WHEN geological science began to take the interest of many during the Renaissance, the Genesis flood was generally invoked to explain the formation of coal. Some of these early studies were well executed, and the interpretations based on Flood geology were sound and reasonable. If this trend had continued, it is most likely that the questions concerning the source and formation of coal would be well answered today, but such is not the case. Much uncertainty and speculation still characterize coal geology. Little progress has been made in the past century.
The reason for this rests with the rise of the concept of uniformity proposed by James Hutton toward the close of the eighteenth century. Gradually a deluge by water was discarded from the thinking of scientists, and long ages and slow natural processes were increasingly advocated.
When men turn away from the Word of God to speculate on earth's past history they are without chart and compass. Satan directed in the development of an impressive edifice of false science that today entices nearly the whole scientific world into its portals.
What evidences were used to advance this concept so opposed to the Biblical record? As men studied the earth, especially coal-bearing sediments, they noticed certain features that impressed them as being strong arguments for much time. Trees were found petrified but in upright position, root-like structures appeared to penetrate through ancient soils, rootlets spreading outward from them in all directions. Giant horsetails or scouring rushes stood in the cliffs and quarry faces like smaller living representatives do in sandy habitats today. Without the "chart and compass" men were readily deceived into thinking that here, indeed, were incontrovertible evidences of geological time. The Biblical flood, which had a short duration of little over a year, could not be involved, so they thought, in the deposition of these sediments of fossils. Thus, more than any other strata, the coal-bearing formations were responsible for cementing geological thought concerning time.
But these arguments cannot be passed by lightly with merely a denial of their correctness. By faith we accept the truthfulness of the book of Genesis, but faith is based on evidence, and God has not left us without evidence in the coal-bearing rocks. We will consider in more detail one classic area that has been studied periodically for more than a hundred years.
The cliffs along the Bay of Fundy and on the east coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, are typical of carboniferous coal deposits in other parts of the world. Charles Lyell, perhaps more responsible than anyone else in establishing geology as a definite science, visited the cliffs near Joggins in 1842 (Lyell, 1843, pp. 176-178). A young Canadian scientist accompanied him during a later visit to this area and went on to make the most comprehensive study of the coal-bearing rocks of Nova Scotia ever undertaken. William Dawson set a pattern of thinking regarding the origin of the petrified trees, the coal seams, and the other phenomena associated with the coal measures that has been rather closely followed to the present time.
He considered each level of trees to represent a ground surface or soil level. Certain zones show rootlets, called Stigmaria rootlets, which he also took to be soil levels. Each coal seam was said to be the result of the gradual accumulation of plant debris in bogs or salt marshes. He recorded eighty-five such horizons and felt this to be the minimum number of soil levels revealed among several miles of sea cliffs in this region (Dawson, 1854, pp. 2-10).
A series of petrified forests one above the other has far-reaching implications. The time necessary for a forest to grow, for it to be covered by sediments, and for an other forest to grow on top of the newly laid soil is considerable. Furthermore, this happened not just once, but at least eighty-five times, because there are that many levels of upright trees or plant remains such as coal, prostrate trunks, leaves, et cetera.
If these are bona fide ground surfaces and forests in position of growth, the creationist is hard put to interpret them, be cause more time is involved than can be encompassed within the year of the Genesis flood; indeed, more time is involved than is understood for the existence of the earth since Creation.
Ellen G. White writes the following in Education, page 129:
"Before the Flood the development of vegetable and animal life was immeasurably superior to that which has since been known. At the Flood the surface of the earth was broken up, marked changes took place, and in the re-formation of the earth's crust were preserved many evidences of the life previously existing. The vast forests buried in the earth at the time of the Flood, and since changed to coal, form the extensive coal fields."
Because of the problem involved for those who accept literally the story of Creation and the Flood, research was begun in this area of Canada.
Although other evidences for growing surfaces are given by geologists, the upright position of trees and other plants is the most obvious and one of the strongest points. Three types of petrified plants are most commonly involved. The upright stumps are almost exclusively those of giant club mosses, a group that is extinct but is represented today by small creeping vines mistaken by most people for over grown "mosses." These ancient plants reached a diameter of three feet or more and truly looked like trees. A unique but not surprising feature of these giant club mosses is the hollow or soft pulp interiors. All these vertical trees are filled with sediments, and only the outer wood or bark remains as a thin film of coal. It seems obvious that the trees must have been hollow at the time they were buried by sediments.
