Pangaea

Pangaea, Pangæa, or Pangea (pronounced /pænˈdʒiːə/[1], from Ancient Greek πᾶν pan "entire", and Γαῖα Gaia "Earth", Latinized as Gæa) was the supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration.

The name was first used by Alfred Wegener, the German originator of the continental drift theory, in the 1920 edition of his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane). He postulated that all the continents had at one time formed a single supercontinent, Pangaea, before later breaking up and drifting to their present locations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangea

Continental drift

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. However, it was not until the development of the theory of plate tectonics in the 1960s, that a sufficient geological explanation of that movement was found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Drift

It is known that sea level is generally low when the continents are together and high when they are apart. For example, sea level was low at the time of formation of Pangaea (Permian) and Pannotia (latest Neoproterozoic), and rose rapidly to maxima during Ordovician and Cretaceous times, when the continents were dispersed.

For oceanic lithosphere that is less than about 75 million years old, a simple cooling half-space model of conductive cooling works,[1] in which the depth of the ocean basins d in areas in which there is no nearby subduction is a simple function of the age of the oceanic lithosphere t. In general,


[center][/center]

where κ is the thermal conductivity of the mantle lithosphere, and is approximately 10-6 [m2/s], and hr is the depth of the ridge below the ocean surface. After plugging in rough numbers for the sea floor, the equation becomes:


[center][/center]

where d is in meters and t is in millions of years, so that just-formed crust at the mid-ocean ridges lies at about 2,500 m depth, whereas 50 million-year-old seafloor lies at a depth of about 5000 m.
As the mean level of the sea floor decreases, the volume of the ocean basins increases, and if other factors that can control sea level remain constant, sea level falls. The converse is also true: younger oceanic lithosphere leads to shallower oceans and higher sea levels if other factors remain constant.


Area A can change when continents rift (stretching the continents decreases A and raises sea level) or as a result of continental collision (compressing the continents leads to an increase A and lowers sea level). Increasing sea level will flood the continents, while decreasing sea level will expose continental shelves.

Because the continental shelf has a very low slope, a small increase in sea level will result in a large change in the percent of continents flooded.


If the world ocean on average is young, the seafloor will be relatively shallow, and sea level will be high: more of the continents are flooded. If the world ocean is on average old, seafloor will be relatively deep, and sea level will be low: more of the continents will be exposed.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle

noetic15:

1. The diversification of species is NO evidence for evolution or any anti-creation concept. The bible was clear that God made beasts after their own kind. . .my biblical understanding is that this implies that species were made of various degrees with divergent attributes and God's final conclusion was that "all He has made was Good"

This diversification is no evidence for evolution simply because unless and until we are able to have an acceptable scientific explanation for the pioneer concept of life, from evolutions perspective, we CANNOT accept the claims of evolutionists. my point is that it is simply ridiculous to claim that the pioneer organisms that kick started evolution and subsequently life were non-organic (non-living) substances. This claim is both scientifically and intellectually unacceptable.
So if we cannot define the very origin of life and species by evolutionary concepts. . . .I think it is absolutely RIDICULOUS to accept any evolutionary claim on the diversification of life.

2. Bio-diversity fits perfectly into noah's account of the flood. . if u objectively look at the biblical claims,  . . . .
your OP does not take into account the "spontaneous regeneration-ability" of plants,  . . which is also a scientific fact.
by biblical accounts we can assume that 7 kinds of every plant was preserved. . . . is it out of place to guess what noah did with them once he got out of the ark?

3. To understand the redistribution of these organisms/animals is to first comprehend the way by which they were gathered. how did they get into the ark? and why were they in the ark?
I will answer u this way. . . . . noah's events was a re-creation/preservation from damnation of life on earth by a super-intelligent creator. by this I can infer that since we have a potent evidence in the case of polystrate fossils which suggest that the flood took place. . .I can confidently assert the scientific plausibility of these preserved animals moving on (after the flood) to find adaptable areas. . .dont forget that by virture of scientific knowledge we can assert that adaptation is a necessity for organic survival. 

Submissively, I state that
A. the animals once off the ship of noah survived based on instincts and adaptable tendencies pertinent with life. They did NOT require a human being to transport them to their places of habitation like u thought. adaptation is a scientific fact.

B. the flood (water) on its own was a means of transportation. the present location of rootless polystrate fossils in Australia attests to this fact.

4. Since your post assumes or rather submits that there was indeed a flood. . . . .would it be out of place to state that the super-intelligent being who caused the flood and made room for preservation also redistributed His creations. . . . but of course u dont consider this notion scientific, but u conveniently dismiss the scientific plausibility of creationism.

5. If by (3) above we can agree on the redistribution of plants then we can also analyse your concerns of present day ecosystems.
An ecosystem is NOT a preceding component for the survival of an organism, because an organism is part of an ecosystem. This implies that an ecosystem is incomplete without an organism, since it is the environment along with the interdependent organism that forms an ecosystem.
In lieu of the above. . . let me state since the flood water and adaptation techniques were the primary modes of transportation, and since an ecosystem is only "form-able" with the existence of an interdependent organism. . it is safe to assert that ecosystems are a product of necessity, as such present ecosystems as mentioned by u are products of the redistribution of orgnisms and are as such NOT a big deal.

mazaje:

@ tpia did you bother to read the article you posted from wikipedia before posting it? What has Pangaea got to do with the biodiversity and the Noah's flood? Did you not see where it states in the article you pasted that "the supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration."

How do you reconcile Pangaea with the Noah's flood story that is claimed to have happened just 4500 years ago? Or are you trying to say that all the Continents were together just 4500 years ago? Do you have any evidence for this?

We have a great amount of biodiversity on our planet. Functional ecosystems can be found everywhere we look, from the arctic tundra to underground caves to the great ocean depths where sun light does not reach and where there is no oxygen at all. Most of these organisms we see possess very specific adaptations and can only thrive within a narrow range of conditions. According to the flood story all terrestrial life were contained within the ark. This implies that the repopulation of every continent and island on the planet started from a single location i.e Turkey. 

When you think of habitats with very high biodiversity on the planet places like the Amazon rain forest, or Australia come to mind not Turkey.

So here are my questions for you. I want you to explain to me using what ever scientific model you can lay your hands on as to

how exactly did all of these organisms get distributed to their respective habitats after the flood?

Was there human intervention, or was everything just left to go where it pleased on its own? If humans were involved and were responsible for sorting this out, then

why do we see rich biodiversity on islands and in caves that are void of human life?

Who was the person that was giving the task of taking the Polar bears to the arctic region or the mountain lions to north America?. . . . .

How exactly did the very delicate animals and insects of the Amazon get shuttled halfway around the world since everything started from the Mountains of Ararat in Turkey?

[size=14pt]Remember scientific explanations only. . . . . . . [/size]


If humans were not responsible, then why do we see certain groups of animals restricted to very specific regions of the world? Why are there so many marsupials, kangaroo, and koala in Australia but none in Europe or Asia?. . . . . . Why is the Galapagos tortoise found only on the Galapagos Islands? Why aren’t there penguins at the North Pole? Or polar bears in Antarctica? and also keep in mind that even if  we are to believe that everything was somehow “delivered” to where it belongs, there will not be a functional habitat waiting when it gets there. . . . . . .

How do you explain the distribution of species throughout the world since you believe that everything(all life on the planet) began again after the flood about 4500 years ago some where in Turkey?. . .

banom:

Tipia well done ooo you are doing great.

tpia.:

I dont hold any strong opinions about the various date theories yet since i havent really examined them- if you find anywhere I insisted Noah's flood happened 4500 years ago then point it out.

This is the section of your post I was responding to for the main part:

I know you were probably responding to a specific statement by noetic but just want to explain a few things.

