Floating forest hypothesis fails to explain later and larger coal beds | The Institute for Creation Research

 
Floating forest hypothesis fails to explain later and larger coal beds

In Journal of Creation 31 (3): 12-14, December 2017

Recently, there have been two papers that have been critical of the floating forest hypothesis. The first paper demonstrated that there are several geological problems that cannot be resolved with a pre-Flood floating forest biome.

The second paper identified an in situ site in Scotland that demonstrated pre-Flood lycopod trees were rooted in soil and not floating atop the ocean. The Glasgow site contains 10 lycopod stump casts that are all rooted in the same horizon and are equidistantly spaced in growth position. Each of the lycopod trunks exhibits a common southwesterly direction of deformation, identical to the paleocurrent direction of the ripples in the encasing sandstone. However, the lycopod tree roots do not show this directional deformation. The roots also visibly penetrate downward into the mudstone below. These two observations indicate that the roots must have been embedded in the underlying horizon prior to the deformation of the trunks. In addition, this paper demonstrated that living lycopod trees were not as hollow as many have claimed. This paper concluded by suggesting we drop the floating forest hypothesis altogether.

Click here to read the full article text.

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