossil record! Is Hamilton’s “Punctuated gradualism” a parallel in geology? It seems, at least, to nail the coffin shut on Lyell’s principle of uniformitarianism. Whatever happens next, we have just seen that major paradigm shifts are still possible in science. Kuhnians rejoice. Darwinians beware.

www.creationsafaris.com/crev1103.htm