Posted on 06/29/2007 9:02:10 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
A buried treasure of trees
A Washington state man who always loved to dig in the dirt unearths a petrified forest, covered by lava 15 million years ago while still upright.
By Tomas Alex Tizon
Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2007
Yakima, Wash. — Clyde Friend's life changed the moment his bulldozer hit the first tree on a hot summer afternoon in 2002 as he leveled a hill behind his workshop. Chips flew everywhere, a small explosion of brown and white shards.
He hopped off the dozer to investigate. There, embedded in the hill, was a mostly intact fossilized tree trunk standing upright in solid rock. "Well, that's different," he recalls thinking.
A heavy-machine operator for most of his working life, Friend was used to finding bits of petrified wood now and then. He'd never bumped into anything like this.
For the next several days, in the privacy of his remote 10-acre lot, Friend dug up the rest of his find by chipping away the surrounding rock. It turned out to be a petrified hickory tree, 18 feet tall and as big around as a cantaloupe.
He extracted it in pieces and put it in storage, thinking it could be worth something someday. Then he went back to leveling the hill — until he hit the second tree. It was the same height as the first, but thicker. The third tree was identical, but the fourth took his breath away: 20 inches in diameter.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Most of what you say is correct. I do have one question though—if they were buried by lava as fast as you (and the article) claim, why are they all still standing? That much lava moving that fast would knock most—if not all—of those trees down.
Indeed, a good question, and I imagine that’s why this is such a remarkable find. However, simply because we may not understand the exact mechanics of the preservation, doesn’t mean we should throw out facts in evidence. The facts clearly show the rocks surrounding the petrified forest are volcanic in nature. Thus, we cannot conclude they were burried by a great watery flood, for if they were, the rocks would be sedimentary in nature.
Possible answer to the question posed though is, that a nearby volcano spat out hot ash and similar hot volcanic rocks that quickly covered a surrounding forest, quickly enough that even oxidation (fire) could not occur due to the lack of oxygen in the local atmosphere. Think Pompeii on an even grander and quicker scale.
Ash and cinder fall slowly enough to allow the trees to burn.
These “trees” only appear to be 15 million years old because we all know the Earth is only 6000 years old...
for your reading pleasure ...
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~kenhon/GEOL205/flows/default.htm
See especially the “Lava Trees and Tree Moulds” section, wherein the following statement can be found “Lava trees and tree moulds are closely related phenomena. Both form when high volume surface flows engulf a forest. As shown in the sketch on the left, a flow initially surrounds the trunk of a tree and chills. This not only insulates the tree and prevents it from burning,...”
Contrary to what many may read into my posts, I am not throwing out the facts. I don't dispute any physical facts shown here.
However, I believe that science tends to dismiss or ignore possibilities simply because they don't agree with those possibilities.
Think Pompeii on an even grander and quicker scale.
While Pompeii holds many preserved buildings and people, I don't believe (correct me if I'm mistaken) that any vegetation is preserved in the same way. Ash may fall and cover things--but not fast enough to prevent burning. Look at the recent Mt. St. Helens explosion. The speed of that explosion was enough to flatten the forests around for miles.
Again--I'm not saying I know what happened here. But I am saying that science doesn't know either, and the proclamation of their guess is premature at best, and totally wrong at worst. I'm guessing somewhere in the middle.
Cool, I wonder if those are 15 million years old too?
So everything we can see in the universe must be closer to us than 6000 light years?
Impossible! Every sane person knows the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
Very cool. Google up Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone for a much more extensive buried forest. I was amazed when I saw it in field camp. There are lots of trees still standing like the day the ash fell.
Fascinating story. Clyde is interesting too.
Fifteen million year old hickory trees, but no petrified hickory nuts? Maybe the petrified squirrels got ‘em?
I agree science doesn't know exactly what happened. The only point to my posts were to answer some other charges that were made that this was caused by a worldwide flood, simply because bark was left on the trees. As I showed, simply because bark was left on the trees is not evidence of a flood because:
1. There are cases (see other posts) of trees being quickly covered by lava without being completely consumed and also, in Pompeii, what was observed was that the hot ash and toxic gasses discharged by the volcano displaced breathable air, not at a rate where oxidation (fire) did not occur, but thousands of people did suffocate. Thus, it's not unreasonable to hypothesize that if this phenomenon occurred "on a grander and quicker scale" that oxygen would be displaced fast enough to deprive the fire triangle of oxygen, thus also preserving the bark.
2. And this is more important, that if these trees were buried in a world wide flood of water, then the rocks surrounding them would be sedimentary not igneous in nature. This is the key piece of evidence that any reasonable person must step back and say, "Yes, clearly this isn't evidence of a world wide flood. We may not know exactly how it happened, but there's no way it was caused by water".
Note for the record, I'm not saying you were claiming a world wide flood, but the original post I responded to was implying this.
Dear Rev,
Consider that ash often precedes lava, and that a small amount of ash might, just might, have prevented bark combusion.
Not to mention that the bark on the outside might well have been thick enough to protect the rest of the tree.
And, was the encasing rock molten or did it solidify in place around the tree?
I ask these questions because the evos versus the crevos bit seems to go nowhere.
“I don’t believe (correct me if I’m mistaken) that any vegetation is preserved in the same way.”
Granted that the volcanic events were different in some ways at Pompeii, but the basics are similar. Perhaps your confusion lies in “vegetation is preserved”. The trees were fossilized, not preserved as organic material.
Volcanic ash is not the same a lava. Molten lava will burn just about anything organic. You do not find large, standing sections of tree trunks in lava deposits.
Volcanic ash, on the other hand, can be either hot or cooled. If the latter, it can bury anything. There are numerous repeated deposits of ash preserving covered forest in Yellowstone Park.
I would like to know who identified the wood as “hickory.” Was this an expert’s opinion, or the word of some guy who accidentally ran into the fossils with a bull-dozer? Identifying fossil wood is not a simple matter, and there are few good books on the subject — and there is much folklore.
As for people who believe that the Earth is but a few thousand years old, your scientific knowledge is really pitiful. Not only that, but your understanding of the Bible is less than one would expect from an adult, Sorry about that.
“He extracted it in pieces and put it in storage, thinking it could be worth something someday. Then he went back to leveling the hill — until he hit the second tree. It was the same height as the first, but thicker. The third tree was identical, but the fourth took his breath away: 20 inches in diameter.
“I thought, ‘One more tree and that’s the end,’ “ Friend says. “But after one, there’d be another one right behind. I haven’t found the end yet.”
Friend spent the rest of the summer, and much of the last five years, unearthing what scientists have since confirmed as an ancient hardwood forest that was buried under lava about 15 million years ago. The 2-acre hill, Friend learned, was a giant mound of volcanic rock known as basalt.”
Five years from now, when this guy gets to the bottom of the pile, we’ll be reading a story about a dumbfounded bull dozer operator finding a fossilzed grader with a wiry little shrunken man behind the wheel.
Yeah, he washed up and got a manicure for the photog.
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