What do Fossils of Hollow Trees tell us about the Pre-Flood World? - Dr. Kurt Wise

 

Along their hike through Tennessee's Pocket Wilderness, paleontologist Kurt Wise shows Del Tackett evidence for the region's catastrophic past, including major earth movements and mega-earthquakes. Hidden in the rocks along the hiking trail, they also come across fossilized tree-like plants that are the remnants of what once was a continent-sized forest that floated atop the ocean in the pre-Flood world.

𝘐𝘴 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺? is a documentary that features over a dozen scientists and scholars explaining how the world intersects with the history recorded in Genesis. From rock layers to fossils, from lions to stars, from the Bible to artifacts, this fascinating film will change the way you see the world. The film’s goal is to provide a reasonable case for Creation in six normal days, a real Adam and Eve, an actual fall, a global flood, and a tower of Babel. Dr. Del Tackett, creator of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵, serves as your guide—hiking through canyons, climbing up mountains, and diving below the sea—in an exploration of two competing views…one compelling truth.  

Watch the full film now: 

   • Is Genesis History? - Watch the Full ...  

This segment is taken from 𝘉𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘐𝘴 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺?, which explores rocks and fossils, intelligent design, astronomy, and so much more! These fascinating segments are approximately 20 minutes each and include an incredible depth of material not included in the film. They are perfect for families, churches, schools, and homeschools wanting to learn how Genesis explains the world around us.

Watch the full series here: 

   • Rocks & Fossils | Beyond Is Genesis H...  

Dr. Wise earned his BA in geology from the University of Chicago, and his MA and PhD degrees in paleontology from Harvard University. He founded and directed the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College and taught biology there for 17 years. He then led the Center for Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for 3 years, before founding and directing the Center for Creation Research and teaching biology at Truett McConnell University for the last 7 years. His fieldwork has included research in early Flood rocks in the Death Valley region, late Flood rocks in Wyoming, and post-Flood caves in Tennessee.

For more information on Dr. Kurt Wise, please go to https://bit.ly/2zUN3U9.

Kurt: So that cliff I was talking about,

we followed along here and now it's coming down to the…

the trail level. Look at the… look at the log right there.

Del: Oh yeah. Oh my goodness!

Kurt: Yeah, right in the middle of that convoluted bedding.

Del: This is… this is massive, Kurt.

Kurt: Yes. Del: It's just hard to imagine

this thing sliding down…. Kurt: And it continues on from here,

so it's been half a mile that we've followed it here.

It continues on for another three quarters of a mile.

Imagine this whole cliff is not in place.

It slid down from above. And the same cliff goes up

the other side. So the whole thing slid down

into this valley. Del: Uh huh.

Kurt: It indicates a time when this valley was cut

out very rapidly —

much more rapidly than any process we're familiar with.

Del: And that's all post- flood here, all these….

Kurt: This would be the Arphaxadian Epoch stuff.

It's similar to the present, just bigger, okay?

And we see boulders in the present eroding

off of cliffs…. Del: But not….

Kurt: Not this scale. Not this scale.

Del: It's massive. Kurt: This is huge.

So we're looking at

that Arphaxadian Epoch when we kind of imagine — in your mind —

that boulder sliding down the hillside.

Del: But the rocks themselves are…

are pointing to something… to the epoch before them,

to the Flood. Kurt: Right. Exactly.

The rocks that have actually

slid down show evidence in them of a time before that.

Del: Yeah. So what are we seeing, then, in the rocks?

Kurt: Well, this… this is a really cool place.

This is a… this… this is a kill zone.

During the time that this rock was being formed,

this would not be a place that any organism could survive.

This was complete destruction. This is catastrophism

on a magnificent scale. About half way up this…

this cliff here, you can see kind of a blotchy pattern.

Del: Oh, yeah. Kurt: Yeah. Layers above,

layers below, and a blotchy

pattern in- between. It's about six feet thick.

That's actually what we call a seismite.

