Re: uniformitarianism

Arthur V. Chadwick (chadwicka@swac.edu)
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 19:02:46 -0800

At 03:27 PM 2/16/98 -0800, Greg Billock wrote:

>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?

Yamamoto, T. and A.V. Chadwick. 1982. Identification of fossil wood from
the Specimen Creek area of the Gallatin Petrified Forest, Yellowstone
National Park. Part I Gymnosperms. J. San-iku Gakuin J C. 10:25-42.

Yamamoto, T. and A.V. Chadwick. 1983.Identification of fossil wood from the
Specimen Creek area of the Gallatin Petrified Forest, Yellowstone National
Park. Part II Angiosperms. J. San-iku Gakuin J C. 11:49-66.

Chadwick, A.V., and T. Yamamoto. 1984. A paleoecological analysis of the
petrified trees in the Specimen Creek area of Yellowstone National Park,
Montana, USA. Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology. 45:39-48.

The first two were published in Japan, and you can be excused for not
having seen these. The last was not. I think the problem died down,
because everyone was pretty much convinced by what happened at Spirit Lake
that the case was closed on YNP. If Fritz subsequently changed his mind (I
suspect that he has not), it is news to me.

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

Arct presented his stuff at GSA and at other meetings, but the data in his
thesis have never been published formally. Nevertheless, these data remain
the most compelling evidence for the allochthonous origin of the trees.
His thesis is referenced in the Chadwick and Yamamoto paper.
Art
http://chadwicka.swau.edu