During the Eocene, the continents continued to drift toward their present positions.

At the beginning of the period, Australia and Antarctica remained connected, and warm equatorial currents mixed with colder Antarctic waters, distributing the heat around the planet and keeping global temperatures high. But when Australia split from the southern continent around 45 mya, the warm equatorial currents were deflected away from Antarctica, and an isolated cold water channel developed between the two continents. The Antarctic region cooled down, and the ocean surrounding Antarctica began to freeze, sending cold water and icefloes north, reinforcing the cooling.

the beginning of the Eocene, the high temperatures and warm oceans created a moist, balmy environment, with forests spreading throughout the Earth from pole to pole. Apart from the driest deserts, Earth must have been entirely covered in forests.

Polar forests were quite extensive. Fossils and even preserved remains of trees such as swamp cypress and dawn redwood from the Eocene have been found on Ellesmere Island in the Arctic. The preserved remains are not fossils, but actual pieces preserved in oxygen-poor water in the swampy forests of the time and then buried before they had the chance to decompose. Even at that time, Ellesmere Island was only a few degrees in latitude further south than it is today. Fossils of subtropical and even tropical trees and plants from the Eocene have also been found in Greenland and Alaska. Tropical rainforests grew as far north as the Pacific Northwest and Europe.

Palm trees were growing as far north as Alaska and northern Europe during the early Eocene, although they became less abundant as the climate cooled. Dawn redwoods were far more extensive as well



.

Eocene-Oligocene extinction event


The transition between the end of the Eocene and the beginning of the Oligocene, called the Grande Coupure in Europe, occurring 33.9 ± 0.1 Ma, is marked by large-scale extinction and floral and faunal turnover (although minor in comparison to the largest mass extinctions).

Most of the affected organisms were marine or aquatic in nature. They included the last of the ancient cetaceans, the Archaeoceti.

This was a time of major climatic change, especially cooling, not obviously linked with any single major impact or any major volcanic event. One cause of the extinction event is speculated to be volcanic activity. Another speculation is that the extinctions are related to several meteorite impacts that occurred about this time. One such event happened near present-day Chesapeake Bay, and another in Central Siberia, scattering debris perhaps as far as Europe. The leading scientific theory on climate cooling at this time is decrease in atmospheric CO2, which slowy declined in the mid to late Eocene and possibly reached some threshold approximately 34 million years ago.

This boundary is closely linked with the Oligocene Oi-1 event, an oxygen isotope excursion that marks the beginning of ice sheet coverage on Antarctica

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene-Oligocene_extinction_event

.

mazaje:

I understand very well the point you were trying to make. What I was trying to show is that Pangea according to the article you sited happened about 250 million years ago. . . That could not be the means of transportation used after the flood because the flood is claimed to have happened about 4500 years according to the bible. . . .

Melting glaciers in Western Canada are revealing tree stumps up to 7,000 years old where the region's rivers of ice have retreated to a historic minimum, a geologist said today.

Radiocarbon dating of the wood from the stumps revealed the wood was far from fresh—some of it dated back to within a few thousand years of the end of the last ice age.

"Thus they really indicate when the glaciers overrode them, and their kill date gives the age of the glacier advance," Koch said. The age of the newly revealed ancient trees also indicates how long the glaciers have covered this region.

The radiocarbon dates seem to be the same around the world, according to Koch. There have been many advances and retreats of these glaciers over the past 7,000 years, but no retreats that have pushed them back so far upstream as to expose these trees.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/071030-tree-stumps.html

The OU geologist has proposed that some 300 million years ago, during the late Paleozoic, glacial ice extended into what is now western Colorado. The problem is, western Colorado at that time sat directly athwart the equator, in a region that conventional wisdom believes to have enjoyed a warm tropical climate.



http://www.oufoundation.org/sm/winter07/story.asp?ID=229

Geoscientists have long presumed that, like today, the tropics remained warm throughout Earth's last major glaciation 300 million years ago.

