The Pendulum Swings ! - 2

Material for this post has been taken extensively from 'The Fossil Record' by Sean D. Pitman

(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)


While the geological and  biological evidences are rather overwhelmingly in favour of Darwin's theory of evolution and the geological principle of Uniformitarianism, some of the anomalies in the geologic record are striking:-


Polystrate Trees:
The first among them are 'Polystrate Trees' or petrified trees that extend through multiple strata.  Many of them extend vertically through millions  of years of sedimentary rock. How can this phenomenon be explained? A common explanation is that these do not represent areas of the standard geologic column but areas of rapid local flooding and sedimentation. Therefore, the layers that these trees pass through do not represent thousands and millions of years. However, a petrified tree (located near Katherine Hill Bay next to Flat Rocks Point, Australia) extends up through many sedimentary layers and through two separated coal seams.  The tree itself is twelve feet tall, and was uncovered by a coal mining company. If the two separated coal seams represent long periods of time, how could this tree extend between them both? This is a difficulty for the current understanding of science. Further the layers themselves show no weathering between one layer and the next even though each layer was supposedly the surface of the earth for thousands if not millions of years.  To many, these combined mysteries are more easily explained by rapid underwater burial with quickly forming sediments. Many argue that the theory that each fossil bearing layer in the geologic column represents eons of time seems inadequate to explain such problems that are easily explained by quick catastrophic events.



Fossil Orientation
It is quite interesting to note that fossilized trees are not like what one would expect from the normal evolutionary picture of what happened.  According to current popular scientific belief many fossilized trees were buried naturally either as they lay fallen on the ground or as they stood while growing.  However, what is unique about almost all fossilized trees is that they do not have roots or branches and little bark if any.  The ones that have fallen and are lying horizontally also align themselves in the same general direction.   Many fossilized seashells and tree leaves too are oriented relative to each other in many parts of the  fossil record.  The trees in the forests of today do not do orient themselves when they fall.  They fall in a fairly random way without a statistical significance in their orientation. This is doesn't seem to be the case with petrified trees. Petrified trees seem to line up.  Even the vertical ones seem to have a particular orientation.  What could have caused these trees to lose all their roots, branches, and bark and to line up in the same direction as every other tree in that layer?  A similar effect was seen during the floods of Mt. St. Helen’s eruptions - they lost all their roots, branches and bark, and were all lined up in the same general direction; even the ones that sank vertically into the lakes.  Scientists at the National Petrified Forest in Arizona freely speculate that the petrified trees of that “forest” were “washed”  into their current positions judging from the fact that they generally have no branches, roots, or bark.  They all appear as though they were in some sort of catastrophe together.

 Other Problematic Considerations:

1. The Morrison Formation of the Late Jurassic age in western United States has a profusion of various animal fossils like fossil fish, frogs, lizards, salamanders, crocodiles, pterosaurs, shrew to rat-sized mammals, dinosaur eggs and is one of the richest zones of dinosaur fossils, particularly of the plant-eating species. This Formation has a strange scarcity of plant fossils prompting the question as to how such species of large herbivorous dinosaurs like Apatosaurus that seemed to need three to four tons of vegetation per day could survive in an environment that seem to be bereft of vegetation judging by the scarcity of plant fossils.

2. Coal Seams: According to modern science, coal forms from peat bogs.  Over a great many years, the peat becomes thicker and thicker.  After being covered by a sedimentary layer, the immense pressure and heat combined with water, changes the organic material chemically into coal.  It is thought to take about 6 feet of organic material to make one foot of coal.  However, this theory has trouble explaining a few interesting facts.
Coal seams, such as those found in Powder River Basin, Wyoming, US ranging from 150 to 200 feet in depth, point to a rapid coalification process. "These coal seams run remarkably thick and unsullied by other material. Usually, unwanted sediments, such as clay, washes over a deposit before coal seams can get very thick. This leaves scientists with the baffling question of how the seams get so massive and still remain undiluted by influxes of clay and other impurities (such as sulfur etc.) before they thicken."  This is quite a mystery considering the fact that a seam of coal 200 feet thick would have taken a layer of organic material over 1,200 feet thick to create it.  That is a lot of peat to be in just one area.  But, what makes this even more unbelievable is that the Powder River Basin covers an area of over 10,000 square miles.  This problem could be solved with the idea of a massive flood deposition of huge quantities of organic material in a very rapid timeframe.  Similar deposits of huge amounts of plant material occurred during the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption and flooding by Spirit Lake.

3. Stacked Forests

In different places throughout the world, there can be found layers of “forests” one on top of each other, with their trees, “in the position of growth” (still standing up).  It is also said that these forests each have their own layer of “soil”.  So it is felt that each of these were forests grew over long periods of time on top of previous forests, each of which was buried by some long ago catastrophe.  What is interesting about these places ( Yellowstone National Park where up to 65 different layers can be found with trees in the vertical position)  is that the trees are still oriented in their positions with each other.  Their “soil” is also found to be water sorted (coarse to fine), and often is found half way up a tree instead of at its base. This organic material also averages only 3 cm in thickness and, for many of the "forest" layers it is missing altogether.  In some areas, such as at Mt. Hornaday, as many as 43% of the forest layers have no organic layer at all.  The lower layers of Specimen Creek generally do have organic layers (96%), but the upper layers of Specimen Creek have far fewer organic layers.  It turns out that the average "forest" without an organic layer  is about 24%.  It seems rather strange for a forest to grow into full bloom without forming an organic layer.  How is this explained? 
There are other problems too about these stacked forests of Yellowstone related to sorting of organic layers; sparseness of pine needles even in areas where conifers dominate; absence of fossil pollen; rarity of clay bands whereas abundant unweathered feldspars scattered throughout the Yellowstone organic layers; absence of animal fossils in these layers; these are all problematic areas for uniformitarianism and a long protracted period of earth history.

 But there seems to be an overwhelming hurry to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction - to brand every event as due to a catastrophic flooding. This tendency must be avoided and a proper balance of seeing uniformitarian events as they are, and catastrophic events as they are, should be encouraged.