Evolution Transitional Forms

This article is from an outside source and
may or may not represent the views of this site.
It is presented to provide alternate views of the topics.
Have an article you would like to submit?

I am commenting on a review that was posted to this website, regarding Dr. Steve Austin's 1990 video called Mount St Helens, Evidence for Catastrophe. I happen to be a fan of Mount St Helens, as I lived relatively close to the erupting mountain for most of my life and it was the eruption in 1980 that sparked my love for geology and volcanology. I also happen to be very aware of the claims being made by Austin and other YECers regarding the eruption, as well as the YEC museum that is operated by Lloyd and Doris Anderson called the 7 Wonders Museum. The 7 Wonders Museum can be found on SR 504, the main highway leading to Johnston Ridge Observatory, at about 10 miles from Interstate 5 and Castle Rock, WA.

Regarding Dr. Austin, I do have my own views on his theories, his books and the "evidence" which he cites to support a young-earth hypothesis. However, I only wish add my input on the reviewers comments on Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone National Park, as it relates to conditions found in Spirit Lake, near Mount St Helens.

The reviewer stated that Austin made some "good" observations regarding the Specimen Ridge, including crediting Austin for finding that the trees found at Specimen Ridge to be transported to their current location.

When Mount St Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, a combination of a lateral blast and landslides, lead to 230 square miles of forest lands being blown down and a tsunami wave that reached an estimated 600 to 800 feet up the flanks of a ridge that confines Spirit Lake. Trees that were blown down by the lateral blast, were then picked up by the tsunami and washed into Spirit Lake. Today, Spirit Lake is clogged with thousands of floating trees.

YECers suggest that floating trees in Spirit Lake mirrors conditions that would be possible as a result of a global flood. The theory suggest that large floating log mats would gather and then subsequently sink, forming into coal deposits and petrified forests - like the one found at Yellowstone National Park.

The first error by the reviewer of Austin's DVD is the credit he gives to Austin for his observations of floating trees in Spirit Lake. The actual YECer to attempt to make a connection between floating trees and petrified forests is Dr Harod Coffin, a YEC geologist with Loma Linda University and a member of the Geoscience Research Institute. Coffin's first attempt to associate the Petrified Forest of Yellowstone to a global flood, appeared in Origins and Spectrum - both publications owned by the Seventh Day Adventist Church - in 1979, a year before the eruption. Shortly after the 1980 eruption, Coffin produced another article in Origins, suggesting a link between floating logs in Spirit Lake with Yellowstone Petrified Forest.

In later articles written by Coffin, Austin is given credit for assisting in the research project conducted by Coffin, but Austin is not the original source.

There are multiple sites inside and outside of Yellowstone National Park where a large number of petrified tress can be found. Most are in fairly remote areas of the park, with a large concentration found in the northeastern section of the park, known as the Lamar River Valley. Specimen Ridge, makes up the northwestern side of the Lamar River Valley.

All petrified trees found in Yellowstone are dated to the Eocene, or a period of about 50 million years ago. The deposits encasing the petrified trees are mostly breccia, associated with mudflows and tephra ash fall, all associated to a series of volcanic vents that are found at the nearby Mount Washburn and vents found to the north and east of the Lamar River Valley in the Absaroka Mountains that borders the park.

It is important to note that the volcanic vents and the petrified forests of Yellowstone, predate the better known super eruptions that gives the park its famous reputation.

Studies of the Absaroka Volcanoes revealed they are very similar to the volcanoes that now dominate the modern Cascade Range. These volcanoes were subject to explosive eruptions, followed by long periods of relative quiescence. Volcanic products can run the gambit, from large pyroclastic density currents to mudflows.

Research on the petrified forest was at its highest during the early 20th Century. WH Holmes, a member of the 1878 Hayden Expedition to Yellowstone, was the first to write a full geologic explanation of how the petrified forest was developed. Professor Erling Dorf with Princeton University also conducted major studies between the 1930's to 1960's. During the 1970's Professor Elisabeth Wheeler with North Carolina State University conducted a comprehensive inventory of the petrified trees, identifying the taxonomy of the preserved fossils. Finally the last surge of major research to be conducted was by Professor William J Fritz, who is now wth Georgia State University. The last study to have been conducted at Yellowstone was in 1987 by Timothy Jefferson. No additional studies have been conducted on the Petrified Forest since 1987 (based on personal communication to me by the Yellowstone Geologists).

