Creation Research Database

Fossil Grove and Other Paleozoic Forests as Allochthonous Flood Deposits

Wise, Kurt P. (2018) Fossil Grove and Other Paleozoic Forests as Allochthonous Flood Deposits. Answers Research Journal, 11: 16. pp. 237-256. ISSN 1937-9056

Abstract

The lycopod stumps at Fossil Grove in Victoria Park, Glasgow, are widely believed to be in situ in a sandy mudstone. However, flattened axial systems, unattached stigmarian appendages, and the thinness, lack of bioturbation and lack of soil development in the sandy mudstone suggest the stumps were emplaced allochthonously. The limited metamorphism and lack of bioturbation in Fossil Grove sediments not only confirm allochthony, but suggest all the sediments were deposited in the same diluvial catastrophe. The distribution of stumps with respect to possible megaripples in the underlying unit, combined with the deformation of axial systems, suggest the lycopod trees lived and grew in water, and decomposed while floating in water, before being deposited at this location. Subsurface borehole and the plunging synclinal outcrop pattern of sediments in the Glasgow region suggest Fossil Grove sediments sit atop thousands of feet of fossiliferous sediments and thousands of feet of flood basalts. Unlike Clarey and Tomkins' (2016) claim, Fossil Grove stumps were allochthonously deposited well into the Flood. When Clarey and Tomkins' (2016) autochthony criteria are corrected, generalized, and expanded, 12 autochthony criteria applied to Fossil Grove stumps argue strongly for their allochthonous emplacement. Among Carboniferous fossil forests in general, their rapid and prolonged burial, the placement of most of them over coal, the commonness of a single higher taxon, and the near-ubiquity of internal-mold preservation collectively suggest that the application of the same 12 criteria to claims of in situ Paleozoic forests will indicate all of them were generated allochthonously during the Flood.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Q Science (General) > QE Geology > QE760 Paleontology > QE760.6 Paleobotany
Q Science (General) > QE Geology > QE760 Paleontology > QE760.7 Polystrate Fossils. Petrified Wood. Amber
Q Science (General) > QS Creation Science (General) > QS7 The Genesis Flood
Depositing User: Admin
Date Deposited: 04 Sep 2026 23:44
Last Modified: 04 Sep 2026 23:44
URI: https://crsq.creationresearch.org/id/eprint/1717

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