Satellite image of the Great Escarpment in southern Africa from the Sentinel Hub Earth Observation Browser. Taken using the Sentinel-2 L1C dataset, in May 2020.
Credit: Prof Tom Gernon, University of Southampton.
Creationist dogma still demands that creationists believe Earth was created pretty much the way it is today, just a few thousand years ago, and it is perfectly 'tuned' for life (especially their life).
In reality, as we’ve know now for over half a century, Earth is far from stable and instead consists of several plates which have been moving around for hundreds of millions of years, causing mountain ranges to rise, volcanoes to explode and earthquakes to open up great cracks in the ground and tsunamis to inundate coast areas, and, latterly, shake human settlements to the ground. Only by filtering reality through a pair of rose-tinted creationist spectacles and dismissing the victims of natural disasters as having somehow deserved it, can creationists maintain the fiction of a planet finely tuned for life.
And now, geologists led by Professor Thomas Gurnon of the University of Southampton, UK, have shown how forces unleashed by plate tectonics are responsible for sections of continents to rise up to form escarpments and domes such as that under the Grand Canyon, the rising of which has cause the Colorado River to carve an ever-deepening canyon as its bed rises inch by inch over millions of years.
What are the geological forces that gave rise to the Grand Canyon, Arizona? The Grand Canyon in Arizona is a product of several geological forces that have been at work for millions of years. The primary forces that contributed to its formation include:Although the scientists don't mention the Grand Canyon, the forces they describe are identical to those which cause the ground to rise up under the Colorado River. Their research concerns the formation of the Great Escarpments like that encircling South Africa and forming the Western Ghats in India. Their findings are published, open access, in the journal Nature. It is also explained in a news item from Southampton University:Together, these geological forces have shaped the Grand Canyon into one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the world. The process is ongoing, with the river and other erosional forces continuing to shape the canyon today.
- Tectonic Uplift
- The Grand Canyon is located on the Colorado Plateau, a region that has undergone significant tectonic uplift. Over the past 70 million years, this plateau has been gradually rising due to the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates. The uplift increased the elevation of the plateau, which in turn increased the gradient and flow rate of the Colorado River, enhancing its ability to erode the land.
- Erosion by the Colorado River
- The Colorado River is the primary agent responsible for carving out the Grand Canyon. Over the past 5 to 6 million years, the river has cut through layers of rock, primarily through a process called "downcutting." As the river flowed, it eroded the rock layers, deepening the canyon and creating its steep walls. The river's erosive power was amplified by the uplift of the Colorado Plateau, which caused the river to flow more rapidly and cut deeper into the Earth's crust.
- Weathering and Erosion
- In addition to the river's erosive force, weathering processes like freeze-thaw cycles and chemical weathering have contributed to the canyon's formation. These processes break down rock, making it easier for the river to carry away sediments. Rain, wind, and gravity also play roles in widening the canyon and shaping its various rock formations.
- Volcanic Activity
- Volcanic activity has also played a role in the canyon's history. Lava flows from volcanic eruptions in the region occasionally filled parts of the canyon, temporarily damming the Colorado River and altering its course. These lava dams would eventually erode away, but they left behind evidence of the region's volcanic past.
- Differential Erosion
- The Grand Canyon's distinctive layered appearance is due to differential erosion, where different rock layers erode at different rates. Softer, less resistant rock layers, like shale, erode more quickly than harder, more resistant layers like limestone and sandstone. This creates the step-like appearance of the canyon's walls and contributes to the formation of its terraces, cliffs, and plateaus.
- Glacial Influence
- Although the Grand Canyon itself was not directly carved by glaciers, glacial periods affected the climate and hydrology of the region. During cooler periods, more water was available due to increased precipitation and melting glaciers upstream, which could have increased the flow and erosive power of the Colorado River.
Scientists uncover hidden forces causing continents to riseThe highly technical details are given in the open access paper in Nature:
Scientists at the University of Southampton have answered one of the most puzzling questions in plate tectonics: how and why ‘stable’ parts of continents gradually rise to form some of the planet’s greatest topographic features.
They have found that when tectonic plates break apart, powerful waves are triggered deep within the Earth that can cause continental surfaces to rise by over a kilometre.