When you've got soft sediment that an earthquake

shockwave runs through, it forms that sediment. And,

in fact, it settles the sediment down,

causes water to come out which deforms it.

And that's called a seismite — it's made by seismic,

or earthquake, activity. This is six feet thick.

Now you're probably not familiar with seismites… know how

incredible that is. We can produce seismites

in the laboratory, or I can go to the edge of a ocean —

over a lake, in that wet zone of the sand along the shore —

and stand there. Now you got to make sure no one's looking…

see this — but you stand there and vibrate. And if you vibe…

you'll notice that when you do, the sand will almost liquefy;

water comes out…. Del: Yes, right.

Kurt: …of the sand and runs down to the… right down to the water.

Now if you look closely, what's… what's happening is you're

vibrating the sand — it's occupying less volume —

and it's pushing the water out from what was between

the sand grains, and it's escaping

and then flowing down. Now if you look closely,

you'll see that the water comes up in little, tiny volcanos

here and there — kind of bubbles up. And if…

again, you got to make sure no one's looking.

And you go down there and cut into the sand — in the middle

of one of those little volcanoes.

You're going to see the layers of sand going down the beach.

But in that place where the volcano is, they're

bent upwards. The water has left the sand and come out

of the sand, creating what we call fluid evulsion structure.

Now in your incredible power on the edge of a body of water,

you can produce fluid of evulsion structures that are

about an eighth of an inch high, something… a quarter inch.

Earthquakes are bigger. They can

create bigger structures; and the bigger the earthquake,

the bigger the structures. So a decent earthquake

that is shaking buildings, produces an inch or so

of fluid evulsion structure…. Del: Only an inch, precisely?

Kurt: Yeah, yeah. Now the biggest earthquakes

that we've witnessed in the last 50- 60 years,

since seismometers have been developed, produce

11 inches. The big Anchorage, Alaska earthquake of 1964 — 8.2,

something like that on the Richter scale,

monster earthquake — produced about 11 inches

of convolutions or seismites. Del: Okay.

Kurt: Yeah, exactly. And as near as I can tell,

when you double the thickness of your… your convolutions —

your seismite — it requires an earthquake about 16 or

so times bigger. This thing's six feet,

so it's six times…. Del: That's beyond imagination.

Kurt: …of the biggest earthquakes we're familiar with

in the present. So we're talking about a time

with earthquakes that are unimaginable.

Del: Right. Kurt: Huge earthquakes,

probably no process

on the present earth is capable of… of doing that.

And so we have a period of huge earthquakes,

but that's not all. Because

for that seismite to work, you've got to have deposited

that six feet of sand very quickly, full of water —

still full of water — to create that.

And so we've got six feet of sand deposited very rapidly,

then hit by that earth. So we've got evidence

of very rapid deposition,

very deep deposition. And you can see here, in one

layer we've got what we call crossbeds: the layers

cross up into… You've got a bed of a certain thickness —

there's one there, it's beautiful it's about a foot

thick or so. And the beds within that bed cross it.

These are called crossbeds. So if water is moving

and carrying sand, it carries sand in and deposits the sand

down the front face of a dune.

Del: It's like we saw in the Grand Canyon.

Kurt: Yes, you would have seen some very large crossbeds there,

and that's indicating that moving water is carrying

sand grains and depositing this. So it's not just depositing

sand very quickly, it's depositing sand in…

in moving water and all these crossbeds facing one direction —

they're all going that way. In fact, not just here,

but everywhere this unit is found, you've got cross beds

that are moving from the east to the west.

And this thing is found from Alabama to the south

to Pennsylvania in the north. This thing goes across

the entire north- south cross section of the United States,

indicating a time when water is moving across the continent —

probably about 1,000 feet above present sea level —

moving ocean across the continent, carrying sand,

depositing it very rapidly — depositing it in moving water —

and, simultaneously, being hit by earthquakes —

enormous earthquakes.

