It's a fact that chalk formed extensive beds in the Cretaceous but nowhere in the world is there evidence of chalk being formed today. Limestone, which is closely related to chalk, being formed also of the shells of marine life, was generally laid down earlier than the chalk. For example, the limestone rocks of the Peak District and the Yorkshire Dales is derived from former coral reef systems when Britain was situated in warmer climes. Like chalk, limestone was quarried in the north and ended up in lime kilns (where it became a useful ingredient to sweeten agricultural fields, just as chalk was dug out of field margins by itinerant diggers to be added to fields in the south of the country, being a more malleable ingredient than the limestone rock formations. As noted in an earlier post, June 22nd, chalk is a bit of a geological mystery – although you would not know that if you went by the textbook description, generated for consumption by Joe Public (and devised to hide the academic uncertainties). Malaga Bay obviously read the above post as he begins by saying, 'the SIS is curious to know why so much chalk was formed in the Cretaceous period' – which indeed we are. Are we being hoodwinked by mainstream, foisted off with a half baked idea? Malaga Bay provides a very informative answer – but perhaps we can read even more into what he is saying (see http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/the-chalky-cretaceous/. For example, straightaway he says we need to clear away mainstream misdirections, and here he gets back on his favourite theme, by saying that during the Cretaceous period, when the chalk was being laid down, there was an outgassing episode taking place (during the Jurassic as well as the Cretaceous). He then queries the conventional view of the co2 levels – why would they have fallen at a time when a huge volcanice event created flood basalts in the Pacific? This is perhaps somewhat new to most people but the massive Ontong Java Plateau lying north of the Solomon Islands, covering approximately 770,000 square miles (roughly the size of modern Alaska), is dated to this period, and volcanic events are supposed to spew out lots of old co2 – so why do geological academics say co2 levels were low at that time? The volcanic event, a huge outpouring of magma from beneath the surface of the Earth, occurred in Lower Cretaceous (125 -110 million years ago on that famous geochronological time scale chart), with some secondary volcanism 20 to 40 million years after the initial event (in the Upper Cretaceous). Something was obviously going on – and was outgassing a symptom of that something?
The principle components of volcanic gases are water vapour, co2, sulphur, nitrogen, argon. helium, neon, methane, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen, plus some lesser constituents. The fact that it coincided with sea floor spreading, or continental drift in a different view, in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and the Indian oceans, cannnot be ignored or disconnected. Suddenly, the whole situation surrounding chalk formation (and the flint nodules found within it) becomes quite different from what mainstream would have Joe Public believe – and geological students. Quite clearly chalk could have been laid down much more quickly than uniformitarian theory allows. This conforms with the fact that chalk may be derived from algal blooms – that arise as a result of chemical changes in the oceans, or warm seas of the Cretaceous, and volcanic events such as basalt intrusions seem to fit that general pattern (without disclosing what actual kind of catastrophic event caused the basalt intrusion in the first place). Malaga Bay notes that mainstream avoids drawing attention to the obvious massive levels of outgassing and misdirects by asserting the volcanic oxygen is 'meteoric' in origin. This is somewhat strange as when it comes to more recent events mainstream is at pains to deny meteoric involvement in anything geological – but apparently it is okay to propose heavy meteoric bombardment in the remote past. Mainstream does actually observe, but avoids making the link, that the timing of the Ontong Java Plateau event roughly coincides with the early Aptian anoxic event in the oceans (the huge algal bloom) that created the chalk. In fact, the algal bloom more or less demands some kind of catastrophic event in order to be the bigger mechanism. Well done Tim Cullen. Just the kind of reply that sets the scene – not just for chalk formation but for the flint within it.