New evidence, however, indicates that cold temperatures in fact episodically gripped these equatorial latitudes at that time.

Geologist Gerilyn Soreghan of Oklahoma University found evidence for this conclusion in the preservation of an ancient glacial landscape in the Rocky Mountains of western Colorado. Three hundred million years ago, the region was part of the tropics. The continents then were assembled into the supercontinent Pangaea

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/headline_universe/olpa/TropicsGlaciers_31July08.html&edu=high

mazaje:

I understand your position very well with regards to creationism  and the biblical creation account but I just wanted us to limit the discussion to the Noah's flood and how terrestrial life began from a single point where the ark settled. You final statement about God declaring that "all he made was good" contains a lot of problems but I am not interested about that debate here on this thread. . . . .

Here I will have to disagree with you, I know you need to believe that evolution is wrong or invalid,(I am not saying it is true) But the definition of evolution has nothing to do with the pioneer concept of life, once life is here on the earth evolution attempts to provide explanation for the staggering biodiversity we see around us. The theory has never tried or attempted to talk about the pioneer concept of life that is why there are so many theistic evolutionist who believe that their various gods created life and used the evolutionary process to diversify life. I am not saying that evolution is true all I am saying is that it attempts to provide explanations for the biodiversity we see around us.

I am sorry to say but you are equivocating here. How is it out of place to guess what Noah did with the plants if the story is actually true? I will just assume for just for this thread that God created the plants again, just the way he created them in the beginning as recorded in genesis 1. The bible only talks about God telling Noah to gather together all terrestrial life and organisms and birds that fly in the air in pairs so that he will preserve them and later use them to repopulate the planet after the flood(Which is claimed to have destroyed all life on earth).

I am sorry to say but you are still equivocating. . . . We have already talked about plolystrate fossils and my understanding is that geologist have provided more than enough evidence for how some of them were formed and their explanations does not involve a global flood, it involves local flood and volcanoes etc.

How exactly did the Mountain lion move from Turkey and finally settled in a habitable environment like North America? How did the Kangaroo, and Koala get to Australia. Besides, just how would all those animals know which direction to walk in to find a habitat in which they could thrive?
You have to provide evidence to show that this is possible.How will a polar bear survive in Turkey What about a kangaroo? How will such animals survive from turkey and move almost half the world across to their present location? How do penguins get to the south pole from Turkey? I did not really say that they relied on humans to transport them I was only stating the possibilities of how they could have gotten to their various locations.

We will always disagree on this, the rootless polystrate fossils very different geological explanations and geologist do not attribute it to any global flood at all. . . . .The flood water could NOT be a means of transportation because according to the story Noah and the animals did not get out of the ark until the water had completely receded and the ground was dry.

Is this not the same thing you accuse evolutionist of doing? Supposition and assumption, your statement above is nothing but special pleading IMO. You claim that science supports your beliefs but run and throw the god did it card when you have no credible explanation.

noetic15:

you should be familiar with my position on evolution by now. I am more interested in how the original life formed before it began diversifying. Evolution claims that this is from non-organic substances which is false. . . .but lets put this aside.

You do not deny the presence of these plants in the ship. . . . all I did was to ask what u though Noah did with them once he was out of the ark?
Like u rightly pointed out, .God's plan was to repopulate the earth. . but I disagree that God re-created plants. That we may not have the answers does not rule out the possibility of the obvious.

I am afraid that the above assertions from your "geologists" are FALSE. one does not require the knowledge of rocket science to decipher how elements as huge as rootless polystrate fossils could find themselves at the other end of the world. . .in an ageless form. u dont have to dismiss the facts to suit your notions. the fact is that there are rootless polystrate fossils in australia who could only have been there through a global flood.

u miss the whole point mazaje.

