Re: uniformitarianism

Greg Billock (billgr@cco.caltech.edu)
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 15:27:50 -0800 (PST)

Art,

> >In the last exchange, both Fritz and Yuretich agree that the trees at
> >Specimen Ridge were buried in situ, both from root evidence and from
> >the surrounding sedimentation. They both agree that there are other
> >fossil forests where the evidence is much more touchy or favors
> >transport interpretations. (Or some combination of both.)
> >
> >I'm not sure what 'uniformitarianism' has to do with either model, but
> >that seems to be the end of the story (no further publications on the
> >matter).
>
> Well, I would say you have done some selecting in your data. We were
> publishing on the Yellowstone forests in 1984, and those were not our
> conclusions. A lot of the work done about that time was done by Coffin,
> Mike Arct (dendrochronology of the fossil trees), and ourselves, and the
> culmination was that the Park Service did remove the signs and National
> Geographic did change their maps.

That dialog ended in 1984. I think Fritz cites Coffin. I don't know about
your work. There is nothing since then on the subject that I know of.
When I was interested in this debate, I read the whole exchange in _Geology_,
and the references Fritz cited. I remember Coffin as being one of them.
If you published papers in 1984 on the subject, though, they may have been
in press during the time this was going on. What are the citations?

Since then, there has been other dendrochronology done on that forest, it
looks like, but nothing else that I found.

-Greg