the flood.

Originally posted by 7ate9
have you been for a drive up around the gorge, 'instead of going through it' where you go through ashurst. there's a spot as you're heading to woodville right at the top on the right hand side of the road, full of shells. (lol) as you know i ain't an expert, but the shells don't look like anything that special... just like what you find at the beach. the ocean is 40+ km away.

I haven't seen that bed. Perhaps you'd be interested in showing me sometime?

Originally posted by 7ate9
of course they should link together. in science the land changes as the effects of evolution (on those shells) are taking their roles. obviously with science, the whole earth isn't gonna change at the same time, so shells from different evolutionary ages would be working their way up the mountains.

together they logically dictate time!

Yes, the geology is important, since it represents the background on which evolution occurred. And there will, of course, be records of what happened through evolutionary time within the geology, in the form of fossils.

In the case of the Ruahine range (the hills near Palmerston North, NZ) the fossils were dated at 2 million years old, but nothing younger has been localed. This suggests (along probably with evidence about techtonic plate movement) that the Ruahines started their uplift around 2 million years ago. This normally happens when 2 plates collide, one is forced down (subducted), and the other uplifted (imaginatively called uplifting). The oceanic plate normally gets subducted because continental plates literally "float" higher on the mantle, since they are less dense. Anyhoo, the crinkle zone where mountains are formed is normally located a bit back from the edge of the plate, in the same way that a sheet of paper folds a bit back, not right at the edge, when you push against it. The himalayian mountains are a great example of mountain building, indeed with fossils being found high up in the ranges, suggesting that they were part of the continental shelf, the sea bed that extends out from the shore, which is part of the continental plate.

2 million years is not long in evolutionary time, so it's unsurprising that there are few changes between fossil shells then and real shells now. If it'd been 2 billion years ago, that'd be a big challenge for evolutionary theory!!

Originally posted by 7ate9
great post!

i find it really interesting when i look at the layout of the land in the particular area from the gorge to the sea. the land is so flat as though it was once the ocean. am i correct that the ocean moved away as the land went up?

obviously we are looking at this process causing the volcanoes we can see inland on a clear day. lake taupo once ...[text shortened]... large open ocean with mountains formed inland.

2 million years. yep, interesting... thanks!

Hey 7,

The Palmy flats are not ocean floor. They are sediments from the Manawatu river (and others). That's why they are so flat. The Ruahines are being eroded all the time. Look at how brown the Manawatu is all the time, that's just sediment. Heaps of it.

I haven't been to rarotonga, but I'm guessing it's probably the tip of an underwater volcano. The Pacific has a mean depth of about 4KM, and certainly many of the islands represent volcanic "chimneys".

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Hey 7,

The Palmy flats are not ocean floor. They are sediments from the Manawatu river (and others). That's why they are so flat. The Ruahines are being eroded all the time. Look at how brown the Manawatu is all the time, that's just sediment. Heaps of it.

I haven't been to rarotonga, but I'm guessing it's probably the tip of an underwater vo ...[text shortened]... mean depth of about 4KM, and certainly many of the islands represent volcanic "chimneys".

does this help?
"Abstract The island of Rarotonga in the southern Pacific is the emergent summit of a Pliocene-Pleistocene volcanic complex built by effusive and pyroclastic eruptions of mainly mafic magma. Petrographically the basaltic rock types are ankaramite and basalt, which range in chemical composition from alkali basalt to nephelinite. Phenocryst assemblages suggest two igneous series, one with a relatively simple equilibrium assemblage of olivine, titanian augite and magnetite, and one with olivine, diopside-augite and titanian augite in which the phenocrysts show disequilibrium textures. These variations reflect fractionation, assimilation, and recharge processes in the upper part of the magmatic system that produced the volcano. The final stages of volcanism at Rarotonga were pyroclastic eruptions of phonolites and effusive eruptions of foidal phonolites, both representing late stage fractionation products. Detailed mapping, together with geochemical work, has prompted a revision of the stratigraphy of the island based on the concept of a single cycle of magmatic activity rather than the Hawaiian style multi-phase evolution favoured by earlier workers"

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Where has this stupendous amount of water gone?

