> Andrew MacRae has an excellent article on "Polystrate"
> fossils at:
> http://earth.ics.uci.edu:8080/faqs/faqs-mustread.html
> after Andrew MacRae's article is a kind of funny article
> on the "fossile whale standing on its tail" by
> Darby Smith.
> To me, Andrew MacRae's explaining polystrate trees with
> roots and rootlels intact, rules out this happening
> durning a catastrophic flood. A catastrophic flood would
> have removed fragile rootlets.
> Wayne Mckellips
> rycttb@sprynet.com
> http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/rycttb
>
Just the opposite is true, as it turns out "kettles" seen as rather
circular shapes in the mine's roof (they are the bottoms of cylindrical
bodies of rock which can easily detach and fall) are really bottoms of
upright tree trunks. The lower portions, including the roots, are
frequently mined away along with the rest of the coal, leaving only the
trunk penetrating up through the roof into the strata above.
Fossil trees, such as mentioned above, give us additional information that
helps us date the entire sequence and tie at least some of the layers
together. If the trees grew in the place in which they are now found (in
other words, were trees growing in the swamp), then after the peat had
accumulated and the whole area eventually slowly submerged, their dead
trunks would have extended up into the ocean water overhead, sometimes as
much as thirty to forty feet.
Consider an exposed tree trunk extending thirty feet up from the bottom of
an ocean. No woody tree can long survive under sea water. Some may grow
with their roots in salt water, but when any tree is covered by sea water,
it will die. How long would it take that dead tree trunk to rot and fall
over? Could it remain upright for millions or for even hundreds of years,
while the mud slowly accumulated around it? Obviously not. Some polystrate
trees even intersect more than one coal layer! Did it ride the strata down
and up again and then down again for millions of years? From studying
these trees, we can conclude that the length of time for accumulation of
the peat (which later turned into coal) and the overlying sediments was
less time than it takes for wood to decay. Obviously, wood decays in only
a few decades at most, whether in an active ocean environment, standing in
air, or furied in sediments.
Polystrate trees which extend through more than one layer (hence the name
"poly-strate"- meaning "many strata") in effect "tie the layers together"
into a short period of time. This period of time can't be explicitly
determined from the data, but it is wholly incompatible with the long-age
model normally taught.
"The Young Earth" John D. Morris Ph.D. (Polystrate Fossils page 100)
-Randy