Quote:Upright Trees in Coal
OOOH how I love this ****. "polystrate trees" are a figment of the Creationists imaginations. Cyclothems are not a worldwide layer cake of coal forests. They record climates and sea level dletas in migrating river systems that have about reached "baseline" or the approximate wetland elevation of a coastal swamp as we see in florida and the Miss delta today. . The nifty sea cliffs of te inner Fundy basinshow cross sections of these coal seams. There are quite a few besides Joggins, there are beauties along the coast of Cap Breton between Port Hood and CheticAMP, AND FROM Boularderie Island to Point Morien along the Sydney coalfields at the tip of Cap Breton. Also at Cape Enrage in New Brunswick.
Ive seen most all of these and Im always wondering what the shoutings about. For if you look, you can see that the only upright trees are preserved in peat layers that lie atop the upward fining sand sequences of a cyclothem. The cyclothems take about 1000 years or more to orm and the Sigillaria trees , like todays puines are preserved and only portions of their trunks are preerved as the deposit infilled the coal swamp with ever fining sediment that ultimately became peat, then cannel coal, then the bituminous coal that is what the coalfields are noted. The "polystrate trees" (PS polystrate is a bogus word that has no scientific significance because it does not represent what youd wish it to (The word does not appear AT ALL in the AGI glossary of Geologic terms 5th ed [2006]). ALL of the supposed "polystrate" trees are actually seen in cross sections of stream channels where the trees had been floated and deposited within stream beds, the deposition in which, was done by classic meander belts like the Mississippi where Ox bows contain many layers of recent sediments and catch "Snags" and pull them down to be deposited all around by varying sediment types.
To give a more technical explanation, a river will cut a channel in older sediemnts and deposit sand and gravel in its channel. Ancient trees like Calamites and Sigillarian grow along the banks, beyond which is a floodplain that supports a larger forest of Sigillaria and giant ferns and cycads. Organic forest duff in this forest builds up a layer of peat that later forms coal. During periodic flood stages of the stream, the river breaks over its banks and out of its channel. Sand is deposited , choking the forest covering the peat and building a new channel. Only the stumps are left, some upright and some wind up in the new channel getting buried by sheet sediments. A new river channel establishes itself and a new forest (cyclothem) begins. Marine or brackish waters sometimes back up into these areas bringing in some marine fossils .
RL, you have to actually visit these sites and see them in 3D, not on some screen play by AIG.
Ill argue and, in a debate, beat up any of those "experts" whove tried making supposed points about "polystrate fossils"Either They just have no idea about how to interpret field data and or they really do know and theyre just doing it for the gullible, the pros dont buy any of their **** because it doesnt even make sense. After all, these processes are still going on today. The Mississippi delta (if it were not being robbed of silt) would be a great model of how" polystrate" fossil trees get caught in the Atchafalaya cuttoff and why sometimes we find buried steamboats in "dry land" miles from a nearest river meander, and these steamboats seem to be lying in multiple sediment layers.Stream morphology and captured fossils have always been a dynamic system and if you go to the cliffs at Blomeden or Cape Enrage, you can see these river beds in cross section right down their axes of flow and they are containing tree stumps and logs that appear to be in many depositional horizons.But its just not so me boy.