Their findings help resolve a long-standing mystery about the dynamic forces that shape and connect some of the Earth’s most dramatic landforms – expansive topographic features called ‘escarpments’ and ‘plateaus’ that profoundly influence climate and biology.
The new research, led by the University of Southampton, examined the effects of global tectonic forces on landscape evolution over hundreds of millions of years. The findings are published in the journal Nature .
Scientists have long suspected that steep kilometre-high topographic features called Great Escarpments — like the classic example encircling South Africa — are formed when continents rift and eventually split apart. However, explaining why the inner parts of continents, far from such escarpments, rise and become eroded has proven much more challenging. Is this process even linked to the formation of these towering escarpments? Put simply, we didn’t know.
The vertical motions of the stable parts of continents, called cratons, remain one of the least understood aspects of plate tectonics.
The team from the University of Southampton, including Dr Thea Hincks , Dr Derek Keir , and Alice Cunningham, collaborated with colleagues from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the University of Birmingham to address this fundamental question.
Their results help explain why parts of the continents previously thought of as ‘stable’ experience substantial uplift and erosion, and how such processes can migrate hundreds or even thousands of kilometres inland, forming sweeping elevated regions known as plateaus, like the Central Plateau of South Africa.
Linking diamonds with landscape evolution
Building on their study linking diamond eruptions to continental breakup, published last year in Nature , the team used advanced computer models and statistical methods to interrogate how the Earth’s surface has responded to the breakup of continental plates through time.
They discovered that when continents split apart, the stretching of the continental crust causes stirring movements in Earth’s mantle (the voluminous layer between the crust and the core).
This process can be compared to a sweeping motion that moves towards the continents and disturbs their deep foundations.
Professor Sascha Brune, co-author
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Potsdam, Germany.
Professor Brune and Dr Anne Glerum, also based at Potsdam, ran simulations to investigate how this process unfolds. The team noticed an interesting pattern: the speed of the mantle ‘waves’ moving under the continents in their simulations closely match the speed of major erosion events that swept across the landscape in Southern Africa following the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.
The scientists pieced together evidence to propose that the Great Escarpments originate at the edges of ancient rift valleys, much like the steep walls seen at the margins of the East African Rift today. Meanwhile, the rifting event also sets about a ‘deep mantle wave’ that travels along the continent’s base at about 15-20 kilometres per million years.
They believe that this wave convectively removes layers of rock from the continental roots.
Building on this, the team modelled how landscapes respond to this mantle-driven uplift. They found that migrating mantle instabilities give rise to a wave of surface erosion that lasts tens of millions of years and moves across the continent at a similar speed. This intense erosion removes a huge weight of rock that causes the land surface to rise further, forming elevated plateaus.Much like how a hot-air balloon sheds weight to rise higher, this loss of continental material causes the continents to rise – a process called isostasy.
>Professor Sascha Brune.
Our landscape evolution models show how a sequence of events linked to rifting can result in an escarpment as well as a stable, flat plateau, even though a layer of several thousands of meters of rocks has been eroded away.
Professor Jean Braun, co-author
Professor of Earth Surface Process Modelling
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Potsdam, Germany.
The team’s study provides a new explanation for the puzzling vertical movements of cratons far from the edges of continents, where uplift is more common.What we have here is a compelling argument that rifting can, in certain circumstances, directly generate long-lived continental scale upper mantle convection cells, and these rift-initiated convective systems have a profound effect on Earth’s surface topography, erosion, sedimentation and the distribution of natural resources.
Dr Stephen M. Jones, co-author
Associate Professor in Earth Systems
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
The team has concluded that the same chain of mantle disturbances that trigger diamonds to quickly rise from Earth’s deep interior also fundamentally shape continental landscapes, influencing a host of factors from regional climates and biodiversity to human settlement patterns.
Professor Gernon, who was awarded a major philanthropic grant from the WoodNext Foundation, administered by Greater Houston Community Foundation, to study global cooling, explained that continental breakup disturbs not only the deep layers of the Earth but also has effects that reverberate across the surface of the continents, previously thought to be stable.
Destabilising the cores of the continents must have impacted ancient climates too.
Professor Thomas M. Gernon.
AbstractIt's part of the childish creationist mythology that the Grand Canyon was caused when the waters of 'The Flood' ran off [sic] which also requires them to believe that Earth was flat in those days and that the water had somehow magically piled up at the edge for a year before running over it. And of course, it would have left a record of that event in the USA, where everything important happens.
