Where is the Pre-Flood - Flood Boundary? - Dr. Steve Austin (Conf Lecture)

okay I'd like to talk about the flood preflu are the pier the pre-flood flood boundary the pre-flood flood boundary and this is an interesting PowerPoint because it was made before PowerPoint okay 20 years ago did they have PowerPoint I don't know okay so these graphics are made on a graphics program they're converted to jpg and then they were imported in as image files into PowerPoint to make this PowerPoint and all of the the image I'm going to show you our film they were they were shot 35 millimeter slides remember those Kodachrome okay so it's Kodachrome okay and then the other thing is Kodachrome doesn't work with powerpoints so you've got to go some intermediate thing so we scanned the the Kodachrome to make digital files out of it and then that was in there and some of the files were so big that we could not use a flatbed scanner like graphics that I drew so we had to take a photograph of the graphic and then digitize it so anyway that's but it's interesting and then you'll see some images of people you know over 20 years ago okay and I'll see if you can recognize who they are okay okay the flood pre-flood boundary myself and Kurt we're doing fieldwork in Grand Canyon and a Mojave Desert and so we started talking about this issue of the flood pre-flood boundary and the pre flood flood boundary and so we were thinking about it in Grand Canyon Eastern Mojave Desert okay here's the familiar geologic column and when you use the words Precambrian or phanerozoic you know what those mean here's what I mean by it I don't mean the geologic ages they represent I mean the strata that occupy that definition or that care category so we have Precambrian strata those are strata that are objective and physical and that's our understanding of their assignment not that they represent some geologic age or imaginary Earth picture and the same thing with our key and proto's like we know they're stratigraphically aligned like that but we don't have any baggage that we attach to it or need any baggage attached to it so those are those are the words but what the question is in the stratigraphic succession of the southwestern United States in eastern Mojave Desert and over through in the Grand Canyon where is the flood pre-flood boundary in that succession of strata and rocks okay and that's those are those are great questions to ask okay here's the idea that Kurt and I were talking about back then 22 23 years ago 25 years ago I think it was 1995 to 97 right in there somewhere okay before that okay yeah okay whatever okay yeah so it's gotta be before that okay that's so anyway history okay so gotta be 91 okay so so it's 25 years ago it's not 20 okay whew okay well anyway we're thinking about what should the the pre-flood flood boundary look like and we we thought about we thought about the pre-flood earth we thought about the creation earth and we talked about what the flood would be like and we came up with five of these what we call discontinuities five types of discontinuity would help us define the pre flood flood boundary and so the an idea of an erosional discontinuity the idea of an age discontinuity idea of a tectonic discontinuity a sedimentary discontinuity and a palin - logic discontinuity and so as we discussed that that's the idea we the boundary criteria let's call it that way or dis continent discontinuities would be the boundary criteria for the pre flood flood boundary what do I mean by an erosional discontinuity we might expect the the beginning of the flood to mark one of the major if not the major erosional dis erosional events in the history of the planet and erosion produces a feature called unconformity unconformity you know what an unconformity is okay so erosion and big erosion like major erosion would produce unconformity which is a-a stratigraphic feature that might be a primary evidence of the pre flood flood boundary and erosional discontinuity might be associated with day three of creation week as well okay you might imagine that okay waters be gathered together in one place let the dry land appear okay and the idea of an age discontinuity chief in my mind as I thinking about age discontinuity might see characteristics of the pre-flood rocks in the first flood rocks a rocks would be inherited or be assimilated into the flood rocks and retained their character before and might be indicative of age let's let's give you an example quartzite boulders in the pre-k mean there's lots of quartzite in the Precambrian and that's a metamorphic rock or partly metamorphic rock and that's going to be moved and redeposited in the flood and it would sit above an erosion surface and so it would imply metamorphic process occurred between when that rock originally formed and when it was redeposited in the early flood that's the idea of an age discontinuity and then tectonic discontinuity not only would there be erosion but there might be tectonics associated with the beginning of the flood especially the beginning of the flood why because Genesis 7:11 says all the Fountains of the great deep were broken up in one day okay and so the the the the beginning of the flood is marked by a colossal tectonic event and so the tectonics should be imprinted on the earliest flood rocks and all of the pre-flood rocks should be crosscut by that inion there's the principle of cross-cutting relationships tectonics of the flood should crosscut the pre-flood and so that's the idea of a tectonic disk under sedimentary discontinuity okay before the flood there might have been oh for around and might have been slow and gradual sedimentation but during