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

(uppermost Zuni) to the Paleocene (lowermost Tejas) across North America. These authors found that during deposition of the Cretaceous (Zuni Sequence), the drainage pattern was dominantly to the north and northwest across much of the USA. Drainage was to the Boreal Sea near present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan. They also determined that very little area was draining to the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) during this time. In contrast, they determined that the Paleocene drainage shifted dramatically from that of the Cretaceous, resulting in much of the USA draining southward to the GOM (Blum and Pecha 2014). As noted on their map, this was not a single river like the modern Mississippi River, but a series of rivers, effectively behaving more like sheet wash, draining into the GOM all at once. This shift in drainage coincides nicely with the end of the Zuni megaequence and the onset of the Tejas megaequence. Blum and Pecha (2014) believe this change in drainage occurred because of the high flooding levels of the NorthAmerican continent during the Upper Cretaceous, known as the Cretaceous Interior Seaway. They claim that the withdrawal of the flood waters during the uppermost Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene caused significant reorganization in the drainage pattern and a reverse in flow toward the GOM. Clarey and Parkes (2016) used this documented shift in drainage at the Zuni/Tejas boundary to explain the Whopper Sand in the deep-water of the Gulf of Mexico (Fig. 18). Since 2001, with the drilling of the BAHA-2 oil well, billions of barrels of oil have been discovered in the Paleocene-Eocene Wilcox-equivalent “Whopper Sand” (Higgs 2009). This well reportedly encountered 335 m (1100 feet) of sand in the Lower Wilcox in over 2135 m (7000 feet) of water within the Perdido Fold Belt of Alaminos Canyon. In Keathley Canyon the Sardinia-1 well encountered over 366 m (1200 feet) of sand and in Walker Ridge, the Jack-2 well and Chinook and Cascade-2 wells reached similarly thick Lower Wilcox sands approaching 580 m (1900 feet) thick (Trammel 2006). Average porosity in the whopper sand is 18% and permeabilities range from 10-30 md (Trammel 2006). Up to 15 billion barrels have been discovered in this trend since 2001.What makes the Whopper Sand unusual is its location in deep water, nearly 300 km from the Lower Wilcox shelf margin, and far from any conventional sand source (Higgs 2009). Clarey and Werner ◀ Pre-Flood geography ▶ 2018 ICC 369 Figure 18. Map of the basal Tejas lithology showing the extent and thickness of the ‘Whopper Sand’ in the Gulf of Mexico (Paleocene Lower Wilcox SS). 500 ft = 152 m, 1000 ft = 305 m, 1500 ft = 457 m. Yellow represents sand, blue represents limestone and brown represents clay/shale. State outlines are shown for reference. Circles represent stratigraphic columns used in this study. © 2017 Institute for Creation Research. Used by permission.