Many cratonic continental fragments dispersed during the rifting and break-up of Gondwana are bound by steep topographic landforms known as ‘great escarpments’1,2,3,4, which rim elevated plateaus in the craton interior5,6. In terms of formation, escarpments and plateaus are traditionally considered distinct owing to their spatial separation, occasionally spanning more than a thousand kilometres. Here we integrate geological observations, statistical analysis, geodynamic simulations and landscape-evolution models to develop a physical model that mechanistically links both phenomena to continental rifting. Escarpments primarily initiate at rift-border faults and slowly retreat at about 1 km Myr−1 through headward erosion. Simultaneously, rifting generates convective instabilities in the mantle7,8,9,10 that migrate cratonward at a faster rate of about 15–20 km Myr−1 along the lithospheric root, progressively removing cratonic keels11, driving isostatic uplift of craton interiors and forming a stable, elevated plateau. This process forces a synchronized wave of denudation, documented in thermochronology studies, which persists for tens of millions of years and migrates across the craton at a comparable or slower pace. We interpret the observed sequence of rifting, escarpment formation and exhumation of craton interiors as an evolving record of geodynamic mantle processes tied to continental break-up, upending the prevailing notion of cratons as geologically stable terrains.
Main
Cratons experience extremely low erosion rates when viewed over geological time12, a feature attributed to their mechanical strength and prolonged stability13,14. Thus, the formation of great escarpments (hereafter, escarpments) (Fig. 1) and subsequent uplift of craton interiors are geologically abrupt and enigmatic15 events that disrupt6 this long-term stability. Escarpments, that is, laterally extensive breaks in slope about a kilometre high and many thousands of kilometres long, typically occur near the edges of shields—tectonically stable regions rooted on strong cratons16 (for example, Eastern Brazil, Southern Africa and the Western Ghats of India; Fig. 1a–c). Although a widely held view is that these landforms originate during continental rifting2,3,4,17,18,19, the mechanistic linkages are not well resolved.
Escarpments have been attributed to various processes, including: (1) flexurally induced uplift along rift flanks owing to lithospheric unloading during extension2,20,21,22; (2) small-scale convection induced by lateral temperature gradients, driving uplift of rift shoulders7,8; and (3) downgrading of the coastal area and inland base-level fall23. Crucially, the relationship of these processes to anomalous exhumation that occurs in remote hinterland plateau regions long after rift termination5,18,24,25 is poorly understood. Flexural uplift is typically confined to the rift flanks and cannot explain the formation of an elevated continental interior. Studies have variously invoked prolonged plateau uplift26,27,28,29 (for example, through compression-induced uplift unrelated to rifting and break-up28), post-rift tectonic reactivation29,30,31 and passive-margin rejuvenation17. However, whether the last process occurs is disputed3.Fig. 1: Location and physical characteristics of great escarpments.
Global terrain maps for ocean and land (gridded data from GEBCO) of the east coast of Brazil (a), Southern Africa (b) and the Western Ghats (Sahyadri Hills), India (c) (see inset map for locations). The maps show a simplified representation of escarpments mapped using digital terrain models (Methods) and COBs from GPlates59 (https://www.gplates.org/). d, Topographic profiles of escarpments (see a–c for lines of section). e, Map of the Great Escarpment of South Africa (see b for location) generated using NASA SRTM elevation data (Lambert conformal conic projection). f, Short-wave infrared satellite image of the same escarpment (white arrows) from Sentinel Hub. A typical topographic profile is shown (A–B). Sinuosity of escarpments is related to contrasted retreat rates of channels relative to interfluves1. Scale bar, 5 km. g, Probability density for nearest distance between escarpments and COBs for the regions (see a–c). Global mean and median thicknesses (vertical grey band) are 336 and 333 km, respectively (n = 5,288; Extended Data Fig. 3a–c). Two distinct peaks for Brazil reflect two phases of escarpment formation there (Cretaceous and Cenozoic)3. h, Difference in orientation between escarpments (θEsc) and COBs (θCOB) calculated using the perpendicular to the escarpment tangent at 50-km intervals (n = 195; Methods and Extended Data Fig. 2). Escarpments are typically sub-parallel to adjacent COBs (Extended Data Fig. 3d–g). i, Box plot of lithospheric thickness for each escarpment, point sampled from maps generated using LITHO1.0 (ref. 41) (blue boxes) and LithoRef18 (ref. 42) (green boxes) at 1.0°, or approximately 111-km, intervals (n = 161).