Another petrified tree common in the Joggins area is a coniferous tree that is perhaps most closely represented today by the Parana pine of the Southern Hemisphere. None of these petrified trees was hollow, and none of them was found in a vertical orientation. Only the hollow trees were observed in the cliffs in the growing position.
The third type of plant in upright position is not a tree, but belongs to a group of somewhat fragile herbs called by various names such as horsetails, scouring rushes, or joint grass. Those fossilized specimens located in the cliffs of Nova Scotia were up to six inches in diameter, but most were not over two inches.
Rootlike structures called Stigmaria, up to six inches in diameter, are covered with regularly spaced pits, or scars, which are the points of attachment for the rootlets that spread out in all directions into the surrounding rock. Although the soft underclays below the coal seams are especially filled with Stigmaria and rootlets, both may be found in shales and sandstones unassociated directly with coal seams. In the environment of uniformitarian thought it was not difficult for Lyell, Dawson, and others to think of the underclays as ancient soil levels where trees with their roots and accompanying rootlets grew.
Paleobotanists have puzzled over the Stigmaria roots and rootlets. That they were growing rootlets seemed to fit best into the prevailing theories o£ time and evolution. They also had the distinct appearance of rootlets in position of growth on ancient soil zones. Yet there were aspects dissimilar to anything seen today that made it impossible for researchers to be unanimous in their conclusions on the Stigmaria rootlets. However, few questioned the in situ position of the structures even though the true nature of their function was not known. Rootlet-bearing Stigmaria have been traced several feet to ward petrified trees where they become one of the flaring roots of the trees. I have personally seen this situation clearly in one tree located in the cliffs northwest of Sydney Mines. Thus the relationship of the Stigmaria and their rootlets to the petrified trees is certain.
The fossils and the coal seams are situated in alternating sequences of shale and sandstone referred to as rhythmic sedimentation. Occasional seams of coal and layers of limestone are interspersed in the shales and sandstones that extend for miles along the Bay of Fundy near Joggins, Nova Scotia, and in other Acadian sites.
If these coal- and fossil-bearing rocks are the result of the Genesis flood there should be evidences in support of this view and against the popular opinion of long geological ages. There should be some explanation for these upright plants other than that of growth in position. What have been the results of research there?
Below are listed ten points that favor a view that the upright trees and horsetail plants drifted into position in the sediments. These evidences are difficult to explain for trees in position of growth.
1. Hollow giant club-moss trees were up right, but the coniferous solid-wood trees were not. As mentioned earlier, the up right trees were all hollow and became filled with sand and mud. If these trees are part of a forest still standing where it grew, is it not strange that fragile, hollow trees would survive the burial process without being knocked over, whereas the solid, more durable trees would all be toppled to a prone position?
2. Sediments inside and outside the hollow stumps do not match. It was a surprise to discover that 70 per cent of those examined did not contain the same kind of material as that which surrounded them, or the bedding inside did not match that outside. The conclusions from such facts are twofold: (1) The sediments built up so quickly and in such a fashion around the stumps that nothing entered them until mud and sand had reached the broken tops and spilled inside. (2) Disturbances following the filling of the stumps either moved the stumps into new positions or removed the surrounding sediments and brought in new material. Either of these possibilities does not agree with concepts of great ages and uniform condition.
3. A distinctive soil level is usually missing. It is expected that growing trees would have their roots anchored in a soil. This growth surface would support not only the trees but less important plants such as grasses, ferns, shrubs, et cetera. Further more, the leaves, limbs, and fruits of the trees themselves would drop to the ground and add to the organic debris. Thus a soil or humus layer would be built. Are such soil layers visible in these sediments of Nova Scotia? Occasionally trees sit upon coal seams. Geologists interpret these as compressed humus or marsh plants. Most often, however, the base of a tree is within a shale bed with no trace of a soil. Occasionally vertical trees are found wholly within sand stone, and again an organic layer is absent.
