(b) Conversely: any kind of fossiliferous strata (even the “oldest”) may not only constitute the surface rocks over wide areas,[8] but may consist of loose, unconsolidated materials, thus in both position and texture resembling the “late” Tertiaries or the Pleistocene—“In some regions, notably in the Baltic province and in parts of the United States,” says John Allen Howe, alluding to the Cambrian rocks around the Baltic Sea and in Wisconsin, “the rocks still retain their original horizontality of deposition, the muds are scarcely indurated, and the sands are incoherent.” (Encycl. Brit., vol. V, p. 86.)
A large number of striking instances are cited by Price to substantiate the foregoing rule and its converse. The impression left is that not only is the starting-point of the time-scale in doubt, but that, if we were to judge the age of the rocks by their physical appearance and position, we could not accept the conventional verdicts of modern geology, which makes fossil evidence prevail over every other consideration.
2. When two contiguous strata are parallel to each other, and there is no indication of disturbance in the lower bed, nor any evidence of erosion along the plane of contact, the two beds are said to exhibit conformity, and this is ordinarily interpreted by geologists as a sign that the upper bed has been laid down in immediate sequence to the lower, and that there has been a substantial continuity of deposition, with no long interval during which the lower bed was exposed as surface to the agents of erosion. When such a conformity exists, as it frequently does, between a “recent” stratum, above, and what is said (according to the testimony of the fossils) to be a very “ancient” stratum, below, and though the two are so alike lithologically as to be mistaken for one and the same formation, nevertheless, such a conformity is termed a “non-evident disconformity,” or “deceptive conformity,” implying that, inasmuch as the “lost interval,” representing, perhaps, a lapse of “several million years,” is entirely unrecorded by any intervening deposition, or any erosion, or any disturbance of the lower bed, we should not have suspected that so great a hiatus had intervened, were it not for the testimony of the fossils. Price cites innumerable examples, and sums them up in the general terms of the following empirical law: “Any sort of fossiliferous formation may occur on top of any other ‘older’ fossiliferous formation, with all the physical evidences of perfect conformity, just as if these alleged incongruous or mismated formations had in reality followed one another in quick succession.”
A quotation from Schuchert’s “Textbook of Geology,” (1920), may be given by way of illustration: “The imperfection,” we read, “of the geologic column is greatest in the interior of North America and more so in the north than in the south. This imperfection is in many places very marked, since an entire period or several periods may be absent. With such great breaks in the local sections the natural assumption is that these gaps are easily seen in the sequence of the strata, but in many places the beds lie in such perfect conformity upon one another that the breaks are not noticeable by the eye and can be proved to exist only by the entombed fossils on each side of a given bedding plane.... Stratigraphers are, as a rule, now fully aware of the imperfections in the geologic record, but the rocks of two unrelated formations may rest upon each other with such absolute conformability as to be completely deceptive. For instance, in the Bear Grass quarries at Louisville, Ky., a face of limestone is exposed in which the absolute conformability of the beds can be traced for nearly a mile, and yet within 5 feet of vertical thickness is found a Middle Silurian coral bed overlain by another coral zone of Middle Devonian. The parting between these two zones is like that between any two limestone beds, but this insignificant line represents a stratigraphic hiatus the equivalent of the last third of Silurian and the first of Devonian time. But such disconformities are by no means rare, in fact are very common throughout the wide central basin area of North America.” (Op. cit., II, pp. 586-588.)
In such cases, the stratigraphical relations give no hint of any enormous gap at the line of contact. On the contrary, there is every evidence of unbroken sequence, and the physical appearances are as if these supposed “geological epochs” had never occurred in the localities, of which there is question. Everything points to the conclusion that the alleged long intervals of time between such perfectly conformable, and, often, lithologically identical, formations are a pure fiction elaborated for the purpose of bolstering up the dogma of the universal applicability of the European classification of fossiliferous rocks. Why not take the facts as we find them? Why resort to tortuous explanations for the mere purpose of saving an arbitrary time-scale? Why insist on a definite time-value for fossils, when it drives us to the extremity of discrediting the objective evidence of physical facts in deference to the preconceptions of orthodox geology? Were it not for theoretical considerations, these stratigraphic facts would be taken at their face value, and the need of saving the reputation of the fossil as an infallible time index is not sufficiently imperative to warrant so drastic a revision of the physical evidence.
