Introduction to Sediment Transport and the Coconino Sandstone
By Tim Helble
Summary: In 2011, I published an article in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (PSCF) which evaluated the feasibility of a graphical procedure developed by flood geologist Steve Austin. Austin’s procedure attempted to explain how sandstones such as Coconino Sandstone were formed by underwater sand waves in a matter of days. After evaluating the sources used in the graphical procedure, it was found that they actually argue strongly against the flood geology case. The sediment transport rates necessary to form the Coconino in a matter of days turn out to be equivalent to a dozens of feet thick, state-size slab of sand sliding across the earth’s surface rather than the washing of sand grains over the tops of underwater sand waves. Flood geologists’ lack of response to the 2011 PSCF article is also discussed along with some possible reasons they have avoided discussion the findings in that article.
In March of 2011, my article “Sediment Transport and the Coconino Sandstone – A Reality Check on Flood Geology” was published in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (PSCF) The inspiration for the PSCF article was an article written by Greg Neyman for his website Answers in Creation. (Interesting side story – Answers in Genesis lawyers strong-armed Neyman to change the name of his Answers in Creation website because it was too close to the Answers in Genesis name. Opting to avoid an expensive legal battle, Neyman change his website’s name to Old Earth Ministries.) In his article, Neyman stated:
Two young earth creation science proponents, Andrew Snelling and Steve Austin, have proposed that proof of Noah’s Flood can be seen in the strata in the Grand Canyon known as the Coconino Sandstone (click here for their article). Let's look at the model they propose for how this sand was deposited. Although this is a sandstone formed from a desert, for their sake, let’s assume they are correct that the sand was deposited from an aquatic event, and not from a dry, desert environment.
They propose that the volume of sand deposited in this formation, which is roughly 315 feet thick and covers an area of 200,000 square miles (or 447 miles long and 447 miles wide) is about 10,000 cubic miles by their estimates (using these same numbers they give yields a volume of 11,931 cubic miles). They claim that the sand was brought in from the north, over the period of several days, by ocean currents, which, in their own words, "The maximum current velocity would have been almost 5.5 feet per second (165 cm or 1.65 metres per second) or 3.75 miles per hour. Beyond that velocity experimental and observational evidence has shown that flat sand beds only would be formed." And, in the next paragraph, "Now to have transported in such deep water the volume of sand that now makes up the Coconino Sandstone these current velocities would have to have been sustained in the one direction perhaps for days." Please note, they propose the formation of this 315 foot thick sandstone in only a few days.
I actually had to lift my jaw off the floor when I read this. Are they actually proposing that they can move 11,931 cubic miles of sand an average distance of 223.5 miles (assuming the sand started at the northern boundary of the current formation, and if the bed is 447 miles wide, the average would be half that) with a water current of only 5.5 feet per second? What they are proposing is similar to this... take the top 315 feet of the entire state of New Mexico, run water over it, and in a week, it will be in Texas!
Snelling and Austin obtained their numbers from a graphical procedure developed by Austin for his book Grand Canyon Monument to Catastrophe. This graphical procedure is described in detail in the PSCF article, but basically it used two side by side graphs to illustrate a relationship between underwater sand-wave height, water depth, and water velocity. Neyman’s article caused me to form two questions – (1) if Austin’s graphical procedure is right, how long would it take migrating underwater sand waves to deposit the Coconino, and (2) what would the sediment transport rate need to be to deposit the Coconino during a year-long global Flood? So I performed a few calculations and decided to write up my results in a PSCF article.
The problem explained in the PSCF article is basically illustrated using the diagram below. The empty box to the left represents where the Coconino Sandstone will be deposited during the early part of the global flood. The layers at the bottom were deposited just before the Coconino. How the piles of pure Coconino sands end up being right beside the box during a raging global flood is beyond my ability to explain, but this is the kind of absurdity flood geology forces its adherents to buy into. The filled box to the right illustrates the Coconino Sandstone immediately after it has been deposited. According to flood geology, this all happened in “a matter of days.”
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The numbers were surprising: at the greatest sediment transport rate that could exist in Austin’s graphical procedure, it would take over 500 years to transport enough sand to deposit the Coconino Sandstone by migrating underwater sand waves. To deposit the Coconino Sandstone in twelve days (a reasonable portion of the Flood year given the average thickness of the Coconino and the way Austin divided up the Grand Canyon and Grand Staircase into early- and late-Flood strata), a slab of sand 25 meters (82 feet) high, 1,600 km (1000 miles) wide, and 1,000 km (600 miles) long would have to be continuously sliding southward at one meter per second (2.2 miles per hour) into the area currently occupied by the Coconino Sandstone. One meter per second is the speed Austin said the water current would need to be to wash sand particles over the top of underwater sand dunes and form the Coconino as sand waves! But in reality, a huge slab of sand 82 feet high, 1000 miles wide, and 600 miles long would need to slide across the land at that speed to supply enough sand to form the Coconino in 12 days.
So how did flood geologists respond to my 2011 PSCF article? The best way to describe it would be deafening silence. The only place I have seen it even acknowledged is in John Whitmore and Paul Garner’s 2018 paper published in the Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism entitled “The Coconino Sandstone (Permian, Arizona, USA): Implications for the origin of ancient cross-bedded sandstones.” It was mentioned in passing in the fourth paragraph of the article:
The Coconino is thought to have been deposited during Noah’s Flood by most Flood geologists because it is bounded by widespread Paleozoic marine deposits, which occur both below, and above the Coconino; and of course you cannot have major windblown dune sands in the middle of worldwide Flood deposits. A wide variety of other skeptics, some theistic, have come to similar conclusions about the sandstone. Examples include Helble (2011), Hill et al. (2016), Ranney (2001), Weber (1980) and Young and Stearley (2008).
In other words, the only mention of the PSCF article was to include my name in a list of skeptics! Whitmore and his associates went through extensive efforts to refute critics on other aspects of the Coconino such as crossbed angles, mica, grain sorting, grain rounding, and grain size, but apparently, they have no response to the sediment transport problem.
Steve Austin did contact me about the PSCF article via email on August 28, 2012, stating
I read your paper “Sediment Transport and the Coconino Sandstone..." published in PSCF. Your discussion brings to mind what I would call an extraordinary story of a graduate sedimentology field trip at Penn State in 1976. I think you would like to hear the "Tuscarora Sandstone field trip story."
We then had a phone conversation on September 3rd, 2012 where Austin did most of the talking. After describing his academic credentials (which I already knew), he related his "Tuscarora Sandstone field trip story." It had to do with a field trip in the mountains of Pennsylvania led by E.G. Williams, Austin’s sedimentology instructor at Penn State. He said Williams took the class to an outcrop of the Silurian Tuscarora Sandstone. He related how Williams asked the class "how long do you think it took the forty cross bed sets to form?" Knowing the duration of the Silurian, Austin stated that the consensus was that it took 0.5 million years to form each crossbed set. (Why Austin thought this sandstone took the entire Silurian to form is beyond me – there are several Silurian formations above the Tuscarora.) Austin then stated that Williams said "I believe it formed in 40 days and 40 nights. Prove me wrong." Austin said none of the people in the class could prove Williams wrong, and that sticks in his mind to this day. Austin also said Williams winked to him when asking the question to the class, and believes that Williams did so because he was a closet young earth creationist and knew Austin was too.
Austin then went into a discussion of the Coconino and said he believes the Coconino was also deposited in 40 days and 40 nights. He then related a new mechanism that he had found for transport of the Coconino sands – submarine liquified sediment gravity currents traveling at 5-8 meters/second (11 to 18 mph). When these sediment currents slowed down abruptly to 1-2 meters/second (2.2 to 4.5 mph), they dumped their sediment in cross beds. It seemed rather convenient that these flows dumped their loads in crossbeds that just happen to look like those in the Coconino. He made it clear that he didn't agree with the 12-day duration that I estimated for deposition of the Coconino. Of course, allocating 40 days just for the Coconino leaves even less time for deposition of the other early flood layers in the Grand Canyon, but apparently that didn’t even faze Austin. He seemed rather evasive on whether he still agreed with the early Flood/late Flood division of Grand Staircase layers that he gave in Grand Canyon Monument to Catastrophe. Austin closed by stating that he might write a response to my PSCF article, but to this day nothing has ever been published.
What are the lessons learned from publication of my PSCF article over 13 years ago? First, it is obvious that young earth leaders, and flood geologists in particular, don’t like to deal with clear evidence that shows the implausibility of the young earth/global flood scenario. It makes more sense to just ignore it rather than call attention to it. Second, in my online interactions with young earth creationists on the subjects covered in that article, I have found that very few have the quantitative skills need to grasp the implications of what flood geology requires in terms of reworking most of the planetary geologic record in one year. We could attribute this to the limited math skills of all Americans, but I think there is something else going on with young earth believers. I have interacted with degreed, young earth creationist engineers on the subject, and there seems to be some kind of wall preventing them from wrestling with the numbers. Which leads to my third observation. Dealing with the quantitative implications of flood geology forces a young earth creationist onto neutral ground – the world of mathematics. One can’t say that math produces biased results – 2 + 2 always equals four, regardless of your worldview. However, the young earth leaders advise Christians to avoid neutral ground at all costs. I have actually seen young earth creationist Jason Lisle, who has a PhD in astrophysics, state this at a creation conference in a Virginia megachurch. Neutral ground is a terrifying to a young earth creationist, because it puts oneself in a place where logic and reason might force a change in one’s views. I believe the fear of neutral ground as it relates to young earth creationism would be a profitable topic for future study by social psychologists.
The PSCF article is accessible at this link.
Tim Helble is a retired hydrologist who worked for a half year at the Grand Canyon and spent most of his career in the National Weather Service. He is now involved in the science communication effort, particularly in relation to hydrology and geology. He was an author and editor for The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon? He obtained a masters in Science from the University of Arizona in Watershed Management with a specialty in watershed hydrology.