Surface processes occurring far from rift zones5,18,24,25,29 (>500 km away) and long (tens of millions of years) after rift cessation seemingly prohibit a first-order role for rifting. Several studies, such as for the classic Great Escarpment of South Africa (Fig. 1d–f), instead propose that plate movement over a large, low-shear-velocity province, exposing the continent to deep, buoyant mantle upwelling, drives rapid uplift and surface erosion over a broader region32. However, such a superswell is not observed in dynamic support histories derived from diverse continental and oceanic records33. Further, evidence for protracted plateau uplift since escarpment formation18 contradicts the notion of post-break-up tectonic stability proposed by the downgrading model23. Alternatively, enduring surface uplift surrounding the escarpment might reflect intermediate-scale (approximately 1,000 km) present-day mantle convective support16,22,32,33,34, possibly associated with cratonic-edge-driven convection17,35. Stochastic inversion models indicate that dynamic mantle support contributes approximately 650 m to the regional elevation in Southern Africa, with the remaining elevation (about 670 m) attributed to the isostatic lithospheric contribution34. This estimate is supported by independent modelling studies that suggest up to 1 km of dynamic/static mantle support15.
Drawing from the above examples, the broader context of landform formation following continental break-up is heavily debated. This study aims to quantify the spatial and temporal relationships between rift systems and the generation of escarpments and plateaus, while using geodynamic and landscape-evolution modelling to gain a quantitative understanding of the mechanisms influencing these regions.
Origin of great escarpments
We begin by evaluating the physical characteristics of escarpments and examining their spatial and temporal relationships to continental margins and high-elevation hinterland plateaus. First, we focus on the main coastal escarpments, associated with cratonic lithosphere, which formed between 150 and 70 million years ago (Ma) during the break-up of Gondwana (Extended Data Fig. 1). We compare three classic coastal escarpments in Southern Africa, Brazil and the Western Ghats, spanning distances of approximately 6,000, 3,000 and 2,000 km, respectively (Fig. 1a–c). These length scales allow us to analyse their lithospheric properties using global reference models with low resolution (100–200 km). Older escarpments in northwest Africa and the eastern USA, associated with protracted rifting and break-up of cratonic lithosphere in the Central Atlantic (between approximately 240 and 180 Ma), feature more subdued topography shaped by prolonged post-rift erosion22 and are not a direct focus of our study.
Given their spatial and topographic characteristics, it is plausible that escarpments initiate as rift-border faults such as those kilometre-high escarpments separating the high-elevation Ethiopian Plateau from the East African Rift today36. In that case, their orientation and spacing with respect to continent–ocean boundaries (COBs), delineating ancient rift axes, should be broadly similar and closely mimic those generated in numerical models19. To examine this, we map the escarpments in detail (Fig. 1a–d) using geoprocessing tools in the ArcGIS software package. We then analyse the first-order spatial and topological attributes of escarpments and COBs (Fig. 1d and Extended Data Fig. 2) using the statistical computing package, R (https://www.r-project.org/; see Methods).
The mean distance between escarpments and COBs varies across different regions, ranging from 207 km in the Western Ghats to 380 km in Brazil (Fig. 1g and Extended Data Fig. 3g). Global mean and median distances range from 330 to 340 km (Fig. 1g and Extended Data Fig. 3g). When we compare the orientations of geographic domains of escarpments to the adjacent sections of COBs (Methods), we find that they are sub-parallel over scales ranging from 102 to 103 km (Fig. 1h). These data suggest that escarpments originate at or near border faults, that is, at the inner boundary of rifted continental margins. Indeed, the distance between escarpments and the nearest oceanic crust (that is, outer boundary of the rifted margin) is similar to the estimated half-width of rift zones in the studied regions, which fall in the range 250–600 km (ref. 37). The mean distances between escarpments and COBs (Fig. 1g) closely align with predictions from numerical models19 and support rifting as a driver of escarpment formation2,3,4.