the flood what would happen the sedimentary process would be greatly accelerated and so we'd see the character of sediments change across the pre-flood flood boundary and then Palin to logic discontinuity not much is going on in the pre-flood world to bury organisms and so those pre flow sediments might have very little Palin to logic record because the earth is very good at taphonomic Lee destroying organisms and so fossilization is not a I would not think of as a primary process in in the in the in the pre-flood ocean but in the in the flood ocean fossilisation should occur so you should see some type of paint onto logic discontinuity and then there may be types of fossils and things that might represent a pail into logic discontinuity like small fossils like bacteria and maybe bacteria and algae algal fossils maybe even pollen and spores things like that may be represented in the pre-flood and they may be represented in the in the flood as well and so you but other types of fossilization so you have the idea of a pale ontological here's the erosional discontinuity it's mechanical it's not chemical that's largely mechanical it's regional and it's the largest magnitude and it has look it could have local relief but it has a lot of cross-cutting of underlying units so that's the that's the thought so an erosional continuity the age discontinuity like conglomerates and breccia s-- in the basal flood deposits would contain class of underlying formations even metamorphic class things like that which are argue age and should be the largest magnitude age discontinuity one of the largest and so well let's do that an areal extent thickness class lithification class size you might think about how big this age discontinuity might be then the tectonic discontinuity faults would be crosscut with unconformity rapid thickness changes there'd be there could be convolute betting convolute being sin sedimentary deformation structures associated with with some of these rocks breeches and conglomerates which would argue tectonics and big mega class Omega classes huge rocks huge blocks in other words landslide blocks and things like that and all kinds of other landslide evidences so that's the the tectonic discontinuity and then the sedimentary discontinuity things things that would be indicative of catastrophic events preceding our following normal sedimentary events okay so a mega sequence an unconformity bounded unit finding upward classics you can imagine carbonates on the top multi formational scale so we're talking hundreds or even thousands of feet things like that so that's the sedimentary discontinuity the paleontological nua t is change in abundance rare to common okay change in fossil type micro to macro you might think that way okay and so that those are those are the boundary criteria and so we've we've tried to be rigorous at applying boundary criteria not just our favorite rock formation or our favorite unconformity okay the pre-flood flood boundary should be defined by these five characteristics okay let me share with you the idea or the plot called a paleo geologic cross-section have you have you ever seen a geologic cross-section you know what a geologic cross-section is we could draw one through through Tennessee from the Sippi River all the way out to the Appalachian front and what would we see we see a deep basin underneath the Mississippi River and the Strada would rise and they'd come up and into the Appalachians and and where the rocks have been uplifted and so you could draw a modern-day cross-section through Tennessee and geologists do that type of thing but the idea of a paleo geologic cross-section is an interesting concept and it's a way to show a particular suite of rocks that you're interested in in what not that at the present but in the past at a particular time so we're drawing with here's what we think we might draw some early strata sequences and we might draw the unconformity on top of a geologic cross-section a paleo geologic cross-section be an unconformity you see the Eureka quartzite over in Nevada okay Eureka quartzite California Nevada and you see this cross-section going across here from Eastern California and Death Valley across through just north of Las Vegas into northern Arizona so here's northern Arizona here's Nevada and here's California Eureka quartzite has an unconformity underneath it and we're drawing that flat and level in the sub tippecanoe erosion surface all the way across the top of this diagram that would be associated with middle Ordovician people would call that okay so anyway the eureka quartzite and that unconformity is has all kinds of elevations today but we can draw it flat in a cross-section and that's what we believe that once was like or nearly flattened so we call that a paleo geologic cross-section and so from that surface called atom the dad Mbeki unconformity at the or part of the sock sequence or the basel Tippecanoe sub Tippecanoe erosion surface we can hang all of the strata pile them up as they likely were positioned back then okay yet you see the power of a paleo geologic cross-section it's it's an abstraction yes but it likely bore some strong resemblance to reality back when it was flat and so we believed it was flat so there's a flat surface there and a nearly flat surface and then conformity and you see how we hang strata underneath it so there's a Grand Canyon you can see the Grand Canyon you see the the great unconformity and you have the two peat sandstone Bright Angel move of sitting on top of it and then you can see the the strata how they thicken off to the west and also take a look in the Grand Canyon area there's the