Re: Earth's Surface Formed Recently
by webolife » Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:22 pm
I live not too far from Vantage and would be happy to take Webolife on a low altitude aerial tour of the area...for my own edification flying with an expert as well as to to get a macro directed view of the flood plain. BTW, Donald Patten passed a few years ago. I met with his co-author Sam Windsor just after that for an informative discussion....I have personally spent hours examining and collecting specimens of petrified wood from interlayered sediments between the lava flows of Eastern Washington. These specimens I took from buried/exposed petrified trees of about a meter or more in diameter from the top of Frenchmen Hills south of Vantage, where also the Gingko Petrified Forest Park can be visited by anyone. Of interest to me was that the woody core materials were less consolidated than the outer layers and were the consistency of toothpicks. Looking at the broken cross sections of the petrified logs, one can easily observe the ringed structure of the wood, and closer microscopic examination shows individual cell features. The petrifying material is opal [not the fiery kind], a silicate common in the Columbia River Basalts there. Opal is formed from aqueous silica...
3. I have also taken numerous samples of diatomaceous earth and opal from the Quincy diatomite beds a few miles north of there. Of interest here is that the diatomite is unconsolidated material [indistinguishable from chalk in appearance, though silicate in composition], yet contains lenses of opalized rock [sections as large as a meter or more in diameter] formed from what I could tell as pressurized steam rewelded the diatomaceous sediment. The geologic story here is of lava flows interbedded frequently with sediment bearing overflows of ocean flooding. These sedimentary inter-layers range from gravels to sands, clays, and the above mentioned diatomaceous beds. The wood found in most of these varying layers is petrified with silica, but notably in one fairly deeply located clay layer the wood was partially carbonized [nearly to coal] but not petrified. That fossil sample is found at the interpretive center in the Petrified Forest park...
7. I am personally familiar with Donald Patten, and am confident he is a bonafide researcher.