Del: So what we have — I mean right here and just this small

area we have — the clear evidence that this was

deposited rapidly,

and that there are these cataclysmic earthquakes that are

beyond our imagination, that are all happening while all

of this is still wet.

Kurt: Mmm hmm. And…and there's more because

there's a lens of material here — it starts

thin over on this side, and thin up this side,

and it gets thick in between. It's a lens- shaped structure.

Kurt: That's a segment of this sand that,

while it was being deposited — while it was still soft,

it slid down. So the whole area is apparently being uplifted,

upended and stuff is sliding down as it's being deposited.

So we not only have rapid deposition, but we also

have this whole area being uplifted. Well,

what's to the east here? Where's the…

what's the source of the uplift? Not but a few dozen miles

to the east, we have the Appalachian Mountains.

So while this is being deposited,

the Appalachian Mountains are being raised

upward very rapidly. Water is going over the top

of the mountains, ripping the tops

of the mountains off and carrying the debris

into this area — depositing the sand —

and carrying the sand across the continent. We can… we can

trace this wedge of sediment — which is thickest at the…

at the Appalachians — thinning to the west,

past the Mississippi River. We've actually found sand grains

from the Smokies in the Grand Canyon,

on the other side of the continent! So…

so there's this… there's a time when water

was being moved across entire continents,

depositing layers of sediment hundreds of feet thick.

You've seen it in the Grand Canyon.

Del: Yes. Kurt: Those great layers.

Del: Huge, huge.

Kurt: Okay, you're just seeing a part of it — 200 miles of it.

That's just 200 miles of it. It carries across

the entire continent.

Del: Yeah, that gives you the…

the sense of how massive all of this is.

Kurt: Almost incomprehensible. Underneath this unit —

remember this unit doesn't belong here,

it belongs up above. So if you look at the rocks

that are in place here, one of these rocks is one

that I would… I used to do some caving in.

That caving is done in a crossbedded

oolitic pentremites-containing dolomite…

Del: well, sure….

Kurt: You know… you don't have to know what that means.

It's just a very specific description

of a very specific rock. There's tens of thousands

of feet of sediment in — of rocks, layers — in Tennessee.

There's only one, a few hundred feet thick,

that is a crossbedded oolitic pentremites-containing dolomite.

That same unit is on the other side of the continent as well.

It's in the Grand Canyon. There's a crossbedded oolitic

pentremites-containing dolomite in the Grand Canyon

that has caves in it; it's known as the Redwall.

Del: Oh yeah.

Kurt: Halfway down… about halfway down the canyon.

That's the same unit, same lithology, same rock type.

Kurt: Up in Montana it exists also —

tens of thousands of feet. There's one crossbedded oolitic

petromites- containing dome. It's got caves in it —

Cave of the Winds, for example,

in Colorado Springs. Del: That's exactly right.

Kurt: You're familiar with that? Del: Been there. I have been.

Kurt: That's in that same unit. You can trace the unit across

the entire continent. And so it… and contained in it,

are little critters that come from the ocean.

They have been ripped off of wherever they lived —

like coral pieces, beautiful coral

fossils in this — they have been carried,

broken from where they live — because coral has to be sitting

on a solid surface. If it's sitting in the mud

it sinks into the mud and the little guy dies, okay,

so it's got to be on a solid surface.

But we find these coral pieces beautifully preserved,

sitting in — what? — mud. We see them sitting

in carbonate mud. They can't have lived there;

they were only dumped there. So these are living organisms

ripped off of some source, thousands of miles away,

carried across the continent and dumped in places like here

and across the continent. So we're talking about

a continent- wide scale event that is depositing thick layers

of sediment across huge distances — thousand plus

feet above sea level — being carried thousands of miles

from where it came from in the place,

while enormous earthquakes are going up that are this…

the kinds of things you might expect with asteroids hitting

the earth or something. And mountains are being raised

very quickly at the same time. That's the flood.

Del: This is part of what Peter is referring to, is the Earth

being destroyed at that time.