Grand Canyon supergroup that's the unkar and Chu are strata that begin with the greatest unconformity you see the greatest unconformity there okay and that thick sequence is what about two miles thick and then it goes off here okay we're showing the Grand Canyon strata and the Grand Canyon supergroup under the great unconformity in this diagram we're doing it with vertical exaggeration 763 times the horizontal okay so paleo geologic cross-section extreme vertical exaggeration so those rocks in the Grand Canyon are dipping at 15 degrees but when we extremely vertically exaggerate it they look like their vertical you see is you see what the effects of that are and so that illustrates and that's that's a convenient way to illustrate these things night show faults on the Paleo geologic cross-section see there's a fault that comes up and then it's truncated by the great unconformity so that is cross-cut that Bute fault is crosscut by the great unconformity the unconformity stun conformity comes vertical and then is transected by the greatest duncum the great unconformity the peach - peach sandstone you see how that works okay what we notice about Grand Canyon strata is the the Grand Canyon supergroup is sitting in there what is it it's a rotated block sitting between associated with this fault and you imagine rotation of on the fault and that creates this maybe two faults creates the unkar to our group being in this down faulted rotated basin if you will okay one thing about Grand Canyon muove limestone the MU off thickens enormous ly as you go to the west that's rather thin in eastern Grand Canyon and then it starts thickening and the MU lob is very thick out in western Grand Canyon near fourteen over here and then what happens you pick up a little bit what's called the pawn up group Dunbar shale no pop formation those sit above the Bonanza King so the Bonanza King formation of Mojave Desert correlates with the move of Grand Canyon to see that how that works and there's a there's a thickening maybe a couple more units out in Mojave Desert anyway Carrara sits underneath Bonanza King and that is limestone and lots of algal fossils in there trilobite sand there's a Biscay quartzite a shale layer underneath it and then the wood Canyon formation the wood Canyon formation looks very much like that the peat sandstone is we connect it up there there's a little there's a limey unit here and that's bring some some question but you see what the paler geologic cross-section represents and then underneath here we have a sterling quartzite Johnny noonday and then go into Kingston Peak formation and down into BEC spring dolomite and in the Crystal Springs quartzite down underneath it and and then underneath that here's the basement rock and you can see the basement Rock all through it an in basement we mean gneisses and shifts and that kind of thing granite nice isn't just being the basement rock is that a convenient way to represent that I think it it's a really good idea to draw one of these paleo geologic cross-sections you it helps us understand the great unconformity how it goes my it announced 25 years after I drew this diagram the only thing I might improve on this diagram is the wood Canyon formation I believe there may be an unconformity between the middle and lower wood canyon formation now that I've seen it in the field a lot more I might draw the great unconformity coming through the lower wood can information this formation are this unconformity coming up and being truncated or or split and so that but that's the that that's a pretty faithful representation of the sequence look at that we have eight thousand meters eight kilometers of strata out in Mojave Desert and we have less than that in Grand Canyon the course and so where do you put the the unconformity or where do you put the flood post flood boundary now here's my my way of looking at this I want to look at the unconscious for mass and I want to look at that and then I want to go look at Mojave Desert so two key areas to look at it's the top of the qu our group okay because it sits under the great unconformity and their flood evidence is there sedimentary evidence of flooding the other thing to look at is the Kingston peak formation notice I have a nonconformity going into the middle of the Kingston peak formation the beck springs dolomite underneath it and Crystal Springs quartzite underneath that so what is that what's going on there okay so that's where you get field observation Grand Canyon in northern Arizona you got the block diagram and of course we have the great unconformity and the tilted Grand Canyon supergroup underneath qu r and unkar groups and you can see the Granite's there's the Granite's underneath the Topete sandstone look at the nature of that rolling unconformity this is 91 Mile Canyon area it's a topographic high that's showing me something about the character of the erosion and and then off to the side you can see the Papeete sandstone coming off the high areas and then you see around associated with the lower part of the pete's sandstone these conglomerates and a quartzite boulders are especially abundant and notice they're not rounded they're angular and they're in briquette and it looks like they've just slumped off areas nearby and there's the great unconformity under there so there's the the unkar group and there is the Papeete sandstone and that's the great unconformity you put your hand thumb on one rock and your index finger and the other and what does that represent that represents the great unconformity right there it's a surface a buried surface and does it represent a million a billion years missing or whatever