[meteorite-list] Imaginary Tsunamis, “Flood Debris,” and Crater in the Gulf of Mexico
From: Paul H. <oxytropidoceras_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 7:59:35 -0600 Message-ID: <20120222085935.JERQS.620891.imail_at_eastrmwml302> In the thread ?obvious single event continental flood debris edge 1 km thick in Gulf of Mexico from S Texas to W Florida: Rich Murray 2012.02.09? at http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2012-February/083341.html Rich Murray wrote, ?Thanks for pointed criticism and leads. If you choose, you could start exploring the many hints of major anomalies re the Gulf of Mexico Holocene geology -- here I add !!! to indicate some candidates: http://www.gulfbase.org/facts.php ? If a person explores the web page, ?General Facts about the Gulf of Mexico,? at the above URL and actually reads what is published in the scientific literature about the Gulf of Mexico, there exists nothing in the above web page, which can be considered anomalous. As clearly documented in the published literature, none of Rich's candidates marked by ?!!!? show any evidence as seen in thousands of kilometers of seismic lines and from samples, cores, and logs from thousands of cores and drillholes of being either ?flood debris? or having been deposited by a single catastrophic event. All of Rich's ?!!!? candidates, his completely imaginary anomalies, and the existence of continental flood debris edge 1 km thick underlying the Gulf of Mexico are readily refuted by decades published research. Rich?s ?obvious single event continental flood debris edge 1 km thick in Gulf of Mexico from S Texas to W Florida? is quite obviously a figment of his imagination. A summary of the published literature that refutes his claims can be found in: Anderson, J. B., and R. H. Fillon, 2004, Late Quaternary Stratigraphic Evolution of the Northern Gulf of Mexico Margin. SEPM Special Publication no. 79, Society for Sedimentary Geology, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Buster, N. A., C. W. Holmes, 2011, Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota: Volume 3, Geology (Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies Series) Texas AM University, College Station,Texas. Galloway, W. E., 2009, Depositional evolution of the Gulf of Mexico sedimentary basin, In A. D. Miall, ed., pp. 505-549, The Sedimentary Basins of the United States and Canada. Elsevier, New York. Salvador, A., 1991, The Gulf of Mexico Basin. Geological Society of America, The Geology of North America, Boulder, Colorado. Suter, J.R., and H. L. Berryhill, Jr., 1985, Late Quaternary shelf-margin deltas, northwest Gulf of Mexico. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Bulletin vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 77-91. For example, part of one of Rich?s ?!!!? candidates for his imaginary "flood debris" is the Mississippi Cone in; ?This portion of the Gulf of Mexico contains the Sigsbee Deep and can be further divided into the continental rise, the Sigsbee Abyssal Plain, and the Mississippi Cone. Located between the Sigsbee escarpment and the Sigsbee Abyssal Plain, the continental rise is composed of sediments transported to the area from the north. !!!? There is more than enough research to completely refute any idea that the Mississippi Cone, which is outdated terminology for what is now called by Earth scientists as the ?Mississippi Fan,? consists of ?continental flood debris? from a single catastrophic event. It is well documented the Mississippi Fan (so-called ?Mississippi Cone?) ?is a large, mud-dominated submarine fan over 4 km thick, deposited in the deep Gulf of Mexico during the late Pliocene and Pleistocene.? The accumulation of the Sediments that comprise the Mississippi Fan occurred During 17 separate and distinct intervals, which were separated by periods of extremely slow pelagic sedimentation. The last period of rapid sediment deposition within the Mississippi Fan by turbidites started during the falling and maximum relative lowstand stages of sea level of the last glacial period over 25,000 years ago and ended about 12,000 to 11,000 years ago. During the past 11,000 years only 10 to 25 cm of foraminifera ooze has accumulated as pelagic sedimentation. There is a complete lack of any "flood debris" from a single catastrophic tsunami. This is all discussed and documented in great detail in: Bouma, A. H., J. M. Coleman, and A. W. Meyer, 1986, Initial reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Leg 96: Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 824 p. Kastens, K. A., and A. N. Shor, 1985, Depositional Processes of a Meandering Channel on Mississippi Fan. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin. vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 190-202. Kolla, V., and M. A. Perlmutter, 1993, Timing of Turbidite Sedimentation on the Mississippi Fan. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin. vol. 77, no. 7, pp. 1129-1141. Weimer, P., 1989, Sequence stratigraphy of the Mississippi fan (Plio-Pleistocene), Gulf of Mexico. Geo-Marine Letters vol.9, no. 4, pp. 185-272. Weimer, P., 1990, Sequence Stratigraphy, Facies Geometries, and Depositional History of the Mississippi Fan, Gulf of Mexico. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin. vol. 74, no. 4, pp. 425-453. In addition, Rich reposted from Wikipedia a short comment about the idea that the Gulf of Mexico is an impact crater as briefly proposed by Stanton (2002). In part, Rich reposted: ?In 2002 geologist Michael Stanton published a speculative essay suggesting an impact origin for the Gulf of Mexico at the close of the Permian, which could have caused the Permian?Triassic extinction event.[13]?? from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico In response to that article I submitted to the next edition of the SEIS database the below text. ?Stanton (2002, nd) argues that the Gulf of Mexico quite likely is an impact crater. According to Stanton (nd), his interpretation is based upon the ?saucier-like? morphology of the Gulf of Mexico, impact metamorphism of Paleozoic rocks, ?down to basin and basinal grabens,? uplifting of Moho as a central uplift within the Gulf of Mexico, and tectonics of the Ouachita region. Stanton (nd) proposes that the Paleozoic metamorphic rocks found in the Ouachita trend are ?melt rocks? created by ?shock metamorphism? associated with a Gulf of Mexico asteroid impact. Unfortunately, these arguments reply on older, even outdated and antiquated, published research about the geology of the Gulf of Mexico. They fail to include more recent significant research published prior to 2002 that contests, even soundly refutes, how the evidence for a Gulf of Mexico impact crater is interpreted. The interpretations offered by Stanton (2002, nd) of the evidence discussed for an asteroid impact creating the Gulf of Mexico is either contradicted or refuted by an enormous and overwhelming amount of published research. As summarized by Viele et al. (1989), Nichlas et al. (1989) and other peer-reviewed publications, over a century of research into the Ouachita trend and orogeny demonstrates that neither the deformation and metamorphism of their Paleozoic rocks can be explain by a hypervelocity impact nor are these metamorphic rocks any sort of impact ?melt rocks.? In addition, enough is known about the structure of the crust underlying the Gulf of Mexico to disprove the idea that a central uplift underlies the Gulf of Mexico. Instead it is clearly underlain by oceanic crust created by sea-floor spreading (Galloway 2008, Salvador et al. 1999, Sawyer et al. 1991). As discussed by various studies, i.e. Galloway (2008), Harry and London (2004), Mickus et al. (2009), and Sawyer et al. (1991), the ?down to basin and basinal grabens? and other structures of the Gulf of Mexico are result of rifting and salt tectonics instead of an asteroid impact. Finally, as shown by numerous studies, i.e. Dickinson and Lawton (2001) and Mickus et al. (2009), plate tectonics provide an adequate explanation for the formation of the Gulf of Mexico (Galloway 2008). Overall there is a striking lack of credible evidence that supports the impact origin of the Gulf of Mexico given the magnitude of the impact needed to create an impact crater as large as the Gulf of Mexico. References Cited Dickinson, W. R., and T. F. Lawton, 2001, Carboniferous to Cretaceous assembly and fragmentation of Mexico. Geological Society of America Bulletin. v. 113, no. 9, pp. 1142?1160. Galloway, W. E., 2008, Depositional evolution of the Gulf of Mexico sedimentary basin, in K.J. Hsu, ed., pp. 505-549, The Sedimentary Basins of the United States and Canada, Sedimentary Basins of the World. v. 5, Elsevier, The Netherlands. Harry, D. L., and J. London, 2004, Structure and evolution of the central Gulf of Mexico continental margin and coastal plain, southeast United States. Geological Society of America Bulletin. v. 116, no. 1-2, pp. 188-199. Mickus, K., R. J. Stern, G. R. Keller, and E. Y. Anthony, 2009, Potential field evidence for a volcanic rifted margin along the Texas Gulf Coast. Geology. v. 37, no. 5, pp. 387-390. Nicholas, R. L., and D. E. Waddell, 1989, The Ouachita system in the subsurface of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, in R. D. Hatcher, Jr., W. A. Thomas, and G. W. Viele, eds., pp. 661-672, The Appalachian-Ouachita Orogen in the United States: The Geology of North America, v. F-2. Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado. Salvador, A., 1991, Origin and development of the Gulf of Mexico basin. in A. Salvador, ed., p. 389-444, The Gulf of Mexico Basin: The Geology of North America, v. J., Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado. Sawyer, D. S., R. T. Buffler, and R. H. Pilger, Jr., 1991, The crust under the Gulf of Mexico basin, in A. Salvador, ed., pp. 53-72, The Gulf of Mexico Basin: The Geology of North America, v. J., Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado. Stanton, M. S., 2002, Is the Gulf's Origin Heaven Sent? AAPG Explorer (December 2002), American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Tulsa Oklahoma. Online at http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2002/12dec/gom_impact.cfm Stanton, M. S., nd, Is the Gulf's Origin Heaven Sent? (PDF and abridged version of Stanton (2002)) American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Tulsa Oklahoma. PDF file available from http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2002/12dec/gom_impact.pdf Viele, G. W., and Thomas, W. A., 1989, Tectonic synthesis of the Ouachita orogenic belt, in R. D. Hatcher, Jr., W. A. Thomas, and G. W. Viele, eds., pp. 695-728, The Appalachian-Ouachita Orogen in the United States: The Geology of North America, v. F-2. Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado.? I have to wonder what the editors were thinking when they approved Stanton?s comical example of Reimold (2007)?s impact crater bandwagon for publication in the AAPG Explorer. For more examples of the impact crater bandwagon, go see: Reimold, W. U., 2007, The Impact Crater Bandwagon (Some problems with the terrestrial impact cratering record) Meteoritics & Planetary Science. vol. 42, no. 9, pp. 1467-1472. Finally, Rich listed: ?LATE QUATERNARY STRATIGRAPHIC EVOLUTION OF THE NORTHERN GULF OF MEXICO MARGIN John B. Anderson and Richard H. Fillon, Editors? I am totally baffled why this book, of which I have a personal copy of at work, is listed Anyone, who would take the time look through it, would find that each of the chapters that is listed in Rich?s post completely demolishes as imaginary any idea of there being an ?obvious single event continental flood debris edge 1 km thick in Gulf of Mexico from S Texas to W Florida.? For example, one chapter of this book, Wellner et al. (2004), provides a detail summary of the stratigraphy and geology of the Louisiana and Texas continental shelf. Their analysis is based upon samples and log descriptions from 358 platform borings, thousands of kilometers of siesmic lines, and previous research by Sidner et al. (1978), Lewis (1984), Suter and Berryhill (1985), and Suter (1987). Wellner et al. (2004) clearly demonstrates beyond all shadow of a doubt the imaginary nature of the ?flood debris? underlying this part of the Gulf of Mexico. What Wellner et al. (2004) and the previous research that they summarize shows is that the continental shelf of this part of the Gulf of Mexico consists of a thin veneer of Holocene marine sediments underlain by Late Pleistocene shelf edge and shelf-phase delta and fluvial sediments filling valleys deeply entrenched into the deltaic sediments. References, Lewis, D., 1984, Pleistocene seismic stratigraphy of the Galveston South Addition, offshore Texas. Unpublished M.S. thesis, Rice University, Houston, Texas, 152 pp. Sidner, B. R., S. Gartner, S., and W. R. Bryant, 1978, Late Pleistocene geologic history of Texas outer continental shelf and upper slope, in A. H., Bouma, G. T. Moore, and J. M. Coleman, eds., pp. 243-266, Framework,Facies and Oil-Trapping Characteristics of the Upper Continental Margin. Studies in Geology no. 7, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Suter, J. R. 1987, Late quaternary facies and sea level history, southwest Louisiana continental shelf. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 225 pp. Suter, J.R., and H. L. Berryhill, Jr., 1985, Late Quaternary shelf-margin deltas, northwest Gulf of Mexico. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Bulletin vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 77-91. Wellner, J. S., S. Sarzalego, M. Lagoe, and J. B. Anderson, 2004, Late Quaternary stratigraphic evolution of the west Louisiana-east Texas continental shelf. in J. B. Anderson and R. H. Fillon, eds., pp. 217-235, Late Quaternary Stratigraphic Evolution of the Northern Gulf of Mexico Margin. SEPM Special Publication no. 79, Society for Sedimentary Geology, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Best wishes, Paul H. Received on Wed 22 Feb 2012 08:59:35 AM PST |
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