It is significant that when a coal seam or organic layer does lie below the base of a tree, almost never do the roots of the tree penetrate into that seam. The roots spread out above the seam or rest directly on top of the coal. If the coal represents a soil resulting from accumulation of organic matter upon a growing surface, the roots of the trees growing on that surface should be penetrating the coal, but this is not the case.
4. Overlapping vertical trees are seen. In one case noticed near Glace Bay two trees approximately two feet in diameter and within ten feet of each other over lapped a major portion of their heights. One tree arose twenty-five inches and ended nine inches below the base and the top respectively of the second tree. This means that if these trees are in position of growth, the major portion of the lower tree protruded above the ground during the entire life of the second tree. Further more, it remained hollow and did not fill with sediments until the second tree was buried. The difference in the level of origin of the two trees was not due to unevenness of the growing surface. The bed ding could be easily traced and was clearly nearly level.
5. Beautifully preserved leaflets and plant parts are found immediately below the roots of erect petrified stumps. The two trees referred to above had good plant fossils directly below their roots. This observation has been, in part, the cause for some geologists, in the early days of the study of coal and coal-bearing rocks, to decide that the coal does not represent in situ growth. Delicate plants located in the soil and humus of a true growth level in which trees are growing certainly will decay and become part of the humus.
6. Unusual fossils are found in the sediments inside the hollow trees. Hollow stumps standing in a growing forest would be expected to collect within their empty interiors debris falling from branches and limbs overhead. However, pieces of roots were found in the sediments inside two stumps near Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. Brown (1850, p. 127) made a similar discovery. In addition, sections of horsetail stem have been seen in the shale inside stumps. These also could not have fallen into the stumps from above. Both roots and horse tail stems must have been washed in by water.
7. Sediments are often banked up against vertical stumps. Mud must have accumulated rapidly to bank and settle within the hollow centers and against the outsides. The slow gradual build-up of sediments over a long period of time would not produce these results.
8. Diagonal petrified trees tipped 45 or more degrees are occasionally seen in the cliffs. A tree tipped to a 45-degree angle whose roots are not parallel to the bedding plane could not have been buried slowly and could not be in position of growth. Unless there were sediments for support, it would have fallen prone. Such trees must have been buried extremely rapidly or carried in toto along with the mud and sand.
9. A marine animal fossil argues for the sea as the force that tore out the trees, carried them about, and dropped them in the sediments. A small worm, called Spirorbis, which has a coiled calcareous tube, is currently an abundant inhabitant of the salt water environments. This tubeworm, which appears like a small snail not over one-fourth inch in diameter, is also seen in the coal measures of Nova Scotia. The limy tubes are abundant in some of the seams of coal and are often found fastened both to the outsides and to the insides of the hollow stumps. The evidence of this worm nearly forces one to the conclusion that these trees floated in salt water long enough for Spirorbis to attach to them, or they were covered by deep, clear sea water.
Despite the fact that Spirorbis is attached to sea-animal fossils in most fossilbearing rocks, geologists have called it a fresh-water animal when it is found associated with coal-producing plant debris. This unwillingness to accept the facts at face value stems from the influence evolutionary geology has on the interpretations of earth scientists. It is difficult for them to accept Spirorbis as a sea animal, because this does not fit their belief that coal was formed by the gradual and repeated burial of marshes and peat bogs where sea animals should not be found (Stevenson, 1911-1913, p. 509).
10. The upright stony columns often pass through two or more distinctive strata. Sometimes one of these may be a coal seam. Although this observation does not exclude the possibility of in situ trees, it does require the rapid dropping of mud, sand, et cetera until the full height of the stump is covered, and it requires this to be done so quickly that no part of the stump is decayed before burial. Trees thirty-eight feet tall, as have been reported for England (Broadhurst, 1964, p. 865), would necessitate sediments at least that deep, not at that spot only but over a consider able area. This is hardly uniformity in operation!
How can stumps floating upright in water and being left in the mud in that position be explained? Yet, this is a requirement if the growth in place of these stumps is questioned. Would hollow stumps that have their centers of gravity in the base of the trunk adjust to a horizontal position as their tissues become saturated with water?
(To be continued)