okay there's the bottom of the Topete sandstone again you see the boulders distributed and so the that sedimentary and Boulder discontinuity associated with the great unconformity in the documentary we went to ooh about the only place we could get the film crew to down in the canyon and there wasn't a lot of Boulder evidence a little bit there was a little bit of conglomerate there but we didn't show that in the documentary but we showed the nature of the flat surface and the great unconformity is a is a big surface there okay you want to think about the top of the that the qu our group here and we want to think about what these upper strata are like and so we want to be careful that we know the full stratigraphic sequence in the in the sequence we have what's called the 60-mile formation at the top I think we took this one because we think we found burrows this could be ocean floor pre-flood ocean floor okay here's here's my explanation of how the flood came over the continent and a year there you see the pre-flood basement rock and you can see the two peat sandstone brightens will move off as the two-piece sandstone is deposited on top of the great unconformity there's that scour surface and so you can imagine in New Mexico the water coming in and scouring off the surface okay back of the shallow water erosion surface is the place where conglomerate is deposit and that's the pebbles own and then offshore as you go west through Arizona the Topete sandstone becomes the dominant and it has ridges and dune like forms small dune forms and so that represents the onshore and offshore flow most of its offshore flow so we what we do is we think an on surging flood would create a back Sir John der neath it you know what undertow is like you know that's that's on a colossal scale it's the undertow of the of the of the deepening current water over the and the undertow brings the offshore oriented cross beds in the Topete sandstone and then over in Mojave Desert and Nevada that's where the shale and and muds are deposited even lime mud and so that represents the Bright Angel move and so one sequence can explain three different rock types want one transgressive sequence unconformity an erosion surface then pebble conglomerate then sandstone then shale then limestone in one kind of now I like that type of thinking okay we're out in nanka wheatberry and we're looking what we think is pre-flood ocean floor the big biscuit like algal features that may represent fossils they would be called fossils I think and they're there al-jalil influenced lamination and they're like big biscuits and big heads and so maybe that's the pre-flood ocean floor that's in the neck weep area here is a upturned Precambrian strata and this area is where we're studying a 60-mile formation the 60-mile formation sits at the top of the chewer group here's the 60-mile formation and it's rather thin but it has enormous current evidences where we were looking at we're seeing sedimentary evidence of a type of bed form we call anti dune which is fast moving water and there's pebble conglomerates and that type of thing a closer look at nanka wheat Butte and the nanka wheat formation at the top of the of the chu our group and my thinking is this is the first flood rock I can distinguish in the Grand Canyon right here and that might be the pre-flood ocean floor underneath but this is probably some type of gravity flow in and strong current looking at the 60-mile formation I think that's the first flood evidence in the Grand Canyon Curt and I like thinking that way okay that's 25 years ago okay and recognize somebody okay yeah okay and there's bed forms in there that indicate strong current and there's pebbles and things drops little and and conglomerates and look at these branches how angular they are they they were hit by tectonic energy and then just distributed by current and not badly eroded so that's the the the very angular tectonic breccia associated with the initiation of the flood in my mind that would be 60-mile formation you see them a little more of these very interesting broken layers and then you see the sandy beds occasionally more breccia layers strong britches and red sandy matrix and I could look at this there's some type of debris flow there and that there's are coarser beds up there that all that's the 60-mile formation so I think underneath the great unconformity technically is probably where the first flood deposits is but over the region the great unconformity is the great is the boundary okay California Mojave Desert you see what Mojave Desert is and Death Valley Panama arranged that area right there so going across there that's where we're studying so that would be out here where we have this thick Stratus sequence enormous thick 8,000 meters okay eight thousand meters is how many feet almost 30,000 feet yikes okay that's a lot of strata so we got to get to know those and and and that's the terminology that's usually applied out in in Death Valley area but okay so I think the the first flood I can distinguish by the five criteria is the uppermost to our group but directly underneath the unconformity I think the unconformity goes through here maybe into the wood Canyon area but definitely down below into Kingston and the Kingston peak formation is this colossal tectonic breccia we're out here looking at it and we see giant mountain ranges those slid this is a this is Kingston peak formation underlying an overlying noon day dolomite noon day dolomite over Kingston and some of these big BEC spring dolomite class or a kilometer long or some type of colossal seafloor collapse event associated with the Kingston peak formation