MrDarwin

You know, all we have to demonstrate is that the fast-growing "stalactites" differ in their chemical composition from the stalactites found in caverns, and it blows the creationists' argument out of the water.

Of course they'll still flail their arms as if they're swimming.

Claudia

I have done part of my studies (the part where Ilearned Geology) in Saint Etienne School of mine, and I have never heard about problematic tree fossils. Which should mean that the fossils presented here are not considered as singular (St etienne area is a big coal basin).

ps418

In fact, coal seams, which is where 'polystrate trees' are usually found, are often topped with a particular type of tidal deposit that allows for an estimate of the rate at which the trees were buried, and the estimates come out a wee bit shorter than "millions of years." There are also modern analogues that show how this happening right now, no miracles required. From my article on coal:

Roof shale rhythmites as a depositional chronometer

Many Carboniferous coals in the mid US (Illinois, Kansas, Indiana) are overlain by "roof shales" containing rhythmic laminae sequences interpreted as tidal rhythmites (e.g. Archer at al. 1995; Greb and Archer 1998). These roof shales often bury upright trees above coals. These sedimentary deposits are very distinctive in appearance. They usually consist of sand-mud couplets, each about 1mm-1cm thick. These couplets are usually flat (planar) to slightly wavy. The individual couplets are arranged in larger sequences of about 10-12 couplets, which progressively increase and then decrease in thickness. Seperating each sequence of couplets is a distinct dark band, which in modern examples represent bacterial colonization of the tidal flats during the period of neap emergence. Similar tidal rhythmites have been documented burying trees in Alaska, near the town of Portage, where coseismic subsidence in the year 1964 resulted in the aggradation of tidal flats over spruce groves near the coast (Atwater et al., 2001).

Precambrian tidal rhythmites. The dark layers represent the neap emergence.
Linked from University of Adelaide

Tessier explains:

"Successive couplets are arranged into microsequences, a few cm to 15cm in thickness, seperated from each other by a dark layer. Each microsequence contains 10-12 couplets and the individual couplet thicknesses thicken and thin progressively from the bottom to the top of the sequence. These microsequences represent a vertical record of neap-spring tidal cycles.

"In a given microsequence, the number of couplets corresponds exactly to the number of tides able to reach the upper intertidal domain which only flooded during spring tides. Neap tides are characterized by extended periods of subarial emergence lasting at least several days. A couplet thus represents the depositional record of a single semi-diurnal cycle . . . In some cases, a very thin second couplet occurs at the top of the primary couplet, reflecting minor reactivation during the ebb retreat.

"Progressive thickening of the couplets is related to increasing tidal range from neap to spring, progressive thinning representing the descreasing tidal range from spring to neap. The neap emergence is manifested by a dark layer . . . At such times no tidally induced sedimentation occurs on the flats and extensive microbial activity develops a thin mucilaginous film" (p. 265-266).

Archer (1996) notes that "In well preserved examples, it is possible to extract synodic, tropical, and anomalistic periods. Yearly periods, which probably relate to sediment supply, have also been documented from several sites" (p. 6; see also Kvale et al. 1994).

It would be easy to dismiss such an interpretation if not for the fact that identical tidal rhythmite sequences are being deposited today in macrotidal estuarine environments, such as the Bay of Fundy (Johnson et al 1996), and the Bay of Mont Saint Michel in France (Tessier at al. 1995), no global flood required. I highly recommend that interested parties view the comparison photos in Tessier (1995). If we assume that the earth's tidal phases had approximately the same periods when the coals were deposited as they do today, and there is no reason to suppose otherwise, then the rhythmites would indicate that the roof shales were deposited over many years. For instance, both the Carboniferous and modern rhythmites pictured in Tessier (1995, p. 266) accumulated at roughly ~1cm per month, locally even faster, which is relatively fast as far as depositional rates go, but not nearly fast enough to be fit into a deluge model which requires, among other geologic miracles, dozens of stacked cyclothems to accumulate in mere weeks or months during Noah's Flood.

Patrick