Coffin proposed that the trees of the petrified forest were washed by the global flood, floated for an unspecified time in the flood waters and later sank near their current location inside Yellowstone National Park. Once the trees sanked to the bottom, Coffin proposed they were buried by underwater mudslides coming from an erupting Yellowstone. Coffin's writings does not take into consideration, the Absaroka's as a source of the volcanic activity. Therefore, I can only assume that Coffin is referring to the better known super eruptions from the Yellowstone Caldera to be the source of the mudflow debris.

To support his model, Coffin and Austin turned to the floating log debris found in Spirit Lake. Over the past 26 years since the cataclysmic eruption of Mount St Helens, some of the trees have sunk to the bottom of the lake, with some of the sunken logs - weighed down by their root balls - found in prone positions. Coffin fails to mention in his theory, that only a small of percentage of trees mirrors conditions found at Yellowstone.

In 1978, Professor Wheeler released her inventory of the flora and fauna fossils found among the Petrified Forest. She had identified over 200 different species of trees and other plant fossils. The most interesting aspect of her study was the diverse mixture of different climate types found intermixed within the preserved fossils. Trees and fauna that were common to climate conditions found in Northern California are intermixed with trees and fauna found in more tropical conditions - like those found in Central America. At the time, based on studies performed by Holmes and Dorf, it was assumed the trees were buried in place by volcanic activity that was similar to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Without any further interpretation of the burial conditions at Yellowstone, Wheeler concluded that it might be possible for cooler climate trees were growing along side sub-tropical trees.

It was the research that was conducted by William Fritz that stirred the pot and not the research that was conducted by Coffin and Austin.

In his PhD dissertation for the University of Montana in 1980 and later in a series of articles that appeared in Geology, Fritz proposed that the trees of the petrified forest was transported almost exclusively by mudflows from Mount Washburn and other volcanic vents of the Absaroka Range. Fritz evidence was two fold. The mudflows that devastated Pine Creek, and the Toutle and Muddy Rivers off Mount St Helens in 1980 and the diversity of trees found by Wheeler.

Fritz made a series of comparative studies between the mudflow deposits at St Helens and the conditions found at Yellowstone. Based on those studies, Fritz proposed that the cooler climate trees were carried down the flanks of Mount Washburn (and the other volcanic vents of the Absaroka's) by mudflows (and stream floods, where they became buried in a forest of sub-tropical trees. Fritz generated some controversy because he at first rejected the findings of earlier geologists that suggested the petrified forest was buried in place. In 1984, Fritz retracted that position somewhat, when additional studies were performed on Specimen Ridge. Those studies revealed that some of the trees on Specimen Ridge were still buried in place.

Coffin and Austin were clearly off base. Coffin failed to include the Absaroka Range as the most likely source of the mudflow debris at Specimen Ridge and Coffin could not compare the lake sediment deposits at Spirit Lake with the deposits found in Yellowstone.

Mount St Helens has proven to be a wonderful laboratory for studies into volcanism and botanical recovery. She is one of the most explosive members of the Cascade Range and St Helens has erupted explosively at least on 7 different occasions in the past 4,500 years. All of those prior eruptions were actually larger than the eruption that occurred on May 18, 1980.

David Yamaguchi with the University of Washington and Rick Hoblitt with the USGS-Cascade Volcano Observatory, have conducted tree ring dating studies of trees that were buried by past eruptions of Mount St Helens. Eruptions that occurred in 1480 and 1482 buried trees north and east of the Mount St Helens in a fashion -tephra ash fall - that was almost identical to those trees found at Specimen Ridge at Yellowstone. Closer to the flank of the volcano, there are buried trees from several mudflows from the mountain. This includes trees that were found on the South Fork of the Toutle River that were buried by a mudflow in 1881. These buried trees were also identical to trees found at Specimen Ridge. What was remarkable with the South Toutle site, the trees measure about 10 to 12 feet in height, they were buried in place and the roots of younger trees that were growing on top of the buried trees were still tightly entangled around the tops of the older trees.

Today, the more correct analogy is that some of the trees were transported by mudflows, but other trees were also buried in place at Specimen Ridge. Coffin theory meanwhile, is correctly buried in the round file for the flawed research that it was.

I will not be overly critical of the reviewer to Austin's DVD, because the information I just parted can be found in the peer review journals, but little of it has been printed for the general public. For those interested with learning more about this subject, I recommend reading Fritz's Roadside Guide to the Geology of the Yellowstone Country, where he devotes an entire chapter to his theory.

Rate This
Article
[click here]

Publish
YOUR
Article
[click here]

Mount St Helens: Evidence for Catastrophe

Viewer Feedback

Want YOUR Opinion Known?

What did you think about this article?