The literature

This page exists so that nobody has to take the article on trust.  Every source it rests on is listed here with what it actually measured, who wrote it, and which way it cuts.

Direction is assigned by what a source shows, not by what its author believes.  Several creationist sources below are tagged undercuts, because their own data cut against the young-earth reading.  Several mainstream ones are tagged complicates, because they hand the creationist side a real point.

Field definitions

supports means the source helps the subaqueous or Flood reading.  undercuts means it damages it.  complicates means it damages the loose popular version of the eolian case without helping the Flood.

Access notes that cost real time and should not have to be rediscovered.  The Answers Research Journal 2014 petrology PDF has a scrambled font map and pdftotext returns gibberish;  the publisher's HTML full text is clean.  The DOI ending .019 that circulates for Whitmore & Strom 2010 is wrong and resolves to a Comment on a loess paper;  the correct one ends .022.  GeoScienceWorld, the Loma Linda repository's viewcontent.cgi, Cedarville DigitalCommons and creationicc.org's 2018 PDFs are all closed to plain retrieval from here.

The primary eolian statement

Ancient Sandstones Considered to be Eolian

McKee, Edwin D.  In McKee (ed.), A Study of Global Sand Seas, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1052 (1979).  Coconino section, printed pp. 197-203.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1052/report.pdf

camp: agency method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: full

Key figures: area 32,000 mi² (51,500 km²);  thickness 12 m at Lees Ferry to over 300 m near Pine;  dips "mostly at 25 deg - 30 deg, but a few reach a maximum of about 34 deg";  about 50 ripple sets analysed, ripple index never below 17.

The single most valuable source in this dispute and the one most often argued with second-hand.  It carries the whole primary eolian case:  the five wind-ripple criteria, the rain-print morphology, the dry-sand slump marks, the chuckwalla-lizard and millipede experiments.  It is also far more careful than its reputation, disclaiming texture as proof of wind on the same page it makes the argument and conceding that the contorted bedding is ambiguous.  Printed page = PDF page − 9, anchored twice against the running heads.

Coconino Sandstone

Middleton, L. T., D. K. Elliott and M. Morales.  In Beus & Morales (eds.), Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press (2003), pp. 163-179.

camp: mainstream method: review direction: undercuts verified: citation

NOT OBTAINED, and the highest-value gap in this article.  Whitmore and Garner call it "the most often cited technical summary of the Coconino."  No archive.org scan of the 1990 or 2003 edition exists;  Open Library holds work records with no scan attached, so neither controlled digital lending nor search-inside applies.  It is reported to assign most Coconino laminae to wind-ripple, sand-flow and minor grainfall types at pp. 171 and 174, which would settle the last live diagnostic.  Everything the article knows about it is quoted through Whitmore.  Untried:  interlibrary loan, university library.

Marine sand-wave complex in the Permian of central Arizona

Blakey, Ronald C.  Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 54:29-51 (1984).

camp: mainstream method: field-survey direction: complicates verified: citation

A mainstream sedimentologist identifying a genuine marine sand-wave complex in the Schnebly Hill Formation, immediately below and laterally equivalent to the Coconino, grading into Coconino lithologies.  With Fisher 1961's marine limestone tongues inside the Coconino and the gradational Hermit contact on the Tanner Trail, this makes the Coconino a coastal erg rather than an interior desert, and the popular Sahara picture overdrawn.  It does not put the dunes underwater.  Used in the article through Whitmore & Garner 2018's quotation of it;  the 1984 paper itself was not obtained.

The creationist field programme

The Petrology of the Coconino Sandstone (Permian), Arizona, USA

Whitmore, John H., Raymond Strom, Stephen Cheung and Paul A. Garner.  Answers Research Journal 7:499-532 (2014).

https://answersresearchjournal.org/petrology-of-the-coconino-sandstone/

camp: creationist method: petrography direction: complicates verified: full

Hundreds of thin sections, XRD and SEM.  Three results the article accepts:  muscovite in almost every thin section and K-feldspar often more angular than the quartz beside it, which is the creationist argument the mainstream has not answered in print;  widespread dolomite over about half the Arizona outcrop area as beds, ooids, clasts, rhombs and cement;  and grain size increasing southward, the opposite of a normal desert gradient.  And one result that retires an eolian argument: Coconino grains are too small to frost mechanically, and the frosting is chemical overgrowth.  Their own sorting statement is weaker than the popular version:  Coconino sorting "falls at the upper edge of" the modern fine-eolian range.