So… so we have the evidence here of the tumultous moment.

But when you talk about little pieces of the coral, and

so forth, those are pointing back, then,

to the ante-diluvian period. Kurt: Exactly.

Del: And it tells us what was there.

What do we see in the rocks here that help us understand more

about what that world was like?

Kurt: If we go a little bit further down the same trail,

we'll see some of that. Del: All right. Okay.

Kurt: Let's go on down. Del: Let's do that.

Kurt: So here we're continuing that same cliff is now

below the trail. It's coming down,

and it's coming down towards the river here,

towards the creek. And this is where it comes down to

the creek and then goes up the other side.

And underneath this overhang we had some cool things to look at.

As a matter of fact, right there.

See that structure…. Del: Oh, yeah.

Kurt: …right there? That's a fossil log.

Del: You can even see the bark ridges.

Kurt: Yep, the impression of the bark.

You can see that right there. It's an even bigger

one up there. The curvature…. Del: Sure do.

Kurt: …curvature of the log. So we've got a number of logs in

this particular sandstone unit.

Del: So what is this telling us, Kurt? What are we seeing here?

Kurt: Well, first of all we've got evidence in this…

in this rock of flowing water. You see this little pebble here?

Del: Yes, right. Kurt: That's a quartz pebble. See,

that extends about three quarters of an inch in diameter

and several in here that are three quarters

to an inch in diameter. And… and a pebble this size,

for water to move it, the water has to be moving at

a pretty good clip. Probably moving at about one

to two meters per second. It's moving from the east

to the west. The water velocity, apparently, to carry this sized

pebble is what's necessary to carry two foot diameter logs.

Del: Makes sense. Kurt: So we have evidence

of moving water, which we saw

already with the crossbeddings… Del: sure.

Kurt: …and all that sort of thing.

But here we have further evidence

in the things it's carrying.

Del: Yeah, so…

more indications that all of this is just not laid down over

a long period of time, with very slow processes.

But what we're seeing here is something is laid down again

rapidly under some tumultous kinds of conditions.

Kurt: And it can't be deposited slowly — you just

can't move water slowly and deposit pebbles.

Del: Those things would be sinking to the bottom.

Kurt: That's right. You can't even roll them along

the bottom with water moving that slowly.

So these are entire units — I mean everything you can see,

it's — you're talking about tens of feet of sediment being

deposited at a time. Steve Austin talks about

the nautiloid bed, for example, a six- foot thick unit being

deposited very quickly — basically moving at, maybe 200

miles an hour — moving into place

and settling in place. Huge masses of sediment

moving very rapidly. That's really the best way

to explain this kind of thing. Del: That makes sense.

Kurt: So we have evidence of the catastrophism

of the flood. Del: Yes.

Kurt: But also it's carrying evidence of the world

that existed before the flood — “that world that then was,

being overflowed with water perished.” Well,

here's an insight into that world.

We're seeing logs from forests before the flood.

Think about the world's forests: you got forests in the tropics,

you got forests in North America.

Del: Yes.

Kurt: The world's forests. Now bring a flood on the world,

destroy the entire world. You're gonna bury some

of those trees immediately. But what about the rest

of the trees floating on top of the waters following the flood?

Must have been trillions of trees!

Del: Huge, mass of….

Kurt: Huge mass of trees. We see in Mount St. Helens,

for example, right? After the eruption of Mount St.

Helens, that collapse of the mountain went

into Spirit Lake, pushed all the water Spirit Lake out

of the lake, and the water went up —

900 feet up the side of the hills around it;

swept all of the soil and trees from the sides of those hills,

came back into what is now Spirit Lake.

At the end of that eruption, there were about one million

logs floating on that lake. And over the years,

they've gotten waterlogged and sank down to the bottom

of the lake. But there's still a quarter million logs!

Del: They're still floating there.

Kurt: It's been 35 years! Now, if you still have logs floating

after 35 years from a small thing like that —

with only a million logs — how many logs do you think are

floating around on the… on the world's oceans

during the flood. And here's some of those logs.

