Unconformities Are Clues to Cataclysmic Extinction Events

The Grand Canyon is an open book with the history of our planet. But we hear two different interpretations of that book. In this post, I'm going to add a third. 

Evolutionists believe that each layer was laid down gradually over billions of years then carved out slowly over millions of years. Creationists say that every single layer was laid down, then immediately carved out in a matter of hours or days during the great biblical flood of Noah.

As usual, it is somewhere in between. 

The biblical flood was not the only cataclysm this planet has experienced. These recurring cataclysms are driven by continental shifts. They are regular events extending far back in time, well before the advent of man, and are a natural cycle of our living planet. (Read: Cataclysmic Continental Shifts: What Causes Them?)

Every so often the conditions are right for the tectonic plates to stop drifting (or cease to be static) and shift violently in a very short period of time. During which time the earth experiences volcanism, massive earthquakes and widespread flooding as part or all of a continent may sink while sea floors rise. The earth's crust buckles, adding height to mountain ranges and creating new valleys. The sediment from mega-floods wash over the land and rapidly deposit new layers of future sedimentary rock as the earth's crust bucks and jolts. Some events are large enough and long enough to witness multiple rounds of flooding from different directions, adding another layer on top of the first layer. Multiple thick layers could be laid down in a very short time, then solidify as sedimentary rock in the following centuries.

This is also why we see periodic extinction events (see table below) and an abundance of fossils. Every time this occurs the plants and animals get swept away and buried rapidly in mass graveyards - or fossil beds. These beds are a snapshot of the composition of life immediately preceding such a cataclysm. 

During the long periods in between cataclysms, fossils are almost never preserved and the evolutionary adaptations that occur are not preserved in stone. These stretches of missing fossils are what led to the theory of punctuated equilibrium.

The boundary lines between the strata of sedimentary rock have two variations. One has almost perfectly straight lines between each layer and others have wavy lines. Some of those straight lines are later distorted by folding or uplift but originally they were laid down in one cataclysmic event in a matter days, weeks, months or years - not millions of years. The wavy lines are called unconformities. They are long gaps in the timeline where the earth was relatively placid and the last layer of sediment was exposed for a long time to erosion or deformed by slow geological movement. The straight lines show no erosion, hence they were deposited one after the other in a relatively short period of time.

Source: Studyblue.com

These unconformities are the clues to the order and magnitude of these ecological disasters.

Source: Studyblue.com

Our planet has been very volatile throughout it's history so nothing is going to be simple to interpret. These cataclysms range from a global event, with continental shift and the accompanying massive flooding and multiple thick layers of sedimentary deposits, to localized events - including newly formed inland seas the eventually break through whatever barrier is holding it in place to wreak havoc downstream. Of the list of extinction events in the table below, the ones in bold type coincide with the biggest cataclysms, the ones that affected the entire planet, or nearly so.

There are many different kinds of unconformities. Here are explanations of the most common types.

Source: Studyblue.com

Angular unconformity
This is when the layers laid down in a previous cataclysm or two are lifted up and/or broken through a later episode of mountain building. This occurs from earthquakes either from the collision of two continental plates or other faulting in the earth's crust. This can also include many years of erosion before and/or after the uplift. A later episode of continental shift will deposit layers of sediment on top of these angled and deformed rocks.

Disconformity
This is where the layers laid down by a previous cataclysm are exposed to the elements for a long period of time and show evidence of erosion from wind and/or water. Then the next episode lays down another layer or more of sediment on top of that.

Source: Wikipedia

Nonconformity
This where the underlying layers are igneous or metamorphic. In this case, the previous cataclysm did not include flooding in the area, only volcanic activity and lava deposits. Or from a long ago event that has finally been pushed up to the surface by mountain building activity. Then a new catastrophic event that includes flooding deposits layers of sediment on top of it.

You can learn more about additional unconformities here. (Unconformities - Wikipedia)  But the bottom line is they are all markers for the periods in between local or global cataclysms.

