1

. See the caption to Figure 54 on page 118.

2

. The generic term “limestone” is used instead of specific varieties of CaCO₃, such as calcite, aragonite, vaterite, chalk, oolites, pisoliths, travertine, and marble.

3

. “Carbonate rocks (limestone and dolomites) total 10–15% of the sedimentary column and are nearly always quite pure.” Harvey Blatt, Sedimentary Petrology (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1982), p. 241.

4

. “The debate over the role of fluid flow in the precipitation of diagenetic cements is a longstanding one that arose because it is often difficult to find a sufficient local source of cement to account for observed cement volumes, and it is equally difficult to justify the large volume of pore waters required to transport the necessary chemical components from distant sources. The debate has been particularly heated in cases where cement sources and sinks are not readily apparent. ... Was large-scale fluid flow required, or was temperature the dominant factor, with silica being locally redistributed from sources not immediately obvious from petrographic examination?” Lori L. Summa, “Diagenesis and Reservoir Quality Prediction,” Reviews of Geophysics and Space Science, Vol. 33, No. S1, February 1995, p. 88.

Note: A very large amount of water was involved (a global flood), and the source of the silica was quartz dissolved in extremely hot, subterranean supercritical water. (Granite contains about 27% quartz by volume.) This solves the “quartz problem.”

5

. Jeffrey S. Hanor, “Precipitation of Beachrock Cements: Mixing of Marine and Meteoric Waters vs. CO₂-Degassing,” Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, Vol. 48, No. 2, June 1978, pp. 489–501.

6

. This reaction, in either direction, is accompanied by a small heat effect (±4.34 Kcal/mole at 25°C and 1 atmosphere) and thus is relatively insensitive to temperature change. While the reaction changes from endothermic to exothermic with increasing temperature, the escape of CO₂ from an aqueous to a gas phase is always endothermic and hence is always favored by increasing temperature. C. Stuart Patterson, personal communication, 2 November 1999.

C. S. Patterson et al., “Carbonate Equilibria in Hydrothermal Systems: First Ionization of Carbonic Acid in NaCl Media to 300°C,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 46, 1982, pp. 1653–1663.

C. S. Patterson et al., “Second Ionization of Carbonic Acid in NaCl Media to 250°C,” Journal of Solution Chemistry, Vol. 13, No. 9, 1984, pp. 647–661.

7

. Gordon A. Macdonald, Volcanoes (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972), p. 50.

8

. P. Falkowski et al., “The Global Carbon Cycle: A Test of Our Knowledge of Earth as a System,” Science, Vol. 290, 13 October 2000, p. 293.

Other estimates, all consistent with the above, can be found in:

U. Siegenthaler and J. L. Sarmiento, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and the Ocean,” Nature, Vol. 365, 9 September 1993, pp. 119–125.

Bert Bolin, The Global Carbon Cycle (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), p. 5.

Bert Bolin, “The Carbon Cycle,” Scientific American, Vol. 223, March 1970, pp. 125–132.

9

. Marilyn Taylor, “Descent,” Arizona Highways, Vol. 69, No. 1, January 1993, pp. 10–11.

10

. Michael Rubner, “Synthetic Sea Shell,” Nature, Vol. 423, 26 June 2003, pp. 925–926.

11

. Arthur N. Strahler, Physical Geology (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1981), p. 247.

12

. As a hydroplate approached and even scraped along the chamber floor, the eroding power of the escaping waters beneath it reached a maximum. [See Endnote 53 on page 132.] When the plates approached their present location, the last waters to escape would, therefore, have carried the greatest load of suspended solids. So, the last material expelled was a huge slurry of water-saturated limestone.

13

. “Most of the recognizable materials composing the Chalk have not been proved to be of organic origin by those who have studied it, and [the few organic] portions are, moreover, distinctly subordinate in amount to the amorphous matrix and spheres, save for some local exceptions. The number of these exceptions are so few as to make the scarcity of organic remains a remarkable feature, for one would expect more of them.

     “The lack of mechanical wear; the evident absence of currents, as shown by massiveness and lack of stratification; the perfectly preserved minute spheres and cells; and the absolute lack of any evidence of an organic origin of the dense material, all favor the view that the Chalk was inorganic in origin.” W. A. Tarr, “Is the Chalk a Chemical Deposit?” Geological Magazine, Vol. 62, No. 6, June 1925, p. 259.

14

. “Prior to 1964, dolomite was unknown as a significant deposit in Holocene [recent] sediments and a major concern of sedimentologists was ‘The Dolomite Problem’.” Blatt, p. 332.

15

. “Dolomite ... poses a problem of origin, because the mineral is not secreted by organisms as shell material. Direct precipitation from solution in seawater is not considered adequate to explain the great thicknesses of dolomite rock that are found in the geologic record.”  Strahler, pp. 117–118.

16

. Blatt, pp. 306, 307, 316.

17

. Anne C. Sigleo, “Organic Geochemistry of Silicified Wood, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 42, September 1978, pp. 1397–1405.

18

. Carleton Moore as reported at www.cnn.com on 23 June 2000. (See also:

www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/astronomy/news/2000/solarsys/20000623.html.) For details, see Douglas J. Sawyer et al., “Water Soluble Ions in the Nakhla Martian Meteorite,” Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Vol. 35, July 2000, pp. 743–747.

19

. “The primary observation is that the suite of species found in Nakhla [this meteorite] is similar to most common ions present in contemporary terrestrial seawater ... . In addition, the relative magnitude of the species is similar to that of seawater, except for the amount of calcium cation (Ca²⁺), carbonate, and the silicate anion. These are unexpectedly high ...”  Ibid., p. 745.

20

. Ibid., p. 744.