and where this was mapped by one of my students and he mapped it and drew a cross-section through it this evidently this whole section is a giant gravity collapse feature and there's huge mega class in there these are these are sedimentary rocks that have been moved into the sequence and here's more mega class everywhere mega class mega class mega quest and look at this mega class sitting on top of normal sedimentary rock and then there's a mega class stacked up against it some kind of imbricate arrangement and so that makes the Kingston want to be a big tectonic event it so that's why I draw the unconformity going down into the middle of the Kingston Peak formation the bottom of the Kingston Peak formation is kind of calm and Placid see it's thin thin Shaylee beds so the that's where I'd put that here's more more of the Kingston peak braches Brett says out there I think that Matt marks the first beginning of the flood in that area in Mojave Desert underneath that is Johnny formation here's a Ediacaran fossils of some type it looks like a sea pen or something like that that's found in some of the strata underneath maybe that's a pre-flood organism not buried in the flood but they're very rare and then here is the again the Kingston peak for mission more bretch as' that is the most bizarre britches I've ever seen they're just colossal and it looks like a sea floor collapse event and where we were mapping class that were a kilometer long and we have Beck Springs dolomite class in this muddy matrix and that's the typical Kingston peak formation look at look at all the crunched rocks so Kingston peak formation is a submarine landslide deposit it's underwater rapid deposition oh man that's it's it's not a glacial deposit like some have said the upper pre-cambrian dynamic tights similar to King's book similar Kingston peak maybe a landslide deposit so that's Rochelle discontinuity age discount any tectonic discontinuity sedimentary discontinuity and that should be Palin to logic discontinuity we can't edit that because it's not PowerPoint maybe the pre fleep pre flood flood boundary that's what we're thinking so we're thinking this is the beginning of the flood right here and it comes down into the thick and what's called Precambrian sequence underneath the wood Canyon formation so the there there apparently is a big thick sequence of what's called Precambrian rock or strata in under the would Canyon formation tucked away here and that represents flood that sequence there and then of course the the the the transgression of the flood initial collapse and then transgression of the ocean is shown by these two mega sequences the mega sequence I'll call that the mojave sequence and that can be called the SoCs sequence and these two sequences mark the beginning of the flood and the transgression of the of the North American continent so from just through that small area that's what I've that's the way I sketch that okay so you can imagine this the day before the flood maybe something like this okay there's the pump group with a 2-hour unkar group okay that's what the continental margin looks like the ocean shoreline is over New Mexico say okay and what what do we have in Grand Canyon region in Arizona we have a shallow ocean sitting over Grand Canyon what's now the Grand Canyon region and so we have the qu r group and that's ocean floor we think and we have ocean floor evidence those large balls and straw mat oolitic structures associated with ocean floor we have the docks and we have that type of thing young car group maybe sedimentary strata from creation week sitting on the Continental basement rock and mostly Vishnu shift so aster granted in Grand Canyon and it asked faults maybe a little bit of fault stair-step and it's welded to oceanic crust you can imagine and there's the / UMP group in Death Valley sitting there and then the ocean deepens into this Basin what happens okay this whole thing gravitationally collapses as the ocean floor is shoved under Western North America and so there you go and then of course these basins form there's the the qu are non-car group basin in Grand Canyon and so that's the that's the beginning of the flood okay that's that's the criteria that I've developed and my interpretation of the pre flood flood boundary thank you any comments or questions yes okay really got thick out there in the Mojave Desert didn't it we the Kingston peak formation was bretch as what and and breccia you know what Brett says broken angular rocks that are deposited in a sedimentary situation those branches were huge over a kilometer thick okay and it you know a thousand meters okay so three thousand feet thick a breccia now as we come to to the Grand Canyon those britches are much reduced and but they're there so that and that appears to be one of the best markers of that event and of course the tectonics of Scripture is all the Fountains of the great deep were broken up okay in a single day second month seventeenth day of the month six hundred years Noah's life so that's the and maybe that's the the tectonic signature you're gonna see in the sedimentary rocks to see how tectonics and sedimentation work together to kind of bring the that that thought together that's and that's been pretty much now a group you know we have a lot of agreement among the creation geologists and we're looking at something like that because you're going out and field and talking about it and just hate what are other different ways of looking at it so the Brett says and the unconformity seemed to mark the best the pre-flood flood boundary

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Published: Wed Jan 24 2018