Let's get back to the Grand Canyon's open book and the third interpretation. The various strata of the canyon were deposited over a long period. Sometimes through the depositing of coastal and river delta sediments, and other times by episodes of cataclysmic shift. This can included major flooding that transfers sediment from one area to another. This happened long ago at the beginnings of the planet. Each cataclysm laid down one or more layers. There were at least 5 cataclysms during the build up of the Grand Canyon's layers.

1. Vishnu Basement Rocks: These are the oldest and are igneous/metamorphic rocks. They also show signs of uplift, so before the major sedimentary layers were deposited, this area was subjected to earthquakes and more volcanism rather than flooding.
2. The Grand Canyon Supergroup: multiple layers of sediment laid down by slow and rapid sedimentary action interspersed with cataclysms. They were later uplifted by the same volcanic/earthquake activity in the area that caused the Basement rocks.

3. The Tonto Group: This is the first of the more recent flooding events and periods of submersion by the sea that laid down three separate layers. From here on out, the seismic activity seems to have minimized since the intervening unconformities seem to be more related to erosion from wind and water in between episodes rather than uplift.
4. Temple Butte-Redwall-Surprise Canyon Group: These appear to have been deposited in the same episode or back to back episodes.
5. Supai through Kaibab Group: Again, these could have been deposited in one episode or back to back episodes. If it were one, it most likely was the Late Devonian extinction event. Because, remember, it is the sedimentary layers above the unconformity that preserve the life that lived during the period of calm demonstrated by the conformity found under a group. And the fossils in this group represent the eras before the late Devonian event.

These multiple layers that would someday be the Grand Canyon was left relatively undisturbed from the beginning of the Triassic period all the way down to the Quaternary period. It even survived the cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs with little damage.

Then subsequent catastrophes proceeded to carve out the canyon during multiple events followed by long periods of slow erosion by wind, ice and water. The most recent event, the global flood of Noah, was the force behind carving out much of the final shape of the canyon. As the continents shifted, sank and rose again, massive amounts of water found the existing canyon its path of least resistance, as it made its way back to the sea. The water carved out the underlying shape, as the water cascaded down the canyon walls and rushed down the canyon.

However, more water was trapped by the new geography as an inland sea - upriver from the canyon. Later this water broke free of its natural dam and added to the general current shape. Read about a similar episode of post-Flood inland seas, but in Central Asia: The Jaredite Route to the Promised Land

The inland sea that covered a vast area to the east of the Grand Canyon eventually broke through it's barrier and carved the general shape of the canyon as we know it today - including the tell-tale signs of massive flooding: horseshoe shaped cliffs. The intervening years have heavily eroded the exposed rocks.

If you doubt that water can carve solid rock that quickly, you need to learn about the Missoula flooding that created the Scablands in the state of Washington. (Read: Randall Carlson and the Great Flood Enigma) There, the water carved out and carried away basalt, a much harder material than the sandstone of the Grand Canyon.

But I actually believe that the material was more like sand and less like stone at the time. It had not entirely petrified yet. We have to come to the terms that geologists don't understand 100% of the process of rock formation. Consider the "London Hammer." It is an 1800s hammer found embedded in "400 million year old" limestone. But don't get all carried away with notions of man living at the same time as primitive fishes and the first appearance of amphibians. The simpler solution is that a hammer was dropped in a riverbed that petrified in the last 100 years. And geologists mistakenly assigned the age of 400 million years to the rock. But rather than admit they dated the strata wrong, they label the hammer as an anomaly and ignore it. This is scientists' favorite past-time: marginalizing and burying evidence that would disprove their pet theories.

This canyon carving is similar to what happened, on a smaller scale, below Mount St. Helens. The eruption deposited tons of mud in the valley below, blocking the Toutle River and forming a lake. Later, that lake broke through and carved a deep canyon. If a drainage tunnel had not been dug to stabilize Spirit Lake, that lake would have made a similar breach, but on a larger scale. But even that is dwarfed by the inland sea that was unleashed on the northern Arizona area, carving the Grand Canyon many thousands of years ago.