1. u make an assumption that the earth was as developed as this 45oo years ago. that explains why u would consider it impossible for a kangaroo to find its way to australia without having a private jet. Nope. . .the earth without the somplexities and ancient civilizations can best be described as an open field.
The natural instincts of adaptation and the urge to survive coupled with no restriction in mobility (since there was no life on the planet) is enough basis to explain the redistribution of these animals.

what do u think the state of the earth was after the flood and after the land had dried. the habitual nature of the earth would be the same all over the earth. . that all animals survived is a miracle science calls ADAPTATION

U can dispute the fact that the flood water could not have transported the inhabitants of the ark (for which u are right) but u cannot dispute the fact that it could have transported "other" substances like the polystrate fossils.
u would notice that I did not lay emphasis on it, I simply drew your attention to it.

mazaje:

What exactly are you "explaining" tpiah? . You are posting articles that talk about 300 millions of years when there was no life on earth I believe as possible explanation of how animals got around after the Noah's flood?

tpia.:

I'm saying the world during Noah's time wasnt the same as we know it today.

The continents were most likely not the same as now. The tropics, north and south poles were interchangeable.

If the earth only had one supercontinent at different periods, then that provides a land bridge for animals and humans to migrate over time. Continents drift constantly- the movement is just so slow as to be unnoticeable.

Besides, in the food chain, animals depend on different types of plant life. So its not too far fetched to wonder if plants getting localised to one region, would eventually cause animals to also move there. And vice versa.

For your polar bear analogy- algae/plankton determine fish concentrations and maybe type. Polar bears will follow the fish to somewhere where they can conveniently catch them. Habitat, etc.

And dont ignore man's contribution either- he takes different animals along wherever he goes.

tpia.:

majaze if you take time to go through my previous cut and pasted articles, you'll find the answers to most of your questions there.

I pasted them for a reason. They are scientific articles detailing the earth's history.

Ignore this time frame issue since it will only derail this particular thread.

I'm assuming this is a genuine thread and not just a Christianity bashfest as usual.

Kay 17:

@tpia, as regards to migration of these animals ( kangaroo, mountain lions, dodo bird, jaguars and the insects) how were they able to cross the enormous ocean separating their continent from Turkey, you could have said God in his miraculous ways, transported them with his divine hand but you run to science to get your yourself out of your quagmire. it simply backs up evolution. you people's blunders are piling up: first earth was created in 6 days now global flood and concentration of animals in one ark.

mazaje:

I understand what you were trying to explain but I find it unacceptable because those events happened when there were no humans present on earth as written in the various articles. . .You were trying to be scientific by providing scientific answers but why accept the scientific process only when it fits your own theory and position with regards to the mechanism and way of transport and discard the dates because it does not fit your own theory? Why accept the theory of Pangaea or continental drif as the mechanism responsible for the movement of animals from present day Turkey to their various locations all over the world but refuse to accept the date that was theorized for the occurance of the said events? I do not accept expalanations because continental drifts and Pangaea were theorized to have happened about 250 million years ago while the Noah's flood is said to have happened just 4500 years ago. . . .


And according to those articles there were no humans on earth when some of the events occured. . .

The tittle of the thread is Biodiversity And Species Distribution, How Does It Fit With The Flood Neotic?

tpia.:


human footprints have been found in the middle of dinosaur ones (apparently meaning they're the same age), so when exactly humans first appeared is still being speculated.

The time kinks arent a problem- I dont recall posting anything about 5000 or 4500 years. The 250 million is part of the scientific school of thought and included in the articles I posted- its not supposed to be the main focus.

So far, you've insisted the earth of Noah's time was exactly the same as it is today, therefore you and kay 17 are pulling up all kinds of weird analogies like how did mountain lions get to north america. Can I ask you how cows got to Africa?

secondly, if you believe the story of Noah is a myth, then you could have worded your question differently. I'm just saying.

However, continental drift is a fact.

Looking at any map of the world, you'll see the continents do fit into each other like puzzle pieces.