If you're looking for satisfaction, try a different brand of beer.
I've read the TO "explanation" of polystrate fossils a number of times and still find it to be full of fluff and no substance.
Then you should read it again, because it addresses the issue quite well. But I see from your comments below that you didn't understand it well enough.
For instance, there is no explanation of the polystrate trees that are often found upside down or at an oblique angles to bedding planes. The last time I was out in the forest, I just didn't see too many trees growing upside down, but, who knows, I might have missed a few.
Feel free to document that there *are* polystrate trees that are actually *growing* "upside down or at an oblique angles to bedding planes". If you've found some, then you're the first creationist to do so, you'll be famous.
What I *have* seen are either trees that have:
1. Been clearly uprooted (unlike the still-rooted trees discussed in the FAQ) and thus ended up in fallen or tumbled positions in the strata, or2. Are rooted and at odd angles, but the "bedding plane" has been skewed by geologic activity and slanted or even inverted, and the tree (which is "standing" properly relative to the actual bedding plane) with it.
Feel free to document any cases you think aren't covered by those well-known scenarios.
A lot of the "trees" which constitute these fossils are actually large reeds such as lycopods which would hardly stand upright for the years and years it would take to cover them in a standard uniformitarian scenario.
Now I *know* you didn't understand the FAQ. It specifically makes the point that "polystrate" tree fossils are *not* formed by "uniformitarian scenarios" -- not every geological event in standard geology has to happen slowly. I quote:
As for Malone's "problem" with the "thousands of years" for the tree to remain upright for "slow accumulation" to occur, it is a non-problem - he is simply interpolating the average depositional rates for an entire formation down to the scale of metres. This is not the correct way to do it, because individual beds can be deposited rapidly (say, sands and mud during a levee breach)And:
Like the modern environments around Mt. St. Helens, there is potential to bury stumps in-place *and* to transport them upright in a variety of sedimentary environments (although burial in-place is far more common).It's not spelled out as well as it could be, perhaps, but the point is that sometimes deep layers of sediment *are* laid down quickly. As the T.O. site mentions elsewhere on this topic:
The writer asks where, if there was no (global?) Flood, the sediment come from to bury and petrify trees in an upright position? The answer is rather simple, local flooding. Local large scale flooding is rather common and quite capable of burying trees in sediment. Another source of sediment capable of burying trees are volcanoes, which can bury whole forests in layers of volcanic ash.Note that the Mt. Saint Helen's volcanic eruption buried thousands of acres of forest in deep ash, and that the Mississippi river flooding of 1993 flooded 8 million acres of land, and over 12,000 square miles of farmland was rendered useless because of sediment deposits. Maximum sand deposition in some areas was 8 feet, and the Mississippi is a slow-moving river. Flash floods can produce much deeper sediment pileups, as can heavy raids and/or mudslides.
"Reeds" (see below, more like "trees") can easily be buried in volcanic ash falls, for example, or rising silt deposits.
The Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, have been known to cover trees ten meters high in just a few years.
Another example of this is a burrow pit near Donaldsonville, LA. When they excavated backswamp clays to rebuild the adjacent levee, they uncovered three levels of upright cypress forests buried on top of each other beneath the recent floodplain. These polystrate trees are buried within recent Mississippi River deposits that are only 4,000 years old.
The small reptiles found fossilized in some of these polystrate fossils would be using the hollow reed as shelter - there is no difficulty explaining that and I'm surprised TO would consider that an issue.
You're right -- it's *not* an issue for standard geology. It *is* an issue for the "Flood did it" people, because the reptiles would presumably have been washed out as the reeds were allegedly being transported by the Flood waters to be deposited in their present locations.
We often see polystrate fossils which not only cut across multiple strata, but also rock layers that are further cut by other fossils.
Both consistent with repeated short-term layering events. And *not* consistent with a "Flood" explanation, because polystrate trees are almost always "cut off" at a given layer, which makes sense via traditional geology but hard to explain with the Flood version.
Furthermore, the Flood has a pretty much an impossible time explaining the discovery of MULTIPLY LAYERED forests, where polystrate trees with established roots are found several layers above polystrate trees. This only makes sense in traditional geology, where a forest has time to grow, then get buried by vulcanism or flooding, and then there is a calm period long enough for *another* mature forest to grow on top of it, then *again* get buried. You can't do *that* with a theory about the geologic column all being laid down in a single year of flooding...
Some of the rock units cross cut by polystrate fossils include multiple seams of coal. I have trouble visualizing a lycopod standing upright long enough for that to happen.
When it was laid down, the coal was just organic sediment, the type deposited in large quantities in river flooding (most coal seams, in fact, are due to river deposits). Many rivers have flooded twice or more in a bad year.
And you're really stretching it when you call lycopods just "large reeds". As even the ICR creationist website admits:
The most impressive fossils are the upright lycopod trees. They bear little resemblance to their modern vine-like counterparts, for the stems of these fossil "vines" are thick tree trunks, up to one meter in diameter. The two most common types found are Lepidodendron and Sigilaria, which grew to over 30 feet in height. These trees had overlapping scalelike bark with a pithy inner pulp.
Wow, that's some "reed"... Look, anything that can grow to a height of 30 feet and have a trunk one meter (over a yard) in diameter isn't a dainty little thing. It's going to be close to as strong as a modern tree, and just as sturdy and long-lasting.
Also on the ICR web page for polystrate fossils is the comment, "The fossils remain only as upright stumps usually from 2-10 feet tall—sometimes much taller." Needless to say, it doesn't take much of a flood or mudslide to bury a tree just 2 to 10 feet -- or several smaller floods to produce multiple layers, each a few feet thick.
The depositional environments found in the deposits that host these polystrate fossils are also inconsistent with the "explanations" found on TO.
You're welcome to try to document that, if you think you can.
Instead of relying on line drawings, it might be advisable to talk to someone who has actually done field work on these fossils; or perhaps that went out of date 100 years ago also.
Andrew MacRae, the fellow who wrote the T.O. FAQ on polystrate trees, has indeed done field work on such fossils. You say you've read the FAQ "multiple times", how could you have missed where he wrote:
I have seen plenty of examples of "polystrate" fossils in the field.
So, as you said, no problem at all.
Indeed, no problem for standard geology at all.