Sand injectites at the base of the Coconino Sandstone, Grand Canyon, Arizona (USA)

Whitmore, John H. and Raymond Strom.  Sedimentary Geology 230(1-2):46-59 (2010).  doi:10.1016/j.sedgeo.2010.06.022

camp: creationist method: field-survey direction: complicates verified: full

Cracks examined at thirty locations, sampled at two under Grand Canyon permit GRCA-2005-SCI-0011, in a mainstream Elsevier journal, and it corrects McKee:  the sand-filled cracks at the Coconino base were injected upward, not washed-down desiccation cracks.  The field pattern is convincing.  And the authors date the injection to Laramide movement on the Bright Angel Fault, roughly 200 million years after deposition in conventional terms, so it is a null result as a Flood argument.  It also carries the best young-earth objection in the whole dispute, in the authors' own words at p. 57:  "It is unlikely the Coconino could have remained uncemented in excess of 250 million years."  On disk as the author's-personal-copy offprint and read on the printed page by the verifier, 2026-09-04;  the earlier record of it as unobtained was wrong.

The Coconino Sandstone (Permian, Arizona, USA): Implications for the Origin of Ancient Cross-bedded Sandstones

Whitmore, John H. and Paul A. Garner.  Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, pp. 581-627 (2018).

camp: creationist method: review direction: supports verified: full

The fullest statement of the subaqueous case, about 500 references, and the version the article engages.  It contains the strongest claim in the corpus, that the new data "indisputably identifies the Coconino as a subaqueous sandstone," and the admission that has to be read beside it:  "There are no modern analogs that match the precise sedimentology of the Coconino."  Its compaction section is a good petrographic argument.  Its p. 588 summary of Brand's four anomalies is the fairest available.  And at p. 588 it confirms McKee's fourth wind criterion without engaging the other four.

Lithostratigraphic Correlation of the Coconino Sandstone and a Global Survey of Permian "Eolian" Sandstones

Whitmore, John H.  Answers Research Journal 12:275-328 (2019).

https://assets.answersresearchjournal.org/doc/v12/coconino_sandstone.pdf

camp: creationist method: measurement direction: supports verified: full

Carries the canonical eleven-point subaqueous list at p. 282 and the cross-bed dip histograms at Fig. 6, pp. 287-288:  pooled Arizona mean 20.2°, locality means 17.3° to 22.8°.  The dip measurements are the best in the literature and the article credits them.  Two of the eleven points fail:  item 6 on avalanche tongues contradicts McKee and the author's own team's 2013 abstract, and item 10 misstates Maithel 2019.  The paper also defends the reality of the geological column against other creationists, which is a costly and honest concession inside the movement.

Characterization of hard-to-differentiate dune stratification types in the Permian Coconino Sandstone (Arizona, USA)

Maithel, Sarah A., Leonard R. Brand and John H. Whitmore.  Sedimentology 68(1):238-265 (2021).  doi:10.1111/sed.12774

camp: creationist method: petrography direction: undercuts verified: abstract

The peer-reviewed version of Maithel's 2019 Loma Linda dissertation, advised by Brand and Whitmore.  Its conclusion is that the cross-beds "may consist of grainflow and grainfall deposits, but these remain difficult to differentiate at outcrop and thin-section scales" — present but hard to tell apart, not absent, which is the opposite of what Whitmore's item 10 says it says.  It also corroborates the ~20° dips independently.  The strongest single point against the creationist synthesis, from inside the creationist team.  Closed at Wiley behind Cloudflare and the printed article was not obtained.  The abstract is confirmed word for word by three independent publisher-deposited records (Crossref JATS, Semantic Scholar/MAG, OpenAlex) and the abstract prints on p. 238.  The dissertation behind it was obtained and read in full;  see the next entry.  Note the wording differs between the two documents, so they are quoted separately.