Rifting alone cannot satisfactorily explain the broad uplift and denudation patterns in hinterland regions, in which further scarp retreat occurred in the Cretaceous5,18,24,25. It is feasible that marginal uplift is more pronounced where the cratonic lithosphere is thick and underlain by a weak, basal layer that undergoes convective removal or delamination—a process that gives rise to isostatic uplift38,39. Since such processes are not expected to substantially thin the lithosphere (that is, more than about 35 km)11,40, the present-day lithospheric thickness offers a rough guide to that in the recent geological past. To investigate lithospheric-thickness characteristics along our coastal escarpments (Fig. 1a–c), we sample this property using two different global reference models—LITHO1.0 (ref. 41) and LithoRef18 (ref. 42)—at regular 1.0° intervals (commensurate with model resolution; Methods). Although locally variable, the escarpments generally occur on thick lithosphere, that is, the lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary (LAB) occurs at a median depth of 177 km or 155 km (Fig. 1i) for the two global reference models, respectively.
The escarpments form primarily near the boundaries of continental lithosphere along rift-border faults (Fig. 1). Their sustained elevation is because of a combination of factors, including lithospheric thickness (Fig. 1i), flexural uplift2,20,21, mantle convection7,8 and dynamic mantle support16,32,33,34. Escarpments climb into higher terrain through headward erosion, causing them to retreat further inland21. This rapid retreat stops on reaching a point at which it functions as a pinned drainage divide, that is, a fixed boundary between drainage basins. For example, in response to tectonic uplift, the westward-draining Karoo River of South Africa (proto-Orange River; Extended Data Fig. 4a) incised a deep channel through the Great Escarpment43 at 120–110 Ma (refs. 29,43), paving the way for fluvial erosion of the hinterland plateau44. Because eroded sediments are largely transported westward into the Orange Basin, this phase of onshore denudation—a west-to-east ‘wave’ of erosion44—is recorded as a step increase in sediment accumulation rates in marine archives29,45,46. Drainage systems, which shaped plateau evolution, may have fundamentally responded to mantle processes (for example, delamination)5,11,25,40,47 following break-up. However, the nature of these geodynamic processes and their connections to geomorphology remain poorly understood.
Modelling mantle–surface connections
Considering this gap, we investigate the influence of rifting and mantle dynamics on regional exhumation patterns. We use numerical thermomechanical simulations, building on our earlier work11 and applying conditions and material properties deemed reasonable within the context of previous geodynamic studies (Methods and Extended Data Table 1). Our simulations show that Rayleigh–Taylor (convective) instabilities9,10, with characteristic wavelengths of about 50–100 km, form at lithospheric edges beneath the rift11. The simulations show that instabilities are initiated by: (1) upward suction of low-viscosity mantle beneath the rifting lithosphere, causing the first delamination event (Fig. 2a); (2) formation of a lithospheric edge during continental necking, inducing lateral temperature and viscosity gradients that generate edge-driven convection cells (Fig. 2c); and (3) sequential delamination (Fig. 2c–g), which combines with (2) to produce complex, edge-driven convection patterns. Delamination exploits the density and strength contrast between the colder lithosphere and hotter asthenosphere across the thermal boundary layer (TBL)11. Instabilities migrate cratonward at a rate of 15–20 km Myr−1, sequentially removing the TBL to drive adiabatic upwelling of asthenosphere and kimberlite volcanism11 (Fig. 2).
Although our reference model is 300 km deep and is pulled on one side only (Fig. 2), we further assessed the impact of symmetric boundary conditions, different extension velocities (5 and 20 mm year−1 instead of 10 mm year−1) and the vertical extent of the model domain (to 410 km; Methods and Extended Data Fig. 5). In all scenarios, the process of sequential delamination occurs as in the reference model, with no marked change in instability spacing (Supplementary Videos 1–4). Migration rates differ only slightly from the reference model (that is, 11 to 15 km Myr−1 for the symmetric model) and are in full agreement with observational constraints.Fig. 2: Geodynamic models of rift evolution.
a–g, The sequential migration of Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities along the lithospheric keel, causing convective removal of the TBL (beige). This process, migrating at a rate of 15–20 km Myr−1, drives a ‘wave’ of isostatic uplift and surface denudation that similarly migrates across the craton at a comparable rate, and in some cases, more slowly, reflecting delayed landscape response times. The spatial and temporal extent of this process is limited by the width of the continent. Rift onset occurs 10 Myr before the time step shown in a, with continental break-up and seafloor spreading occurring in time steps c and d, respectively. Note that the reference frame is chosen such that the right continent is fixed, whereas the left continent is moving at 10 mm year−1. Values provided above each image on the left-hand side show timing relative to continental break-up in panel c. The images are adapted from ref. 11, which provides the animation for this reference model. In the simulations (see Supplementary Videos 1–4), the rift-border fault, or proto-escarpment, is 100–300 km from the COB.