It makes up 60% of the extra 5.9 billion people that weren't on the Earth back in the day.

Originally posted by beerbrewer
It makes up 60% of the extra 5.9 billion people that weren't on the Earth back in the day.

LMFAO! Are you really that much of an idiot?

Originally posted by no1marauder
LMFAO! Are you really that much of an idiot?

OK numbnut, let's do the math. If the average person weighs 150 pounds (a conservative estimate that balances out the fat Americans and the skinny Ethiopians), That means that roughly 90 pounds per person is water. For the sake of easy math, let's say that that a gallon of water weighs 9 pounds. That is 10 gallons of water per person (59 billion gallons). that figures into roughly 8 billion cubic feet of water. Now what you have to take into consideration is that up until about 600 years ago, it was believed that the world was flat and according to many of the cartographers of the day, didn't go much further than the eye could see. Now back that up 4000 years. The "world" was a lot smaller, relatively speaking. When they say the whole world flooded, it was the world as they knew it not as we know it today. So theoretically, it quite possible that all of these extra bodies are storing the water from the flood. Would you like me to do it again in metric? Who is the idiot now, clown?

Originally posted by beerbrewer
OK numbnut, let's do the math. If the average person weighs 150 pounds (a conservative estimate that balances out the fat Americans and the skinny Ethiopians), That means that roughly 90 pounds per person is water. For the sake of easy math, let's say that that a gallon of water weighs 9 pounds. That is 10 gallons of water per person (59 billion gallons). er from the flood. Would you like me to do it again in metric? Who is the idiot now, clown?

You are, of course. Your argument is moronic to the nth degree.

Duxbury, Alyn. An Introduction to the World's Oceans - Sixth Edition. McGraw-Hill, 2000: 39. "The volume of water in the oceans is enormous: 1.37 billion cubic kilometers (1.37 × 109 km3, or 0.328 × 109 mi.3)" 1.37 × 109 km3

Your 59 billion gallons isn't even a puddle.

Originally posted by beerbrewer
OK numbnut, let's do the math. If the average person weighs 150 pounds (a conservative estimate that balances out the fat Americans and the skinny Ethiopians), That means that roughly 90 pounds per person is water. For the sake of easy math, let's say that that a gallon of water weighs 9 pounds. That is 10 gallons of water per person (59 billion gallons).

Use SI units if you want to be taken seriously in a scientific discussion. I'm working in cubic metres of water because it is easier than working with even larger values when working with litres.

Now if I calculate using the same approximations (except I'll use an actual value of 1000kg of water = 1 cubic metre of water) I get an answer of 3.584*10^8 cubic metres of water. How much is this in comparison to the missing water? Well if we scale down and call the missing water an olympic swimming pool (1 million litres) you've looked at half a millilitre of that swimming pool. So where is the rest?

Originally posted by 7ate9
... so is it possible to calculate where the shells i found were located when they were living? the shells are now on the other side of the gorge from the ocean.

4km. raratonga, yep diving is really good out past the reef, as it drops into real deep water. i haven't been out past the reef, but i think it may have like underwater pinacles and other weird fea ...[text shortened]... e cook islands have an area of around 3 trillion square miles with only 13 or so small islands.

Hmmm, not sure. The fact that it's on the leeward side of the hills makes sense, the sea floor would have been pusehed up and backwards. Perhaps if there are any species there that are specific in their habit, for example inter-tidal species.

Originally posted by hakaman
at the end of the day the flood was meant 2 rid the earth of sin,so wat happened?

I think the flood was to kill the people, not to rid the earth of sin.

Originally posted by gambit3
I think the flood was to kill the people, not to rid the earth of sin.

ah yes, that benelovent god.....