Tonight I had a wonderful dinner with Art and he brought this now world
famous rock. The fossil was better than it appeared in his poor picture on
the web. What I had not seen in the photo was the layers. There are
layers in the rock, and the fossil is perpendicular to them (best seen on
another face of the rock). I will say that the layers are faint, but the
rock was uneroded. I asked if the layers were crossbeds--Art didn't think
so. I couldn't argue with him about that, as I haven't seen the original
bed. I made an estimate (not a count) of the number of layers and came up
with about 40 layers for the distance the leaf would occupy. If this is a
tidal deposit, this would mean that the fossil took about 40 days to be
covered. Given what I had said earlier about leaves lasting several weeks
in water, I don't find this unexpected or unlikely. Art might disagree
with me here. I would cite the leaves on the bottom of my swimming pool
sure last a long time. :-) Anyway, it was a fascinating fossil to see in
person.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm