After an 18 month break in this strata formation experiment due to chief machine builder illness, we have been able to resume our experiments to make a machine (now at Mark 5 version) to duplicate French Sedimentologist Guy Berthault’s strata experiment, but on a scale which will enable us to demonstrate to students in just one short visit to Jurassic Ark, that strata actually form a) rapidly b) horizontally and c) not from bottom to top. The reboot on Thursday 26th April with new modifications was very successful, and the experiment took 2 hours - well within one JA visit time ... and also suggested new modifications to improve performance. (Mark 6 now on drawing board).
Guy’s experiment was originally set up to demonstrate horizontal deltaic bed formation based on the original (1800’s) observations in Venice by Johannes Walther, 1893-1894, Einleitung in die Geologie als historische Wissens- chaft, Jena, Verlag von Gustav Fisher, Sud. 1 055 pages. For why you never heard about this see also ‘Johannes Walther's law of the correlation of facies’ by Gerard V Middleton - Geological Society of America Bulletin, 1973 - pubs.geoscienceworld.org.
Our chief new observation was that 1) after starting as sideways growing steeply inclined foreset beds that paralleled the 45 degree starter slope we had deliberately built into the machine; then 2) as the sediment load approached the top of the 45 degree slope, the strata began to grow horizontally across the tank, and not from bottom to top. Our sediment deliberately included three easily detectable ‘markers’ - light sand, coarse sand and very dense black mineral sand. As Berthault also noted, the heavier sediment always ended up as a top layer in any flood pulse flow because it was deposited last across the horizon so it was always the top layer in any pulse sequence, and was never at the bottom. This is the opposite of all that you are taught in geology class regarding density effects.
OF GREATER SIGNIFICANCE is the implication that fossils buried in the top layer at the starting end, will actually be older than fossils in the bottom layer at the other end. An upset to geological history for sure ... especially if we consider flood waters as behaving as if in a delta, where horizontally flowing water from one direction carries sediments then hits a different depth of water and loses speed thereby depositing sediment sideways. Creation Research.
So far this experiment has cost us about 10K and we will be building Mark 6 machine from scratch next. Thanks to helpers Ben and Estienne (pictured with the apparatus). Further references link below, and yes, donations are welcome.