Valles Marineris superimposed on USA

Further, let's look at Mars. The Valles Marineris is a canyon that is 4000 km (2500 mi) long and reaches depths of up to 7 km (4 mi). That is 4 times deeper than the Grand Canyon and long enough to stretch the entire length of the United States if it happened to be on our planet. Eons ago, Mars had an atmosphere and liquid water, yet it's short history of water and air isn't long enough to have produced that size of a canyon through slow erosion over time. It had to have been carved out in a massive Mars shaping event, or series of events.


Since the fossils deposited above an unconformity were alive during the time an unconformity is created, that means that the comet that left the worldwide K-T boundary may not have killed off the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs may have been extinct before the comet hit, since they K-T layer was laid down on top of the sediment that covered their bodies. However, if the comet happened to hit in the age of the dinosaurs when a continental shift was pending, it could have pushed the planet's tectonic plates, already primed for a shift, to accelerate. Then the cometary debris may have been held aloft in the atmosphere until after the cataclysmic shift had done its damage - killing and burying the dinosaurs with the debris - finally settling out of the sky on the newly formed ground to leave the K-T boundary. Either way, the K-T boundary would be just the icing on the cake of the dinosaur extinction layer cake below it.


Most unconformities are localized. What we need is a world wide survey of all know unconformities. We need a comprehensive catalog so we can look for matching unconformities over large areas. They would help us understand the extent of a given cataclysm. And if we find certain unconformities present everywhere, then those would be the fingerprints of those regularly occurring global catastrophes.

This is a list of extinction events from Wikipedia

Period	Extinction	Date	Possible causes
Quaternary	Holocene extinction	c. 10,000 BCE — Ongoing	Humans[26]
	Quaternary extinction event	640,000,[citation needed] 74,000,[citation needed]and 13,000 years ago	Unknown; may include climate changes and human overhunting[27][28]
Neogene	Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary extinction	2 Ma	Supernova?[29][30] Eltanin impact?[31][32]
	Middle Miocene disruption	14.5 Ma	- climate change due to change of ocean circulation patterns and perhaps related to the Milankovitch cycles?.[33]
Paleogene	Eocene–Oligocene extinction event	33.9 Ma	Popigai impactor?[34]
Cretaceous	Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event	66 Ma	Chicxulub impactor;[35] Deccan Traps?
	Cenomanian-Turonian boundary event	94 Ma	Caribbean large igneous province[36]
	Aptian extinction	117 Ma
Jurassic	End-Jurassic (Tithonian) extinction	145 Ma
	Toarcian turnover	183 Ma	Karoo-Ferrar Provinces[37]
Triassic	Triassic–Jurassic extinction event	201 Ma	Central Atlantic magmatic province;[38] impactor
	Carnian Pluvial Event	230 Ma	Wrangellia flood basalts[39]
Permian	Permian–Triassic extinction event	252 Ma	Siberian Traps;[40] Wilkes Land Crater[41];Anoxic event
	End-Capitanian extinction event	260 Ma	Emeishan Traps?[42]
	Olson's Extinction	270 Ma
Carboniferous	Carboniferous rainforest collapse	305 Ma
Devonian	Late Devonian extinction	375–360 Ma	Viluy Traps[43]
Silurian	Lau event	420 Ma	Changes in sea level and chemistry?[44]
	Mulde event	424 Ma	Global drop in sea level?[45]
	Ireviken event	428 Ma	Deep-ocean anoxia; Milankovitch cycles?[46]
Ordovician	Ordovician–Silurian extinction events	450–440 Ma	Global cooling and sea level drop; Gamma-ray burst?[47]
Cambrian	Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event	488 Ma
	Dresbachian extinction event	502 Ma
	End-Botomian extinction event	517 Ma
Precambrian	End-Ediacaran extinction	542 Ma
	Great Oxygenation Event	2400 Ma	Rising oxygen levels in the atmosphere due to the development of photosynthesis

Additional Studies:
Mount St. Helens—A model of the Grand Canyon
What's so Grand about the Grand Staircase? - Dr. Steve Austin

Grand Canyon How it was made HD 1080p