manderguy

I just wanted some more knowledgeable opinions to make sure I understand this stuff right.

Debating with a creationist who claims overthrusts would shatter the rock, and also rock couldn’t be bent and folded like we see it in many places. As I understand it, the deformation pressure causes enough heat that the rocks behave in a more plastic manner. So it more like bending silly putty as opposed to a slate shingle.

Another claim was about polystrate tree fossils in St. Etienne, France. I assume this case is similar to the cases in Yellowstone and Nova Scotia. Anyone know about this specific case?

He’s also claiming the trees at Mt. St Helen are fossilized, which is different from the older claim of new coal being formed. Anyone know anything about this new version of the old claims?

And finally, he mentioned a case of stalactites growing 5 feet in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial in 45 yrs. Does anyone know the specifics? Is this just a case of the stalactites forming from the calcium sulfate from the gypsum or the calcium hydroxide from the cement or mortar?

(side note: I know these don’t set a min age for the earth anyway.)

MrDarwin

Not sure if this helps, but in most cases rocks are folded very slowly (i.e., over millions of years) and this probably accounts for their not breaking, rather than the heat generated. Many things that will break if bent quickly will not break if bent slowly. Patrick will know more about this.

Never heard of it but all such cases I've looked into have been badly misrepresented by creationists. Try doing a google search. (edited to add a link to the only information I could find on this particular subject)

They are not "fossilized" any more than a miner's hat that is coated with mineral deposits is fossilized (another favorite creationist example). Try asking him if most of the organic material in the trees has been replaced with minerals, as is the case with most fossils (and pretty much all the old ones). Also try asking him where he's getting this stuff!

Stalactites can grow fairly quickly under the right conditions. So what does that mean? Only that stalactites can grow fairly quickly under the right conditions. But I suspect that the "stalactites" in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial are different in composition from the ones found in caves, and I suspect that there are ways to estimate their approximate ages aside from the sheer fact of their existence.

Craig

Tell him I'll be down there in September and will be happy to pick up some non-fossilized wood for him, if he needs proof.

Mageth

talkorigins on "polystrate" fossils

ps418

That's exactly right. I've seen pictures of plastically-deformed ice in ice cores as well. Obviously, if not under some confining pressure, ice would respond to stress by shattering. Under confining pressure, it deforms plastically. Another interesting obsevation is the observed plastic deformation of materials that are known to have been lithified at the time of deposition, such as plastically deformed pebbles or cobbles of igneous rock.

Well, I dont know what the claim is exactly. If the claim is that trees preserved in situ contradict mainstream geology, then the claim is clearly false. I am familiar with the Eocene Yellowstone trees and the in situ Carboniferous lycopsids in Nova Scotia. The details of both formations provide a fantastic refutation of flood geology. You can find some info in my article on Fossil forests and the flood, as well as my article on Coal and the flood.

There are several different levels of buried in situ trees in the vicinity of Mt St Helens, due to the multiple eruptions over the past several hundred years. Some of the older levels of trees are indeed being silicified, or replaced by silica, but none are close to being completely silificied. I'll try to find my copies of Karowe and Jefferson (1987) and Yamaguchi and Hoblitt (1995), and see what they say about the degree of 'fossiliztion' of these trees. From my fossil forest article:

Karowe, A. and T. Jefferson, 1987. Burial of trees by eruptions of Mt. St. Helens, Washington: implications for the interpretation of fossil forests. Geology Magazine 124:191-204.

Yamaguchi, D. K., and Hoblitt, 1995. Tree-ring dating of pre-1980 volcanic flowage deposits at Mount St. Helens, Washington, GSA Bulletin 107, pp. 1077-1093.


A few points. First, no one dates the earth by dating stalactites, and no one should try to date stalactites by dividing their length by their current growth rates. A much better way is U-series or 231Pa dating, or by stable isotope correlation with well-dated proxy records. Second, if this is like other examples of 'stalactites' that YEC refer to, they have very little in common (other than shape) with the accretionary structures that you see in caves. I don't know very much about stalactites, but one similar accretionary structure that I am familiar with is the Devil's Hole calcite vein. You can find some interesting information about this vein, and how it is dated, at the bottom of this page. There are plenty of other case like that, that is just the one Im most familiar with.

Patrick

manderguy

Thanks for the replies.

From his text: "Another vivid case of polystrate fossils is in "Saint-Etienne" (france) and features about 11 fossilized tree trunks, also in a roadcut. Maybe no big deal, except that the tree trunks have no tops or bottoms, and at least one of them is upside down: clearly the work of a violent flow of water, which would have no trouble detaching the bottoms and tops of the trees and then throwing the trunks where they ended up. And these tree trunks are surrounded by rock in the layers that we have been told to believe are the fruit of millions of years' work. So much for that notion. "

The site that MrDarwin linked is the only thing that I came up with on Google as well. The brief reference to St. Etienne suggests (as suspected) reality is far removed from the creationist "facts". Too bad it's not dealt with at TO like the Yellowstone and Nova Scotia formations.

MrDarwin

And of course paleontologists don't believe floods and other cataclysmic events ever happened in prehistoric times, nor that several inches or feet of sediment were ever deposited in anything less than several million years

Coragyps

It very likely could be the calcium hydroxide in set cement (mortar or concrete) getting leached out by groundwater, dripping into the basement, and getting neutralized and turned into limestone (calcium carbonate) by carbon dioxide from the air. I wonder if they're on the tour of the monument?

Mageth

From here:

Coragyps

Hot damn! Thanks, Mageth - that makes me look like I know something!
A Google for "lincoln memorial" + stalactite shows three pages of links, all apparently leading ultimately to Kent Hovind. If Kent told me there was a statue of A. Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, I'd go look for myself.