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

the two supercontinents are remarkably similar. That should not be surprising because the entirety of Gondwana did not change between the two supercontinent configurations, and the blocks of Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia changed relatively little. 4. Including continent motion history in the numerical model To include the continent motion histories within the numerical framework required that a representation of the motion of each continent block as a function of time be incorporated. This was accomplished by specifying rotation poles for each of 11 different continental blocks and each of 10 separate time intervals. Each rotation pole is a vector in space with three components (x, y, z) that specifies the rate of displacement of the rigid block over the surface of the sphere during the time interval.As might be surmised, obtaining those rotation poles guided by the paleogeographic maps was a moderately tedious process. Figure 1 (a)-(t) provides snapshots from the resulting time history. Arrows indicate the motions of the individual blocks. Colors indicate topographic height relative to mean sea level. Blue regions beyond the dark contour lines marking the continental boundaries correspond to deep ocean. The continental configuration depicted in Figure 1 (a) and (b) is intended to represent the configuration that existed at the onset of the Flood, namely, that of Pannotia as mentioned earlier. The continent configuration depicted in Figure 1 (m) and (n) represents the configuration at the end of the Paleozoic generally referred to as Pangea. The primary difference between Pannotia and Pangea in this model is the location of the land area that today corresponds to eastern Asia. In Pannotia this land area adjoins Gondwana along its northeastern boundary. In secular continent motion histories this land area is also similarly adjoined to Gondwana, but splits away in multiple, successive slices that migrate northward and coalesce to become eastern Asia. In this numerical treatment the complexity of the multiple slices is omitted, and that entire region is treated instead as a single block. By removing what this author is convinced is true polar wander, Pannotia and Pangea, apart from eastern Asia, plot almost on top of one another. Their striking similarity thereby becomes much easier Baumgardner ◀ Large tsunamis and the Flood sediment record ▶ 2018 ICC 295 Figure 1 (begins on preceding pages). Snapshots in equal-area projection and geographic North Pole orthographic projection from the continent motion history assumed in this model at times of 0 days (a) , (b) ; 10 days (c) , (d) ; 20 days (e) , (f) ; 30 days (g) , (h) ; 40 days (i) , (j) ; 50 days (k) , (l) ; 90 days (m) , (n) ; 110 days (o) , (p) ; 120 days (q) , (r) ; and 140 days (s) , (t) . Arrows indicate the instantaneous lateral velocities of the individual blocks. Colors indicate topographic height relative to mean sea level. The localized regions of elevated topography represent mountain belts resulting from collisions between Laurentia and Baltica (Caledonian orogeny) and between Laurentia and Africa (Variscan/Hercynian/Appalachian orogeny). Blue regions beyond the dark contour lines marking the continental boundaries correspond to deep ocean with a uniform depth of 4,000 m below mean sea level. The blue stripe that straddles the boundary between Siberia/Baltica and Asia in (m)-(t) is a consequence of the assumed initial low coastal topography of Pannotia. Note that this sequence of plots shows only the assumed continental motions. Tsunami activity is turned off, and there is no water movement.