Del: And especially in a… in that world before the flood.

That Ante- Diluvian world which could have been

even more lush than what we have today.

Kurt: Could well be. In fact, going down the path a little bit

further we can see more information which tells us yes,

there is good reason to believe that it was even more lush

world and today, more trees than today,

and a little bit different. If we look at these logs —

kind of hard to tell from this… from this location —

but they're different kinds of trees

than we have in the present.

Del: What kind of trees are they?

Kurt: Well, these are… turn out to be what are called

lycopods In the present world we have scrawny little lycopods.

We have herbaceous lycopods: soft, short plants, not

tall trees, but these are arborescent lycopods.

These are lycopods that grew to the size of trees.

So they are in that group of plants known as lycopods,

but they're unlike anything in the present.

And what's really interesting about them

is that they're hollow. They are logs that actually

don't have secondary wood in the inside, like the trees

you have around here — you cut into them, you're going to find

hardwood in the middle. Del: Right, yeah.

Kurt: You cut into these, you will not find hardwood

in the middle. All you're seeing is the bark,

the impression the bark made in the sand.

There is nothing in the middle. In fact some of them are

full of sand, because there was nothing aside from the bark.

And…. Del: Okay.

Kurt: And so this is a weird…

that's a weird kind of tree. Del: It is.

Kurt: A tree that has no central core with wood in it.

What's going on there?

Del: So why would a tree have now inside?

Kurt: Yeah, that's an interesting question.

When we look more carefully at this, we realize we have more

parts than just the bark; we find also branches,

branches are also hollow, and we find — well,

you'd call them roots, but technically

they're not roots, they're called rhizomes —

but those are also hollow. And the rootlets coming off of

the roots are hollow.

This is a weird kind of plant: a whole tree that's hollow

in every aspect — in its branches, in its stem,

in its roots, in its rootlets.

Del: Okay, there must be a reason for that.

Kurt: Yeah, I think so. In fact, the rootlets are so soft…

can you imagine a root that is hollow,

making its way through soil? Could it do that?

Del: I doubt it. Kurt: It's gonna collapse.

So something's odd about this.

Now it turns out in the modern world we do have some plants

that are hollow, with hollow roots, and hollow

rootlets coming off of them. Now they're all little plants,

they're not trees. But every one of them are plants

that live in water. They float on water.

So there's air in the inside of the trunk and the roots

that allows the plant to float. That's part of what gave

me the idea; and, actually, Joachim Scheven back

in the early 80s got an — he's from Germany —

got the idea that maybe these trees are actually floating.

That rather than their roots going through soil,

their roots intertwined with the roots

of adjacent trees. The trees are light

enough to float, and you have a floating forest

in the pre-flood world since they're all bark and they float.

If, once they're floating, once you've

destroyed the forest, once they're floating logs —

because these are horizontal, there they're apparently

floating in water to get down to this point — while

they're floating — and let's say while they're still floating

on top of the water — they rub against one another and peel

their bark off. Now once the bark's gone, they're gone,

but the bark can then filter down to the bottom of the body

of water and accumulate as a pile of bark.

And that big log mat can be blown around by the wind

and deposit that bark over a large area.

And if that was the case, you would expect that perhaps

those layers of bark landed on a flat surface,

built up on that flat surface. When the log mat blew away,

the flat surface would end and other sediment would come

on top and you'd end up with a layer of bark

that had a flat bottom surface, a flat top surface.

When that bark is… is then coalified,

you'd have a layer of coal — a very special kind of coal:

coal that's made of bark. And, in fact, if we go down the trail

we can see some of that coal.

Del: Huh. So you would expect that if we have… if we have

trees that were floating, we'd expect to find a coal

bed here somewhere. Kurt: Yes.

We can do that. So if we follow it, we can…

we can go back and we can take a look

at one of those coal seams. Del: After you.

After you.