The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Pole, had seemingly migrated northward dramatically since the mid-Paleozoic—by many tens of degrees. At the time this created quite a stir in the earth science community. In the decade of the 1960’s, these paleomagnetic determinations helped convince many in the community that plates and plate mobility are indeed genuine realities. In subsequent decades more detailed and comprehensive paleomagnetic studies continued to reveal that same large amount of northward motion of Europe and North America relative to today’s North Pole. The current estimated amount of northward motion is about 110°. From these studies it has been possible to reconstruct the history of continental motion during the Paleozoic to a reasonable level of confidence despite the lack of strong longitude constraints. Several authors have published continent motion histories that span the neo-Proterozoic to present. The work described in this paper utilizes the global paleogeography maps by Ronald Blakey, emeritus professor of geology at Northern Arizona University, as a guide to that history. (An animation is available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGtQ1zpsdx4. ) Blakey’s map for the Early Cambrian (540 Ma in terms of the secular time scale) provides important insight into the continent configuration at the onset of the Flood. That map can be accessed online at http:// scienceviews.com/photo/medium/SIA3660.jpg. In terms of the Flood, this snapshot corresponds to shortly after the breakup of a pre-Flood supercontinent. Some, including this author, refer to that supercontinent as Pannotia, while others, including Blakey, refer to it as Rodinia. At this early stage in the cataclysm the continental blocks known as Laurentia (corresponding to North America and Greenland), Baltica (corresponding to modern Western Europe), and Siberia (corresponding to Eastern Europe) have only recently broken away from the rest of Pannotia in a northerly direction. Although it is nearly impossible to discern in this global projection, the large portion of Pannotia known as Gondwana, composed of modern South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica, remains intact throughout the Paleozoic era to become part of Pangea. The remaining portions of Pannotia includes blocks that later become modern China and other parts of modern Asia. Three subsequent snapshots in time from Blakey’s set of global paleogeography maps provide a representative picture of the continental motion during the Paleozoic era. The snapshot for the Late Ordovician (450 Ma in terms of the secular time frame) shows Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia progressively moving away from the rest of Pannotia and from one another. (This map can be accessed online at http://scienceviews.com/photo/medium/SIA3663.jpg. ) The next snapshot for the Early Devonian (400 Ma in terms of the secular time frame) shows Laurentia and Baltica then reversing directions relative to one another and colliding back together. (This map can be accessed at http://scienceviews.com/photo/medium/ SIA3665.jpg.) The final snapshot for the Pennsylvanian, (300 Ma in terms of the secular time frame) shows the remainder of Pannotia moving northward in the eastern hemisphere, crossing the South Pole, and colliding with Laurentia/Baltica from the south and that assembly in turn colliding with Siberia, also from the south. (That map can be accessed at http://scienceviews. com/photo/medium/SIA3668.jpg.) This paper utilizes this basic dynamic paleogeography as its guide for specifying the motions of the continental blocks as a function of time during the Flood. One can inquire as to the reliability of continent motion reconstructions such as Blakey’s. My own assessment is that the basic features are robust. They are based on vast numbers of paleomagnetic determinations stretching back more than 60 years by many investigators from all the continents. They are also based on a vast amount of geological field observation, including indisputable evidence for continent-continent collisions during the Paleozoic and associated orogenies, including the Caledonian orogeny involving Europe and North America, the Variscan/ Hercynian/Appalachian orogeny involving Europe, North America, and Africa, and the Uralian orogeny involving Europe and Asia/Siberia. While many of the details may remain uncertain, to me there is little reason to question the basic history of relative motions. 3. The issue of polar wander One aspect of the picture that to me is subject to question is the issue of whether the large changes in paleomagnetic latitude are to be interpreted as apparent polar wander or possibly instead as true polar wander. Interpreting them as apparent polar wander implies that the magnetic poles have remained largely fixed and the continents have moved vast distances. Allowing for a significant amount of true polar wander allows for the continents to have moved dramatically shorter distances over the earth’s surface—distances that can readily be accounted for by normal plate tectonics. This issue is exacerbated as one considers the brief time span of the Flood. It is incredibly difficult to conceive of a mechanism by which the huge Gondwanan continent might move around the earth by more than a quarter of the earth’s circumference in such a short interval of time. While it is not that obvious as to how that amount of true polar wander might have occurred in such a brief time window, the processes of transport of a large volume of cold lithosphere from the earth’s surface into the deeper mantle and the rising of a comparable volume of hot mantle rock from the core/mantle boundary into the mid and upper mantle may have temporarily altered the earth’s rotational moments of inertia sufficiently to produce the wander within the time span of the Flood. This is a topic to be explored in future studies. Based on these considerations the choice was made to assume that 110° of true polar wander of the earth’s spin axis occurred during the Flood, most of it during its earlier stages. It was found appropriate to assume that the plane in which the polar wander occurred was the defined approximately by today’s 0° or prime meridian that runs through Greenwich, England. With these assumptions it becomes possible to rotate Pannotia 110° clockwise, when viewed from the east, on the computational grid such that Africa in Pannotia coincides with Africa today in its location on the earth. To account properly for the Coriolis effect, one simply alters the orientation of the spin axis appropriately with respect to the computational grid, involving merely a trivial change in the coding. The actual true polar wander is accounted for by allowing the orientation of the spin axis to change with time in a specified way. This approach allows for all the motion of the continental blocks to be actual plate motion. Moreover, it becomes dramatically simpler to compare Pannotia with Pangea directly from the plots. One discovers that, apart from the terranes that form Asia today, Baumgardner ◀ Large tsunamis and the Flood sediment record ▶ 2018 ICC 292