> Randy wrote:
>
> >How about coal formed from tree bark? Ever look at coal? To me it looks
> >just like tree bark. What if there really was a flood and all the trees of
> >the entire earth at that time floated bumped together removing all the
> >bark which sank and formed coal? I know it sounds farfetched but would it
> >be possible?
>
> The internal structure of coal is not that of trees or tree bark. It is
> structureless. If you want the coal to have been formed during the global
> flood, explain this problem.
>
I was under the assumption that it was widely accepted that coal was
composed of carbonized remains of great masses of plant remains. However,
coal seams are regularly found interbedded with strata of shale,
limestone or sandstone. Furthermore they are sometimes very thick and also
are repeated dozens, sometimes scores, of times in a vertical section.
There is obviously no such phenomenon being produced in the present world.
There are many existing peat bogs, of course, but none of these grade vertically
downward into a series of coal seams. The uniformitarian peat-bog theory of coal
seam origin seems quite unrelated to the real world.
A very obvious proof that coal beds must have been formed rapidly is the
existence of "polystrate" fossil tree trunks, as well as other polystrate
fossils (that is, fossils extending through several strata of coal and the
other rock units) in the coal beds.
"In 1959 Broadhurst and Magrow described a fossilized tree, in position of
growth, from the Coal Measures at Blackrod near Wigan in Lancashire. This
tree was preserved as a cast, and the evidence available suggested that the
cast was at least 38 feet in height. The original tree must have been
surrounded and buried by sediment which was compacted before the bulk of the
tree decomposed so that the cavity vacated by the trunk could be occupied
by new sediment which formed the cast. This implies a rapid rate of
sedimentation around the original tree."
-F.M.. Broadhurst, "Some Aspects of the Paleoecology of Non-Marine Faunas
and Rates of Sedimentation in the Lancashire Coal Measures." American Journal
of Science, Vol. 262 (Summer 1964), p.865.
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.Y/ ,_-8!s/*fi! '',_\,!@m[ Jacques Millot, "The Coelacanth"
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