Characterization of Cross-Bed Depositional Processes in the Coconino Sandstone

Maithel, Sarah A.  PhD dissertation, Loma Linda University, June 2019, xvii + 434 pp.  Advisers Brand (chair), Esperante, Nalin, Nick, Whitmore.  https://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/1870/

camp: creationist method: petrography direction: undercuts verified: full

The work behind the 2021 Sedimentology paper, and far more useful than it because it prints the literature review and the raw reasoning.  Four things in it bear on this article.  Its own dip dataset, independent of Whitmore's:  overall average 19.8°, n = 135 (p. 107), with dip "decreas[ing] rapidly upon approaching the lower bounding surface."  Its statement of the mainstream geometric answer to the dip argument, quoting Kocurek and Dott 1981 p. 581, that non-avalanche foresets are "necessarily below the angle of repose" and that the preserved lower part of a dune runs "from less than the angle of repose to near horizontal" (p. 36).  Its statement that the subaqueous model predicts sub-repose dips too, quoting Smith 1972 (p. 47), which is what actually neutralises the creationist dip argument.  And its restatement of the Middleton chapter (p. 23), which records that Middleton et al. published an illustration of wind-ripple lamination — the one part of Whitmore's item 10 that survives, and the reason this article treats the wind-ripple question as open.  Obtained by the verifier on 2026-09-04 with bin/cdp-fetch.py, which walks through the Loma Linda Cloudflare wall that plain curl cannot;  the previous record of the PDF as unreachable was wrong.  Now sources/papers/maithel-2019_cross-bed-depositional-processes-coconino.pdf.

Rounding of Quartz and K-Feldspar Sand From Beach to Dune Settings

Whitmore, John H. and Raymond Strom.  Answers Research Journal 10:259-270 (2017).

camp: creationist method: experiment direction: supports verified: citation

The experimental basis for items 2 and 3 of the eleven-point list.  Cited in the article only inside the quoted list;  the paper was downloaded but not worked through, because the grain-roundness argument is answered by McKee's own disclaimer rather than by re-doing the experiment.

Intraformational Parabolic Recumbent Folds in the Coconino Sandstone

Whitmore, John H., Guy Forsythe and Paul A. Garner.  Answers Research Journal 8:21-40 (2015).

camp: creationist method: field-survey direction: supports verified: abstract

Item 8 of the eleven-point list.  Real structures, but McKee had already conceded in 1979 that Coconino contorted bedding forms wet or dry.  Note the internal split:  this paper rules out a seismic origin for the Sedona folds, while Brand & Maithel 2021 attribute small-scale Coconino deformation to seismic influence.

Small-Scale Soft-Sediment Deformation Structures in the Cross-Bedded Coconino Sandstone; Possible Evidence for Seismic Influence

Brand, Leonard R. and Sarah A. Maithel.  Frontiers in Earth Science 9:723495 (2021).  CC-BY.

camp: creationist method: field-survey direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Open access, downloaded.  Attributes small-scale Coconino soft-sediment deformation to earthquakes, a mechanism entirely at home in deep time, and inconsistent with the other creationist explanation of Coconino folding.  Used in the article only for that contrast.

Conference abstracts from the same group

Maithel, Brand & Whitmore, "Morphology of avalanche beds in the Coconino Sandstone at Chino Wash, Seligman, Arizona," GSA Abstracts with Programs 45(7):126 (2013).  Emery, Maithel & Whitmore, "Can compaction account for lower-than-expected cross-bed dips in the Coconino Sandstone (Permian), Arizona?", GSA Abstracts with Programs 43(5):430 (2011).  Maithel, Brand & Whitmore, "Characterizing variation among prints interpreted as 'raindrop impressions' in the Permian Coconino Sandstone," GSA Abstracts with Programs 53(6) (2021).

camp: creationist method: field-survey direction: complicates verified: citation

Three unpublished-in-full items that carry load in the dispute.  The 2013 title contradicts item 6 of the eleven-point list.  The 2011 abstract is the only support for "compaction can account for only a few degrees," so that figure has no published calculation behind it.  The 2021 abstract is where the rain-print question goes next and is why this article declines to use rain prints in either direction.

Helble's critique of creationist research on the Coconino Sandstone fails

Whitmore, John H. and Paul A. Garner.  Proceedings of the 2025 New Scholars International Conference on Creationism, p. 32.  Cedarville University (2025).

camp: creationist method: commentary direction: undercuts verified: abstract

A one-page abstract in a volume its own author edited.  The single most important item in the Flood half of the dispute, because it concedes the arithmetic:  "Helble is correct that the processes he outlines could not have formed the Coconino during the Flood," and appeals instead to conditions that cannot be observed.  Fuller work is promised and has not appeared.

The trackways

Variations in salamander trackways resulting from substrate differences

Brand, Leonard R.  Journal of Paleontology 70(6):1004-1010 (1996).  doi:10.1017/s0022336000038701

camp: creationist method: experiment direction: undercuts verified: full

230 trackways of the western newt Taricha torosa across ten substrate combinations.  The result removes the underwater diagnostic:  toe marks are distorted "if the animals were walking underwater or on sloped, damp sand" (p. 1004).  Two conditions, not one, and the damp-sand condition is specific:  sand moderately wetted and then left at least eight hours (p. 1006).  Brand's own Discussion at p. 1010 draws the conclusion:  the Coconino trackways "may have been produced in either subaqueous sand or subaerial damp sand."  This is the load-bearing source in the trackway section and it is by the underwater hypothesis's own author, who left the question open in print.  Read on the printed page by the verifier, 2026-09-04, via the archive.org microfilm scan of the issue plus the publisher's own abstract HTML at Cambridge Core.

Paleozoic Vertebrate Ichnology of Grand Canyon National Park

Marchetti, Lorenzo, Heitor Francischini, Spencer G. Lucas, Sebastian Voigt, Adrian P. Hunt and Vincent L. Santucci.  Chapter 9 in the Grand Canyon National Park Centennial Paleontological Resource Inventory, National Park Service (2020), pp. 333-379.

https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/637951

camp: agency method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Public domain, free, and the best single source on the trackway dispute.  Records the rejection of Brand & Tang's hypothesis by Loope, Lockley and Marchetti et al., and replaces it with a gravity-driven digit-sliding locomotion model on inclined foresets.  The revision invalidated the ichnogenera Chelichnus and Laoporus because the "digit impressions" are drag marks, taking the standard eolian tetrapod ichnofacies concept with them.  Its successful prediction is what makes it more than a rebuttal: once slope effects are subtracted the Coconino track fauna matches contemporary non-desert assemblages and falls inside the Erpetopus biochron.  Printed page = PDF page + 332.

Tetrapod ichnotaxonomy in eolian paleoenvironments (Coconino and De Chelly formations, Arizona)

Marchetti, L., S. Voigt, S. G. Lucas, H. Francischini, P. Dentzien-Dias, R. Sacchi, M. Mangiacotti, S. Scali, A. Gazzola, A. Ronchi and A. Millhouse.  Earth-Science Reviews 190:148-170 (2019).

camp: mainstream method: experiment direction: undercuts verified: citation

The primary paper behind the NPS chapter.  Closed at Elsevier, no open copy anywhere, not obtained.  Its author list includes three herpetologists from a Milan lizard-behaviour group, so the locomotion model rests on the team's own live-animal work.  Mitigated by the 2020 NPS chapter, which states the same conclusions, is more recent, and is public domain.

Fossil vertebrate footprints in the Coconino Sandstone (Permian) of northern Arizona: Evidence for underwater origin

Brand, L. R. and T. Tang.  Geology 19:1201-1204 (1991).  And the Comments by Lockley and by Loope with the authors' Reply, Geology 20:666-670 (1992).

camp: creationist / mainstream method: experiment direction: supports verified: citation

Not obtained;  GeoScienceWorld is closed to this project.  The originating claim and the first published replies.  Brand's four anomalies are used in the article through Whitmore & Garner's own summary at p. 588, which is a hostile witness and therefore fair.  Loope's argument, that the Coconino cross-strata are climbing translatent strata produced by migrating wind ripples, is the strongest published sedimentological reply to Brand and the article does not rely on it, because it has not been read in the original.

Faith, Reason, & Earth History

Brand, Leonard and Arthur Chadwick.  3rd ed.  Andrews University Press (2018).

camp: creationist method: commentary direction: undercuts verified: full

EPUB in the source library, carrying printed-page anchors.  Page 474 is the most candid statement in the whole dispute:  the sedimentology "seems to point to wind-blown sand," the contradiction "indicates there are some unknown pieces of the puzzle," and "This research does not show whether the tracks were or were not made in the biblical flood."  Page 475 states the injectite mechanism as earthquake energy from Bright Angel Fault movement.

