Article 20513 of talk.origins: Newsgroups: talk.origins Path: klaava!hydra!news.funet.fi!fuug!mcsun!uunet!nntp1.radiomail.net!fernwood!aurora!isaak From: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) Subject: Response to the Response to the Flood FAQ, part 3 Message-ID: <1992Dec31.184814.6605@aurora.com> Reply-To: macrae@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca Organization: The Aurora Group Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 18:48:14 GMT Lines: 190 [Still more contributions from Andrew MacRae, who himself can't post.] [deletions...] > folta@cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) >> How could a one-year flood deposit the following: "In Yellowstone >> Park there is a stratigraphic section of 2000 feet exposed which >> shows 18 successive petrified forests. Each forest grew to >> maturity before it was wiped out with a lava flow." [J. Laurence >> Kulp, quoted in Strahler, _Science and Earth History_, pp >> 221-224.] >This is an easy one. These are not 18 separate petrified forests, but the >repeated, rapid, cataclysmic deposits of trees from elsewhere. The >"trees" found are in fact tree stumps, without extensive roots or >branches. It is well-known that tree stumps that are ripped up in floods >often are deposited roots-down. (For example, this month;s Science >magazine shows such an effect from a huge flood in Washington. Gish and >company have also found the same sort of event at Mt. St. Helens.) I've seen the Mt. St. Helens paper [Coffin, H.G., 1983. Erect floating stumps in Spirit Lake, Washington. Geology, v.11, p.298-299]. It is a good, if short, observational paper. The reason the roots are often deposited down is because of boulders that the roots have trapped. The author makes a good point, however, note that at least as many logs and stumps in the illustrations are _not_ upright [ibid. fig. 2, 3]. Also note that the transported nature of the trees can be tested by other methods. For instance, trees grow in soils. If you find a tree stump with roots embedded in a paleosol (fossil soil), it must be in place. Another test is whether leaves appropriate for the wood are found around the stump (i.e. leaf litter), and other evidence that you were dealing with a normal, "in place" forest floor at the horizon of the stumps. As you imply, an "extensive", delicate root system is more likely to be in place than transported. >Thus, what looks like "forest killed by volcano, tens of thousands of >years until new forest, which is killed by volcano, ..." could have >actually been entirely been deposited in rapid succession from a forest >at another location. In fact, I think they presented (at their seminar) >information that one of their group had gotten a Master's Thesis out of >looking into the different forest's tree rings and finding that the many >layers were from the same forest (tree rings corresponded). Now that would be interesting. Do you have a citation for the paper or thesis? Ok, instead of trying to find out more about the Yellowstone occurrence, for which your explantion is certainly a possibilty [see note at end. -Tero Sand] (without more data), lets look at some others. One that I am familiar with is the "Fossil Forest" on Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic: Cristie, R.L., and McMillan, N.J. (eds.), 1991. Tertiary fossil forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago, Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 403., 227pp. Here you find _mummified_ (i.e. non-mineralized) tree roots and trunks in an unlithified "leaf-litter" (needles, leaves, like you find in modern forests). Amber is common. And, you guessed it, there are paleosols: Tarnocai, C. and Smith, C.A.S., 1991. Paleosols of the Fossil Forest area, Axel Heiberg Island. IN: [see above], p.171-187. They recognize 15 paleosols in a 22m section at the site, including the ones with the tree stumps/logs. There is no evidence that this is a displaced occurrence. The stumps and leaf litter are exactly as it would be if you were walking through the forest today (except that the tree trunks have fallen over beside the stumps :-). The spacing between trees is similar to modern forests. You can even burn the wood :-) Explain that. And when you are finished, check out this reference: Carpenter, K., 1992. Behavior of hadrosaurs as interpreted from footprints in the "Mesaverde" Group (Campanian) of Coldorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming, v.29, no.2, p.81-96. Which describes dinosaur footprints and large tree stumps in the roof of two coal seams in Cretaceous age sediments. And visit Joggins, Nova Scotia, which has many upright stumps of Carboniferous age giant lycopod trees in what look like river-deposited sediments. Giant lycopod trees are not woody, they are a tube of vascular tissues with a pith-filled centre. The root systems are branch into a system 1-1.5m in diameter, and have many small rootlets (about 1cm dia, 10cm long) projecting from the main root branches into the surrounding sediment - - it is very unlikely that the rootlets or the pithy trunk could be transported far without being crushed. There are many more "fossil forest" horizons of different age worldwide. -Andrew macrae@geo.ucalgary.ca ---------- Note from TS: I contacted Andrew MacRae about the Yellowstone fossil forest, and he had these further comments to add: From macrae@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca Sun Jul 16 01:32:07 1995 Received: from tuba.geo.ucalgary.ca (root@tuba.geo.ucalgary.ca [136.159.90.20]) by kantti.helsinki.fi (8.6.12+Emil1.1/8.6.5) with SMTP id BAA27982 for ; Sun, 16 Jul 1995 01:32:04 +0300 Received: from pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca (pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca [136.159.91.130]) by tuba.geo.ucalgary.ca (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id QAA03277 for ; Sat, 15 Jul 1995 16:32:02 -0600 Received: by pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca (NX5.67d/NX3.0S) id AA21778; Sat, 15 Jul 95 16:29:45 -0600 Date: Sat, 15 Jul 95 16:29:45 -0600 From: Andrew MacRae Message-Id: <9507152229.AA21778@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca> Received: by NeXT.Mailer (1.100) Received: by NeXT Mailer (1.100) To: cust_ts@cc.helsinki.fi Subject: Re: Fossil forests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO [some deletions] Fritz, W.J., 1980. Reinterpretation of the depositional environment of the Yellowstone "fossil forests". Geology, v.8, p.309-313. Yuretich, R.F., 1984. Yellowstone fossil forests: New evidence for burial in place. Geology, v.12, p.159-162. Fritz, W.J., 1984. Comment and Reply on "Yellowstone fossil forests: New evidence for burial in place." Geology, v.12, p.638-639. Yuretich, R.F., 1984. Comment and Reply on "Yellowstone fossil forests: New evidence for burial in place." Geology, v.12, p.639. [Basically: both authors agree that the Specimen Ridge examples are in place, and that *some* of the trees at *other* sections might be transported.] [Fritz, 1984] "In many places not cited by Yuretich, I have also interpreted the tall stumps on Specimen Ridge to be in place and have state that the forests are best explained by _both_ in situ and transported wood (Fritz, 1980a, 1981a, 1981b, 1982, 1983; Fritz and Harrison, 1984). Furthermore, I have proposed ways to differentiate in situ from transported stumps (Fritz, 1981a, 1982, 1983; Fritz and Harrison, 1984); by all these criteria, the tall stumps on Specimen Ridge are in place." [Some other locations may have transported stumps] [Yuretich, 1984] "Fritz's Comment clears up any lingering misunderstandings that may have arisen as a result of the original publication about the Yellowstone fossil forests that triggered this series of exchanges (Fritz, 1980c). He has clearly stated elsewhere (Fritz, 1980a, 1982) that the Specimen Ridge trees are preserved in place, and I am glad this statement now appears in _Geology_." "Many details of the facies relationships in the Lamar River Formation still must be studied, but I think we have at last gotten to the root of the forest problem, and no longer need to be stumped by the origin of these fossil trees." -Andrew macrae@geo.ucalgary.ca home page: "http://geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/current_projects.html" Check out the U. of Calgary resident Peregrine falcon: http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/falcon