3. The third class of facts militating against the time-value of index fossils, are what Price describes as “deceptive conformities turned upside down,” and what orthodox geology tries to explain away as “thrusts,” “thrust faults,” “overthrusts,” “low-angle faulting,” etc.[9] In instances of this kind we find the accepted order of the fossiliferous strata reversed in such a way that the “younger” strata are conformably overlain by “older” strata, and the “older” strata are sometimes interbedded between “younger” strata. “In many places all over the world,” says Price, “fossils have been found in a relative order which was formerly thought to be utterly impossible. That is, the fossils have been found in the ‘wrong’ order, and on such a scale that there can be no mistake about it. For when an area 500 miles long and from 20 to 50 miles wide is found with Palæozoic rocks on top, or composing the mountains, and with Cretaceous beds underneath, or composing the valleys, and running under these mountains all around, as in the case of the Glacier National Park and the southern part of Alberta, the old notion about the exact and invariable order of the fossils has to be given up entirely.”
Price formulates his third law as follows: “Any fossiliferous formation, ‘old’ or ‘young,’ may occur conformably on any other fossiliferous formation, ‘younger’ or ‘older.’” The corollary of this empirical law is that we are no longer justified in regarding any fossils as intrinsically older than other fossils, and that our present classification of fossiliferous strata has a taxonomic, rather than a historical, value.
Low-angle faulting is the phenomenon devised by geologists to meet the difficulty of “inverted sequence,” when all other explanations fail. Immense mountain masses are said to have been detached from their roots and pushed horizontally over the surface (without disturbing it in the least), until they came finally to rest in perfect conformity upon “younger” strata, so that the plane of slippage ended by being indistinguishable from an ordinary horizontal bedding plane. These gigantic “overthrusts” or “thrust faults” are a rather unique phenomenon. Normal faulting is always at a high angle closely approaching the vertical, but “thrust faults” are at a low angle closely approximating the horizontal, and there is enormous displacement along the plane of slippage. The huge mountain masses are said to have been first lifted up and then thrust horizontally for vast distances, sometimes for hundreds of miles, over the face of the land, being thus pushed over on top of “younger” rocks, so as to repose upon the latter in a relation of perfectly conformable superposition. R. G. McConnell, of the Canadian Survey, comments on the remarkable similarity between these alleged “thrust planes” and ordinary stratification planes, and he is at a loss to know why the surface soil was not disturbed by the huge rock masses which slid over it for such great distances. Speaking of the Bow River Gap, he says: “The fault plane here is nearly horizontal, and the two formations, viewed from the valley appear to succeed one another conformably,” and then having noted that the underlying Cretaceous shales are “very soft,” he adds that they “have suffered little by the sliding of the limestones over them.” (An. Rpt. 1886, part D., pp. 33, 34, 84.) Credat Iudaeus Apella, non ego!
Schuchert describes the Alpine overthrust as follows: “The movement was both vertical and thrusting from the south and southeast, from the southern portion of Tethys, elevating and folding the Tertiary and older strata of the northern areas of this mediterranean into overturned, recumbent, and nearly horizontal folds, and pushing the southern or Lepontine Alps about 60 miles to the northward into the Helvetic region. Erosion has since carved up these overthrust sheets, leaving remnants lying on foundations which belong to a more northern portion of the ancient sea. Most noted of these residuals of overthrust masses is the Matterhorn, a mighty mountain without roots, a stranger in a foreign geologic environment,” (Pirsson & Schuchert’s “Textbook of Geology,” 1920, II, p. 924.)
With such a convenient device as the “overthrust” at his disposal, it is hard to see how any possible concrete sequence of fossiliferous strata could contradict the preconceptions of an evolutionary geologist. The hypotheses and assumptions involved, however, are so tortuous and incredible, that nothing short of fanatical devotion to the theory of transformism can render them acceptable. “Examples,” says Price, “of strata in the ‘wrong’ order were first reported from the Alps nearly half a century ago. Since that time, whole armfuls of learned treatises in German, in French, and in English have been written to explain the wonderful conditions there found. The diagrams that have been drawn to account for the strange order of the strata are worthy to rank with the similar ones by the Ptolemaic astronomers picturing the cycles and epicycles required to explain the peculiar behavior of the heavenly bodies in accordance with the geocentric theory of the universe then prevailing.... In Scandinavia, a district some 1,120 miles long by 80 miles wide is alleged to have been pushed horizontally eastward ‘at least 86 miles.’ (Schuchert.) In Northern China, one of these upside down areas is reported by the Carnegie Research Expedition to be 500 miles long.” (“The New Geology,” 1923, pp. 633, 634.)