At 05:39 PM 10/25/97 -0600, bpayne@voyageronline.net wrote:
>Present-day swamps show a density of standing trees which generally
>interrupt line-of-sight in any horizontal direction within a distance of
>less than 200 to 300 feet from the observer. Organic matter from the
>trees collects on the swamp floor and is preserved in a reducing
>depositional environment. The tree stumps interrupt the horizontal
>continuity of the organic mat and roots/rootlets from each stump
>penetrate into the soil below. If the swamp was located in a tidal-flat
>area, buried by a storm-driven wash-over of sediment, and eventually
>preserved in the stratigraphic record now observable in outcrop, we
>would predict the presence of certain features. A cross-section through
>this hypothetical swamp deposit would show the features depicted in
>Figure 1. We would expect to see tree stumps in the coal with attached
>roots/rootlets penetrating the underlying strata. Many of these stumps
>would have attached trunks entombed in the lithified wash-over of sand
>and silt. If the tree stumps had been uprooted during the wash-over, we
>would see potholes left by the uprooted stumps which had been filled
>with the overlying sediment. The organic layer and underlying soil
>would be intensely penetrated by roots, leaving little or no bedded
>structure and creating a transitional zone between the underclay and
>coal.
>
Then I would presume that you would agree that the Joggins section of
Newfoundland fits your description above.
Consider these descriptions:
""Logan's 'Division 4', with a thickness of 2,539 feet, is the
main fossiliferous horizon with coal formation, and often abounds
in fresh-water bivalves, air-breathing snails, bivalve
crustaceans, tiny worm tubes, and bones and tracks of Amphibia;
even rain-drop impressions are preserved."~Louis V. Pirrson and
Charles Schuchert, Textbook of Geology, (New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1920), p. 783-784.
"Land snails were first discovered in the famous Joggins section
of Nova Scotia where they were associated with the skeletons of
amphibia. Both had taken refuge in standing hollow stumps that
were overwhelmed by floods and buried with sand and mud."~Charles
Schuchert and Carl O. Dunbar, Textbook of Geology, (New York:
John Wiley and Sons, 1933), p. 264.
Notice that the trees were standing and hollow, just what one sees in old
stumps in the Atchafalaya swamp of southern Louisiana (I used to fish down
there)
Trees had time to decay before the overlying layer was deposited. Coal
seams are indeed interrupted by the casts of old tree trunks which have been
infilled by sediment.
"Although much has been written about fossil wood and isolated
standing trees, far less is known about fossil forests. There
are a number of accounts of carboniferous standing tree fossil
forests, but very few of these contain any truly petrified trees.
The sigillaria trunks of Joggins, Nova Scotia, studied mainly for
the vertebrate fauna which the hollow trunks contain, the
lycopods of the Francis Creek Shale, Illinois, and the
Lepidodendron trunks of Victoria Park, Glasgow all decayed and
were subsequently filled by sediment. "~Timothy H. Jefferson, "Fossil
Forests from the Lower Cretaceous of Alexander Island Antarctica", Paleontology,
25, pt. 4, November, 1982, p. 684.
In a global flood where deposition was supposed to be instantaneous, how did
the trees decay to allow the sediment from above to infill their moulds in
the coal?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm