Discussion on modern and ancient continental hypsometries

A.R. Wyatt's comment that hypsometric slopes for individual continents have large variations over the -50 to +250 m range with respect to the current sea level is contentious. Taking continental area as constant results in linear hypsometric slope changes with increments in flooded areas for the above elevations. The this assumption is valid given that the physical dimensions of the blocks do not change with flooding. Aside from the difficulties in using the normalized hypsographic curve, it represents data fora single continent, whereas the hypsometric data used involved a group of continents.