jazzlover_PR wrote in Message 30
"The petrified forests of Yellowstone National
Park have often been used to argue against
Bible chronology. These were once interpreted
as buried and petrified in place-as many
as 50 successive times, with a brand new
forest growing upon the debris of the previous
one. Naturally, such an interpretation would
require hundreds of thousands of years to
deposit the whole sequence and is inconsistent
with the Bible time-scale."
It sound like Mr. jazzlover_PR is indulging in "hit and run posting" here. Instead of discussing the topic at hand.
Mr. jazzlover_PR wrote:
"But this interpretation is also inconsistent
with the fact that the tree trunks and stumps
have been broken off at their base and do not
have proper root systems.
The above statement is quite blind to the "facts on the ground" as far as the Yellowstone Petrified Forests are concerned. The fact of the matter, contrary to the above sentence falsely claims, is that **not** all of the trees found in the Yellowstone Petrified Forests are "broken off at their base" and "do not have proper roots systems". Instead, the **upright** ( polystrate ) tree trunks have well-preserved, fossilized, intact roots systems that are rooted in recognizable fossil soils, called "paleosols."
This has all been discussed before in other threads, i.e. " Paleosols" at:
http://
EvC Forum: Paleosols -->
EvC Forum: Paleosols
There I wrote:
"Amidon (1997) illustrated a number of in place /
non-transported / in situ stumps, somewith trunks, using
photographs and line drawings. For example, pictures and
line drawing of **rooted** trees buried in place can be
found in the section on pages 63 to 83, which is titled
"Palesol Analysis", on of his thesis.
Also, as the section title implies, in addition to solid
evidence of **Rooted** trees within the Gallatin part of
the Yellowstone petrified forest, Amidon (1997) also
provides solid proof of the fact that these stumps are
rooted in well-developed paleosols. Amidon (1997)
recognized these "fossil soils on the presence of well-
developed soil horizons, well-developed soil structures
on both microscope and megascopic scale, and demonstrated
alteration of clay and other minerals that can be best
explained by the long-term weathering of sediments within
an active soil associated with a stable subaerial,
terrestrially exposed surface."
...text deleted...
Rettallack (1981, 1985, 1997) has documented well-rooted trees associated with fossil soils (paleosols). In fact, Rettalack (1997) contains a beautiful picture of one of the upright ( polystrate ) tree trunks showing it well rooted in a well-developed fossil soil (paleosol). Although there are many transported stumps, which have broken roots, it is an utter falsehood, to claim that all of the tree trunks, specifically the upright trees, "have been broken off at their base and do not have proper root systems". The presence of transported stumps and trunks mixed with in situ trees is quite typical of volcanic lahars as was directly observed within the debris flow deposits produced by the eruption Mt. St. Helens and many other volcanoes. This was something that Dr. Coffin either overlooked because he was so fixated with Spirit Lake or simply chosse to ignore in his arguments. Modern deposits and polystrate trees at Mt. St Helens virtually identical to the trees and strata at Yellowstone Petrified Forests has been documented by Yamaguchi, D. K., and Hoblitt (1995), Yuretich, R. F. (1981, 1984), and others.
Reference cited:
Amidon, L. (1997) Paleoclimate study of Eocene fossil
woods and associated Paleosols from the Gallatin
Petrified Forest, Gallatin National Forest, SW Montana.
unpublished Master's thesis. University of Montana.
Missoula, MT 142 pp.
Retallack, G. J., 1981, Comment on 'Reinterpretation
of Depositional Environment of the Yellowstone
"Fossil Forests"'. Geology. vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 52-53.
Retallack, G. J., 1985, Laboratory Exercises in
Paleopedology. University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.
Retallack, G. J., 1997, A Colour Guide to Paleosols.
Chichester, United Kingdom
Yamaguchi, D. K., and Hoblitt, 1995.Tree-ring dating
of pre-1980 volcanic flowage deposits at Mount St.
Helens, Washington. Geological Society of America
Bulletin, vol. 107, no. 9, pp. 1077-1093.
Yuretich, R. F., 1981, Comment on 'Reinterpretation of the
Depositional Environment of the Yellowstone "Fossil
Forests"' and 'Stumps Transported and Deposited
Upright by Mount St. Helens Mud Flows'. Geology.
vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 146.
Yuretich, R. F., 1984, Yellowstone Fossil Forests: New
Evidence for Burial in Place. Geology. vol. 12, no. 3,
pp. 159-162.
Mr. jazzlover_PR further wrote:
"Furthermore, trees from different layers have the
same 'signature' ring pattern, demonstrating that
they all grew at the same time."
In addition to a M.S. thesis by Dr. Arct, this arguments refer to:
Michael J. Arct, 1991, Dendroecology in the fossil
forests of the Specimen Creek area, Yellowstone
National Park, Ph.D. Dissertation,Loma Linda
University,Lmoa Linda, California.
There are problems with Dr. Arct's research. First, he used very short ring segments, which allowed for many of his correlations to the result of chance alignments instead of being real correlations. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Dr. Arct actually admitted that the procedures, which he used, **weren't** standard drendochronological procedures. He didn't even use the actual pattern of tree-ring within the wood, which he wasn't able to match. Instead, he matched the inta-annular bands within these tree rings. Although he used relatively short ring sequences, which are highly prone to false correlations, he was only able to correlate 9 of 28 trees that he examined. It is even highly questionable whether Arct's research actually proved that these trees died in same year. In fact, Dr. Arct clearly noted in his M.S. thesis that in 5 of 9 "matched" trees, which retained their bark, his so-called signature rings didn't always have the same number of tree rings between these signature sets and the bark. This conclusively proved that these 5 trees **didn't** die in same year as Walker claimed and made it impossible for the Noachian Flood or any single catastrophe to have killed them at the same time. The lack of bark on the other 4 trees makes it impossible to know if these trees were actually killed at the same time or not. Finally, Arct's matches came from only a 10 m (30 ft) section of strata. If a person looks at lahar deposits that accumulated during historic volcanic eruptions, it is quite possible for the thickness of strata containing the 9 trees, which he so-called "matched", to have accumulated during a single eruption.
Mr. jazzlover_PR further wrote:
"Rather than 50 successive forests, the geological
evidence is more consistent with the trees having
been uprooted from another place, and carried into
position by catastrophic volcanic mudflows-similar
to what happened during the Mount St. Helens
eruption in 1980, where waterlogged trees
were also seen to float and sink with the root
end pointing downwards."
All the cut and pasted text about the Yellowstone Petrified Forests shows is "Dr." Walker's remarkable lack of knowledge of inconvenient facts, i.e. numerous paleosols (fossil soils), rooted upright trees; the flimsy nature of Arct's signature correlations; the fact that Arct's couldn't correlate 19 of his 28 trees; that Arct's data actually shows 5 of the 9 correlated trees definitely died in separate years; and so forth, about the Yellowstone Petrified Forests. Also, Walker overlooks the fact that if these trees were buried in a lake, lahar deposits wouldn't enclose these trees. Instead, fine-grained lake deposits would enclose the upright ( polystrate ) trees within the Yellowstone Petrified Forests.
One matter that I agree with, in the above statement, is that Dr. Coffin's hypothesis that the Yellowstone Petrified Forests were created by undersea turbidity currents / flows is completely unworkable and refuted by the evidence.
Just some Thoughts
Bill
[This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 02-05-2004]
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