Re: marine or eolian dunes?

Arthur V. Chadwick (
Thu, 05 Feb 1998 07:15:43 -0800

At 08:48 PM 2/4/98 -0600, Glenn wrote:

>It seems to me that a global flood has worse problems in this regard. The
>sediment is always soppy wet never allowing the tracks to harden. Any
>jostling of the sediment via faulting (which must have been going on during
>the flood) will liquify the sand (take water soaked sand place a steel
>marble on it and pat the surface with your hand. The marble will sink. Any
>structure in hte sand will also liquify). In soppy wet sand with water
>flowing, the tracks are likely to become very indistinct very rapidly. How
>long do foot prints on the bottom of beach sand in 2 feet of water last? If
>tracks are made underwater, there ought to be thousands just offshore of
>Padre Island.

Again, the problem is that the trackways made in dry or damp sand look
nothing like the fossil trackways. Only tracks made underwater look
anything like the fossil tracks. That is still the bottom line.

>First, the 100 meters didn't come from me and if it is true, what is your
>source for the 100 meter limit?

100 meters is from lots of sources, but Weaver is the one I was quoting.
Mason and Berry (Elements of Mineralogy) simply state "ocean floor far from
sources of sediment" That is where it is found today, and the reasons why
it is not found in shallow water are genetic, it is a mineral formed under
reducing conditions, and shallow water is generally oxygenated.

>Storm wave base is generally much shallower than 328 feet (100 m). You
>must have experienced some whopper storms in your life.

Yeah, a few, some in the ocean.... OK. I should have said glauconite is
known to form today only FAR below storm wave base. Is that better?