Other trackway literature, considered and not used

McKeever 1994 (Palaios 9:477-487);  McKeever & Haubold 1996 (J. Paleontology 70:1011-1022), the lumping revision that Marchetti et al. overturned;  Hunt & Santucci 1998;  Kramer et al. 1995 on Laoporus and pelycosaur predation;  Braddy 1995 on the invertebrate ichnotaxonomy;  Lockley et al. 1995 on the De Chelly;  Millhouse 2009 (Northern Arizona University MS thesis), the bridge between the old and new analyses;  Francischini et al. 2019 on Ichniotherium in the Coconino.

verified: citation

None of these was obtained and none is load-bearing.  The De Chelly and Corncockle occurrences matter to the article's argument that oblique trackways recur in every Permian erg, and that point is carried by the NPS chapter instead.  Francischini et al. 2019 is worth getting:  diadectomorphs are animals not expected in a desert, and it is an anomaly the eolian side raised on itself.

Not the Coconino

Rowland 2017;  Rowland & Caputo 2018 (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology);  and the 2020 PLOS ONE follow-up widely reported as the oldest tracks of shelled-egg-laying animals.

verified: citation

Listed here only to prevent a recurring confusion:  the fallen Bright Angel Trail boulder is Pennsylvanian Manakacha Formation, not Coconino.  Not used.

The Flood question

Sediment Transport and the Coconino Sandstone: A Reality Check on Flood Geology

Helble, Timothy K.  Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 63(1):25-41 (March 2011).

https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2011/PSCF3-11Helble.pdf

camp: old-earth-christian method: model direction: undercuts verified: full

Key figures: 26 km³ delivered against 42,000 km³ required, a shortfall of 1,600×;  52 years instead of 12 days;  a 25 m sand slab under 54 m of water moving at 1 m/s;  48 metric tons per second per metre.

An engineering mass balance run entirely on Austin's own inputs, at ten times Austin's own transport rate, with nine further assumptions granted to the young-earth side.  It also dismantles the tsunami and stacked-current rescues by checking Austin's cited sources.  Its one weak sentence is the swipe at Brand for not simulating Flood velocities, which is beside the point, and its p. 29 dip figure of 25° is higher than the modern measurements;  the article follows neither.

Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon: A Critique

Hill, Carol A. and Stephen O. Moshier.  Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 61(2):99-115 (June 2009).

camp: old-earth-christian method: commentary direction: undercuts verified: full

On disk.  Two of its arguments are used:  the internal collision between reptiles walking on bedforms and 3 m/sec currents under 100 m of water, and the point that Austin's cited mainstream analogue for underwater Coconino dunes never envisaged catastrophic flow.  Two of its factual claims are rejected in the article: the uncited "29-31 deg" cross-bed dips, which match no modern measurement, and the mechanical explanation of grain frosting, which Whitmore's SEM work retired.

Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe

Austin, Steven A. (ed.).  Institute for Creation Research (1994).

camp: creationist method: model direction: supports verified: citation

The source of the numbers Helble answers:  10,000 mi³ of sand, 200,000 mi², 315 ft average thickness, 3-5 m/s currents, 100 m water depth.  Borrowable on archive.org as grandcanyonmonum0000unse and not yet borrowed.  Helble and Hill & Moshier quote it consistently with each other, and the article cites Austin's figures through Helble rather than directly.  Any direct quotation of Austin should come from the book.

Considered and not used

Earth's Catastrophic Past, Snelling 2009 — restates Austin plus Brand at book length;  not on the critical path, since both are available in stronger primary form.  "Coconino Sandstone — The Most Powerful Argument Against the Flood?", Whitmore, Answers magazine 2015 — an honest lay summary of the same case, superseded here by the technical papers.  The Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth, Hill, Davidson, Helble & Ranney (eds.) 2016 — not on archive.org by any search;  Hill & Moshier 2009 substitutes by the same lead author.  Maithel, Brand & Whitmore 2019, Journal of Sedimentary Research 89:599-609 — a disaggregation methodology paper, often confused with the 2021 cross-bed paper, and not relevant to the depositional question.  Blakey 1988, 1990, 1996 and 2003, and Blakey & Knepp 1989 — the regional Permian framework;  only Blakey 1984 bears directly on the article's argument.