We next ask how much crustal exhumation could realistically be driven by lithospheric removal. Our simulations imply that the lithospheric keel is removed rapidly over distances of hundreds of kilometres parallel to the continental break-up boundary (Fig. 2). The area of removed keel subsequently propagates hundreds of kilometres inland of the break-up zone. Thus, the footprint of the region in which the lithosphere has been thinned by removing its keel is much greater than the elastic thickness of the lithosphere. Therefore, we can use a simple Airy isostatic case to estimate the magnitudes of surface uplift and erosion. Rapid thinning of the lithosphere causes initial uplift at Earth’s surface of:
\(\begin{align}s=b\frac{\Delta \rho }{{\rho }_{{\rm{a}}}}\tag{1}\end{align}\)
in which b is the thickness of the lithospheric keel that has been removed, ρa is the density of the asthenosphere and Δρ is the mean density difference between the lithospheric keel and the asthenosphere (not to be confused with the density difference between the asthenosphere and the crust; see Extended Data Fig. 6 for a schematic).
It is well established that uplift drives intensified surface erosion38, leading to further isostatic rebound. For the endmember case in which the new surface uplift is eroded back to the original base level, the total amount of denudation is given by:
\(\begin{align}d=s\frac{{\rho }_{{\rm{a}}}}{{\rho }_{{\rm{a}}}-{\rho }_{{\rm{c}}}}\tag{2}\end{align}\)
in which ρc is the density of the eroded crust (Extended Data Table 2). Combining these two expressions gives the maximum amount of denudation in terms of the thickness of lithospheric keel removed:
\(\begin{align}d=b\frac{\Delta \rho }{{\rho }_{{\rm{a}}}-{\rho }_{{\rm{c}}}}\tag{3}\end{align}\)
Using indicative density values (Extended Data Table 2), the isostatic factor relating lithospheric keel thickness to initial surface uplift (equation (1)) is 0.003. The isostatic factor that relates initial uplift to maximum denudation (equation (3)) is 0.03–0.04; that is, the total erosion can be about an order of magnitude greater than the initial uplift. If the entire lithospheric TBL is removed, equivalent to removing an approximately 35-km-thick keel11, the initial uplift (equation (1)) will be about 50–100 m. This uplift can then be amplified by erosion (equation (3)), resulting in total denudation of approximately 0.8 km but, sampling for a range of variables (equations (1)–(3); Extended Data Table 2), plausibly lies in the range 0.5–1.6 km (Extended Data Fig. 7). Combining insights derived from our geodynamic simulations and analytical models, we anticipate that cratonic exhumation on a kilometre-scale should occur in the several tens of millions of years after break-up, and crucially, that the locus of denudation should progressively migrate inboard of escarpments over time (Fig. 2). Both predictions can be tested using surface-process constraints.
But creationism is nothing if not so detached from reality that only a fool would believe it.
The truth, of course, is that the same geological and geophysical forces that can slowly push up large chunks of a continent to form the sorts of escarpments found in South Africa, India, South America and elsewhere, are also capable of slowly pushing up the centre of North America over millions of years to increase the erosive power of the Colorado river and exposing the cut-through layers of rock to weathering, so widening the canyon and producing the step-like walls of the gorge, as different strata erode at different rates.
There is no magic required and no need to include the ludicrous notion of water suddenly running over the edge of a flat Earth having piled up on it for a year. And apparently, there are creationists planning to 'carbon date'[sic] some rocks they picked up in the Grand Canyon, to 'prove' it is only a few thousand years old, but of course, any dating method used on a rock dates the rock, not the formation of the Canyon, and the strata in the Grand Canyon can be aged accurately using zircons associated with volcanic eruptions in the area. For reasons which can probably be easily guesses at, creationist frauds steer well clear of U-Pb dating of zircon crystals.
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